Nothing... yet...

Artus de Lavilléon


"Un homme obsedé est un homme possede du demon"

Catalog for the "No Deposit ­ No Return (I¹m Not an Underground Artist)"
exhibition at the Elk Gallery on Guanghua Lu in Beijing, April 2008.
"Nothing...Yet..." is the bastard offspring of a collaborative miscegenation
between Elk and Deadpan, overflowing with de Lavilléon¹s witty, scabrous,
incisive drawings that mix social commentary, true life experience, comely
females, alternately hilarious and angst-ridden personal revelations, and a
healthy dose of raunchiness. Spawned by Spring Festival fireworks and
discussions over baozi in Sanlitun, this tome is both a record of the
artist's six-month stay in the northern capital and document of the process
that led to "No Deposit ­ No Return" materializing on the walls surrounding
a mini-ramp in a downtown Beijing warehouse. French skate-punkism and
Situationist détournement and "customization" with Debordian comic book
overtones, told through image and text depictions of Chinese Hip-Hop kids,
guilty visits to McDonalds, punk snobs, workers eating lunch, old skaters,
art collectors, dead cowboys and washed-up boxers, along with attendant
rants, aphorisms and dialogue. Guest appearances by Mao Zedong, Andy
Warhol, Karl Lagerfeld, Minnie Mouse, Marc Jacobs and Chen Wenling, along
with written musings and dialogue cut-ups from Breathless by de Lavilléon
and Jocko Weyland's essay "Wasting Time to Be Free (Je crois que je
gagne!)" Lushly illustrated, provocative, and the definitive printed
manifestation of the Art Posthume declaration "You must not do to be, you
must be to be." C'est la vie.
90 pages with a color cover, in English, French and Chinese. $12.

www.artposthume.com

"Putain de tatouage de merde! C'est que ca fait un malde chien!"

Installation Views

 


Sleepers

Rick Charnoski


"Poorman's wealth, brother to death,
The balm of woe - the indifferent judge between high and low."

Taking pictures of sleepers is like bird watching. Rick Charnoski is a
sleeper watcher nonpareil, documenting everything from poetic New York
subway slumberers to four women enjoying a quick vehicular nap. "Sleepers"
is comprised of amazing photographs showing people of all sorts and stripes
dozing on benches, planes, trains and on the grass, interspersed with
Charnoski's handwritten textual commentary such as "In Japan They Sleep
Too" and "Meanwhile in LA, a person adapts to the bum-proof bench with a
yoga mat." In addition quotes from various sources, including Noam Chomsky's
notorious nonsensical sentence "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" are
liberally sprinkled through this one of a kind book. Also: sidewalk
explosions (melting like soft cheese in the hot sun), different sleeper -
same spot, the fire nap, and an incredible double down in Greenpoint.
60 pages with a color cover and 4 inside color pages, $8


"Sleep is the state of natural rest observed in most mammals, birds, fish,
as well as invertebrates such as the fruit fly Drosophila."


 


La Perruquière

Gloria Toyun Park


"WIG (1) Subs. An artificial head of hair, from the French Perruque and
through the forms, Peruke, Periwyk and Periwig, became wig by 1765, as a
result of the elision of the first two syllables. See also Periwig. 'Beneath
an ample wig he tucks his hair.' 1760. (Woty)" - From James Stevens Cox, The
Illustrated Dictionary of Hairdressing and Wigmaking, 1966

Catalog for the comprehensive exhibition "La Perruqueière" (The Female Wigmaker)
at the Elk Gallery on Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles, May-June 2007. Includes
documentation of Parks's wigs, drawings, rock pieces, appearances at Wigstock, the
performances "She, Sublime" and "Hypothermic Runway Rack" and stills from
her films and videos. With photographs of the artist and her work by
Patrick McMullen, Bill Cunningham, Angelika Grundler, Andreas Bleckmann,
Misa Martin, and Jocko Weyland's essay "From Ahgashee to La Perruquière:
Gloria Toyun Park Returns to Koreatown." Related imagery by James Stevens
Cox, Yi In-Mun, and Ashley Bickerton.
48 pages with a color cover and four inside color pages.
$8


"Hair is potent because it defines our sexuality - though hair has no gender"
- Gloria Park


Installation Views

 


The Regency

 

Listen
Listen
 

"Climb over the fence and go directly south along the side of the building...
use the chair to climb over the wall...please be advised that by
attending the exhibition you will be trespassing and thereby are subject to
the possible consequences of breaking the law...also keep in mind that
you will have to climb two five-foot high walls and that sensible shoes are
recommended due to debris and other obstacles...The Regency does not
have bathroom facilities, though that does not necessarily mean you can't go
to the bathroom there."

Catalog for one-day exhibition at The Regency apartment complex (R.I.P.) in
Hollywood on March 4th, 2007. Includes artwork by Nicole Andrews, Gerardo
Castillo, Rick Charnoski, Bill Daniel, Frank Grow, John Brinton Hogan, Sue
Huang, Brian Kennon, Julie Lequin, MachineHistories, Doug Magnuson, René
Margritte, Coan Nichols, and various unidentified Regency visitors and
residents.
44 pages with eight inside color pages and a foldout color
back cover,
a Divine sticker by William McCurtin, and a CD of
Daniel Pineda's sound piece "Whirlpools@Regency," $15


"Perhaps the Regency now was officially dead; but it sure had
been a nice wake." --Kate Wolf


Installation Views



Now I Hate Summer

 


"Malibu is summer....summer is ruined. Now you have to share your summer
vacation with everybody - I hate to share my time with working slobs. Summer
has had it. You have to share it with everyone else. Now I hate summer: for
four months out of the year now I have to sweat it out." --Miki Dora

Catalog for exhibition at the Elk Gallery in New York running from December
2006 to January 2007. Includes Craig Stecyk's essay "Victims of
Circumstantial Evidence, or, You'll Never Hear Surf Music Again", Jocko
Weyland's "Hydro-Knight Templars" and artwork by Billy Al Bengston
Rick Charnoski, Judy Chicago, Anthony Friedkin, Rick Griffin, Robert Irwin,
John McCracken, Joe Quigg, Ed Roth, Anne Truitt and Von Dutch, with two
poems by Francis Picabia.
44 pages with color centerfold and foldout back cover, $10.


"Waves are the ultimate illusion. They come out of nowhere, instantaneously
materialize and just as quickly they break and vanish. Chasing after such
fleeting mirages is a complete waste of time. That is what I choose to do
with my life." - Miki Dora

Installation Views



Teen Book

Kate Haug
&
Nicole Andrews

 


"I love you, forgive me, I am love, I am a heart." The poetic truths of high
school journal keepers, both actual and transformed by Haug five years after
graduation. Dispassionate terseness belied by those undeniable poetic truths
as raw feeling seethes right below the surface. Listlessness and
dissatisfaction commingle with possibility in California's Central Valley
during the mid-1980s. Tallow factories, wineries, speed, Chevelles, alcohol,
blowjobs, boys that smell like chlorine, Caprices, Taco Bell, Corvettes, and
lots of driving. "One night we all drove to Manteca to get some speed. We
drank the whole way there - traveling up the 99 north from Modesto. For some
reason the car seems small in my memory even though I know it was big. It is
probably because I passed out along the way." Interlaced with Haug's stories
are Nicole Andrews' evocative, haunting drawings of pools, men in bars,
couples kissing, and solitary figures blankly confronting the viewer. A
perfect compliment and foil to the text, Andrews' wayward characters embody
an overarching sense of aimlessness, of time going by without anything
happening, and the irrevocable passing of youth's expectations. Completed in
1997 but never published, Teen Book is finally, deservedly, seeing the light
of day. With front and back cover photos taken in Modesto by the
incomparable Marcy Robinson.
48 pages, $6

 


The Water and The Sand

Mark Hubbard



An early and crucial participant in the Burnside Project, Mark Hubbard has
subsequently - in his capacity as head of Grindline Skateparks - been
responsible for the construction of over 50 outstanding and seminal
skateparks in the United States. Though his work in concrete is justifiably
world famous, his preparatory drawings, schematics, and writings collected
in this volume are less well known. Included are plans later manifested in
three dimensions at Orca's Island, Washington and Mammoth Mountain,
California, just to name two pilgrimage sites, as well as bewildering M.C.
Escher-like mazes, designs for multi-media projection devices, photographs
of the Grindline crew at work, archival newspaper articles, fantasies by
teenage attendees of city council hearings, prose poems from the road and
Northwest Indian influenced color artwork. Imbued with an individualistic
and uncommon sensibility, these drawings completely transcend their
practical origins by the fact that almost all of them have been realized as
actual, built concrete wonderlands enjoyed by adherents from around the
globe. A comprehensive, mind-boggling artistic outpouring brought together
in one place that forms an unorthodox biography of a true visionary and folk hero.
52 pages. $6.

www.grindline.com


Photographs

Thomas Hauser

Primarily known for his paintings, drawings and mosaics, Thomas Hauser’s photography constitutes a rich new vein in a twenty-year career of restless, single-minded artistic exploration. Saturated colors and pitch-perfect compositions buoy achingly pretty flower studies, Naples at night, seemingly deserted buildings and little brightly-hued cars, mysterious balloons, ominously draped chairs and cameras of all sorts, interspersed with something else entirely. That, the primary focus of this volume, is an intense concentration on the baroquely multi-hued world of female undergarments, panties that is, both by themselves and worn on, pulled down around or stretched tight over the barely concealed pudenda of one very unselfconscious model. A close-up, unflinching, unsentimental look at one woman’s body, they are also wildly colorful and celebratory and anchor a collection that manages to find the beauty and terror of the sublime in the mundane as well as the agonizingly pulchritudinous. Offensive to some, controversial to others, certainly, but also mesmerizing and strangely incendiary.
All-color, 40 pages. $15.

www.thomashauser.net



Time Kills

Evan Becker


Eros, fame, anxiety, Goya, humiliation, Robert Hughes, Pall Malls, hanged men, Chevrolet Caprices, aneurysms, comets and men in canoes daydreaming of murder. A cauldron of fear and loathing and Art Brut scrawling, Becker’s text exhortations and aphorisms ("Shape Up, Kid!" "Everythings Complex") stand alone or are joined to drawings that manage to be both part of the high art historical continuum and filled with savant atavistic rawness. Not nice, not pretty, but memorable, powerful and occasionally beautiful.
46 Pages. $6.



Photographs

Mike O'Meally


From the globe trotting Australian best known for his outstanding skateboarding photos, a collection that expands on those achievements with images from around the world on the cusp of the 21st Century. Everything is covered from burning cars, cryptic signage, crucifixes and discarded TVs in America’s heartland to elephants in Africa, Asian policemen, cane toads and Cairo Foster grinding a rail in front of the Cairo Supreme Court building. O’Meally’s ever curious and attentive eye produces a picture poem of new age's action, heroics, terror and the quiet moments in between.
34 pages. $6.


Famous for Never
&
Two Other Stories

by
Peter Nolan Smith

 

Peter Nolan Smith is a New England-born former
nightclub bouncer and diamond dealer who now lives in
Thailand. The self-professed "failurologist" narrator of
"Famous for Never", "Gay Boy" and "One RPM" is both
to-the-point and toughly poetic as he vividly evokes
1980s New York, Paris and Hamburg as well as
contemporary Watchic Pond and Pattaya. Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Klaus Nomi, Brigitte Bardot and Rock Hudson make
appearances; so do Anita Bryant, perennial Red Sox
scapegoat Bill Buckner and a pseudo-anarchist teenager
who goes by the name Bakunin. Prodigious drug and
alcohol abuse, Studio 54, insanity, naked men
chained to trees in the woods, and refrigerator
destruction are just some of the elements in these
elegiac and celebratory paeans to lost fortunes,
the loss of loved ones and the redemptive powers of
street basketball and hope.
50 pages. $6.



Merry Christmas
Beijing, China

Johnee Kop

 
 

A sampling of Johnee Kop’s extensive photographic output over a three year period in Beijing and other regions of China. Copious amounts of self-portraiture are paired with a number of unknown photographers’ records of Mr. Kop’s daily activities. Ex-skateboard pro, ex-Chokebore drummer and now a tennis coach (and second highest ranked amateur tennis player in China, 18-and over division), Kop’s vision of his adopted homeland and his place in it is strange, beautiful and impossible to categorize.
Not for the faint of heart.
28 pages $6.



Today Your Love
Tomorrow the World

Thurston Moore
&
Jocko Weyland

Catalog for Thurston Moore’s and Jocko Weyland’s fall 2005 "Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World" exhibition at KS Art on Leonard Street in New York. Moore’s collages reconstituted from Creem and Rockscene (amongst other sources) and Weyland’s close-up photographs of hardcore-era record covers are reproduced, as are contributions by Jack Brewer, R. Elis, Charles Henri Ford, Godlis, Bob Greun, Lazlo Maholy-Nagy, Dave O, Raymond Pettibone, Pushead, Kerry Schuss and Fred Tomaselli.
www.ksartonline.com
20 pages $6
.


Acrobats Shouldn't Fall
&
Other Poems

by John F. Weyland


Short and sometimes funny poems of sex,
regret, anxiety, nihilism and man's irrevocable
drive toward self-annihilation, along with
"The Slums of Naples," a longer evocation
of fear and loathing in post World War II Italy.
37 pages. $6.




Lies Like Truth, or,
A Little Bit of Luck
and a Dash of Larceny

by John Godley

 

John Godley's probing, playful long form essay on the interrelated output and destinies of the master forger Elmyr de Hory, The Autobiography of Howard Hughes author Clifford Irving, Howard Hughes himself, and Orson Welles, who brought them altogether in F is for Fake, his masterful cinematic meditation on the the confluence of fakery and reality. First published in Bunnyhop Magazine's "Fake" issue in 2000, this is a complete and unabridged version of the little-known but seminal exploration of the compulsion to believe in coincidence, magic, masterpieces and professional liars. With added illustrations and photographs.
16 pages. $6.