Interview

Christopher Bollen

By Christopher Bollen 10/15/2009 02:50 PM

Tom Weschler; Bob Seger at Crosley Field (Cincinnati), June 27, 1970

Smell is commonly recognized as the strongest sensory gatekeeper to memory. For me, it has always been music. A certain refrain from a certain '80s song heard from a passing car window works on me like a kidnapper's van–or, really, like a teleportation device–sending me to some tragically too-real Cincinnati, Ohio, scenario of my youth. Some of my early musical obsessions have proved enduring; in retrospect, others are so confounding as to seem to belong to somebody else. For every prescient discovery of a band like the Violent Femmes, there is the confession that during one particularly dark summer it was the soundtrack to the movie Beaches mixed with the original prduction of Jesus Christ Superstar that resonated most with my life.

One particular singer who entered my life early and has since remained is Bob Seger. My father listened to Bob Seger. He owned a floor-installation company, one so small that he himself installed the flooring. And the guys who worked for my father listened to Bob Seger.

Tags: bob seger, Christopher Bollen, travlin' man: on the road and behind the scenes with bob seger, tom weschler

Art

Guyton Walker Serve Creative Juices

By Christopher Bollen 07/01/2009 02:06 PM

Photo courtesy of Greene Naftali Gallery

Wade Guyton and Kelley Walker, the two artists who make up the artistic tag-team Guyton/Walker, can finally take a vacation. In the last month alone, they decorated the prime entry space of one of the pavilions at the Venice Biennale, opened a show at Air de Paris Gallery, and, as of last night, extended their international tour to Greene Naftali Gallery in Chelsea. Neither Guyton nor Walker looked like they were out of creative juice, silkscreening and inkjetting on every raw material from sheets of dryboard that lined the walls and paint-can labels spread sporatically along the floor all the way to actual tables and benches (some even installed sideways on a wall to float in mid-air). Altogether, they packed Carol Greene's rooms with so much manic visual pop in such gravity free form, the frenetic patterning and obsessive fruit motif made up for the evening thunderstorms. While coconuts were a heavy visual reference in the twosome's early silkscreens and inkjet paintings as well as their coconut chandeliers (there is one chandelier here dipped in white paint), they've extended their reaches through the fruit bowl—blowing up lime slices and slapping peeled bananas on checkerboard patterns and Jam-shorts-colored graphic fields. But perhaps everyone's favorite opening element were the complimentary glass cups for the margaritas that were served, which were printed with a checkerboard patterning. At least I, and everyone else who slipped them into their bag, think they were complimentary. In any case, I have half of a GuytonWalker glasses set now in my kitchen. So Carol, if you have three left over, I'd love them for my collection.