01.28.10 SÃO PAULO FASHION WEEK DAY 6 Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, and parties of São Paulo fashion week
No fashion today. First stop, a morning snack at a typical Brazilian “diner” called La Bella Paulista. They have an assortment of typical meat and cheese-filled pastries, fresh juices (I had pineapple and ginger), and strong coffee.
Down the street, the Museu de Arte de São Paulo’s (MASP) graffiti show was highly recommended – couldn’t miss it. The show features Carlos Dias, Daniel Melim, Ramon Martins, Stephan Doitschinoff, Titi Freak and Zezão. It’s a little weird to see graffiti in within the confines of an instution, especially in a city like Sao Paulo where graffiti is everywhere. The city is a constantly changing work of art.
In a little neighborhood called Vila Madalena in the western part of Sao Paulo, the streets are devoted to this artform. We explored the winding streets with Eli Subdrack (Assume Vivid Astro Focus) – look out for their retrospective book published byRizzoli.
Continuing our journey away from the center of the city, we come to the desolate neighborhood that now is home to Fortes Vilaca’s new gallery space and warehouse. A metal Ernesto Neto piece takes centerstage, but there is art by a myriad of their artists in all sorts of places, among the crates of millions of dollars worth of work.
A bit further outside of the city, in a working class district called Vila Medeiros is a foody’s dream destination: Motoco, a modest restaurant catering to the locals. Here, traditional ingredients are transformed into savory new creations headed by handsome chef Rodriguo Oliveira. Mocoto also boasts one of the most impressive cachaca (liquor made from fermented sugarcane) collections. And while hanging out eating delicious food and drinking manioc beer, you will meet a cast of characters.
We met Mexico's celebrated conceptual artist Felipe Ehrenberg (he told me that his great grandmother, grandmother, mother, and one of his daughters are all named Cecilia). Check out his upcoming show at MOLAA (Museum of Latin American Art in LA in March) and at Pinacoteca in Sao Paulo in September (during the Sao Paulo Biennial). We met Fyodor Pavlov who will have interesting exhibitions at Volta in March in NY and at the Sao Paulo Biennial.
Mocoto is worth the trek by anyone who loves adventure and food, but I was instructed to remove all jewelry and I carried my Givenchy purse in a plastic bag!!
01.28.10 SÃO PAULO FASHION WEEK DAY 4 Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, and parties of São Paulo fashion week
The day started with dark drama at Alexandre Herchkovitch's menswear show: a parade of the dead walking to The Cure. The makeup by Celso Kamura was impressive!!
In sharp contrast to the macabre of Herchkovitch, Neon showed a colorful joyful tropical collection that celebrated the jungle - check the "elephant tusks" jutting from the "elephant" jacket!
Spot the colorful birds on the clothes and shoes of Lino Villaventura, making these pieces little works of art.
Neon hosted an after-party at The Lion Club, a new club in the outskirts of downtown Sao Paulo, set to open in one month.
01.28.10 SÃO PAULO FASHION WEEK DAY 5 Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, and parties of São Paulo fashion week
The first show of the day, Isabela Capeto, was all colors and flowers in a sea of green.
Since I missed the Alexandre Herchkovitch women’s show, I dropped by his studio/mini-factory. It was a collection inspired by Eastern Europe with a South American flair.
Andre Lima
After dinner (that started at midnight!), we headed to Gloria, a dance club, where fashion journalist, TV host, and website creator Lilian Pacce was guest dj. The crowd went wild!
01.21.10 SÃO PAULO FASHION WEEK DAY 3 Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, and parties of São Paulo fashion week
The Gloria Coelho show held at Iguatemi, the super mega mall. Her dresses were all about architecture in three parts: the first section was all about visible structure, the second part consisted of amorphous sculptures, and the third section of dresses were made of ribbons. Practically all off-white. The shoes were sky-high. And the rings were like teeth jutting from the models’ hands. In the audience was Luisa Moraes wearing a piece by Gloria Coelho’s son, Pedro Lourenco.
Lunch at Mani Restaurant where I ate an egg that had been cooked at 63 degrees for 2 and half hours.
Back to the Sao Paulo Biennial building for more shows. The place is swarming with people, live shoots, TV crews, bloggers, constant interviews, paparazzi.
Similar to Gloria Coelho, the Huis Clos show was a very monchromatic collection with off-white, grey, and beiges. Soft geometry. Both these shows were monochromatic even though the audience was dressed primarily in colors and patterns.
I missed the last show at 9pm, Animale, which everyone was twittering about because supermodel Raquel Zimmerman was walking in it. There was even a press conference about it.
Camila Yahn and Joyce Pascowitch
Instead, I had the special treat of eating a traditional Brazilian dinner at the home of Joyce Pascowitch: TV host, website creator (glamurama.com.br), and publisher of Joyce Magazine and Modo de Vida. We had Picadinho, a meat stew, with bananas in farofa (toasted manioc flour), fresh corn, rice, and fresh hearts of palm. Her dining room is next to her gym.
01.20.10 SÃO PAULO FASHION WEEK DAY 2 Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, and parties of São Paulo fashion week
Sao Paulo Fashion Week takes place in the sprawling Sao Paulo Art Biennial building in a park next to the Museu de Arte Moderna. It’s a self-contained little fashion universe complete with a pop-up stores and food, a fashion shoot in a glass studio for everyone to watch, a myriad of lounges sponsored by various companies (Melissa shoes, Glamurama website, Coca-Cola), exhibitions, fashion show live feed, a T-shirt installation, and camera crews everywhere filming, interviewing, and reporting.
My first show at Sao Paulo Fashion Week was such a surprise. I guess I half expected to see bathing suits and flip flops, but the Ronaldo Fraga show started out with a silent Pina Bausch-inspired modern dance performance and then featured models whose heads were on backwards.
Simone Nunes seemed much tamer in comparison.
I met the exuberant Joyce Pascowitch for a quick interview, check it out at glamurama.com.br.
The press release said the collection by Fabia Bercesk was inspired by Joan of Arc and was divided into 4 themes: air, earth, water, and fire.
At Ellus, everyone was all a-twitter because Jesus Luz, Madonna’s boyfriend, was opening the show and dj’ing the after-party. He caused a frenzy among the paparazzi getting backstage.
I rushed to the Vermelho Gallery, a gallery dedicated to Brazilian artists with an emphasis on new media. It’s a fantastic building made of up four main spaces connected by a myriad of stairways and outside spaces. There is a bookshop that sells books and multiples, a courtyard where artists gather at 5pm for a beer, and a chic restaurant. Tonight, Vermelho opened three shows: Detanico Lain (Angela Detanico specializes in semiotics and Rafael Lain specializes in graphic design); Ana Maria Tavares (installation), and Gabriela Albergaria (photography, painting, and illustration).
Afterwards, we dropped by a house party at the studio of Bruno 9LE (yes, that is his name) with a bunch of “street” artists who are actually in a museum show at MASP Muesu de Arte de Sao Paulo.
01.19.10 SÃO PAULO FASHION WEEK DAY 1 Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, and parties of São Paulo fashion week
Since I already missed 2 days of Sao Paulo Fashion Week, the moment I landed I went straight to a dinner at The Fasano Hotel hosted by talented Brazilian shoe designer Alexandre Birman for Fred Dechnik (one of the creators of The Webster in Miami). It was an evening of sky-high-heels. I’m always curious as to how/why a straight man falls into designing ladies’ high heels, but, in this case, it was the family business, as simple as that. Then, we were plied with vodka/red bull and danced at Secreto (“The Secret Bar” which didn’t seem to be much of a secret) packed with young groovy Brazilian kids.
04.13.09 MOSCOW MADNESS Cecilia Dean's week of art, parties, shows, and general Russian craziness in the city of the future
MasterCard and our host Anne Dyulgerova put together five of the most talented and professional names in Russian fashion and asked them to show their collections in two days. At the same time, there was the opening of the Fetish Exhibition by David Lynch and Christian Louboutin and a private tour of the Pinnault Collection at The Garage, and art installations by Idem Item and Slavs & Tatars. Fueled with lots of food, vodka, and a Le Baron party and you have the first “Cycles and Seasons”.
12.12.08 NORTH AND SOUTH Visionaire launches issue 55 SURPRISE with a party in Miami and another in New York. Cecilia Dean remembers
Visionaire and Krug threw a wild party to celebrate issue 55 SURPRISE at The Raleigh's Oasis during Art Basel Miami Beach. The recession might have gotten everyone down in the day, but no one held back on partying at night. Under the glow of a fifteen-foot champagne fountain (the biggest in the world...well, at least in South Beach) and Krug bubbly pouring freely and lots of shirtless Ford male models in tight American Apparel jeans, Stephen, James, and I drank with fashion folk like Marc Jacobs, Franca and Carla Sozzani, Yves Carcelle, and Rachel Zoe. We introduced Pharrell Williams to Bruce Weber (hmm...that could be interesting). And chatted with power artist couple John Currin and Rachel Feinstein, Ryan McGinley (who won paintball in the same location two nights later), Russian art collector babe Dasha Zhukova, hot French gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin, and painter/water colorist Marilyn Manson (not to be confused with the heavy metal goth rocker). Sean Dack and Lady Bunny manned the decks and lots of revelers played with our pop-ups. It was exciting.
As if throwing a party for 500 in Miami wasn't enough, we were back on the dancefloor four nights later in freezing NYC at the studio of super hottie bad-boy artist Tom Sachs to celebrate part two of our SURPRISE launch. In the backroom of a Chinese hardware store, surrounded by millions of dollars of art, rubber vaginas, Con Ed guns, and power tools, the DJ duo of Harley and Cassie sat in the kitchen and spun for an intimate crowd: mega fashion photographer and partier Mario Testino, Mario Sorrenti, Luke Grimes (watch out for this young actor!), models-of-the-moment Lily Donaldson and Natalia Vodianova, more bad-boy artists like Terence Koh and cutie Italian Maurizio Cattelan, musician Michael Stipe, the Campana Brothers, and the ever glamorous Diane Von Furstenberg. The Harlem Gospel Choir arrived, but instead of singing Christmas carols they did a raucous a-capella version of Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)." The night ended with Tom and my boyfriend, David, engaging in a macho wrestling match that left David limping with a sprained ankle and Tom in rehab for a slipped disk. Memories...
Top: Cecilia Dean, Lady Bunny, and James Kaliardos in Miami Photography Billy Farrell/PMc Bottom: Natalia Vodianova and Olya Thompson in New York Photography Will Ragozzino/PMc
11.07.08 EASTERN EXPOSURE Cecilia Dean spent three weeks in Asia to launch Visionaire 54 SPORT, and brought back a few memories and a ton of party pics to share
For Visionaire 54 SPORT, editor Cecilia Dean went on the road with Lady Bunny and Lacoste to celebrate the issue in Asia, from Bangkok to Beijing to Seoul, play host to an exhibition and a launch party in each! Check out this Asian tour below.
12.18.07 BEST OF 2007: SPIKED Cecilia Dean on why Rodarte's heels come in handy in Hell's Kitchen
These are the most fantastic high heels/weapons designed by Rodarte and produced by Christian Louboutin. They’re covered in studs, spikes, and “cat claws,” which give them that extra-dangerous look. They’re fun to wear and really scare off the creeps in Hell’s Kitchen where I live.
10.18.07 SPACE RACE Cecilia Dean flies to L.A. to take in Tom Sachs's new out-of-this-world performance
Adrian Grenier (of Entourage), Chris Burden, Aaron Rose, Kate and Laura Mulleavy (of Rodarte), Miranda July, Mike Mills, and a couple hundred others gathered together last Saturday night at Gagosian Gallery to watch Tom Sachs's performance of the lunar landing and the famous "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" as performed by two women astronauts. From the upstairs viewing room, one could watch Major Tom at Ground Control in one room while in the main gallery the astronauts ascended and descended the lunar landing pod and drilled a hole in Larry Gagosian perfectly poured concrete floors.
Scenes from Tom Sachs's "Space Program" performance at the Gagosian, L.A., October 13th, 2007 Photography Cecilia Dean
SUPER FRICK Cecilia Dean puts on her Rodarte dress and panniers and hits the Frick Collection's Young Fellows gala
The Frick Ball Thursday, March 1, 2007 At The Frick Collection 1 E. 70th Street
Dress code: Black tie, britches, dress to exhilirate
Theme: The hunt Inspired by George Stubbs (1724-1806) Paintings of horses, romantic landscapes, and hunting parties
How does one decide what to wear to the Frick Ball? First, study the invitation. Do some additional Google research into the time period. Frick features an incredible collection of Renoirs, Rembrandts, Bouchers, Frangonards, and Gainsboroughs, so that sets the tone. But, this isn’t Halloween, so it’s not about being in a costume. It’s being contemporary within the context of the time period. My current favorite designers are Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte. This was my chance to wear one of the most gorgeous dresses they have ever created (inspired by a Gainsborough painting) complete with panniers! Add Rodarte for Christian Louboutin heels and throw on $350,000 worth of Van Cleef & Arpels diamonds and I’m set to go. My companion for the evening: my dear friend Russell Piccione.
The annual Frick ball is one of the truly most elegant evenings of the year. Everyone really makes an effort to get dressed up in big gorgeous gowns. And you can pretend you live at the magnificent Frick mansion, once a private home. The only incongruent element that whiplashes one back to the tacky 21st century is the disco music blasting in the ballroom and there are, invariably, some ladies who get messy and take off their shoes to dance—NO NO NO!!!
Cecilia Dean and Russell Piccione on the way to the Frick Ball, NYC, March 2007 Photography Cecilia Dean
Click here for a slideshow of images from the Frick Collection gala
FINGER ON THE PULSE Cecilia Dean reports from New York's Pulse and Scope art fairs
The annual Armory show lands in NYC this week and with it comes a ton of satellite art shows and fairs. The Pulse Art Fair and the Scope International Contemporary Art Fair are two of the best art fairs around, showcasing new art by many young, rising artists and galleries. With so much amazing art going down, it's hard not to be inspired to build a collection of your own—now! Here are just a few of the highlights from Pulse and Scope, going on right this second in NYC.
Click here to see a slideshow of up-and-coming art from Pulse Click here to see a slideshow of up-and-coming art from Scope
Photography Cecilia Dean
The Pulse Art Fair runs through Sunday, February 25, at the Armory, Lexington Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets, NYC. For info: www.pulse-art.com/ny
The Scope International Contemporary Art Fair runs through February 26, at Damrosch Park at Lincoln Center, 62nd Street and Tenth Avenue, NYC. For info: www.scope-art.com/
VISIONAIRE AT ART BASEL, PART 4 The Scope Art Fair and Visionaire's final day in Miami!
The first piece at the Scope Art Fair, the alternative art fair and the one I think is the most fun, is a sound tunnel. A man says New York New York New York faster and faster until it’s jibberish. It was called "The Utter Project" by Derek Coté and John Henry Blatter.
Click here for more from Cecilia and Visionaire in Miami
VISIONAIRE AT ART BASEL, PART 3 Exploring the off-the-beaten-path art fairs at Art Basel Miami Beach
There are a bunch of alternative art fairs that coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach. Since the main fair is a huge, slick, greatest-hits-in-art event, the alternative fairs offer the emerging galleries and artists. The best ones could be at the main fair in a few years.
VISIONAIRE AT ART BASEL, PART 2 The opening of the Visionaire Coloring Bar at the Raleigh Hotel drew a pretty cool crowd
The Visionaire Coloring Bar opens! First day visitors include Liz Goldwyn, André Balazs, Elizabeth Saltzman, Chiho Aoshima, Stefano Tonchi, and asian punk boy Terence Koh, who was too drunk to answer the 5 questions.
Lots of people at the Convention Center for the art fair. It was packed! In my 2 hours there, I probably covered 1/20th of it. And I haven’t been to any of the alternative fairs yet. Here are some things that caught my eye…
VISIONAIRE AT ART BASEL Cecilia Dean blogs it up from Visionaire's Coloring Bar at The Raleigh Hotel, Miami Beach
MONDAY 12/4 It's countdown here! We're in full production on The Visionaire Coloring Bar at The Raleigh. So far, there is one big dome constructed in the Raleigh Hotel parking lot, directly in front of the entrance. It's COOL looking! Like an alien space pod.
TUESDAY 12/5 10:00am The 2nd dome is being constructed, floors put in.
Cool modern furniture from Luminaire arrived. Custom furniture from Karla Events arrived. There are boxes and boxes and boxes of Visionaire 50 Artist Toy issues, charity Coloring Toys, Sex & Words by Bruce Weber, Courtney Love by Hedi Slimane, balloons, helium tanks, signage...SO MUCH STUFF!! ARGH!!!
Our painted MINI’s arrived—SO CUTE!!! One is painted like the Robert Crumb toy, and one is painted like the Chiho Aoshima toy:
We’ve been waiting for the Rob Pruitt MINI…it was picked up HOURS ago:
2:00pm Bryan Sullivan and Sean Simpson from Pacific Domes skinning the second dome.
Now we have TWO domes!
Time to install sound and lights. Our drawings are becoming a reality—it's exciting!
7:00pm The team is putting on the finishing touches, cleaning up and preparing for opening day!
11:30pm
Check back soon for more blogs from Art Basel Miami Beach 2006!
What do the Fashion Director of The New York Times Magazine and the owner of the best photography bookstore around, Dashwood Books, do for Halloween? Spend the night carving out a range of hilarious pumpkins with their closest friends.
From left to right: -Anne Slowey covered her smoking thief with pantyhose, causing quite a fire hazard. -Patrick Li illustrates how he feels after a long, hard night of pumping carving. -Judith Eisler carved a smirking cat-like creature up to no good. -(Center) Paul Leonard made his happy-go-lucky lantern the life of the party. -(Top) Philip-Lorca diCorcia wanted to be topical and wrote “BUSH” on his pumpkin. What you can’t see are the question mark ears. -(Bottom) I referenced Japanese artist Takashi Murakami for my pumpkin—notice the flower hat. -Alix Browne got all loopy with her jack-o-lantern, who fell madly in love with my pumpkin.... -Alexei Hay imagined a glowing albino jack-o-lantern. -David Selig employed some delicate carving techniques to achieve this glowing barbed-wire effect.
FRIEZE FRAME Cecilia Dean nips over to London's groovy Frieze Art Fair for a looong weekend of contemporary art, mushy peas, and jet lag
Frieze Art Fair is an annual art fair that converges
in London's Regent's Park to showcase work from over 150 contemporary galleries from around the
world. Our own little art star, Visionaire's Cecilia Dean, escorted V's Chris Bollen on a field
trip across the pond. And, bless her heart, she kept a daily diary for us.
Click here to view a slideshow of Cecilia Dean's photographs
from the Frieze Art Fair
Monday
10/9/06 First outing was to the Butt Booksigning, appropriately held in a gay sex shop in Soho. Artist Wolfgang Tillmans and Butt editors Gert Jonkers and Jop von
Bennekom sat behind a desk looking serious and signing the Butt Book and giving out Butt posters and drink
tickets for free beer at the next door bar, Village.
Second stop:
Fischli & Weiss "Flowers & Questions" retrospective at the Tate Modern and the debut of Carsten Höller's giant slides,
"The Unilever Series." I loved the slides as massive sculptures, but was too embarrassed
for the riders, who were unceremoniously spat smack on their asses in front of cocktail-sipping
onlookers, to snap a pic, and too embarrassed to ride the slide myself—I should just get over it!
I was much more comfortable in the dark room that played Fischli & Weiss' 1987 video "The
Way Things Go," an extraordinary, mesmerizing, and addictive chain reaction of household
objects and homemade explosives. Then jet lag kicked in and it was time for MTV Europe (they still play music videos!) and
bed.
Tuesday 10/10/06 Headed toward East London to the Rochelle Canteen for an early
lunch inside an old schoolyard (through an unmarked black door labeled "Boys").
The best in English food: shepherd's pie
(that's with lamb; cottage pie is with beef), roast beef, smoked haddock, bread pudding in a pool
of warm custard whipped up by chefs Kevin and Andy of Nose to Tail Eating...yum!! The old
school has been converted into studios for the likes of Katy Baggott (Juergen Teller's agent),
fashion designers Luella Bartley and Giles Deacon, choreographer Michael Clark, and a bunch of
other way cool people. Since I love English teatime, but am watching my diet, I checked out Dover
Street Market for the healthy version—coffee with warm frothy soy milk and an organic date scone.
This would give me energy for a slew of art openings: Christopher Wool at Simon Lee—love his gestural
abstractions. Alison Jacques
Gallery featured German painter Michael van Ofen. Sadie Coles opened a show
of somewhat political works by young Polish painter Wilhelm Sasnal. Hauser & Wirth also featured a
Polish artist. And then you get to White
Cube–it is HUGE! Their new space housed a whale's skeleton in the basement by Gabriel
Orozco!! It was a sight, but security stopped me from snapping a pic. Jay Jopling was on hand to
greet everyone, but Sam Taylor-Wood wasn't there since she just gave birth to a baby girl on
Sunday—congratulations!! Neville Wakefield curated a show of American video artists at The Hospital, owned by Dave
Stewart of the Eurythmics. A dark, crowded room surrounded by large screens showing footage of the
World Trade Center bombings. I downed some fizzy elderflower water (very popular here) and headed
to the East End for the next round. Wolfgang Tillmans's fantastic exhibition space in the stairwell
of his studio, Between Bridges, showcased Sister Corita, which immediately brought back childhood
memories to our V editor Chris Bollen.
Tillmans
said that happened a lot with this show. We wanted to stick around and watch the video, but had to
rush off to the next gallery. Bumped into our favorite English art director Peter Saville with girlfriend Anna
at Herald Street, which featured a fantastic
show by Klaus Weber—sculptures of men as lava rock fountains, pissing, vomiting, and profusely
perspiring. Matthew Higgs of White
Columns fame curated "Other People's Projects" in the adjacent room. Gillian Wearing
at Maureen Paley featured scarily realistic prosthetics. And, finally, dinner at Bistrotech for
some good English food—fish and chips with mushy peas (that's the proper name for it, I'm not
being critical).
Wednesday 10/11/06 Start off with a
traditional English breakfast (which will easily keep you going until tea time!!) and some
quintessential gray English weather—pouring cats and dogs! First stop is ICA for the Ceryth Wyn Evans show before the
place opens to the public. (Back in the summer, there was a Ceryth Wyn Evans show at the Musée
d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris—everywhere I go, it's Ceryth Wyn Evans!) I walked into the
first room and kept looking around for the art... Where was it? Was this the invisible show? An
unhearable sound piece? Turns out the artist knocked down the wall covering the windows. Oh. The
installations in the other rooms were a little more obvious. After a Japanese lunch (somehow seems
so wrong in London, but it was good), that gave us a chance to dry off from our drenching, it was
time for the main event—the Frieze Art Fair! Lots of art, lots of people, lots of buying and
selling! There was an ugly colorful sculpture with a seated wax figure of a tired tourist that we
studied for quite some time, marveling at the excellent craftsmanship, the subtlety of her skin,
the realism. The woman in the bed (in other part of fair) was real, but this one was motionless!!
There was a huge vat of what looked like a mountain of oozing mushy shit, but smelled like peanut
butter. There was Jake and Dinos Chapman (at the White Cube booth) painting portraits of anyone who would shell out £4500 (a
steal!!! And they were busy!). A fantastic installation by Do-Ho Suh at the Lehmann Maupin booth—look closely and you
saw the glass floor you were standing on was held up by thousands of little hands. A woman hard at
work meticulously restoring a damaged 18th century painting, part of artist Marine Hugonnier's
process at the Max Wigram booth. Team devoted their entire space to Ryan
McGinley's photos from his road trip last summer. And there were lots of groovy people. On the
way out I hit the bathroom (even though I was completely dehydrated) and who should come out of
the stall but the tired tourist wax figure! How shocking. That means I was standing and staring at
a normal person who decided to rest her feet on a sculpture. Then it was time for Euro 6, another
art fair about 15 minutes away. Younger gallerists were busy installing their spaces for their
opening the next day. Grimm Rosenfeld had a great Katarina Burin installation. The giant "Snowman
in Love" by David Humphrey dominated the stage. There was lots of painting. I've been
noticing lots of embroidery, sewing, and string, too. After six hours of hardcore non-stop art, I
finished the day by gorging myself at the trendy Notting Hill staple, E+O. I guess it's the London
version of Indochine (oh, I miss NYC).
Thursday 10/12/06 First
stop: Zoo Art Fair. My friend Kim Sion
picked me up on her Vespa and we zoomed to the London Zoo. Gorgeous day—sunny, cool, and crisp.
Zoo is like the miniature version of Frieze. Our first stop was Museum 52 which was impossible to miss due to the giant swinging impaled
unicorn head (by John Isaacs–he's going to be in a show called "Murder Me", curated by
Damien Hirst at the Serpentine in
November). Kim bought a beautiful Kate Atkins. Here it is:
Spending money on art is quite thrilling; I look forward to doing it one
day. There was a gorgeous Tom Gallant piece—super mega intricate cut-outs from porn. Polly
Morgan's precious sad little birds on melted silver spoons at T1+2 made me want to cry. After Zoo,
it was time for cream tea (scones with clotted cream and jam) at the Wolseley—you can't get more British than that!
Back to the hotel to freshen up, catch up on e-mails, talk to the
office, and back out to catch the Fischerspooner concert at Koko in Camden. Lots of costumes,
dancers, confetti, wind machines, smoke machines, lights, strobes, and a raucus cheering crowd.
Good show!!! I have to say, though, after my evening out in London, you really appreciate American
non-smoking. And I have a new appreciation for air conditioning. Time to hit the sack—getting up
early for Mert and Marcus.
Friday 10/13/06 Mert and Marcus shoot for
Visionaire. Sorry,
can't talk about it—it's all under wraps!
Saturday 10/14/06 Thought today would be the quiet day, but there are still loads of things to do before I head
back to NY. First stop: Gloucester Road tube station to check out Chiho Aoshima's uplifting
installation inside the station (it's up until January 25). Totally adorable; it makes you smile. From
there, it's a short cab ride to Battersea Power Station for the "China
Power Station Part 1" exhibition put on by the Serpentine. The Power Station is a massive
old crumbling shell of a building; moss and weeds growing everywhere, windows blown out, birds
flying overhead. Catch it in all its decrepid glory before it becomes a shopping mall and luxury
condos. The video installations, like Wang Jian Wei's "Flying Bird is Motionless" hang
in empty musty brick floor-throughs, skirt around the puddles on the cracked concrete floor.
Wandering onlookers meander in the dark from screen to screen, staring at whatever catches their
fancy. One video had a bunch of Chinese people staring through to us as we stared back at them,
just sort of standing, shifting our weight, looking, wondering if anything will happen, and then
one by one we all slowly move on; life mirroring the video mirroring life on opposites ends of the
world. Amusing Yang Zhezhong's "Light as Fuck" I and II. It was funny to be in a dark
power station and watch Cao Fei's "Whose Utopia" about workers in a light bulb factory.
The wall of apples by Gu Dexin permeated the entire floor with their smell. Around the side of the Power Station stands Toyo Ito's Tea House.
Inside is a cafeteria and the "Universal Shop" that looked like a bunch of Chinese
street vendors complete with the cardboard boxes the items were shipped in. Curated by Pi Li and
Waling Boers (of Universal Studios,
Beijing), it featured AK47-shaped pillows in camouflage from SHIRTFLAG, life-size human-shaped pillows with pubic hair of
string by Unmask, and funny T-sirts, pins, bags, and knick-knacks. A nice walk through Battersea
Park brings you to Mariko Mori's multi-colored pod installation at the Albion—very cool and relaxing. Make sure to read the
text to find out what all the lights and colors mean. No trip to London is complete without
stopping by Portobello Road and One of a Kind and Relik to see the best vintage. The Salisbury, a
lively pub on St. Martin's Lane, was a good place for a farewell pint of bitter with salt and
vinegar crisps.
Click here to view a slideshow of Cecilia Dean's photographs
from the Frieze Art Fair
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RUNWAY REPORT: PARIS DAY 2
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RUNWAY REPORT: PARIS DAY 1
Juun J, Vuitton, Dries, Adam Kimmel
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Cecilia Dean reports on the people, places, parties of São Paulo fashion week http://bit.ly/6jyX1i http://bit.ly/5IfIED http://bit.ly/7XUIg9... 18 Days Ago
Supermodel Natasha Poly pays homage to the Queen of Grunge-Glam, Courtney Love...click here to watch the video! http://bit.ly/4sXtSi... 19 Days Ago
The New Animated Short From Pringle That Everyone?s Been Talking About http://bit.ly/4V0bG6... 19 Days Ago
