Archive of Karen Archey

Karen has written 47 article(s) for AFC.

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Karen Archey

Best Link Ever! Stock Photo Fantasies: Pedo-Spouts and Funeral Parties!

by Karen Archey on November 20, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Image via badstockart.wordpress.com Stock photography is a strange bird. Not only do agencies frequently create bizarro scenes like the free-for-all-funeral above, but they’ve also somehow figured out way to turn a profit from it. This week’s Best Link Ever badstockart.wordpress.com presents a slew of entertaining stock images showcased with their corresponding […]

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Best Link Ever! Pricasso: It is What you Think

by Karen Archey on November 13, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Photo via pricasso.com “There are millions of artists in the world but only one who paints with his penis.” So goes the tagline of this week’s Best Link Ever, pricasso.com, a website touting the talents of Pricasso (a portmanteau of “prick” and “Picasso”) who paints exclusively with his dick. We’re not […]

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Best Link Ever! Someone Still Cares About Fred Durst!

by Karen Archey on November 6, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Image via fredandme.com Did Fred Durst do it all for the nookie? We’re not entirely sure we care what the rapper’s career motivations are, but someone apparently does. This week’s Best Link Ever, fredandme.com offers documentation of the Limp Bizkit frontman’s various career stages via fan photos of the singer and […]

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Best Link Ever! Man Meat or Steak Meat?

by Karen Archey on October 30, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Image via Iguogo.com “This quiz is really fucking hard!” exclaims AFC Editor Paddy Johnson. This week’s Best Link Ever, steakhouseorgaybar.com is indeed hard–and no pun intended! The site, simply structured, asks its visitor whether they think a franchise name is a restaurant or a homosexual drinking establishment. Although there’s a wide […]

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Best Link Ever! It’s Hammertime for Simon de Pury!

by Karen Archey on October 23, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Link via Hanne Mugaas’ Art and Culture blog People do weird things with their money. As evidenced by this week’s Best Link Ever, the ultra-charismatic Phillips de Pury chairman Simon de Pury produces a cheesy music video featuring himself in an fantasy-auction of sorts, set against a Europop remake of Pete […]

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What Recession? Collectors Compete For Büchel’s Dirty Socks

by Karen Archey on October 18, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Christoph Büchel Socks, 2009. Pair of dirty socks of the artist on the floor. Copyright Christoph Büchel, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Is artist Christoph Büchel simply a surly art world prankster or does his work effectively question the mechanisms of the art world? The Swiss artist, whose stunts […]

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Best Link Ever! Regretsy Punks Etsy

by Karen Archey on October 9, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Etsy had it coming. The online arts and crafts-based marketplace features saccharine, handmade creations from the hipster-meets-Martha Stewart demographic – a target for ripe for picking by the blogging community.  And so enters Regretsy, a blog pairing the craft site’s most regrettable listings with a bit of vitriolic commentary. The recipient […]

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Borna Sammak Opens Video Exhibition in Best Buy, New Yorkers Annoyed

by Karen Archey on October 9, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY Best Buy customer retrieving his motorbike next to Borna Sammak’s title piece I can only imagine what the handful of potential Best Buy customers were thinking when they happened upon Borna Sammak‘s video installation at the retailer’s SoHo location last night. Perhaps, “Only in New York City do I try to […]

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Karen Archey at Art in America: The Full Yard: Changes at Hauser & Wirth

by Karen Archey on September 29, 2009

Allan Kaprow in his Environment “Yard,” 1967 Pasadena edition with participants. Photo copyright Julian Wasser, via eluxury.com AFC Associate Editor Karen Archey’s latest piece at Art in America Online discusses the opening of Hauser & Wirth’s first gallery in New York City. The teaser below. In 1992, principals Ursula Hauser and Manuela and Iwan Wirth […]

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In Our Masthead: Daniel G. Baird

by Karen Archey on September 28, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY

Daniel G. Baird and Robert Andrade, A Moon of Saturn Resting on a Doric Foundation, 2007. Wood, Polystyrene, Hydrocal. Image via Daniel G. Baird

Daniel G. Baird considers ideas endemic to Western society about culture and technology, often subverting ideas of technological progress with juxtapositions of their primitive translations. Baird, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predominantly works through sculpture using found objects and those of his own creation.

The artist frequently makes use of CNC cut models, as evidenced by his 2007 collaboration with fellow graduate Robert Andrade. Titled “A Moon of Saturn Resting on a Doric Foundation,” the sculpture pairs the landscape of Titan—the terrain believed by scientists to closest resemble the environmental conditions of the Earth—with the Parthenon, an ancient representation of advanced human civilization. Here, Baird and Andrade collapse numerous centuries, subtly highlighting the innumerable, sometimes prodigal events accounting for our currently screwed up civilization, and consequent desire to inhabit an untapped alien world.


Daniel G. Baird Homo Habilis Hand Axe, 2007. Image courtesy the artist.

Baird similarly packages time in his 2007 piece Homo Habilis Hand Axe. Accredited with creating the most primitive of tools, the hand axe, the Homo habilis is an early ancestor of the Homo sapien. The artist acquired a batch of flint, transforming it into his own Homo habilis-style hand axe, which looks like a dagger made of rock. The tool was then sent to a 3D modeling company to be scanned into a computer. The company, who usually recreates artifacts for museums, manufactures (supposedly) exact replicas of much lesser value, allowing institution visitors a tactile experience with the “artifact.” The effect is a little like the French government's recreation of Lascaux' Paleolithic cave paintings: It was discovered that only fifteen years worth of human contact with the caves noticeably damaged their paintings—in response the French government created Lascaux II, an exact reproduction of select cave halls only 200 meters from the original. Similarly, Baird created an exact replica of his own artifact, although for a different purpose. In effect, the artist recreated the hand axe to test the efficacy of the computer in reproducing the most primitive version of itself—the tool. Reticent to spell out exactly what may be lost in the process, the artist simply offers the original and its computed progeny side-by-side, allowing the viewer to contemplate the technological progress of eons.

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