ARCO's covenant
14 February 2005. No comments yet. Inspired by .
All been busy over here - visitors, socialising, watching Real Madrid undeservedly scrape a victory. And of course ARCO, the huge international art fair held here each year.
It was immense, and exhausting, and I didn't cover nearly a quarter of what was on - and I didn't even take my camera, so you'll have to take my word for it on a lot of things. Some links though, from my personal highlights of what I saw:
* The Wooden Mirror by Daniel Rozin - just jaw-dropping. Check out the QuickTime movie (though it's not as good as the real thing - the detail it mirrors is incredible)
* Dinh Q. Lê, Vietnamese artist who hand-weaves his huge images mixing American and Vietnamese visual culture. The links don't really do justice to the work, which up close is remarkable.
* Chiharu Nishizawa (click on Pickup Artist-> Artist Information), whose work at its best is like what the Chapman brothers would paint if they'd ever had to work in offices.
* My favourite unusual art magazine La Mas Bella with their latest box of games. Which is quite literally a box of games. I first saw them - or rather their magazine vending machine - two years ago in Barcelona. I'd not heard anything from them since, so am glad they're still around.
Having produced their first three editions as a magazine, they decided to challenge themselves, their would-be contributors and the shops that stock it a little more. Hence the Tupperware, the tin can, the wine bottle, the collection of slides, the rifle targets, the stencils and flags and, if you have €30 to spare, you really should get my favourite, the wallet. It's an amazing and witty object and the final word in bespoke artist commissions.
ARCO was far more full of nonsense and pretension of course, as these things always are. But these brief thrills I found were enough to make their point: when anyone says you can't do something, be the bear.
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