Interview

In 1969, Joe Goode produced the deadpan calendar L.A. Artists in Their Cars, a tribute to the banality and the myth of the masculine American artist. 40 years, one coast, and a Swiss sensibility later, we've got Artists on Their Bicycles: New York. Produced by the Swiss Institute's director Gianni Jetzer and Emma Reeves and shot by photographer Lukas Wassman, the calendar is a functional testament to the devotional lifestyle and creative consumption engendered by a bicycle. The calendar opens in January with noted wanderer Philip Lorca-Dicorcia. Famed documenter of athleticism Collier Shore follows up in February. In August, Terry Richardson gives a candid look at his chosen vessel, and in December, David Byrne and Cindy Sherman cut a mean twin path on the West Side Highway.


The Swiss Institute calendar launchesThursday, December 4, 5–7 PM at the Standard, Miami Beach, and Friday, December 5, 5–7 PM, at Swiss Institute New York

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LUNAR LAMP BY KONSTANTIN GRCIC, FLOS 2008

032c is the unpronounceable, Berlin-based art and culture magazine with the red cover, the typeface that seems to be always changing, and the unpredictable features with an ironic approach to pop culture and fashion that's never quite distant. The 18th issue of 032c is dedicated to the inscrutable Thomas Demand and includes a portfolio and theoretical discussion of the artist's work; there's also a birthday card to Berlin bookstore ProQM, an Alasdair-McClellan shot mens story about tough Brits, a profile of the socialist candidate to the forthcoming Albanian presidential election,  and party photos by Purple editor Olivier Zahm. The new issue coincides with the magazine's first New York exhibition (they have a Berlin space that irregularly hosts events), which founder and editor Joerg Koch hopes will elucidate his international mission—which is perhaps why it includes a lamp.


INTERVIEW: What are the themes in this exhibition that you were hoping to bring out with this show?

JOERG KOCH: The exhibition looks to map the history and shifting identities of the magazine through the work of some of its defining contributors and contributing artists. For example, Konstantin Grcic is principally an industrial designer, but he's also been a major contributor to and influence on 032c. Helmut Lang has been involved as an advertiser, a topic on investigation, and a stockist. Above all, his career in particular instigated 032c's involvement with fashion. Another great example is the artist collective Slavs and Tatars, whose geopolitical and polemical work has become an important part of 032c's efforts to provoke the present by confronting the past. Cyprien Gaillard's work, as well, is a sort of pure emotional expression of that effort.

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THE PARLOUR ROOM. PHOTO BY MARTIN BRUDINSKI

London is a town with an East-West problem, and for the last decade or so the East has won on most accounts, chief among them in thee important categories of art and boozing. But the west has never given up its claim to the city's prostitution. "The West is ripe for rejuvenation; I'm bored of East," says writer Francesca Gavin, who with artist Jonathan Yeo has installed artworks into a West Side bar with hopes of changing parts of the neighborhood's reputation—and maintaining others.

The venue is the Dean Street Townhouse, which the SoHo house recently acquired and have turned into a brasserie. Previously The Townhouse's 18th Century building was  a printing press for publisher Novello. In the 1920s, it was Gargoyle club, the haunt for Anglo and Anglophile bohemians like Noel Coward, Sigfried Sassoon, Dylan Thomas, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, John Minton and Graham Greene. Matisse did the interiors. In the 1970s, a goth bar moved in, called itself Batcave, and earned the space a cult following. Yet another following (with overlap) came in its next incarnation as a men's sauna and massage parlour. In the 1980s it hosted the nightclub Gossips.

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The 76th issue of COLORS magazine celebrates the lives of Internet addicts, one-legged prom queens, muscular young men shaped like bats, and people who fancy themselves vampires. It's just the global network of adolescents in 2009, as depicted by the everyday-feature quarterly for its "Teenagers" theme.

COLORS is a magazine sponsored by—but operationally separate from—United Colors of Benetton, so the magazine's interest in rainbow-striped diversity is less surprising that it might seem. This being the magazine's 18th birthday, it was naturally the moment to celebrate coming of age. And like any gear-hungry teenager, the latest issue of COLORS comes with new technology. Select pages of COLORS are marked with a Lego-like graphic; readers orient these in front of their webcam and "augment" reality by activating the page's story as a video.

Erik Ravelo, COLORS' Creative Director, explains that the magazine's web site began as a way to interface with users, encouraging readers to share stories of "other-ness." As readers and editors came to work with increasingly complex and integrated technologies, the project became more and more an exploration of the limits of print media. Says Ravelo, "Wow, we even changed the invention of the magazine itself."

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