Alexander Tinei

Alexander Tinei (born 1967 in Căuşeni, Moldova) is a painter based in Budapest, Hungary.

The figures depicted in Alexander Tinei’s paintings and drawings bear the emblematic trace of tattoos. The notion of being different or ‘marked’ is an emotive concept for Tinei. He sees the tattoo as an act rooted in pagan culture and Eastern belief systems and the means by which a person can express their devotion to a particular cause or ideology through the signing of an agreement in blood. Tinei’s preoccupation with depicting highly individualized, ambiguously sexed figures whose poses and the contexts they occupy often point towards marginalization and alienation from mainstream society, reveal him to be someone concerned by identity. Tinei’s interest in an individual’s transformation could in part be traced to the history of his own personal evolution. Born in Moldova before it became a republic and while it was still part of the Soviet Union, Tinei describes himself as: ‘an absolute product of a Soviet culture, transformed into Western culture, transformed into myself.’

Moonrise Kingdom / Wes Anderson

Looking forward to seeing the new Wes Anderson film called Moonrise Kingdom.

Set on an island off the coast of New England in the 1960s, as a young boy and girl fall in love they are moved to run away together. Various factions of the town mobilize to search for them and the town is turned upside down

Last

I went to visit the recent exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery the other day, twas a great show....I recommend checking it out if anybody happens to be around that neck of the woods.

The group exhibition is entitled 'Last'

It was about edgelands, liminality, and the borders of the known; Last pushes beyond those boundaries towards a less familiar place where everyday structures have either been eroded or disintegrated. Last might be said to reflect a mood of anxiety, a struggle for survival, and the possibility of transformation. From another perspective, however, it is a simple exhibition of twenty recent works by Irish or Irish-based artists that has no particular meaning.

Last includes works by the following artists:

Stephen Brandes, Peter Burns, Elaine Byrne, Oliver Comerford, Kevin Cosgrove, Gary Coyle, Paul Doran, Damien Flood, Cliona Harmey, Wendy Judge, Nevan Lahart, Stephen Loughman, Sinead Ni Mhaonaigh, Paul Nugent, Mark O'Kelly, David Sherry, Sonia Shiel, George Warren

Here are a couple of works from it..........

Paul Harrison and John Wood

Bristol-based duo Paul Harrison and John Wood could be described as an art-world equivalent to Laurel and Hardy. Their videos, showing their dead-pan antics as they dangle precariously from a ladder, slide on office chairs around the back of a moving van, and submit themselves to a drenching from dozens of watering cans, are both hilarious and thought provoking.

They invited TateShots to meet them at their studio.Check it out!!

Julia Holter

I cannot stop listening to the new Julia Holter album.....I love it!

This is a review from BOOMKAT

How do you follow a near-perfect album? By edging even closer to perfection. Julia Holter hasn't allowed herself to be cowed by the success of her acclaimed 2011 album Tragedy, instead producing another pellucid, beautifully composed and sequenced LP for head and heart. On Ekstasis, her first album for New York's RVNG Intl., Holter's vocals are given a central role throughout. The arrangements are more open and "pop" than those of Tragedy, but not at the expense of musical complexity or eccentricity. By now you'll probably have heard lead single, 'Marienbad', an astonishing amalgam of tempered baroque instrumentation and spritely vocal layering, in which Holter comes over like Julianna Barwick's mischievous older sister, running amok in a pastel-hued psychedelic Wonderland. Like album highlight 'Boy In The Moon', it's a song that takes conventional pop forms and structures them unconventionally. Tragedy's rousing highlight ''Goddess Eyes' appears here in a re-recorded version, and there's also a sequel, 'Goddess Eyes II', delivered with an exotic pomp that suggests Kate Bush collaborating with Ryuichi Sakamoto. 'Fur Felix' is like Brecht by way of J-pop, and parting shot 'This Is Esktasis' is inspired - all stomping Glitter-beat, languid horns and arcing strings, pointing towards even greater things to come from Holter in the future. Even the seemingly more straightforward numbers - like 'Our Sorrows', or 'In The Same Room', which sounds like the work of an Italians Do It Better band with a degree in medieval studies - crackle with personality and idiosyncratic compositional touches. It takes an artist of rare stature to create a record at once as accessible and exploratory as Ekstasis, and Holter is just such an artist. A truly wonderful record.

This is my favourite track from Ekstasis...