Rockonski

I would do it again but I can't.

2008-11-02T01:40:00.002-05:00

Passin Me By - Pharcyde

2008-10-24T08:35:00.000-05:00

stung haiku

2008-10-09T10:31:00.001-05:00

that bee that stung me
in the morning, at 4 AM?
i thought it was you

Homesick

2008-09-20T10:40:00.002-05:00

Homesick - October 2 - October 31, 2008

The Cousins (2007) 30.5 x 35.5cm

Rockonski is happy as a pair of boobs to present Homesick, Tonik Wojtyra's first solo exhibit ever. The show opens October 2 and runs to October 31. Please join the artist for the opening the morning of October 2 at 8 am - 11 am. The show takes place at 71 Havelock St. Toronto, ON - M6H3B3 KANADA

In Homesick, Tonik presents a multifarious chronicle culminating 30 months of painting at 71 Havelock Street in Toronto. Produced and presented in situ, the works on exhibit explore painting's relationship to architecture, abstraction, genealogy, dreams, promises, lies and it's ability to affect. Tonik explains:

>"It sucks ass but I have to move. Man, I learned to cook here. I wrote a book here. I mastered paint here. What haven't I done here? I have the best balcony, to boot. And although the tide has turned for the better and all? I feel sick about it. I really love this place, man. I don't wanna go but I can't stay either. The best way for me to talk about it is to show my Art within its first frame as Daniel Buren calls the studio. Let's have a cup of tea, a cookie, a chat, a smoothie, some eggs, oatmeal, sausages, yogurt, let's get high or whatever. I'm inviting you. I miss you."

A book will be published to accompany the show.

About the artist

Tonik Wojtyra is probably taller than you are... but maybe not as smart. Mos def maybe.

or 416-879-5077

xxx

None of the above

2008-09-10T11:25:00.001-05:00

Herzog and de Meuron (a slight intro)

2008-08-14T15:50:00.002-05:00

They number and hardcover bind their projects for studio reference? Inspiring.

Maurizio Cattelan's Good versus Evil

2008-08-09T09:51:00.003-05:00

A 2003 chess set by the Italian contemporary master where the artist posits "the figures of Adolf Hitler as the Black King against Martin Luther King, Jr. as the White King. I like.

Piotr Uklanski

2008-08-08T14:44:00.003-05:00

Nuclear Explosion in Eastern Europe

2008-08-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

Complete story.

Wednesday - Saturday --- 11:00 - 18:00

2008-08-01T14:10:00.001-05:00

Sandman Simms vs Bill Cosby: Challenge!

2008-07-15T16:10:00.001-05:00

I wanna be your Tennis Ball - Jamie Foxx and the Ballers

2008-07-09T22:59:00.001-05:00

I'd really like to live beside you, baby

2008-07-09T22:57:00.001-05:00

Ah you loved me as a loser, but now you're worried that I just might win
You know the way to stop me, but you don't have the discipline
How many nights I prayed for this, to let my work begin
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

Let this be my promise

2008-07-01T23:45:00.001-05:00

Force MDs – Tender Love

2008-06-26T13:13:00.002-05:00

"Candles, they light the dark"

My red roses, your red two lips

2008-06-24T10:04:00.000-05:00

How I wish You were Mine

2008-06-14T21:57:00.000-05:00

I'll meet you at the studio

2008-06-12T11:48:00.000-05:00

So many I love live so faraway

2008-06-05T14:30:00.002-05:00

Steely Dan – Peg (Live)

2008-06-05T13:15:00.002-05:00

On my route home yesterday I started whistling de la soul's Eye Know; I don't know how or why it got in my head. After whistling the loop once or twice, a gentlemen named Will Strickland of UMAC elucidated to me that the sample de la used comes from a song called Peg, by Steely Dan.

Honey, I'm home.

Banksy is at it again...

2008-05-14T13:05:00.002-05:00

The Cans Festival organized by Banksy featuring Hugo Kaagman, Dolk et al.

A couple paragraphs about Katie Bethune-Leamen

2008-05-13T16:03:00.006-05:00

Rem Koolhaas: The typical pizza restaurant in Germany, for instance, is run by Turks, and yet, the discussion among politicians is that these people should know about German history and should have a minimal sense of belonging to an identity, etc., so it is a completely counterproductive and reactionary idea and also part of this nostalgia. It would be really interesting to locate that moment when nostalgia started to become the dominant mode.

Hans Ulrich-Obrist: And when would you locate it? Would you say it was postmodernism?

Rem Koolhaas: I think it was probably earlier, no?*

Maybe, (I'm not sure, hear me? But here I go panning, speculating, for gold) just maybe, Katie Bethune-Leamen's long-titled "Tupac" piece is some sort of attempt to locate a moment for nostalgia's rise to a dominant mode. Probably not, Rem and Hans might have nothing to do with it. The piece whose long title is missing here, whose memory is fogging off in this memory, whose composition should probably be considered in relation to the body of the group show it hung with ,is composed (and decomposed) by 3 links: mushrooms, Tupac and modernism's throne: a chair. (The exact name escapes me... Eames' design, originally issued in fiberglass by Herman Miller, ubiquitous. You've seen them. If you saw one it would be so obvious.)

There are 3 framed digital drawings works on the wall which read left to right. They dissolve linearly like a birth to death narrative: the image dissolves literally; the far right work is nearly black and white, and unlike the others is subtitled. Katie, in her hand writing, has scrawled a nearly decipherable sentence (or maybe it's my memory now) about Tupac Shakur and his ghost; an epitaph of sorts. Looking at the piece, one deciphers that the image of Tupac in the digital drawings is lifted from the blanket on the floor. A mink blanket, I'm told, it's called. It lies there before us, before the wall, below the drawings; it covers what one discovers is an Eames chair, you know the kind, this one is fancier than the kind bought en masse by universities in the 70s, fancier because it has what are known as an Eiffel base for legs (mimicking that shape of that industrial, romantic, French tower) and doubly fancier because it's white. That colorless, pale, white chair lies on it's side, toppled, dead; covered by that Tupac blanket like a cadaver. Sculpted, life-size, mushrooms sprout both from what's visible of the chair and from the blanket. Tupac dead, Eames chair dead, and mushrooms growing upon this substrate demanding our consideration. And as considerate I am, I consider, and all my thoughts return Hans and Rem. Sentimentality, homesickness, youth and oooh it was all so simple then...

Katie's "Tupac" ciphers nostalgia as a dominant mode but it doesn't pin-point nostalgia's rise; honestly, I'm lost here, help, hold me, I have no idea; then again, wait, wait, wait --- maybe it does pin-point a moment.

If it does, then the date lies with Tupac dying in the mid-late 90's, or does the moment rest when Eames chairs were being re-issued in fibreglass-free plastic editions? Probably in the 90s too. Same thing. But wait, Rem has given us a hint: it was probably earlier, no? And he's right, it lies much earlier, probably in the original issue of that Eames chair; somewhere in the midst of American post-WWII revelry; sometime when JD Salinger's Holden is loathing phonies; sometime when Martin Luther King Jr. was dreaming; sometime when a de Kooning was fresh in William Rubin's loft; sometimes when humans hadn't been to the moon yet; sometimes when Russians were warring the west with their cold; sometime when the future was still something look forward to... The exact moment nostalgia arose as a dominant mode is at modernism's peak and simultaneous collapse. And what of Tupac there? Why can't he rest in peace? This is where hip-hop kills us softly and directs us: mushrooms are the remix. Regardless how culture grows and flows and attempts to ascertain its highness through conflation of colors, times and rhymes, down below nature wants to (and of course eventually will) topple it, grow over it like weeds popping through cracked concrete, like books breeding dust, like meanings amplified by ambiguities, like mushrooms growing, rising, out of invisible mold; just add moisture and a bit of willing ghost. Within the remix, shiitake, magic, or otherwise, it's what Tupac Shakur instinctively knew when he rhymed to his mum: "tell my homies, I'm in heaven." What Tupac's premonition points at, and what Katie clarifies with her installation is a contemporary riddle: Never before have we lived in such material wealth and simultaneous spiritual poverty; a condition that obfuscates the present and keeps makes the mass nostalgic for the past; the politicians, on all sides in regards to the present, teach us to die. The riddle Katie leads me to is like a Borgesian labyrinth and I find myself trapped in it and even though it answers nothing, I have to rephrase Hans to ask it differently, to clarify... why did the future become something to be afraid of?

Martino Gamper

2008-05-08T09:48:00.002-05:00

Martino Gamper is doing a project with Wright in Chicago. Look it up, it's worth it; his work is marked by alchemy, punk and a slight twist garage sale. Lovely.

Images courtesy of: www.gampermartino.com

Cacao supply, children...

2008-04-30T16:46:00.003-05:00

"Childhood is both a construct and a luxury good, available only to children of adults who earn sufficient livelihoods for their families as a whole." Read more.

How My Family is and How to be more successful in 2 paragraphs or so, for Angela Nardiello

2008-04-27T23:50:00.003-05:00

First of all, I had a great nap today. It was dreamy... so nice. I woke up to soup on the table.

You ask, I tell. Dancing is like art and dancing is an art and dancing is art but not if you're smoking and drinking on a Saturday night for just so. Drunk art isn't art, fuck that. But it can be. Don't let me be the arbiter on this one. What I do really know is this: If you like it, if it feels good, and it feels right, adopt a corporate catch phrase and just do it. Ahem, My family is so beautiful. I hung out today with mum and dad and my sister, Urszula, and her exceptionally wonderful son, my nephew, Tyrus. Tyrus has deep blue eyes from my father, I think. His brown hair is light brown, a glowing dark blonde, nothing dirty about it. He is deeply interested in all things with big wheels and painted yellow: diggers, excavators, trucks; his favourite are cranes. I credit his preference to his exceeding intelligence because he obviously has an affinity for ideas beyond brute force. He seems to understand lifting, as the surpassing of this primordial law that makes even flesh fall, and stretching towards the heaven is one step from flying and one stair step from being angelic. He doesn't pronounce the R in crane very well and when he sees one (and he sees many because Toronto is constantly under construction) he yells out KWAYNE! You can't help but smile at his budding wit when he points at the cranes and says "I wanna see dat!" He's a great joy to play with. I tease him a lot about what is his and what isn't, to his mother's dismay, but he laughs when I do it and I like it and oh, you'd love him Angela, you would, because he's so easy to fall in love with.

The second part of this much delayed response addresses your second question:

1. Read "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Louis Borges and from it...
2. Decide that you can't know everything and focus on what success is for you and let it be your new modus operandi. Obsess on it. And then realize that...
3. You have this thing inside you called "joy". Bring it to any table you may have the pleasure pulling up a chair to, resting your elbows upon, tapping your finger tips on, eating food from, dancing on top of and let joy unfold it's warm magic... voila.

I hope that helps.

I'm happy to have the chance to share this with you, you've asked great questions. I would have loved to share this with you over brunch. I miss you lots and lots, send me your mailing address, okay? Until then, I am

yours affectionately,
tonik