A note about the photo at the top of my blog...

This past summer I spent six weeks traveling through Europe by myself (an amazing experience I may start chronicling here with the help of my journal). I spent ten days in Lisbon, Portugal, and while there visited the amazing Museu Berardo in Belem.

They were closed for the installation of a new exhibit (which kept happening to me over and over on my trip...) but had an architecture exhibition still open. Usually I'm a bit turned off by such exhibits, since the idea of studying floor plans isn't exactly enticing (I've had some bad art history experiences), but it turned out to be one of the most amazing exhibitions I've ever seen, and now I'm in love with the Portuguese artist who did the painting above.

(http://www.theguide.co.za/images/arts/0.01094100%201211470347.jpg)

His name is Amancio d'Alpoim Miranda Guedes but he is mostly known as Pancho Guedes. Though primarily an architect (and an amazing, surrealist one that that) he is also an artist. Here are a few images from the exhibition:

(excuse the quality/angles, it's hard to avoid the reflection of the glass on most of these)

He has spent most of his life in Mozambique, which might be the reason why he apparently isn't well known here. He has done sculptures based off of African Art:

(the darker one is an anonymous original, the lighter wood is his own version) 

More importantly, he has made remarkable buildings:

The Eye House

(http://www.greenart.info/guide/C26P01t.jpg)

(http://alexandrepomar.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/09/09/pancho.jpg)

Baby's First Blogpost

Here's my first blogpost on the W Magazine blog. Heavily re-edited, as to be expected, but at least it exists and has my name on it.


http://www.wmagazine.com/w/blogs/editorsblog/2009/10/16/south-african-artist-robin-rho.htm


Pictures Reframed (Performance Documentation), 2009

South African artist Robin Rhode has been an increasingly hot commodity since his debut at the Walker Art Center in 2003. Rhode's socially conscious, street culture-influenced work features cheekily humorous performances (at the Walker, he pretended to break into a sketch of a car), photographs and film, often using chalk as a medium. For his next project, Rhode is collaborating with world-renowned pianist Leif Ove Andsnes on Pictures Reframed, a re-imagining of Modest Mussorgsky's classic piano suite Pictures at an Exhibition. Five panels of Rhode's images, along with a video projection, will surround Andsnes as he performs, evoking a gallery setting.

Apparatus (Still) 2009

What was the impetus behind the project?
Leif Ove Andsnes was interested in bringing Pictures from an Exhibition back into the visual arts. Lincoln Center has a very multidisciplinary outlook; they inspired him to look at how one can stage classical concerts and recitals differently.

Were you familiar with the music?
I hadn't heard the music before, to be honest. But upon listening to it, I discovered that I'd heard pieces of it in cartoons or in some hip-hops samples by Method Man. Only then did I realize how big the Pictures at an Exhibition music is -- it's actually has been incorporated into popular culture quite extensively.

Promenade (Still) 2008/2009

Are you trained at all, musically?
No, not at all.

Pictures at an Exhibition was inspired by an exhibit of Viktor Hartmann's artworks. Did you look to the original works yourself?
Yes. I found it really interesting to not work from my own ideas. But I created the art from a new framework. How do these drawings from the 1860s relate to our current economic and social climate? That became really interesting.

Pictures Reframed (Performance Documentation) 2009

Did any of Hartmann's works speak to you in particular?
There's a sketch of an ox wagon that Hartmann made in a Polish ghetto in Russia during the 1860s. Two years ago, I shot a lot of material in Johannesburg on the theme of trains. Just as the ox wagon was a symbol of Russia's political injustices toward the Polish people, the train is a powerful symbol in South African history. It transported the masses from rural areas to goldmines, where they worked for minimum wage. The train also touches on the persecution of the Jews in WWII. The idea around this ox wagon then began to touch on histories outside of its own, and that's what I believe gives this project relevance to anyone.

Has music influenced your work prior to this collaboration?
Through working within the musical discourse I'm able to understand the influence that music has had [on my process]. I create drawings in a very physical manner that is linked to rhythm and tempo.

Pictures Reframed premieres at Lincoln Center (November 11-13) and will be followed by a world tour.
Photos: courtesy of the artist, Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York and Tucci Russo Studio per l'Arte Contemporanea, Torre Pellice.

By Sarah Lerner

Middle Class

I'm at a weird place in my life right now, transitioning between two internships.This semester I was offered an internship with W Magazine in their features department, and so of course I leapt at the opportunity to join the sinking ship that is Conde Nast (or so other bloggers like to say). Because I'm an intern, I do the typical menial things in exchange for the occasional actual assignment- I sort mail, I photocopy, and last week I had to go out and get someone a newspaper. In the office, I barely register on the food chain. Our conference room is full of clothes I will never be able to afford for photo shoots, and our articles revolve around high society events, successful businessmen/women, and celebrites.

After work this past week I went to the film forum that I've organized for my old internship, a non-profit for families with incarcerated family members. Despite the fact that I have curated the event, I still carry connotations that members of the audience are against. I am white and in college at a prestigious unversity, but what these people might not know is that I will be paying for that education for a long, long time. Though no one is directly mean to me, half of the film forums are often spent yelling about racism, oppression, the targeting of communities, all of which I know nothing about from personal experience. I started working with them while taking an art and public policy course, and I spent a long time talking with my class about the ways to convey support without alienating a group that you don't actually belong to. Of course, just by being there are creating these forums I am showing my support, but I still get looks of skepticism from audience members at each and every screening.

So at one internship, I am begging for scraps in the form of interviews while at the other, I am the elite, the lucky, because of my circumstances and for the fact that I happen to be middle class. It's quite a shift all in one day.


In other news: I really want to just go away for awhile, live on a house in the beach or the mountains and read and write and hide. Is that sad? I'm in the middle of two really good books right now though and with no time to read them all I can dream about is escaping. I guess you can have too much of a good thing though- perhaps my goal should be less running away from my life and more just learning how to live it, learning how to make enough time so I can spend twelve hours reading or escape for a weekend. Does anyone really get to do that, once they grow up? College and travel have spoiled me.


In other other news: Just saw Where the Wild Things Are. Will have to sit on it for a bit, all I know is that it made me want to be a kid again, to see things in that light, even if it does mean the occasional temper tantrum. I still have a hard time controlling my emotions, so where'd the fun part go? I want to sleep with my friends in a pile and have dirt fights and roll down hills...for now my childish fantasies will have to be fulfilled by Tilly and the Wall, who I haven't listened to in awhile and who seem to capture it best.