Pagodism

Its funny that I've been in New York for a week and I'm still thinking about L.A.

Just off of Hill Street is LA's simulated Chinatown. It was built in the '50s for a movie and then inhabited by chinese americans as a real place. Now its inhabited by cool stores such as OOGA BOOGA, cool school such as Piero Golia's Mountain School of Art, galleries and project spaces mixed with Mah-jong parlours and chinese stuff stores, mixing film with reality. One of the first spaces to open there was Miltos' Electronic Orphanage, which now has become Telic.

Even the gas station was dressed up as a pagoda, which come to think of it, if China someday rules the global market maybe this will be the new international style, replacing all the Mies van der Rohe type of abstract floating planes with Standard Pagodism.

Miltos Manetas at Yvon Lambert

Miltos is showing 3 websites and 2 paintings, the websites projected onto blank canvases. The painting canvases are identical to the website canvases. And when he paints he projects the image onto the blank canvas. Sometimes he paints websites. Everything in the show is the same size, and the same price. It's a perfect show, just like a 444 moment.

The Agony and the Ecstasy at Geffen MOCA

I wasnt supposed to take photos inside the Ecstasy show at the Geffen MOCA in L.A., but I couldnt resist Pierre Huyghe's (top) or Assume Vivid Astro Focus' pieces.

Some pics from my show at INMO Gallery, LA.

INMO is located in downtown LA, in what used to be the abandoned Billy's Coffee Shop at the equally abandoned and scary Rosslyn Hotel. Inmo has decided to open the gallery without turning it into a white cube kind of space. Instead he has left the bar of the coffee shop intact, and the space in a semi ruined state. The result is one of the most poetic galleries I've ever been to (or exhibited in).

Spring was never waiting for us dear

..., it ran one step ahead, As we followed in the dance
Donna Summer, "Mac Arthur park"


Right in front of Mac Arthur Park is a great 1950s pre-cast concrete building, where Textfield magazine is located . I'm in L.A. preparing my show at Inmo Gallery, which is now in Downtown but used to be in the same building as Textfield, when they were both in chinatown, on Chung King Road.

At Inmo I'm showing Hotel Blue Wave, itself a pre-cast concrete building inspired by the 1050s examples like the one Textfield is today housed. There seems to be a cosmic coinsidence thing going on, and I think Donna Summer was right after allAt Inmo I'm showing Hotel Blue Wave, itself a pre-cast concrete building inspired by the 1050s examples like the one Textfield is today housed. There seems to be a cosmic coinsidence thing going on, and I think Donna Summer was right after all

Fabulous ceilings inside toy store in New York

The Toys 'R' Us store on Times Square has some of the best ceilings around. They're all very standard industrial and full of ducts, structure and stuff, but they are firecoated in candy colors and some of them even have candy hanging from it. Who would have thought it was so simple?
The whole store is architectural fabulosity, perfect for the gay architect who keeps a secret stash of Barbies' Magic Pegasus under his desk (like me).

Double Diamond

This is the 1959 Pearlroth beach house by Andrew Geller, sometimes called double diamond house. I think it was demolished, but I'm not sure. I wanna be there.

Newmanifesto on my desktop

My friend Newmanifesto takes beautiful pictures in the country side. They remind me of vacations I never took.

Feu d'artifice

from Marinas apartment
next day on the beach

I'll be back last year

Happy NEW Year!

A Conceptual Form

This is MATHEMATICAL FORM 0001 by Hiroshi Sugimoto, from the series Conceptual Forms. Makes my brain stop.

via the great gravestmor

The Good Lifo

Lifo is the newest and best free press in Athens. Like most cities Athens is full of these free magazines, though most of them are not really free. The most popular one sells advertising space inside personal ads, resulting in ads like "I saw you wearing a v*daf*ne t-shirt, you looked hot etc". Lifo is mostly good, apart from some weird lifestyle elements that make me think we are still living in the 1990's (some even in the 80's) so I recently I made a harsh comment about it in another blog, and then I felt guilty: Lifo comes from Stathis Tsagarousianos, the man responsible for the best ever greek magazine, the legendary 01. By the way when are we gonna get the 01 compendum?

Hotel Blue Wave featured in the fantastic "DVD companion" book "Everything will be ok" by Thisisnotamagazine. The DVD features a re-edited segment of the Hotel video with new music by Radioganesh Peep1. Check it out, also for Angelo Plessas' amazing double page.

Back from Milano

Too tired to say anything clever about Milan, or about elegance, design, history or humor. This is no tacky town, for sure.

Off to Milan

AndrewBurgess.com

Just found this Cat Town on AndrewBurgess.com. Andrew worked with me on several projects such as Mirrorsite, InvisibleHome and a pre-proposal of Forever Laser. Now he's based in Iceland, doing some pretty cool stuff. I love this Cat Town and also the Hand Tower. His site is super minimal and all the content is presented in a continous fascinating loop.

Time for Quicktime

Finally I've uploaded the animations for projects that could not possibly be explained without motion: Hotel Blue Wave, Mirrorsite, P130 and Animated. More is coming soon. Hope the bandwidth doesnt' kill me, but then again it would be nice if it did.

SUPERGLOBES

this amazing globe from Ingo Günther's Worldprocessor globe catalog. [via the also super BLDG BLOG]

Cant' take my eyes off of you

A drawing for Alkis

Just did these drawings for my friend Alkis who passed away recently. The images will be used on the flyer for a party at Factory club on christmas eve. You can download the high res image from here. Print it big. Put some music on. Dance around and think of Alkis.