February 16, 2012
We just got the R. Luke Dubois/Bora Yoon posters today: BUY THEM RIGHT NOW IN OUR SHOP. Hand-drawn by Ryan Duggan, they celebrate the New York duo’s upcoming performance on March 2, which is part of the opening celebration for Data Deluge. Both poster and show: Not to be missed.
February 15, 2012
Re-enactment (365 days)
Long Durational Performance Duraton: 7 hours
MUSEO DEL BANCO DE LA REPUBLICA Bogota/Colombia
2011
Maria José Arjona, who performed Vault for us in 2003, as well as endurance pieces in Treading Water and at our 2011 benefit, has a new work, All the others in me, which will premiere at the VOICE gallery as a parallel project of the Marrakech Biennale. She will perform Friday, 2 March 2012, 7:30 pm, at Dar Cherifa; the opening follows on Saturday, 3 March 2012, at VOICE gallery.
In All the others in me, “the artist’s body proposes itself as a result of a metis entity which is continuously in transit, it undertakes a metaphorical travel through a series of possible and never definitive identities to remember, another time, that art exists to exceed differences and accept the diversities.” If you happen to be in Morocco in March, don’t miss this.
(And for more on Maria: be sure to watch this video, “RIGHT AT THE CENTER, THERE IS SILENCE”, which documents some of her recent work.)
Also of note: Tinariwen, who played here in November, won a Grammy Sunday night for Best World Music Album. Amazing. Now all we have to do is get Adele out here.
February 14, 2012
We are ecstatic to announce our 2012 Benefit Dinner & Concert taking place 25-28 May 2012 in Marfa, Texas — A Trip to the Moon: A Weekend with Aliens and Astronauts. Please join us for this interstellar adventure.
Set in the far-flung environs of the Texas desert, we will host an extraordinary weekend of events recognizing and celebrating nine years of presenting art, film and music. The centerpiece will be an otherworldly dinner curated by Jens Hoffmann, and the weekend will also include a very special musical performance and several intimate parties.
So dust off your dark matter and plan to head west this spring for an unforgettable experience…!
For more information, please call MF Productions at 212.243.7300 or email benefit@ballroommarfa.org. More details coming soon.
February 10, 2012
Erin Shirreff
Four Sides, 2012
Four archival pigment prints, 61cm x 61cm each
Installation view from Recto/Verso, The Approach, London
Kelowna-born, Brooklyn-based artist (and Ballroom alum) Erin Shirreff has a new touring solo exhibition, Available Light, which will travel across Canada through 2012 and 2013. Curated by Sandra Dyck and Jan Allen, the show will open at the Carleton University Art Gallery next Monday, February 13, and Shirreff will give a short talk about her work at 6:30 p.m.
We love Erin’s work, and if you’re in Canada, I wouldn’t miss this (plus you have three chances to see the show, as Available Light will travel to Carleton University Art Gallery, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, and Contemporary Art Gallery).
Also of note: Shirreff is in a group show, Recto/Verso, currently at The Approach in London. The exhibition includes work by Michele Abeles, Robert Heinecken, Alexandra Leykauf, and Lisa Oppenheim, amongst others, and examines how the six artists engage with photographic image making and the ambiguous perceptual relationships between object and representation. Londoners: Make it happen!
Tomorrow night, we close our AutoBody Film Program with Asif Kapadia’s award-winning documentary, Senna, about the tragedy and success of Formula One racecar champion Ayrton Senna. Senna won the 2011 Sundance Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary and 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival Audience Award for Best International Feature, so it’s a great finale to the program. The screening is free and starts promptly at 7 pm at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas (special thanks to Jennifer Bell, Tim Crowley, and Marfa Recording Company for letting us use their lovely space.)
(After the screening, there are two great shows in town: first, Laura Gibson and Breathe Owl Breathe at the Marfa Book Company, followed by Adrian and the Sickness and new local metal band LBS at Padre’s. Another exceptional and packed Saturday night in Marfa.)
February 6, 2012
Solid Waste. Courtesy of The New York Times.
The latest in “The Real Artists of Marfa” series over at The New York Times: Solid Waste, who played a crazy awesome humid set for us last August and are featured in Meredith Danluck’s film, North of South, West of East, which is part of our soon-to-close visual arts exhibition, AutoBody. Read their profile, and don’t miss the rest in the series (and stay tuned for our associate curator’s profile).
There’s Leonard Cohen fever in the air: he has a new record out (which you can — and should — here on NPR’s First Listen), and MOJO’s just released an album of Leonard Cohen covers, featuring our pal Cass McCombs, as well as Field Music, Marc Ribot, Michael Kiwanuka, Father John Misty (who was in Fleet Foxes), Bill Callahan and others. You can’t listen to the Cass track, but download’s Bill Callahan’s cover of “Marianne.” The lyrics: sheesh. Killer.
Bill Callahan – So Long Marianne (Leonard Cohen Cover)
Courtesy of Stereogum.
February 5, 2012
A behind-the-scenes look at the installation of “Diamond Sea” and “Hive,” part of the Leo Villareal exhibition currently on view at the Telfair Museum in Savannah, GA.
For all our friends in Savannah: Be sure to check out Leo Villareal’s show at the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia, which is on view until 3 June 2012 (Villareal is on our Board of Directors, and was in our very first show, Optimo, in 2003). Organized by the San Jose Museum of Art, the exhibition is Villareal’s first museum survey show and features 20 sculptures dated from 1997 to the present. After leaving the San Jose Museum of Art, the show visited the Nevada Museum of Art and Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, and will be at the Telfair Museum of Art in Savannah from now until the summer. If you live there, or taking a road trip, don’t miss it!
See a slideshow from Leo Villareal’s show at San Jose Museum of Art on The Huffington Post, and download a free (!) soundtrack by James Healy that accompanies the exhibition.
February 1, 2012
La Santa Cecilia playing “La Negra,” which recently was nominated for a 2011 Latin Grammy. Note the guitarist Gloria — pure awesomeness.
Friends in LA: The amazing LA band La Santa Cecilia, who played our Marfa Dialogues symposium in 2010, are talking this Saturday, 4 February, at UCLA about their music and heritage with Josh Kun — curator of the PST/GRAMMY Museum exhibition Trouble in Paradise: Music and Los Angeles 1945-75; director of The Popular Music Project at USC Annenberg’s The Norman Lear Center; and — by crazy chance — Ballroom alum from The Marfa Sessions.
After the conversation, there will be a Q&A with the band, followed by a brief performance. Tickets are only $10 — if you can make it, go! They’re so fun, and have the best energy. For more info, check out their website or watch this great interview with them.
January 31, 2012
We’re sooooooooooooooooooooooooo excited to announce that singer-songwriter Eleanor Friedberger — she of Fiery Furnaces fame — is coming out to Marfa for a weeklong residency this March, culminating in a special performance on March 24, 2012. While she’s here, Eleanor will record a limited edition 7” for us (Grouper did the inaugural one for us last year). Read more about the show here — and check out Eleanor’s song “Inn of the Seventh Ray” off her first solo record, Last Summer, which was released last July — the part around 3:04 is so good.
