Gregory Halpern spent five years shooting ZZYZX , and another year editing the results, from an estimated thousand rolls of film, about half of which were shot in the final year after his Guggenheim Fellowship enabled him to live in California. According to Halpern, the series “is grounded in reality, but it occupies an in-between space, between documentary and a certain sense of mystery.” …“I see ZZYZX as part of a continuum but edging a little closer towards fiction.” The series title is borrowed from the village Zzyzx (pronounced zye-zix), formerly Soda Springs, but rechristened by the mineral water pioneer, Curtis Howe Springer, in 1944. The eccentric Springer named it after what he claimed to be the last word in the English language. The images in the ZZYZX series begin in the desert east of Los Angeles and drift west, through the city, and finally end at the Pacific ocean. This general westward movement is a pilgrimage toward the ocean, and alludes to the manifest expansion of America from east to west. The people, places, and animals in the series did appear before Halpern’s camera, but he has selected and organized the images into a work of fiction or fantasy, with assistance from artist Jason Fulford on the sequence. The work brings together seemingly disparate images of environmental crisis, kinship, entertainment, urbanity, and stunning vistas. There is a strange narrative harmony to the series—the sublime, the psychedelic, and the self-destructive. Southern California is unpredictable, wild. Cultures and histories coexist, the beautiful sits next to the ugly, the redemptive next to the despairing, and all under the golden state’s radiant light, as transcendent as it is brutal.
Gregory Halpern is an acclaimed American photographer whose practice is predicated on wandering. Combined with a curiosity about the elusive qualities of Americanness, he makes images that mix documentary and fiction. He has been celebrated for his pioneering photobooks, which involve rich colors, thoughtful sequencing, and evocative associations between images as a form of storytelling.
Pyre , an installation by Mexico City-based artist Joaquín Segura, addresses corruption, impunity, and the role that failed governments play in the normalization of violence...
Book Review: "The State and The Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions" | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Images courtesy of Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore April 9, 2019 By Chin Ailin (734 words, four-minute read) Commissioned by the Institute of Policy Studies of Singapore (IPS) to trace the course of cultural policy in Singapore from the 1950s to the present, The State and the Arts in Singapore: Policies and Institutions is a comprehensive tome that should serve as an essential text in time to come for any student’s introduction to Singapore’s arts and cultural policies...
In 2019, Ayoung Kim traveled to Mongolia to research its widespread animistic belief system towards land, mother rock, stones, and sacred caves that purify human guilt...
Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara on his art’s meaning, and chasing the ‘carefree freedom’ of childhood | South China Morning Post Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara on his art’s meaning, and chasing the ‘carefree freedom’ of childhood Art Yoshitomo Nara, one of Japan’s leading contemporary artists, talks about his influences, from punk rock to Kraftwerk, and what drives him – it isn’t money Kate Whitehead + FOLLOW Published: 7:15am, 29 Jan, 2024 Why you can trust SCMP I am from Aomori, in the north of Japan’s main island of Honshu...
Air Con: Who Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints October 8, 2021 By Dhinesha Karthigesu (1,330 words, 5-minute read) Who do you want to be when you grow up? At the end of the play AIR CON , the character William (Nick Davis) asks the character Asif (Ryan Lee Bhaskaran) this question...
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Reunion — Hand-Embroidered School Class Portraits - Photographs and text by Diane Meyer | LensCulture Feature Reunion — Hand-Embroidered School Class Portraits By obscuring the faces with embroidery — which would typically be the most important parts of these elementary school class portraits — otherwise overlooked details are brought into focus, such as body language and other embodiments of social convention...
The collector is developing projects that allow her to support artists in her own unique way....
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The primary interest in the trilogy is Joskowicz’s use of cinematic space, with long tracking shots that portray resistance to habitual viewing experiences of film and television...