Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Text Art

By Randy Gladman. Originally published in Contemporary, Text Art Special, vol.21, Issue 13, 2008 We interact with technology hundreds of times a day. We dial telephone numbers, scan our food through supermarket check-out lasers, change the television channel and move our mouse to surf to another web page. We click, slide, dial, push, swipe, turn and type on our machines to communicate our contextual commands, and we take for granted that the device will understand our desires and provide an expected result. The point of interface, where our bodies meet our machines, is at...

Ryan McGinness; Art and Entertainment

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in Strength: Skateboard Culture Magazine, January/February 2002 A small TV in a corner of the gallery projects a video of your worst nightmare. Office hell: A shallow space with white walls and whiter lighting, a nondescript table, and a generic clock, hung low on the wall so it appears in the tight camera angle view. The time is apparently twenty-one minutes past the hour and a skinny dude in a white business shirt sits at the table in obvious discomfort. He looks bad. Hurting bad. As he rubs his hand across his clean-shaven...

David Altmejd: 21st Century Werewolf Aes...

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in C International Contemporary Art, Issue 84, Summer 2004 21st Century Werewolf Aesthetics:  An interview with David Altmejd Interview conducted in Istanbul, September 2003 Montreal born sculptor David Altmejd was the only Canadian artist at the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, curated by the New Museum’s Dan Cameron. Since graduating with an MFA from Columbia University in New York City in 2001, he has taken part in high profile group shows at spaces as impressive as Artists Space and Deitch Projects, received glowing...

Tom Sachs; A Visit to Nutsy’s

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in C International Contemporary Art Magazine, Issue 77, Spring 2003. It’s a Tuesday night in Lower Manhattan. Race night. I’m at Tom Sachs’ production facility on Hester Street, three blocks from his studio, two blocks from his home. Chinatown. This giant factory is on the third floor of an ancient building that once housed the New York City Police Department’s mounted division. There’s even a horse elevator, which will soon be used to transport the components of Nutsy’s, Sachs’s newest installation and most ambitious...

Alexis Rockman: Fresh Kills

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in ArText Magazine, Spring 2002 Alexis Rockman sauntered up to our meeting spot on Canal Street, the sanguine spring in his step belying the bizarre state of Broadway, deserted except for about twenty police officers wearing flak jackets and carrying machine guns. The natural history painter’s studio is located in an area of Manhattan that was closed off to all nonresidents in the aftermath of the tragedy of September 11, Black Tuesday, and he arrived exactly on time to escort me into the war zone. Alexis Rockman sauntered up...

Rafael Lozanon-Hemmer at ARS Electronica

By Randy Gladman.  Originally published in Canadian Art Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 4, Winter 2002 Body Movies: A Linz Ars Electronica Festival award winner on the State of Interactive Art Interview with Rafael Lozano-Hemmer Installing large scale interactive artworks in heavily trafficked and populated zones of cities around the world, Canadian/Mexican artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer explores the intersection between new technologies, public space, active participation and ‘alien memory.’ As part of this year’s ARS Electronica festival of new media art in Linz, Austria,...