Unless you're hiding under a rock you know that Michael Jackson's This is It hit theaters last night.

This is It is far from the best documentary or concert movie of all time, but it is special and worth seeing. If you are a performer or artist of any kind and you want to see a group of people dedicated to being the best they can be...see THIS IS IT. If you want to get a sense of the hard work involved in making dreams come true...see THIS IS IT. If you're under 30 and think everything should be handed to you without any effort on your part...see THIS IS IT!

The movie wasn't the emotional roller-coaster you'd expect because the films producers purposely kept the focus of the film on the process of Michael preparing for the concerts that never were and did not even refer to Michael's untimely death.

If you're looking for insight into his final days or how the cast and crew of his stage responded to his death you wont see it here. The movie is a concert film and tribute plain and simple and to this end it works well.

The movie DID show the greatest entertainer of all time working hard to show the world why he was the greatest. The movie DID show the sense of family between him, his dancers, crew and band. The movie DID show a man in control of how is art was to be presented to the world. The movie DID inspire me to continue on my personal quest to use my art and music bring more love into the world and leave it a better place when it's my time to go.

Michael lived his promise, now it's time for each of us to live ours. No more tomorrows, next weeks and maybe's. For me it's today and right now. For me...THIS IS IT!

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Today Michael Jackson's This is It hits theaters and I have tickets for later in the day. I'm not sure why I am doing this to myself because I know I will cry myself through most of the film. In any event to celebrate the opening of the film I'm reposting the single from the new CD for your enjoyment.

Have a great day.

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Nicholas Robinson Gallery is pleased to present its second solo exhibition of new paintings by Florian Süssmayr

The current exhibition, entitled Interieurs, focuses both the artist's and viewers' attention on various iterations of interior spaces, one of the traditional genres of art history. Frequently de-populated and executed with the artist's characteristic somber palette of monochromatic dark browns, Süssmayr's interiors create an evocative atmosphere that is simultaneously disquieting, banal, and even, on occasions, gloomy or sinister. His fleeting glimpses of these spaces are often ambiguous - both artist and viewer participate in the viewing of the scene and yet are somehow also clearly excluded from belonging in them.

A number of the paintings tackle another traditional genre - that of the self-portrait. The artist is depicted either as a reflection in a surface in which he is photographing himself, or as part of a pin-board collage containing an image of himself and other biographically relevant images or references. The depiction of self is thus never direct, and continues the theme of detached observation and exclusion.

Florian Süssmayr has his roots in the social and political subculture pervasive in Germany in the 1980s. Originally a musician in the leftist post-punk scene, he has also been a film cameraman, and began painting in the late 1990s.

Süssmayr has had a solo exhibition at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and has participated in numerous other important gallery and museum exhibition in the last five years.

Florian Süssmayr was born in 1963 in Munich, Germany, and lives and works in Munich.

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Maya Gold / Untitled (detail), 2009 / Oil on canvas / 55 x 94 inches / MG-020

Maya Gold: Wake
October 29, 2009 - January 9, 2010
Opening Thursday October 29, 6-8pm

Mike Weiss Gallery is excited to present Wake, an exhibition of new oil paintings on canvas by Israeli artist Maya Gold. This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York and at Mike Weiss Gallery. Her use of a combination of soft, nearly see-through backgrounds and precisely executed subjects in the foreground blend the genres of abstraction and figuration and challenge the viewer to make that distinction.

This series of paintings is greatly influenced by the artist’s time spent living in Israel and her proximity to the sea and urban landscape. In some works, a female figure dressed in a bikini the colors of the Israeli flag stands alone in a vast empty field of muted gray or blue. She is throwing a life preserver out into the empty space or crouching on the shore arranging the seashells on the sand in futile exercises to call for help. In one work the same figure holds a large beach umbrella, attempting to pierce the ground with its tip seemingly unaware that she is standing on a brick walkway. In some works the figure is unrepresented and its presence, either male or female, is completely obstructed by open umbrellas that play across the surface of the canvas like a bag of scattered marbles. The artist composes the works so that they are a visual trick to behold, undefined, offering a several meanings at once.

The title of the exhibition, Wake, is meant to conjure the same curiosity as to which particular meaning it denotes. All at once, Wake is a reference to the shape of water when it parts behind a boat after it passes, the time after dreaming when we slip into present consciousness, and the services that are attended by friends and family after the passing of loved one. The viewer, hovering, peering down ghostlike above the world below is left to guess from where they are supposed to be viewing this world. It is the ambiguity of the moment, the uncertainty of the time that the artist captures on the canvas.

The surfaces of the canvas, although rich with detail are surprisingly flat. The artist begins by laying in a translucent wash of color over the white canvas to indicate the sky, water or brick. Each element, the background shadow or figure, is painted from start to finish in one sitting to keep the texture of the paint and the canvas even and flat. The figures or subjects are painted in last with delicate and almost photographic realism. The artist does not however take her subjects directly from photographs and instead works from various imagery and is most reliant on her own memory. In the end, what we are given is a composition that is contrastingly different in its appearance and meaning, at once minimal in its imagery but also riddled with the clues to a deeper story and symbolism.

aya Gold lives and works in Tel Aviv, Israel. The artist received her Bachelors of Art at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Tel Aviv and continued with post graduate studies at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College of London and the Bezalel Academy. The artist was the youngest recipient of the Gottesdiener Award, which resulted in a solo exhibition of her work at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. The artist has exhibited previously in Tel Aviv, Israel and this is her first exhibition in New York.

For more information about the upcoming Maya Gold exhibition or prices please contact
Helene Necroto, Director.

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Pop Life: Art in a Material World

Tate Modern Level 4 West
Thursday 1 October 2009 – Sunday 17 January 2010
Admission £12.50 ( concessions)
Opening hours: Sunday to Thursday, 10.00–18.00. Friday and Saturday, 10.00–22.00. Last admission into exhibitions 17.15 (Friday and Saturday 21.15).
Public information number: 020 7887 8888.
Public information URL: http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/poplife/default.shtm

Pop Life: Art in a Material Worldproposes a re-reading of one of the major legacies of Pop Art. The exhibition takes Andy Warhol’s notorious provocation that ‘good business is the best art’ as a starting point in reconsidering the legacy of Pop Art and the influence of the movement’s chief protagonist. Pop Life: Art in a Material World looks ahead to the various ways that artists since the 1980s have engaged with mass media and cultivated artistic personas creating their own signature 'brands'. Among the artists represented are Tracey Emin, Keith Haring, Damien Hirst, Martin Kippenberger, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World argues that Warhol’s most radical lesson is reflected in the work of artists of subsequent generations who, rather than simply representing or commenting upon our mass media culture, have infiltrated the publicity machine and the marketplace as a deliberate strategy. Harnessing the power of the celebrity system and expanding their reach beyond the art world and into the wider world of commerce, these artists exploit channels that engage audiences both inside and outside the gallery. The conflation of culture and commerce is typically seen as a betrayal of the values associated with modern art; this exhibition contends that, for many artists working after Warhol, to cross this line is to engage with modern life on its own terms.

The show begins with a focused look at Warhol’s late work, examining his related initiatives as a television personality, paparazzo, and publishing impresario. Highlights include a number of works from his initially controversial series known as the Retrospectives or Reversals. Reprising his celebrated Pop icons from the 1960s, in a manner initially deemed cynical, the Retrospectives look ahead to installations by a number of artists including Martin Kippenberger and Tracey Emin, who overtly engage the self-mythologizing impulse manipulating their personas as a medium, like silkscreen or paint.

Pop Life: Art in a Material World includes reconstructions of both Keith Haring’s Pop Shop and Jeff Koons's seldom reunited Made in Heaven. Haring opened the Pop Shop in 1986 on New York's Lafayette St. to merchandise his branded artistic signature as editioned objects such as t-shirts, toys and magnets aimed at as wide an audience as possible. Jeff Koons’s Made in Heaven, which debuted at the Venice Bienniale in 1990, immortalized his marital union with the Italian porn star and politician known as La Cicciolina. A specially-commissioned new installation by the celebrated Japanese artist Takashi Murakami debuts in the exhibition's final gallery.

A gallery dedicated to the so-called ‘Young British Artists’ focuses on their early performative exploits including ephemera from Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’s shop in Bethnal Green where they created and sold their work. Renowned pieces such as Gavin Turk’s Pop 1993 also feature, as does selected works representing Damien Hirst’s recent Sotheby’s auction, Beautiful Inside My Head Forever. Tate Modern will also restage Hirst’s performance originally shown at Cologne’s ‘Unfair’ art fair in 1992. Identical twins will sit beneath two identical spot paintings for the duration of Pop Life: Art in a Material World. Tate Modern is appealing for identical twins to take part in this performance.

The exhibition is organized by Tate Modern and is co-curated by Jack Bankowsky, Artforum’s Editor at Large, Alison M. Gingeras, Chief Curator of the François Pinault Collection and Catherine Wood, Tate Modern Curator of Contemporary Art and Performance, assisted by Nicholas Cullinan, Curator, International Modern Art, Tate Modern. Pop Life: Art in a Material World will travel to the Hamburger Kunsthalle from 6 February – 9 May 2010 and then to the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa from 11 June – 19 September 2010. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

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IT’S A HARD POP LIFE
by Laura K. Jones

Andy Warhol, bad or good? This is the dilemma facing the poor old Tate Modern in its current blockbuster, "Pop Life: Art in a Material World." It’s a show that restages Keith Haring’s "Pop Shop," his SoHo store that opened in 1986 and lasted till 2005; Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas’ Bethnal Green "Shop," which did business during the early 1990s; Jeff Koons’ notorious and rarely reunited "Made in Heaven" series of photos of himself and his then-porn-star wife in marital congress; and Richard Prince’s provocative "Spiritual America" (1986), his appropriated image of a ten-year-old Brooke Shields from the Hollywood movie Pretty Baby (which proved its continuing vitality by being promptly removed from the show by local authorities).
"Pop Life," then, examines the brassy legacy that Warhol offered up to his epigones: Let the concept of showbiz and making money sit easily on your shoulders; Do editions; Embrace yourself as a brand; Make yourself look slightly silly but never whimsical; Branch out into TV and even a spot of party-reportage.

The show is very much a crowd-pleaser, nowadays a specialty of this behemoth of an institution. It even has its own massive shop, selling a velour reproduction of Murakami’s Flower Ball for £3,000, along with postcards and books and T-shirts which were a fair bit cheaper. (I don’t recall a Tate show that had its own shop built especially for it before.)

It’s lively and bright and involved and looks good thronged with people, milling about in front of the work. At the evening party, superdealer Jeffrey Deitch agreed with me. "I’ve flown in especially for tonight," he said. "The best thing for me is that I was there when all this happened in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Also the ‘90s. The reason you think it looks better tonight is because art always looks better with people in front of it."

"Pop Life"’s first room reminds us, just in case we’d forgotten, that Andy Warhol created a lasting impression. His red fright wig Self Portrait from 1986 is hung low down so his eyes are at our eye level, and looks across to Takashi Murakami’s leaping, manic Hiropon, that life-sized statue of a mighty-breasted Manga-esque and manic schoolgirl whose breasts sprout a world of what could be whipped cream.

Check out the rest of her review here: http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/jones/pop-life10-1-09.asp

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THE EXPERIENCE OF GREEN
Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen
Opening Reception: Friday, September 25, 6 - 9 PM

Exhibition Dates: September 25 - November 29, 2009
Artists' Talk: Thursday, November 5, 7 PM
Gallery Hours: Wednesday - Sunday, 12 - 6 PM

Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen B. Nguyen have filled the Dumbo Arts Center with their enormous site-specific installation The Experience of Green. Opening September 25, 2009, the exhibition emphasizes the contrast between the organic and the built environment. Viewers step out of Dumbo’s stark brick-and-glass commercial district into a fantastical forest; a walk-through labyrinth of old growth trees made entirely from red kraft paper. The spectacular network of gnarled tree trunks and twisted roots extends over every inch of the gallery, suspending the boundaries of space and time while fully immersing the viewer.

The Experience of Green is Kavanaugh and Nguyen's most ambitious work to date as well as the artists' first major debut in NYC of their ongoing collaborative series of visually phenomenal, meticulously crafted paper installations. Here, the staggering volume of paper that the artists stack, splice, layer and coil is in a brilliant crimson, burning an impression in the viewers’ mind. The Experience of Green may come most clearly into focus only after viewers exit the gallery, the color persisting as an optical after-image, accentuating the relationship between experience and memory, landscape and longing, nature and the sublime.

The Experience of Green, a full-color catalog with accompanying essay by Jen Schwarting, will be published by DAC in December, 2009.

DAC will be open until 8:30PM October 1 and November 5. We are a proud participant in the Dumbo First Thursday gallery walk series.

D.U.M.B.O. Arts Center (DAC)
30 Washington Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201

Hours: Wednesday - Sunday 12 - 6pm
Admission: $2 Suggested Donation
Gallery Telephone: 718-694-0831
General Email: gallery@dumboartscenter.org
Fax: 718-694-0867

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Robert Bergman: Selected Portraits
On view October 15, 2009 - January 4, 2010

Robert Bergman
Untitled
2009
C-print
37" x 25"
Courtesy the artist
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is pleased to announce Robert Bergman: Selected Portraits, an exhibition of twenty-four large-scale color portraits of everyday people the artist photographed on the streets of various American cities from 1985 to 1997. The exhibition will be on view in the first floor Drawing and Painting Galleries.

Using a handheld 35mm camera and precisely integrated natural lighting, Bergman explores both the poignant expressions of each individual and the formal structures of their surroundings. As art historian Meyer Schapiro wrote, "Certain photographers-Robert Frank, as well as Robert Bergman, come to mind-discover, like the poets, otherwise ignored qualities of the person and environment, hidden moments of feeling, and present them to our entranced scrutiny-for our meditation."

Bergman's epic series of portraits documents the physical and spiritual manifestation of Americans at the approach of the millennium. Of this series Toni Morrison has written, "Occasionally there arises an event or a moment that one knows immediately will forever mark a place in the history of artistic endeavor. Robert Bergman's portraits represent such a moment, such an event. In all its burnished majesty his gallery refuses us unearned solace and one by one by one each photograph unveils us, asserting a beauty, a kind of rapture, that is as close as can be to a master template of the singularity, the community, the unextinguishable sacredness of the human race."

Robert Bergman (b. 1944, New Orleans) now divides his time between Minnesota and New York City. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue featuring an essay by David Levi Strauss.

Organized by Phong Bui, P.S.1 Curatorial Advisor.

The exhibition is made possible by Alfred and Ingrid Lenz Harrison. The accompanying publication is made possible by Agnes Gund.

http://ps1.org/

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http://rihannanow.com/

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COMBO a collaborative animation by Blu and David Ellis (2 times loop) from blu on Vimeo.

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Episode 3 of Anacostia is here now!

Anacostia Episode 3 from Frank Jackson on Vimeo.

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Justine Cooper

October 22nd - December 31st, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday October 22nd, 6-8pm


Royal Familiy, C Print 2009

Justine Cooper’s timely new project Living in Sim is a mixed reality artwork that includes a website, online social media, photography, video and installation to explore the complexities present in the current health care environment and online social media. On the Living in Sim website she deploys medical mannequins typically used as patient simulators to train medical staff as surrogates to present intricate relationships between our sense of identity, culture and health care in a technologically advanced society. She draws a playful and interesting parallel between our culture's obsession with self-documentation and our presentation of individual identity through online media, with her fictional documentation of the mannequins' identity and world.

At LivingInSim.com, Cooper introduces a social community of characters, played only by mannequins, who blog and debate health care issues and medical incidents from both a pop culture and ethical standpoint. It invites public participation and dialogue. Set in a fictional Midwestern clinic the mannequins play the patients, as well as the entire staff including doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, insurance agents and visiting drug reps. They inhabit a fiction that we as potential patients and online users fully recognize. In videos, photography, and storytelling Living in Sim mirrors the role-play utilized in medical simulation scenarios but in an experimental and often tongue-in-cheek manner. Cooper states “The mannequins operate in a dysfunctional health care system, not much more far-fetched than our actual one, but at least theirs can offer us some form of actual pain relief, without a co-pay.”

Both the Living in Sim website and exhibition include two videos. The first, If It Weren't For You, is in the form of a music video where an unseen clinician serenades the mannequins with a brilliantly catchy pop ballad. Emoting on the depth of their relationship, she apologizes to the mannequins for what they go through in the name of patient safety and the improvement of her clinical skills, crooning the chorus “If it weren’t for you, I’d be sued.” The second video, Indemnity General, is a 4 part satirical mini-soap opera depicting the woes at the axis of an absurdist medical industrial complex.

The gallery exhibition features imagery from the actual world of medical simulation and its population of mannequins and clinical devices, at once both familiar and foreign. A grouping of large photographs show images inflected with classical references. A formal family portrait of mannequins, bathed in ethereal light; a disconnected mannequin head lays like a modern day John the Baptist upon a stainless surgical tray; an anatomical still life resembles a botanical drawing. A chiaroscuro-like tableau appears to be unfolding with an MRI machine and limbs. Along another wall, a series of rhythmic small prints on canvas depicting the characters from the blog come to life in snippets of seemingly narrative moments.

Lastly, an installation with an actual medical mannequin occupies the gallery space. Intoning that while medical simulation may be an educational fiction, and online identities and communities may be virtual, we also inhabit a place where health care and medicine revolve around a failing physical body.

Accompanying the exhibition a compact education program of lively discussions staged around Cooper's multi-faceted practice including an exclusive meet the artist session will take place in the gallery and is guest curated by Sara Raza, a former curator of public program at Tate Modern and current independent curator and co-editor of ArtAsiaPacific magazine.

Daneyal mahmood
info@daneyalmahmood.com
DANEYAL MAHMOOD GALLERY

511 WEST 25 ST, 3FL
NEW YORK CITY 10001
phone: 212 675 2966

Tues.-Sat. 11am to 6pm
(between 10th and 11th aves.)

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Rihanna has announced the official release date for her new album. The Barbados singer’s fourth studio effort will arrive on Monday, November 23.

“The Wait Is Ova. Nov 23 09,” she tweeted on Tuesday afternoon. Her official website also confirms the date.

Sources confirm that November 23 is Rihanna’s album release date and not a single release.

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Two-CD Package Also Features Brand-New Single “Make Me”

In Stores November 17

Los Angeles, CA (October 13, 2009) – Janet Jackson has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, and is one of the best-selling artists in contemporary music. For the first time ever, 33 of Janet’s global #1 hits, plus the newly recorded single, “Make Me,” will be available on one album—NUMBER ONES. Made possible by a partnership between Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) and EMI Music, the two-disc set, to be released November 17, 2009, in the USA (November 23, worldwide titled JANET JACKSON: THE BEST), celebrates the career and artistry of one of the most successful and influential artists in music history.

Among the album's many highlights is new single “Make Me,” which was produced by Janet and Rodney Jerkins. Along with “Make Me,” NUMBER ONES spans more than 20 years of chart-toppers, every #1 track spun off from Janet’s original albums, from her 1986 blockbuster breakthrough CONTROL to her most recent, 2008’s DISCIPLINE. CONTROL sold more than 14 million copies worldwide, with five #1 singles. The best-selling album of 1990, RHYTHM NATION 1814 sold more than 14 million copies worldwide, making Janet the first and only artist in history to produce seven top 5 hits from one album. JANET. sold 20 million albums worldwide, with six hit singles and a nomination for an Academy Award® for Best Original Song, “Again.” THE VELVET ROPE has sold more than 10 million worldwide, with six hit singles. ALL FOR YOU was Janet’s fifth consecutive album to debut at #1, with more than seven million in worldwide sales. For Janet's seventh consecutive platinum album, DAMITA JO, Janet took its title from her middle name.

Janet's eighth consecutive platinum album, 20 Y.O., acknowledged her love affair with her fans. Janet encouraged her fans around the world to design the 20 Y.O. cover artwork and she chose her favorites for the U.S. pressings. DISCIPLINE was Janet's 6th number one album and 10th studio album.

NUMBER ONES is the first greatest hits compilation from Janet in this century. Janet’s last hits collection was released in 1995.

About Janet

Janet is an iconic figure in the worlds of music, entertainment, fashion and philanthropy.
Mega-award-winning artist, singer, songwriter, producer, actor, dancer, Janet Jackson is all of these things and more. She possesses an unprecedented list of achievements, and remains at the forefront of her craft, a true inspiration. As an artist, Janet excites, enlightens, leads, and embraces her audience with insights into life's meaning and our deepest feelings. Her vocal gifts, musical style, choreography, lyrical exploration, and awareness of the human condition has made her one of the top artists of our time as well as a leading influence on people around the globe. Through words and actions, she has set an example of generosity, of empowerment, of compassion, and helped to lead efforts addressing some of society's greatest challenges.

As an actor, Janet made her big screen debut in 1993 with Poetic Justice, in which she starred opposite hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur and actress Regina King. Her ballad "Again" was featured in the film and received both a Golden Globe and Academy Award nomination. In the box office smash Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, Janet made her second feature film appearance as Denise Gaines, opposite Academy Award nominee Eddie Murphy. Nutty Professor II became her second film to open at number one at the box office. In her third feature film, Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married?, Janet starred opposite Tyler Perry and received an Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Feature Motion Picture. The film was yet another number one opener at the box office. Janet's fourth film, Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married Too, will be released in 2010.

Janet is the only artist having Grammy nominations spanning the Dance, Pop, Rap, Rock, and R&B categories and to have number one hits on every chart except country. Among her many honors, she has accumulated 5 Grammys, multiple MTV Awards, Billboard Music Awards, and Soul Train Music Awards. Janet's concerts are stunning events that stimulate all the senses— engaging mind, ears, eyes and the soul. Unbelievable choreography performed to perfection has become synonymous with Janet.

MTV presented Janet with the inaugural mtvICON Award solidifying her accomplishments and effect on pop culture. Some of the world's most recognized musical artists were enlisted to recreate the music videos and performances of her classic hits in honor of her work, influence and overall impact in the arena of music. The title of ICON was and continues to be hers.

Janet continues to focus on speaking out and giving back. Several of her tours have raised money for charities such as the Cities in Schools, and America's Promise. She has supported the Watts Willowbrook Boys & Girls Club of America, the Starlight Foundation, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, A Place Called Home providing after school programs in South Central LA, the American Foundation for AIDS Research, S.O.S. Children's Villages in South Africa, Cartier's Love Bracelet Program benefiting OCNA and sponsored an Airlift of Food and Medical supplies to famine-stricken Rwanda. Janet established the Rhythm Nation Scholarship with the UNCF and has assisted countless students striving to meet their educational goals.

She has been honored with many Humanitarian Awards due to her intense dedication to helping others. Recent honors reflecting the range of her involvement in charitable and social causes include the 2008 Humanitarian of the Year award from the Lisa Lopes Foundation, the 2008 Vanguard Award from GLAAD, and the 2004 Touching a Life Humanitarian and Philanthropic Award from the NBA. Janet's efforts have also been recognized by AIDS Project LA, the Congress for Racial Equality, and by the NAACP with their Chairman's Award. In September 2009, Janet chaired amFAR's inaugural fundraising event in Milan, Italy during Fashion Week and raised over 1.1 million dollars.

Next year, Janet will publish her first book, providing an intimate look at her life and how she has dealt with issues of self-esteem. Janet will reveal aspects not known before about her uniquely successful career in music, television and films.

Janet's next studio album is slated to be released in 2010.

The track listing for NUMBER ONES is as follows:

Disc 1

1.

What Have You Done For Me Lately (Control, #1 R&B)
2.

Nasty (Control, #1 Dance & R&B)
3.

When I Think Of You (Control, #1 Pop & Dance)
4.

Control (Control, #1 Dance & R&B)
5.

Let’s Wait Awhile (Control, #1 R&B)
6.

The Pleasure Principle (Control, #1 Dance & R&B)
7.

Diamonds—Herb Alpert with Janet Jackson (Keep Your Eye on Me, #1 Dance & R&B)
8.

Miss You Much (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 Pop, Dance & R&B)
9.

Rhythm Nation (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 Dance & R&B)
10.

Escapade (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 Pop, Dance & R&B)
11.

Alright (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 Dance)
12.

Come Back To Me (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 AC)
13.

Black Cat (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 Pop)
14.

Love Will Never Do (Without You) (Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, #1 Pop)
15.

The Best Things In Life Are Free---Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson
16.

That’s The Way Love Goes (janet, #1 Pop, Dance & R&B)

Disc 2

1.

If (janet, #1 Pop, Dance & R&B)
2.

Again (janet, #1 Pop)
3.

Because Of Love
4.

Any Time, Any Place (janet, #1 R&B)
5.

Scream—Michael Jackson and Janet (History - Past, Present, and Future Book 1, #1 Dance)
6.

Runaway
7.

Got ‘Til Its Gone---Janet featuring Joni Mitchell and Q-Tip (The Velvet Rope, #1 Japan and South Africa)
8.

Together Again (The Velvet Rope, #1 Pop and Dance)
9.

I Get Lonely--- Janet featuring BLACKstreet (The Velvet Rope, #1 R&B)
10.

Go Deep (The Velvet Rope, #1 Dance)
11.

What’s It Gonna Be---Busta Rhymes featuring Janet (Extinction Level Event, #1 R&B)
12.

Doesn’t Really Matter (All For You, #1 Pop)
13.

All For You (All For You, #1 Pop, Dance, R&B)
14.

Someone To Call My Lover (All For You, #1 Dance)
15.

All Nite (Don’t Stop) (Damita Jo, #1 Dance)
16.

Call On Me with Nelly (20 Y.O, #1 R&B)
17.

Feedback (Discipline, #1 Dance)
18.

Make Me

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Check out the 2nd episode of the new web series from creator Anthony Anderson

Anacostia Episode Two from Frank Jackson on Vimeo.

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Shipyard #5, Qili Port, Zhejiang Province, China, 2005

Highway #2, Los Angeles, California, USA, 2003

October 13 - November 21, 2009

Opening Reception for the Artist:
Tuesday, October 13th
6 - 8 pm

Adamson Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of photographs by Edward Burtynsky. "Oil" examines the resource from all sides, depicting the mechanics of its extraction and refinement, the details of its consumption and the effects; physical, political, and economic, of its influence. The large-scale photographs are reminiscent of the tradition of landscape painting, yet the landscapes they depict force the viewer to rethink the connection between nature and industry.

Burtynsky has traveled the world to document the influence of oil, taking photographs of oil fields in Azerbaijan, Canada, California, highways in Texas, and industrial parks in Shanghai, among other places. Like the landscape painter before him, the artist shoots from a distance, letting the scale and sprawl of his subjects overwhelm the piece and its viewer. Like paintings in the sublime tradition, Burtynsky's photographs inspire awe as well as apprehension-the images are very beautiful, but they document a frightening reality.

Highway #2 is an aerial shot of a highway loop in Los Angeles - the road twists and turns, making complicated, abstracted swirls. The patterns are mesmerizing to the eye and remind the viewer of the power of technological and industrial innovation. However, in the context of this series, and when placed alongside Burtynsky's other photographs, this piece acts as a powerful reminder of the continuum of production. These dual messages are a potent commentary on contemporary life.

The artist writes, "These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."

This project is part of a larger inquiry into the interactions between nature and industry. Burtynsky has also completed series of photographs of shipyards, quarries, and urban mines which have been exhibited internationally. Images from the series are also on display at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and have been collected in a new artist book from Steidl. Edward Burtynsky's work has been collected by the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, among many other institutional and corporate collectors. He lives and works in Toronto, Canada.

For questions or more information please contact Laurie Adamson or Erin Boland at (202) 232-0707.

ADAMSON GALLERY

1515 fourteenth street nw
washington dc 20005
www.adamsongallery.com
p: 202.232.0707
email: gallery@adamsongallery.com

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My friend, Writer-Director-Actor Anthony Anderson has done it again. His critically acclaimed Independent Film The Ties That Bind was well received and his Velocity Magazine and its associated award show has been a hit in the Washington DC area. Now he's back with his latest project a brand new dramatic web series called ANACOSTIA – The Web Series.

ANACOSTIA – The Web Series is a 10 Episode Dramatic Web Series which follows the lives of the residents of ANACOSTIA, a small residential community in Washington D.C. as they navigate through love, betrayal, deception, sex and murder.

Each resident of ANACOSTIA has their own share of painful secrets as well as personal vices which threatens to destroy their peaceful community and all that surrounds it. In the center of the chaos stands the shrewd and manipulative Michael Stephenson who will stop at nothing to get what he wants…..even possibly murder.

When Michael Stephenson goes too far, someone decides to give Michael a taste of his own medicine which sparks a chain reaction that will have implications on all of the residents of ANACOSTIA for years to come.

Created by Anthony Anderson the Writer and Producer of the critically acclaimed Independent Film The Ties That Bind, ANACOSTIA is a new twist on a familiar formula. “I wanted to create a show that was along the lines of Dallas and Knots Landing with a bit of a Sex And The City flair” said Anthony. “The show will have twists and turns along with what we are sure to be controversial story lines which will spark interesting debate I'm sure” Anthony continued.

ANACOSTIA has an ensemble cast which all relish the opportunity to portray such diverse and interesting characters. Included in this great cast are Walter Maxfield Jones, Tamieka Chavis, Kena Hodges, Wil Lash, Anthony Anderson, Chante' Bowser, Pasha Diallo, Terrence Porter, Tia Dae, Jermaine McNeal, Marion Akpan and Kareem Pettaway.

Every city should have neighbors like these.

Check UrbanPopLife.net regularly for new episodes or go directly to the show website listed below. Congrats to cast and crew on some genuinely interesting entertainment. I will be posting the first 3 episodes here today and tomorrow. Check out episode one right now!

Anacostia The Web Series - Episode One from Frank Jackson on Vimeo.

www.anacostia-thewebseries.com

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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Anges on UrbanPopLife.net from Ricky Day on Vimeo.

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This is an indie comedy series online. I'm testing some new directions and potential new features for the blog. I'm curious as to what your thoughts are about this trailer and the show it's promoting. Shoot me a comment with your feedback.

Bad Apples promo from Ryan Charles on Vimeo.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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I've been relatively quiet lately and it's because I've been hard at work developing my craft, working on new and on-goingprojects and building a better me.

In a few days I will be officially launching my new headshot business which will provide great photos to actors, models and musicians at competitive prices. I will allot a small amount of time per week to this endeavor so securing an appointment recommended.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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The wild and crazy and creative and colorful and extraordinary Jonte is about to drop the official music video for his single Ya Who? Check out the teaser here first.

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Stéphane Calais: Flowers for America
October 8 – November 7, 2009
Reception for the Artist: Thursday, October 8th, 6-8 pm

Composites both practical and conceptual are at the center of the Stéphane Calais’s process in his second exhibition with ZieherSmith Flowers for America. The installation features paintings and sculpture as well as the artist’s own multifaceted approach to drawing.

In Pleiades, Calais morphs by superimposition eight watercolor drawings of “famous” men from three centuries into a sequence of sixteen pulsing, frenetic silkscreen portraits. Hanging in a formidable grid, their antique stateliness is, in fact, a mockery of identity and power, each sitter’s visage illegible; crumpled into seven others like last week’s news. These apparitions also question traditions in portraiture drawn by hand, considered by some today as almost quaint. The individual value of each precedent artist’s work and the sitter themselves are equally dismissed and enhanced, each silkscreen acting as a reverse palimpsest. This process could be seen as a critique or demystification, an understanding of tradition as cumulative, or as sheer delight in the capabilities of having everything at once.

In a series of sculptures Calais calls Ornaments, crimes and delights, macramé plant hangers filled with basketballs, feathers and plastic leaves hang from the ceiling like storks delivering Calais’s creative spawn. These collages of found and repurposed materials embrace lowly, crafty supplies and employ a symbolic, embroidered veil for the toy at the center of a multi-billion dollar industry. Undaunted by the decorative, Calais also approaches the ornamental with exuberant floral still lifes executed in tondi form and collectively titled Flowers for America. Not your typical flora, these abeyant blooms appear to smoke cigarettes, implode and spontaneously combust at once. They float on backdrops of dueling color amalgamations, blurred as though seen through a prism, laid over with vectors of saturated color.

Calais turns away from handy categorizations, urging “It’s better to be incomprehensible,” embracing aspects of a playful, absurdist tradition. Here he translates into French e.e. cummings’s lines “since the thing perhaps is/to eat flowers and not to be afraid.” The text piece acts as an anchor to the installation, as the wall drawing continues in a splatter of black paint on a length of white carpeting that buckles and heaves along the floor, extending the long poem of his perpetual creative evolution. Recognition tends to drift from painting to painting, sculpture to sculpture. Soon plants become portraits, ready-mades turn organic, and the printed page becomes a graffito wall in which poem begets drawing that morphs into the sculpture of the very ground beneath us.

Stéphane Calais was a finalist for the 2008 Marcel Duchamp prize and has exhibited widely at an international list of galleries and museums. In 2009, he has also had solo exhibitions at the Ashdod Art Museum, Israel and, in Paris, at Galerie des Multiples and at Espace Claude Berri.

The gallery’s forthcoming schedule will include exhibitions by renowned French artist Stéphane Calais; the New York debut of British artist Matt Stokes’s these are the days, a video installation co-produced by ZieherSmith and Arthouse, Austin; and book launches for the Stokes catalogue as well as Wes Lang’s The Paradise Club and Scott Zieher’s IMPATIENCE.

ZieherSmith’s new address is 516 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011. The phone number and email remain 212-229-1088 and info@ziehersmith.com. Gallery hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm and by appointment. www.ziehersmith.com


ZieherSmith
516 West 20th Street
New York NY 10011
212-229-1088
917-837-7201

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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I've lived in New York for over 10 years now and I can count on my hands the number of Broadway musicals that I've seen. I like theater as a concept and I love music, but Broadway shows don't generally hold my interest because they tend to be far more cautious and conservative than I prefer my art to be.

I attended a preview performance of the new Broadway musical Memphis at The Shubert Theater last night. Memphis tells a story we've seen a thousand times in a very predictable way. The story is one of a white boy meets black girl and they share a common love of black music. He's a deejay, she's a soul singer and they fall for each other as the music propels each to career success. All is nearly lost when the dark clouds of racism threaten to tear them apart. Hmmm.

The cast is talented, professional and capable, but the subject matter and songs are a bit underwhelming. The staging is pretty good and there are definitely some breakout performances during the show including James Monroe Iglehart as Bobby, Cass Morgan as Mama and Chad Kimball as Huey. Montego Glover as Felicia is certainly a talented and capable actress/vocalist, but I kept wishing she had better songs to sing.

All that being said, these things are a matter of opinion and mine is no more important than anyone else's. If you like great dancing, good music and musical theater in general you will enjoy this show. If you crave ground breaking art that pushes the envelope, then turn on HBO.

I love seeing other artists doing what they love to do and I know there's an audience for this type of entertainment. Tell everyone you know who loves fairly traditional musicals to check this out. They will most definitely enjoy this show, our economy needs the revenue and I'm sure the musicians, cast and everyone who put the show together will appreciate the support.

As for me...hmmmm...not so much.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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My good friend and fellow artist Humphrey Cobb is holding a special one night only showing of his first new work in years called Portraits on Red. These incredible hand rendered drawings are incredibly detailed and passionate works.

All are welcomed to stop by on October 29 and enjoy the works for yourself.

Humphrey Cobb: Portraits on Red
October 29, 2009 7PM
137 Duane Street 3A
New York, New York

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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Attention all models this Saturday October 3, 2009 come out to the Runway Model Casting Call for Harlem's Fashion Row. The event time is 2pm until 5pm. The casting venue is Harlem Textile Works 1677 Amsterdam Avenue at 143 Street.

Check the flyer for further details and good luck.

For more info on me visit my official website
www.rickyday.net

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