The Midnight Socialite x Sloppy Seconds (ATL)

It’s been awhile since anything got put into this category on the site. What can I say, we get busy. The life of a genius is harder than we gracefully make it look.

Late night photographer/fun finder The Midnight Socialite (who bases his world headquarters out of the vicious ATL) has just released a new video in a series of nightlife web-docs that he is titling TMStv. Get it? In this latest episode, TMS takes a look at the behind the scenes involved in getting a club off the ground and into full flight, ironic t-shirts n’ all. This all went down recently at ATL’s premier underground spot MJQ during a monthly Saturday event dubbed Sloppy Seconds. They give you a roofie upon entering, and a morning after pill upon leaving. I can smell the regret and shame from all the way on the west coast. I love a good sweaty bonch like the next guy, don’t get me wrong. Honestly though, I’ve never been to ATL, but I hear absolutely amazing things about it. Plus their rapidly expanding dance culture is unarguably becoming a force to be reckoned with. Known for a long time now as a breeding ground for dirty (and often annoying as shit) hip hop, ATL is very efficiently cementing itself into a much broader musical landscape.

 

Dior Homme Spring - Summer ‘09 Collection

As everyone is running around, jabbering about the soundtrack to the recent Dior Homme Spring - Summer ‘09 runway show that took place earlier this month, it’s gotten harder to find actual photos of the event, which are amazing to no surprise. But the models were all dressed like Xavier. Either Justice is extremely fashion forward or Kris Van Assche became immensely inspired by more than just the super duo’s music… And don’t forget your Kanye shades. In all, I’d rock any of the stuff (if I was a foot taller).

Here’s the complete collection of high-res pics from the show.

Sean Dack’s Ghost Hardware

Friend to DBDF, Sean Dack was recently featured as Artcal’s pick of the week. His new show, Ghost Hardware, is currently occupying Daniel Reich Gallery in NYC.
Some examples of his work:

Dack is a genius. He also happens to be one of my favorite people ever ever ever. Check out his stuff. Tell your rich friends to buy it.

Here is what this show is all about:

“Daniel Reich Gallery is very pleased to present a new solo exhibition by Sean Dack, Ghost Hardware, featuring new photographs and sculpture.

Sean Dack’s new photographs expound upon Dack’s pursuit of the cryptography of digital images and the unpredicted errors intrinsic to their transmission. Malformed and missing crucial “blocks” of data, such images belie the digital nature of our illusionistic virtual world: abrasive ruptures while watching a DVD (causing one to manually tap the player) or while loading an image in ones computer Browser. Rendered in dubiously popCMYK cyans, hot pinks and electric blues: Dack’s partially decipherable subjects appear dynamic and mobile. Yet since digital “glitches,” tangle and halt the flow of information, Dack’s “stopped” images seem to express an isolated impersonal world. This impersonal world is hermetic – outside of the orbit of the world at large – enclosed in the obsessive-compulsive space of computer screen work and folly. A helicopter hovers, the ostentatious rounded terraces of a postmodern hotel signify grotesque vacuous luxury, and the faces of glamorous women are obscured by formal pixel blocks. As the resolution of digital images has improved in a few decades, the appearance of the evident square of the pixel is nostalgic yet tinged with the recollection of non-user-friendly computing: not completely enveloping computing distinguished by its imperfect pixilated line and the healthy differentiation between daily life which is merely mapped instead of replicated. As Dack’s colors are garish, his pixels are aesthetically dubious: evocative of early “computer drawing” and “poor taste” is also at issue in Dack’s work. And yet Dack’s glossy prints are formal and function sculpturally as seductive reflective slabs. In this way, there are aspects of Jacques Derrida’s concept of “hauntology”. As Derrida’s theory of “hauntology” has recently been ascribed to music and popular culture, it is the glimmering, shimmering and suggested – a quality attributable to Dack’s prints and sculptures. In the distant “reality” “obscured” by Dack’s formal pixel stripes, there is a heady mystery in terms of indecipherable action beneath the pixels, the color and the gloss of the print. And in the midst of a day-glow palate, there is foreboding and blocky subsumed death as though one is among bright ghosts and half rendered covert actions. Yet this same day-glow formal block quality has a modish goofy celebratory insouciance in rambling irregular staggered bars of information.

The loss of capacity to relay meaning is also captured in Dack’s excellent Ghost Hardware sculptures in attractive candy primary colors. These works are John McCracken-like: cast in bright hues making the oblongs of obsolete stereo components (tape deck, multi disk c.d. changer etc.) into formal sculptures. While their largess, once made them enticing objects emblematic of auditory superiority, they now have a mute slab like quality albeit bright yet bleak in their import.

Recently, Dack participated in “The Hidden” at Maureen Paley in London. His solo show at Fred Snitzer Gallery in Miami was exceptionally received. In the past year, he has exhibited at the Moore Space, The Moscow Biennial, and in a Peter Coffin curated exhibition at Frank Elbaz in Paris. Last summer Dack produced the book Future Songs as a mail exhibition in conjunction with Daniel Reich Gallery. Dack has also exhibited at Hiromi Yoshi in Tokyo and will be included in “The Future as Disruption” at The Kitchen this summer.”

Ginger Opening Reception At New Image Art Gallery

New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles has been a steady source of beauty and subculture since 2000, very rarely showing work that I’m not impressed and taken by. Their website doesn’t do any of the artwork the slightest bit of justice–you’ll have to go in there and get involved. I know that leaving the house can be scary, but just imagine that your neighbor changed their internet WEP key and you’re forced to actually go out into the real world to discover something new and amazing. You can only watch so much Deadliest Catch. Anyway, New Image are specialists in the showcasing and presentation of alternative, urban, & contemporary artists, having done shows with Ed Templeton, Chris Lindig, Alex Kopps, & Rich Jacobs, just to name a few geniuses. The gallery has a thick-as-blood relationship with independent art based (even though they sell at Nordstroms) clothing brand/now mogul RVCA, who in their defense still hold hands with some pretty outstanding artists and musicians. I am a little disturbed by their current sponsorship/boasting of cage fighter BJ Penn. Paint brushes and broken noses? Oh well, the ANP’s familyship with Modest Mouse, Grandaddy, Mars Volta, Animal Collective, & Pharcyde’s Fatlip is more than enough to earn my respect.

Okay, so about the gallery–they are having the opening reception for their latest installation Ginger on June 7th. You’ll see the typography based works of Tauba Auerbach, some paintings from indie/folk icon Devendra Banhart, plus a great deal more of wonderment from 8 other artists involved in the group show.

Interview With Jean Marc Of Le Branché

Care to get Epic? Lebranche.net is an excellent new noise/design frontier where our favorite crazy frenchman, Jean Marc, holds court. I am particularly enamored with the idea of a gesamkunstwerk–a total life work, as demonstrated most notoriously by Nietzsche, and Le Branché seems to successfully capture elements of this in a manner that’s not pretentious or contrived. We will now speak with the master… And yes, we fully acknowledge that most of what is about to transpire will make no manageable sense.

Can you describe the philosophy behind Le Branché?
The philosophy behind Le Branché : international fuck you style!!! We don’t have any pretension, but what we can say for sure is that we gonna do what we feel, without really thinking about the future. More like… We are everyday the new year eve 2012, you know what I mean? I will say like we are preparing ourself to party and create like there will be “no time for tomorrow”.

What are you influenced and excited by today, visually and musically?
The comin’ of 2012. Visually… The idea of thinking that almost everything has been done. Me and my crew feel that actually there is no limit, and it is time to go to another era. What makes me excited the most is the fact that we have now Myspace, Youtube, Dailymotion, etc. All those platforms to showcase art and music. They should really push all of us to be creative but in the real level, now that we have all those things as tools, we’re still acting like there are majors around to guide us to create and compose because we’re still scared of the being different.

(At this point I lose Jean Marc completely)

People in general… I will say… There are the new artists… Pick one person or 2 is kind of close-minded… Cause don’t believe the hype. Hype is very dangerous. Eyes Lies. Everybody is dope… And everybody is wack… We shouldn’t act anymore like the way things supposed to be “according to the system”, and I guess this is what Le Branché is sure to do.

You describe your work as “Sound Illustration”. What, exactly, does this mean?
It means the work we’re doing is not only music, that our music is composed with images, and our images are designed with sound. we can’t dissociate music from visual. This is the 4th dimension. A lot of people are not ready to understand that, but who cares. Knowledge, once again is the key. More precisely, an open mind is the key to live better in the future.

“Style Bully/Modern Builder?”
Yes… DE SIGNER. We’re all DESIGNERS. DESIGNERSRULETHEWORLD is the second LP of the main band of Le Branché house, DE SIGNER. DE SIGNER is a group of visual and audio artists. Our projects include full-length albums, audio/video installations, and DJ sets. Blending the methods of the modern lifestyle, our work bridges the gap between art and commerce, architecture and hip-hop, and the 3rd world and the ruling class, with a flashlight pointed at the truth that is DESIGNERSRULETHEWORLD. Style and progressive construction, this is what DE SIGNER is about no matter if it is music or video.

Check out DE SIGNER’s first single HERE.

Sabre Vision & T. Hendricks Collab Sunglasses

Australian inspired, American based sunglass designer, and dear friend of DBDF, Sabre Vision have collaborated with yet another talented artist to create more custom shades. This time with reputable tattoo artist Tim Hendricks, who I’m told is on the show Miami Ink… I wouldn’t know. But I do know that the collab eye wear will be revealed later this month at Don’t Panic, Sabre Vision’s very own secret storefront and HQ located in Newport Beach, Ca. These customs aren’t my personal favs of SV’s collection, but they do showcase one end of Sabre’s very wide spectrum. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Sabre Vision, their eccentric designs walk some made up line between retro & futuristic. You can check out just a few of their more magical styles HERE.

Here’s some pretty pix of the collab shades, and check in with SV’s site & blog in the coming weeks for details on the release party for Sabre Vision & Tim Hendricks.