Heman Chong 
Finaly Untitled (chong) got a web page where he puts all his works online. The newest is this one:

Untitled (A woman walks into a multi-storey library. She searches for a man reading "what we talk about when we talk about love" amongst the shelves. She slaps him in the face. He looks at her in disbelief.)

(It shows a woman walks into a public library, finds a man, slaps him in the face and leaves - the video is repeated repeted 10 times. This is the very same book that my blog refers to. )



© Heman Chong, 2006


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Remembering MoMa and Nasjonalmuseet 
Calvin Tomkins wrote a piece on MoMa for the New Yorker Sept. 25 (small detour; this is the best I-hate-blog I have found. someone is intensely hating this magazine, but still uses a lot, a lot of thinking about and reading it ). Tomkins is almost 80, something you do notice in the article (somehow I miss marc spiegler's touch on a subject like this, but I guess it is not of his interest), takes us on a tour trying to, like the old man he is, finding piece with the new MoMa instead of remembering the past when everything was so much better.

This is the type of piece me myself would like to write about the National Museum in Norway and it's founding director Sune Nordgren. The newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (Financial Times of Norway) produced a major piece of journalism when the showed in a long feature how a small group of men did an intensive effort to discover and expose how Norgren in his role a director squeezing the National Gallery, The Contemporary Art, The Architecture and the National Museum of decorative art and design under one administration, banned part of his staff - did a bad job at Baltic etc. The feature expose who these men are, how they fed a few major norwegian art critics with material. This material was again used by the critics without exposing it's source.

The feature shows that in every witch hunt, this one as well used slight, doubtful and useless evidence. The mafia standing behind this tried to feed journalists and editors with the same material, but it never stood ground when they dug deeper into it.
This case is a very complex case, and even though the article was explosive when it was published, it show many a great gap in the structure and history.

BAck to MoMa, Tomkins have spent almost half a century at MoMA and has a memoryt about it before most of today's artists and curator even could spell 'art'. He talks about the new museum, takes into consideration some rumours and lies that have been said about MoMA, about the curatorial staff, its director etc. and then talks to all involved. This is what I would like to do about the National Museum in Norway: talk to those involved. No one ever talked to the curators at the museum, they never ever entered the debate. neither did other museums directors. IT is all so quiet.

So why is this something?
Norgren resigned - something I do not think would have happened it a bigger country.




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the best 
I have found the blog I am longing for, the blog I always wanted to read. It got the perfect protagonist: a female young art worker, nerd and buzzÿ bee working hard, in the same part of the world as I. It is updated daily, it is part art world gossip, part serios, part update on the news front, project descriptions, statements, comments on different things and a clear cut "I-am-an-art-world-maniac" profile. I am loving every single sentence. Actually, it is the blog I would write if I was half as good and a even near that well connected and updated.
It's like reading from someone you love and have dear, someone you know for a very long time - like a sister or a lost friend.
It's recent posting includes themes like the exhibition African Remix, Frieze Art Fair, Art Forum Berlin (long, very long and very subjective - mixture between the anal Scene and Herd of Artforum and personal letter/ email), David Elliott's predecessor at Mori Art Museum (Fumio Nanjo), about Kunsthalle Basel's Adam Szymczyk curating the next Berlin Biennial, hints and tips about the best art critics around (Searle and Saltz if you wonder) etc.

It is a great blog. the best around.

why I do not link to it?




Hidden Blog
This blog is "hidden" as in: you cannot search it on any search-machines or find it by looking for it. I'd like to keep it this way. This is a blog created for myself to be able to just post shit on my mind as a kind of therapy almost. Don't want to become a pro with this, I'd like to keep it simple, so IF you do send the link on I won't like it even though I can't stop you from doing it - I'd like to make it clear that this is NOT an official blog, I only post things related to myself in a very informal and easy way. I don't want other than very good friends to read this. I am not going to update on a regular basis. I am not going to be a "real" blogger, I'm just gonna keep the diary-thing going. AND I'm gonna talk about stuff that ONLY myself could possibly be interested in, I'm not gonna start adapting the content to any possible readers other than just as large art nerds as myself. So - please be careful with passing the blog-address on, will you? And if you do: please be selective...? Thanx!
posted by ****** at 7:06 PM


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some small things. the gallery of the year 
Italy got a new gallery; Citric Gallery in Brescia (where is that?)`
Not that I understand Italian, but here is what the invitation card state:
ha il piacere di invitarvi
all'inugurazione della galleria
sabato 23 settembre 2006
ore 18.00

when your happy, clap your hands.

got a really nice package from Jan Christensen the other day with a lot of stuff in it (a bit like christmas), dvds, cracs, art stuff and a copy of a magazine page with a red circle marking som text:
It sucks to abandon your kids and it makes them feel really bd about themselves for their whole lives and they tend to have relationship problems, but as far as aesthetic goes, it's kind of a good look. It's way more FTW than punk or metal, because it's like "You guys can give all the fingers you want. I AM fucking the world"

I guess me and him got something in common there.

further, about Mr. Christensen, the inevitable is happening. Me and him would meet again, I knew it. Around 2000 we where mailing back and forth making up stories and ideas about how to open a art gallery in Oslo.; when Jan decided to do his own art instead (got him far I guess, much further than me and my do-not-know-what-I-am-doing-with-my-life; attitude), I bailed as well. It was never that serious, but we had ideas. it would have blasted the art scene in Oslo (and then we would have gone bankrupt after 11 September 2001 for sure). Now, I am doing my own
art space here in Leipzig and our first larger exhibition will be "I Will Never Make IT!" based on Jan's first big wall piece, conceptualized in 2000 and realized first in 2003, winning an award - like Jan does the best.

Anyway. Jan will start a gallery it looks like. Funny name, reminds me of something ; like my own name.
Leif Magne Tangens

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The Berlin Test 
After a rather long 3 weeks trip to Copenhagen (assisting Sandra in putting up her installation, or rather: I should have helped her, the installation, 165 m2 of trocellen got lost somewhere between Norway and Copenhagen. DHL does not know where it went. That must be every artists nightmare, when the works is lost in transport just before the opening. Luckily she had with her some installation shots of the initial work and managed to get two 125x175 cm photographs up on the wall 5 minutes before the press arrived.
these two:

At hålla samman / Keeping it together
© Sandra Norrbin 2005


Sandra also participated in a group show called Emergency Room at Galerie Olaf Stüber
Galerie Olaf Stüber.
see their blog for pictures of the installation called Carpet from Art Forum Berlin, 2006

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