Friday, May 22, 2009

CONFESSIONS - THE $1 MILLION INSTALLATION

Matthew Rose exhibition at Soma Gallery, Cape May, NJ. May 9 - June 14, 2009. 

Price for entire installation: $1 million. Yes, $1 million for 800 pieces (or so).  You need a room big enough for this. 

Contact: SOMA GALLERY for more information.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Poor Richard's Inn : Cape May, NJ







































POOR RICHARD'S, built in 1882 as the private residence of a Cape May, NJ hotel owner, has been run as an inn since 1977. It's one of that small number of owner-operated inns that offer exceptional overnight accommodations in National Landmark buildings. Each has its own special mix of style and service.

Harriet Sosson is the inn keeper and an artist as well.  She exhibits at Soma Gallery in Cape May, NJ.

"At Poor Richard's we try to strike a balance between today's informality and yesterday's charm, without being pretentious or overbearing," says Harriet. "We're friendly and helpful, but respect your privacy; and while the rooms are furnished with period pieces, our primary goal is to have guests feel comfortable and 'at home'—we're not aiming at strict Victorian authenticity...and our prices aren't too outrageous."  Visit the web site: Poor Richard's Inn.

And do say hello to Harriet from Storefrontwindows.

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Confessions : Matthew Rose at Soma Gallery, Cape May






Confessions, Obsessions & Indiscretions at the Soma Gallery, Cape May, New Jersey.  From May 9 - June 14, 2009.

As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive















From The New York Times May 12 2009

As Storefronts Become Vacant, Ads Arrive



Almost every category of advertising is declining precipitously in this economy, but there is one that is thriving.
Taking advantage of all the abandoned retail spaces in urban areas, marketers are leasing them at cut-rate prices and filling them with their ads.
At first, advertisers saw storefront advertising as a poor man’s billboard — that is, a bad thing. Now, they see it as a poor man’s billboard — that is, brilliantly frugal.
Ads for Intel that went up on Monday capitalized on the bankruptcies of stores like the Disney Store, Domain Home and Comp- USA, filling their former shops with digital billboards. 
Elsewhere, barren-looking store windows have been plastered over by ads for Nestea, Snickers, Delta Air Lines and Conservation International.
“All you have to do is walk out the door for lunch and notice the number of vacant storefronts — and they tend to be in prime areas, in major thoroughfares, and they’re unused space — so why not get in there and put a message in there?” said Peter Sherman, the managing director of BBDO West, San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group.
BBDO West is running ads for Conservation International in storefronts in New York, San Francisco and Berkeley. Advertisers can rent the storefronts for a fraction of what landlords charge retailers. 
Mr. Sherman is paying an average of $500 for three-month stints in prime locations. (An outdoor billboard in comparable spots would cost $50,000, he said.) 
In some cases, he said, the landlords even donated space, both because they liked Conservation International’s environmental message, and because it is more appealing to have something in their windows other than dust and grime.
“It looks better for something to be going on in the storefront,” Mr. Sherman said. “If that something is a positive message regarding the environment, that’s a win for both sides.”
The retail vacancy rate rose to 11.2 percent in the first quarter, the highest it has been since the early 1990s, according to CBRE Econometric Advisors, a unit of the CB Richard Ellis Group. And some real estate owners say an ad helps, literally, cover up the problem.
“The way I look at it, when somebody moves out of a space it looks terrible,” said William Walther, the president of Granite Companies Asset Management, which owns several buildings in Manhattan. “Retail use is animated, because you see all the things that are in the space and people are in the space, and coming and going. When people move out, it’s just a big, vacant room and not very attractive,” he said.
Though advertisers pay only 10 to 15 percent of what a retailer would, Mr. Walther says he will take that. “We still have taxes, we have insurance, we have electricity that we have to pay on the property,” he said. “The market started to change, so now we look at it as, ‘When’s the next campaign, fellas?’ ” 
Storefront advertisers say that since the downturn, real estate owners have become eager to lease their space, making ads in prominent spots more common.
Ray Lee, the managing director of real estate at Inwindow Outdoor, a company that creates storefront advertisements, used to have to court real estate owners, but now they are calling him, he said.
“In the last year and a half, it’s been much easier to acquire locations,” Mr. Lee said. “They’re realizing the money’s important, of course, and they’re realizing they don’t want to be sitting on vacant spaces anymore — they want to be more ambitious in terms of covering their windows.”
Inwindow Outdoor executives said the company had had record revenue in the last two quarters. And Inwindow’s ads are running in highly trafficked places. A former high-end furniture store in Greenwich Village in Manhattan is now an ad for Snickers. A Delta ad covers the windows of a former restaurant in Midtown Manhattan. 
A group of Intel ads that began running Monday has gotten particularly good placement because of other companies’ misfortune: ads are running at several sites where the former tenant declared bankruptcy. 
These include the Disney Store in San Francisco (its operator, Hoop Holdings, filed for bankruptcy last year), a CompUSA in Chicago (the company filed for bankruptcy in 2007 and is operating under a new owner), and a former Domain Home store in the Flatiron district of Manhattan (Domain filed for bankruptcy in 2008).
“We were able to time the market well to find a couple even better locations than what we originally anticipated,” said Jamie Eaton, group strategy director at OMD, the media-buying unit of the Omnicom Group, which advised Intel on its strategy. “As the companies make a transition, the great thing for the landscape is you’re able to cover up something that may have been a visual sore point.”
Inwindow has also changed the storefront ads so they are more than just posters hanging inside a store. It now designs custom vinyl coverings that adhere to a store’s brick and glass, and are cut to fit over doors, ledges and other architectural elements.
The Snickers ad is composed of several panels that fit over the building’s panes of glass, while an ad for Nestea is plastered over both the windows and the doors of a former shop in Midtown Manhattan, making it look more like a street-level billboard than abandoned retail space.
The potential is even bigger when marketers incorporate technology, said Steve Birnhak, the chief executive of Inwindow Outdoor. “If you look at vacant real estate as a shell, it’s the perfect environment to safehouse any technology you want that lives within the confines of that building,” he said. 
The Intel ads house screens displaying slightly time-delayed text messages from passers-by about their hopes for the future. And for “Coraline,” a fantasy movie, Inwindow created holograms in dark retail spaces. “Children would appear out of thin air in an environment that looked to be 20 feet deep, and float up to the window,” he said. 
For Mr. Sherman, the storefronts he used for Conservation International did double duty. They were cheap, centrally located and perfectly matched his message, which compared destruction of the environment to the destruction of the economy. The windows carried messages like “Our shopping districts are starting to look as barren as our rain forests” and “Ignore climate change and a lot more than our shops will be going under.”

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Fluxibition & Natural Born Fluxus

 Natural Born Fluxus is that tendency among artists to engage in Fluxus-like behaviors even if they never heard of Fluxus. Or possibly we could say that Fluxus ideas come out of a naturally occurring tendency in all artists that we now think of as Fluxus. It could be that the free wheeling nature of Fluxus allows artists to enjoy their creative, or at least peculiar, tendencies in an unfettered way that other forms of organized artistic activities do not. The sorts of things that delight a Fluxus artist tend to be of an ephemeral nature, contain a humorous element and refer to that mysterious some-thing that makes one laugh at a joke; call it irony or the unexpected twist, Fluxus artists enjoy a good surprise and a cleaver turn of phrase. They are willing to remain innocent enough to be easily amused and fall for a good trick. It is this adherence to a child-like sense of wonder that this book hopes to illustrate.  



News from the Fluxmuseum:  
Call for Works
FLUXHIBITION #3
JULY, 2009
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Fluxhibition #3 - Boxes, Cases, Kits and Containers
Greetings!
Fluxhibition #2 was a great success thanks to all of the great contributions see the catalog at: http://fluxmuseum.org/
I had planned on Fluxhibition #3 being in 2010 HOWEVER a venue become available for this summer at The University of Texas at Arlington. I, in fact will actually be graduating with a BFA from UTA in about a week (after 35 years!). There is a current Collage Museum call out for an exhibition entitled Thinking Inside of the Box - A Survey of Box Assemblage Art see: (http://collagemuseum.com/thinking-box-call-for-works.html) Deadline May 15th ( PARTICIPATE IN THIS ONE TOO!).

I thought that, since I was able to secure the university venue, it would be great to invite my fluxfriends to contribute a fluxbox for Fluxhibition #3 and later I will combine the two bodies of box works for an additional exhibit later in 2009 or in 2010. So your Fluxbox contribution will get at least double exposure.

SPREAD THE WORD

This is rather short notice so I would appreciate it a great deal if you would post the following call on your blogs and/or mail out to your email lists. If you happen to know addresses for some of the old timers, please inform them of this call - maybe we could get some first generation participation.

My best to all,
Cecil Touchon

http://fluxmuseum.org
http://collagemuseum.com
http://fluxuslaboratories.org

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

INTERNATIONAL FLUXHIBITION #3 - Fluxus Boxes, Cases, Kits and Containers by Contemporary Fluxus Artists

Call for Works - Deadline: June 30th, 2009 (sooner if possible) No Jury, all works accepted.

Fluxhibition #3 will consist of Fluxus Boxes, Kits, Cases and Containers and/or Fluxus Objects (to be placed in containers or boxes by the museum staff for the exhibit). An exhibition will be held in July at The University of Texas at Arlington, Texas. Works contributed will become part of the permanent collection of the FluxMuseum (fluxmuseum.org) and will be used for additional future exhibitions. A catalog will be produced for the show and available for purchase after the exhibit. Additionally, images of all works will become a permanent exhibit on the FluxMuseum web site.

What to do:
1) Create a Fluxus box, case, kit or container - use classic themes or come up with something new.
2) Send Fluxboxes, Fluxcases, Fluxcontainers and/or Fluxobjects by June 30th, 2009
3) Come to the show if you can
4) if so inclined, write or contribute a related essay for the catalog
5) When available, buy a catalog of the show.

FluxMuseum
6955 Pinon Street
Fort Worth, Texas 76116  USA
817-944-4000

     

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Art Show Case at Spill : Paris

Spill, the award-winning Paris-based web design firm, is throwing an art party on May 6 at their palatial digs on Rue Faubourg Poissoniere 75010 Paris. Led by tech and design geniuses Nicholas Mir Chaikin and Liz Stirling, longtime friends and clients of Lalande Digital Art Press, Spill has won more Clic d'Or awards than just about anyone.

The exhibition includes Paris-based artists Sarah de Teliga, Roubiou + Toft Anderson AKA Moto 777, Jean-Pierre Valette, Matthew Rose. Click the image at left to enlarge to see all details.