Suit yourself

Houston-born, New York artist Trey Speegle makes paintings that incorporate letterforms and text with paint-by-numbers backgrounds.  The result is a campy Pop-hybrid that speaks of both painting and American material culture.

The best pieces, I think, present an intriguing aphorism, rather than a single word,  - think of a domestic Jenny Holzer.  In a profile in the December 2010 Texas Monthly, Speegle says,

I guess that’s what living in this age is about, really – curating and recontextualizing your world to suit yourself.

I think so, too.

Intervention: reversal

I didn’t make it to MoMA during my Thanksgiving trip to New York, but I wish I could go now to see this amazing interactive piece, where Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla cut a hole in the center two octaves of a grand piano, inserted a pianist backward playing Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ while pushing the piano around the room.  I’m thankful and merry.

http://moma.org/explore/multimedia/videos/132/825