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04 June 2006 by nathaniel

latest ArtThrob

The latest issue of ArtThrob is live ("South Africa’s leading contemporary visual arts publication"), and I have to say how impressed I’ve been with the new Johannesburg editor, Michael Smith, over the last few months. We’ve never met, but his reviews are thoughtful, thorough, descriptive and critically engaged – what more could you ask for (especially when nathaniel can’t even provide snap judgments for a while, due to his daughter’s arrival)? Check out his reviews of Kentridge at JAG and Murray at Goodman this month to see what I mean (big apologies to Brett for missing that latter show! Forgive?). nathaniel also recommends the Johann van der Schijff review and Malcolm Payne’s picking a cat fight with Khwezi Gule – MEOW!

I picked up the new Art SA yesterday at Krut. Haven’t had a chance to read any of it yet, but rumour has it that our guest blogging Franci Cronje is named as having one of the KKNK’s most successful solo shows. Congrats Cronje!

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02 June 2006 by nathaniel

Compressionism WorldWide

I was at Outlet yesterday, discussing my Time and Seeing exhibition of Compressionist prints with Brenton Maart. Maart normally does the Gauteng art listings for the Mail & Guardian, but we met about this show for a small review he’s doing in the next Art South Africa magazine. I never get over how happy it makes me when people respond very positively to my work… Also look out for Franci Cronje’s review of the show in Die Beeld next week.

This chat, and Cronje’s review, are timed really well, given that South Africa finally has the May issue of MacFormat magazine in stock, which has a full-color back page feature on me and the Compressionist series – click here, or on the thumbnail below, to read their take, see the images.

Don’t miss the Time and Seeing closing party at Outlet on 10 June (next Saturday), 16h00 – 24 du Toit Street, Building 10, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria.

Time and Seeing exhibits selections from nathaniel stern’s Compressionism – a "digital performance and analog archive.” Stern traverses bodies, spaces and objects with his scanner face, while the head is in motion. After being Compressed into digital images the size of a small sheet of paper, the files are then stretched, cropped and colored by hand. Compressionism is an exploration of media and perception, a transfiguration in Time and Seeing.

Compressionism in MacFormat magazine

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26 May 2006 by nathaniel

DVblog feature » Passage to Ill

DVblog kicks it old school Stern by featuring the first ever hektor recording (1999) – hektor.net (2000) was recently archived by the Cornell Manuscripts library. Minor props for old school net.art?

Link: DVblog » Passage to Ill – Nathaniel Stern

“Passage to Ill was one of the first pieces I wrote as “hektor“, playing the cynical romantic and trying to get in bed with “Ill” (a punny nickname for a real person). After seeing me perform it at the Nuyorican poet’s café, fellow grad student Alisa Schwartz asked if I’d be keen to make a DV version (for one of our classes at ITP, 1999), and we storyboarded it out. It was thus the very first piece in a series that would later become hektor.net” – Nathaniel Stern.

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24 May 2006 by nathaniel

Outlet on SAartsEmerging

abrie fourie at the Outlet Gallery in Pretoria
Abrie Fourie at the Outlet Gallery in Pretoria

Prof Christo Doherty, head of Digital Arts at Wits, pens a piece on the Outlet gallery and experimental art space in Pretoria for this month’s SAartsEmerging feature. The space, intended for both local and international young and emerging artists, has become a stepping stone for many an SA star, similar to The Market Theatre gallery when Stephen Hobbs was curator "back in the day" (before my time…). Abrie Fourie is also one of the most generous gallerists, and gifted photographers, I’ve had the pleasure of befriending – so no pretense of objectivity there.

Check out what Christo has to say.

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18 May 2006 by nathaniel

Humor and Materials

(Forgive the quality of this image – I broke my crap camera and will from now on be taking gallery pix on my even more crap phone…)

Spent much of Monday with Gordon Froud and Franci Cronje, both of whom will be writing pieces about my current show at Outlet gallery in Pretoria (Franci for Beeld, Gordon will see where he wants to publish after he writes it). After spending some time talking about my work with them, I head over to Gordon (the gallerist at Gordart)’s studio for the first time – it’s awesome. He’s got a collection of art, CDs, records and books that may just rival Warren Siebrits’, but Gordon mostly uses them to produce his own odd juxtapositional art. i think the most interesting thing in Gordon’s studio must be his collection of large pots and pans – the sourced / found objects he’ll be using to produce a huge 3D mobile for a recent CSIR (Science and Technology) commission. (Shown right, just half of one leg of this many-metered monstrosity.)

It was actually the first time I took a close look at Froud’s body of work (he took me through the books), and I have to say I’m a little humbled and awestruck by the scale, amount, and committment of/to his seriously/funny history.

Froud – where can we see more / online? The things you do with cups….

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13 May 2006 by nathaniel

Art Heat

A seemingly "in-crowd," jokey, gossipy, opinion and irony-based blog (with a few short, but well-thought out reviews in between – welcome to blog country), Art Heat is the new Cape Town-based group, online-publishing project for fine (and sometimes only relatively fine) art. They’ve  been around a week or so and have a few bugs to work out (and I usually don’t write about things this early on), but I got a personal mail from the editor promising some "big things" soon; and there’s a naked Ed Young pic, so I thought, Why not?

Ed is mentioned in just about every other post, by the way. That guy works really hard and never gets any press, so this is the main reason I decided to feature Art Heat. (Oh look, irony.)

Glad to see another SA art voice – keep it up peops!

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