Monthly Archive for April, 2010

Kim has an exhibition entitled : “The Noise Paintings” at John McWhinnie @ Glenn Horowitz Bookseller in Manhattan April 8- May 8 2010.  According to the gallery’s site: “Loosely painted words have dripping edges and bleeding contours that threaten to disrupt or annihilate the sense within. There is the feel of un-stylized urban graffiti, of the anonymous, spontaneous scrawls encountered in the profane world.  The gesture, the moment of creation, with all its attendant expressiveness is paramount. And yet, as lyrics, and personal catch phrases, Gordon has produced these words before, on paper and on canvas.  They are like personal mantras, surfacing repeatedly at moments of creative charge and expression. From the provocative (16 Bitch Pile Up) to the banal (Wet Hair) by way of the personally obscure (Sudden Oak) the words find a new unique form each time the artist commits them to a surface.

In partnership with Ecstatic Peace Library, JMc & GHB Editions will introduce a special edition of a new publication, Kim Gordon, The Noise Paintings. Drawn from a full edition of just 200, the special edition will comprise 26 lettered copies enclosed in a custom made cloth box with an original painting and recording laid in.”

The exhibition SONIC YOUTH etc. : SENSATIONAL FIX focuses on the multidisciplinary activities of the groundbreaking experimental guitar band Sonic Youth since its formation in 1981. From day one, Sonic Youth has been exploring and mapping unknown cultural territories through their activities as a band and as four individual musicians, visual artists or cultural entrepreneurs, each member with his or her specific ties to and within the international cultural scene. The exhibition features the band’s collaborations with visual artists, filmmakers, designers and musicians, as well as a choice of other works selected by the band. Through the multidisciplinary output of Sonic Youth and related works by other artists in the exhibition, an alternative history of contemporary culture is being unfolded, in which underground meets official culture of the last four decades, while themes are explored such as teenage rebellion, adolescent wanderlust, gender, fame, fashion, sexuality, and religion.

The exhibition is initiated and curated by freelance curator Roland Groenenboom in collaboration with the band. The show will be at the Centro dos de Mayo in Madrid Jan 29-May 2 2010. Steve and Lee will be at the Feb 2 opening event. A complete description of the show can be found here.

David Byrne has thoughtful things to say about the Sensational Fix show here. And here’s some images of the show. Keep pace with the show from curator Roland Groenenboom’s perspective via his blog. Also, a German TV spot can be seen here. Two more video documents of the show can be seen here and here.

The show’s catalog is currently being reprinted for availability in early 2010, and should be more widely available in US bookstores at that time.

The first edition of the ‘Sonic Youth, etc : Sensational Fix’ catalog, the giant “official publication” of the touring art show, sold out so quickly that few copies made it to USA shores.  The second edition is available now at the SY webstore.   This time the 2  seven-inch singles included w the book are in colored vinyl, instead of the black+clear of the first edition (the singles have one side each from Thurston, Kim, Lee and Steve).  More info here.

For those of you overseas, this catalog was originally published in 4 languages: French, Italian, German and English—there may be some copies still floating around via overseas sources…

Sonic Youth announce upcoming shows in Spain and Portugal: SY will be in Barcelona April 18 at Razzmatazz and Madrid April 19 and April 20 at La Riviera. The 22nd will be in Lisbon at the Coliseum and the 23rd in Porto at the Coliseum.

Ticket info: Continue reading ‘SY IN SPAIN AND PORTUGAL IN APRIL’