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Posts Tagged "Bert Rodriguez"
Tonight! We see the world premiere of a feature length documentary about this man, Bert Rodriguez and his career. If you are not in Miami, here’s the trailer: Why Bert? Bert is the best! He’s also my boyfriend.
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We are absolutely thrilled to do a special Wednesday edition of the Adventurer Profile today. Today’s adventurer, long time creative mover and shaker, Grela Orihuela, has recently produced a very special movie called Making Sh*t Up that premieres tonight at Miami’s classic Tower Theater in Little Havana as part of the Miami International Film Festival. To read more about the film’s director, Bill Bilowit as well as the process he and Grela went through to create this feature-length film about the career of contemporary artist Bert Rodriguez, click here. Grela Orihuela is Cuban by birth and grew up in Astoria, Queens. She graduated from the NYU Film School Fine Arts program, and in the early 1980s worked directly for two legendary, iconic men in marketing and promotion: Bloomingdale’s fashion director Kal Ruttenstein and rock ‘n roll impresario Bill Graham. In the mid-1980s, Grela was a producer at WABC-TV news, the executive producer at Telemundo Network, and an independent producer of Spanish-language broadcast programming. She then went on to found several film and multi-media companies, The Show Works, Tareco, and Wet Heat Project with her partner Bill Bilowit. Her most recent work from Wet Heat Project can be seen onscreen in two feature-length films about young artists on the rise, miamiHeights: Hernan Bas and Making Sh*t Up about the conceptual artist Bert Rodriguez, and at the online documentary network wetheat.tv. We asked her our usual questions. 1 what skill do you want to learn? Ambition and / or Patience
2 food and drink you don’t want to live without? Masitas y batido de mamey
3 the scariest thing you can think of? Being a “Real Housewife of Miami”
4 your favorite party supply? Laughter
5 your favorite book of the moment? “The Wild, Wild East” by Barbara Pollack
6 describe your dream party place. Inside my head
7 what is the evil version of you like? She’s blonde
8 what gives you confidence? High heels
9 name four essential elements of a good party. Good guests, good guests, good guests and great guests
10 what do you appreciate most about a party host? Getting the details right
11 favorite adventure supply? The TV remote
12 describe the best party you ever attended. My wedding reception
13 hotel room or campsite? You can’t be serious.
14 do you have a style icon? No
15 where is your next adventure destination? My days-are-numbered storage unit
16 if you could teach a class about anything in the world ever, what would you teach? Ethics
17 what is your motto? Everything happens for a reason So, see you tonight Grela. And, dear readers, if you’re in Miami. Don’t forget to get your tickets for tonight’s show.
Hello adventureland! One of our dear friends of adventure, Bert Rodriguez will be giving a lecture tomorrow at The Henry Art Gallery. I think you should come because I want you to meet him. Also, if you like to go to Miami, you can visit him there sometime when he is not in Seattle. Bert is very funny and so I assume that you will like him. Also, there will be cupcakes. If you have ever wanted to eat cupcakes with a conceptual artist, tomorrow is your chance. I think it would be a great free date, a good way to impress the person of your liking with your taste in cupcakes and activities. 7 to 9 at the Henry Auditorium. Oh, anddddd, the southernmost incorporated place in the contiguous United States is in Florida in Key West. The northernmost incorporated place in the contiguous United States is in Washington. Let’s hear it for SUMAS! Road trip with us! See you tomorrow at the Henry! Find out WAY more about Bert’s work below: Here’s a snippet I stole from his website: “In conjunction with the University of Washington School of Art’s summer residency project, the Henry Art Gallery is pleased to announce a lecture by Miami-based visiting artist Bert Rodriguez. He will speak about the history of his work, his art-making practice in addition to the forms and methods generally used within the framework of contemporary conceptual art. Following Bert’s Lecture there will a Q&A cupcake social in the Café sponsored by Trophy Cupcakes. Friday, September 3rd 2010 | 7:00-9:00pm Bert has exhibited in galleries and institutions worldwide. Most recently, THE MAN CALLED BERT, at Annarumma Gallery in Naples, Italy (2010); I’LL CROSS THAT BRIDGE WHEN GET TO IT, at Fredric Snitzer Gallery in Miami, FL (2010); IN YOUR OWN IMAGE: THE BEST OF BERT RODRIGUEZ VOL. I; at the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, FL. (2009); WHERE YOU END AND I BEGIN, at Frieze Art Fair (2008); and IN THE BEGINNING…, at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2008). In 2009, Lawrimore Projects introduced Rodriguez to Seattle with a work in the group exhibition SPITE HOUSE, and was hosted by Western Bridge on the occasion of PARENTHESIS where he created A WALL I BUILT WITH MY FATHER and A MEAL I MADE WITH MY MOTHER”. For more information please contact the Henry Art Gallery.
Today’s adventurer profile is internationally recognized artist, hall of famer and boyfriend of adventure Bert Rodriguez (b. 1975 Miami, FL). Here is some info that I took from his website about him: Bert has exhibited and received commissions through many prestigious institutions all over the world. Most recently, I’LL CROSS THAT BRIDGE WHEN GET TO IT; his fourth solo show at Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami (2010), IN YOUR OWN IMAGE: THE BEST OF BERT RODRIGUEZ VOL. I; a survey show presented by the Bass Museum of Art in Miami Beach, FL. (2009), WHERE YOU END AND I BEGIN; A performance based installation commissioned by the Frieze Foundation on the occasion of Frieze Art Fair, London (2008), IN THE BEGINNING…; for the Whitney Biennial, New York (2008), and A WALL I BUILT WITH MY FATHER / A MEAL I MADE WITH MY MOTHER; two site specific installations for Le Plateau, FRAC Ile de France, Paris (2008). Current projects include, getting settled into his first official studio, looking for interns, moving to Seattle for the summer starting later this month, trying to eat better including discovering the magic of juicing, and training his totally adorable dog, Wilson, to be a gentleman. So folks, please give a warm adventure welcome to Bert Rodriguez and don’t be afraid to bake him cupcakes this summer to welcome him to his new (temporary) home here in Rain City.
What skill do you want to learn? -levitation Food and drink you don’t want to live without? -tacos, liquid tacos The scariest thing you can think of? -termites Your favorite party supply? -cupcakes Your favorite book of the moment? -Marvel Comics Cloak and Dagger Describe your dream party place. -Being tethered to all my friends in an outer space conga line chasing space bubble cakes floating around - extremely well dressed, overwhelmingly handsome and infinitely clever What gives you confidence? - practically everything that has come and will come to pass in the entire universe since the beginning of time. Name four essential elements of a good party. -friends, pizza, cakes, puppies What do you appreciate most about a party host? -her smlie Favorite adventure supply? - a sherpa Describe the best party you ever attended. -the best party I ever attended…best party I ever attended…, the party they threw when I was born. I don’t completely remember it but, the world must have thrown the biggest party ever in history. It had to have been bangin’ Hotel room or campsite? -hotel Do you have a style icon? -my 60 year old self in the future -I’m spending the summer in Seattle, WA. It’s gonna be precious to me If you could teach a class about anything in the world ever, what would you teach? -it would be called “think about it”. It would be a completely white room flooded with light and the walls blending into the floor and ceiling so you couldn’t tell where they began or ended. Everyday, I would bring in a different object I found and place it in the middle of this room. Everyone would get to sit around and do what the title suggests. Maybe we would talk about it? Your motto? -ok What is your spirit animal? -not sure. I have the cards but have yet to figure it out. Sounds like a good summer project. I like spiders, monkeys, puppies, and giraffes. Maybe it’s one of those. Maybe a spider monkey?
Oh, and that last blog post reminds me, I forgot to tell you about my recent travels in May, here’s a short recap: Went to Miami to see a magical guy named Bert Rodriguez, you can read more about him on Monday, as he will be next week’s featured Adventurer.
Miami sort of feels like it is exists outside of the USA; everyone is there getting really sweaty on the daily and everything is all-tropical-beauty-all-the-time. It is a very adventure-y destination, one moment glamorous pool party the next, delicious Cuban sugar treats at a place that looks like it was lifted whole hog out of Cuba post revolution. Here is a listing of adventures that we had: Psychic Youth performance at De La Cruz Collection, full of friends dancing for four continuous hours! WOW and HOW! I was hangin’ a lot at this bar while the inimitable Bert Rodriguez DJ’d and then a few days later we said BYE BYE to our friend Freddie, “go to Paris to be young and in love”. Then we went to NYC with some students and ART’ed it up at times with notable Miamians Ruba Katrib and Fred Snitzer to talk about art types of things. I will now share all the things we saw to emphasize the sheer volume of art happening in NYC right now. PS 1 – eh?, pretty much all closed for install of Greater New York show. Sculpture Center, a good video and a good catacomb-y downstairs gallery space, people say it fucks up the art, I say it’s awesome. New Museum, where we saw “Skin Fruit: Selections from the Dakis Joannou Collection” curated by artist Jeff Koons, most of the work was sort of going for a cheap-o one/two punch of “I don’t care about a thing because I am so cool and I will shock you” which was lame but this Tim Noble and Sue Webster piece kind of made me die, which if you know me, is really a positive thing, the more visceral the reaction to art the better-ish. More importantly, we saw my friend Ari and talked about the smash success of his style blog about older adults: Advanced Style. Thankfully, we went to see Marina Abramović at the MoMa, her show was amazing and she looked gigantic, Tilda Swinton was there and looked much smaller. The Whitney Biennial was kinda whatever, we liked this video by this guy, Alex Hubbard, who we liked the day before at The Sculpture Center and I met Yoko Ono in the lobby. Besides being one of the best people of all times, she looked really hot and I won’t even qualify that with “for an older woman” . . . just plain beautiful! I was trying to play it cool around her but she is one of my idols and I couldn’t help snapping a a camera pic of her after she bid us her goodbye. Shhhhh! Don’t tell her that I am actually, not that cool. We went to literally one million galleries, seems like all the shows in Chelsea are up until June 19, 2010, so go check ‘em out if you are in the neighb. The Sonnabend Gallery was the best, their show, “Robert Morris: Felt Pieces, Blind Time Drawings and Two Films” will be up through July 2010 and you should definitely go see it, it totally reminds me of the Haida and Tlingit Native Art collection at the SAM. I never see celebs in NYC, except when I saw Grace Coddington at Uniqlo, but this time NYC was crawling with notables. We spotted Valentino near the Gagosian, his orangeyness was shocking, but he had amazingly graceful posture. Gagosian was full of ‘Roy Lichtenstein Still Lifes’ and they were too bananas; it felt like a high class car dealership but instead of cars, nice pictures. Luhring Augustine had a show called ‘Twenty Five’ to mark their 25th anniversary in the biz. It had a lot of iconic pieces that I had heretofore only read about in the late 90s in college art history class, like the heads by Janine Antoni called ‘Lick and Lather’ from 1993 aka Two busts: one chocolate and one soap on two pedestals and Yasumasa Morimura’s ‘Angels Descending Staircase’ from 1991. Andrea Rosen had a little show in the back with the hilarious name of “She Awoke with a Jerk” curated by Nigel Cooke and showed a really disparate group of arties including my favorite Georges: George Condo, and George Grosz. All the galleries on West 26th Street were off-putting especially, Greene Naftali their Bjarne Melgaard show was extremely freaky, Galerie Lelong showed the Seattle favorite, Andy Goldsworthy but it was a departure from his usual and wonderful rock swirl photos, it was focused on an all urban series called “New York Dirt Water Light”, Mitchell-Innes & Nash had a show William Pope called landscape + object + animal. The super classy Lehmann Maupin showed Lee Bul at 201 Chrystie Street and it was so pretty (dare I say, it was party inspiration to the max) but the show at their Chelsea outpost was a real snooze. The list goes on and on, but who has time to tell you how I really felt about every show. Oh, you do? Well, email me.
After all the art we needed a break and we walked the Highline for the first time – GREAT! We also saw a dead body being carted away by the coroner in Brooklyn – NOT GREAT! The end of this massive and mighty blog post, now Bert will come to the greater Seattle land area later this month and it is our job (yours and mine, I can’t do this alone) to show him about this alpine wonderland and see NO dead bodies. Oh, AND, we flew Spirit Air, which was quite the EVENT, not one I would recommend to the faint of heart or those who would be freaked out by things like a guy yelling at a woman in English on the plane to ‘shut the fuck up’ and then yelling it to her again in Spanish just in case she missed it. Dramatic times and you have to buy drinking WATER? Well, anyways, good thing it was just a two hour flight. See you next week.
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