ESM-Artificial

WE'RE SUPPORTING

Los Feliz artist Vanessa Prager has been exhibited at the Robert Berman Gallery, Gallery 1988, and the Santa Monica Museum of Art. Her series, Hunting and Gaming — which opens in LA on January 24th — explores the ‘nature of sinister play’. Prager paints ’starkly-lit scenes of surrealistic moments in daily life; untangling holiday decorations, playing with old toys, driving or chatting. But her odd theatrical arrangements suggest something creepy going on behind the innocent façade’. Read more

WE'RE TRAVELLING TO

These twin sixty-story towers to be built in Malaysia feature a combination of ‘continuous, flowing, double-curved perforated surface with a flickering, crystalline, transparent single-curved surface that is triangulated on an enormous scale’. The design by New York-based architectural firm, Asymptote, includes a 400,000 square foot retail section and the Penang Performing Arts centre.

WE'RE WEARING

Made from 100 percent organic cotton and eco-friendly, this super soft tee celebrates a sinister world of kaleidoscopic colours and ripples of psychedelia, of serenading Queens, of dancing flamingos, of unimaginable euphoria. It’s all the work of Sydney label, Das Monk and it’s available through the Lost At E Minor online store for just US$40. Now, there’s one hell of a Christmas present, even if we do say so ourselves!

WE'RE THINKING

It’s windy, cold, and raining out. On days like this, looking at the intricate work of artists like Kristopher Ho feels like re-reading an old book that you loved as a kid but forgot about in your more cynical adulthood. Read more

WE'RE READING

I am really into Hong Kong action flicks from the 1980s and 90s. When I first moved to New York, there were a handful of curious friends who were also interested in watching movies such as City on Fire by Ringo Lam, which Reservoir Dogs was based on. How did they find videos like thus? At the legendary Kim’s Video in New York City. These days, City on Fire can be find online, and Kim’s is history. But all the videos that entertained the film geeks of this city for more than twenty years have found a new home in, wait for it, Salemi, Sicily. Yes, the southern island of Italy. Kim has recently relocated there, as this sad but heartwarming story about him in yesterday’s New York Times reveals.

If animated wall drawings of severed heads and insect men ejecting their brains from their craniums is what people produce when they have too much time on their hands, then we should do their laundry for them and cook them dinner so they’ll have even more time on their hands.

WE'RE LISTENING TO

UK-based one-man-band Sieben has a new album out: As They Should Sound. Frontman Matt Howden builds songs with a loop pedal and a violin, which he uses for rhythm and melody. His sound is wonderfully sophisticated and cabalistic, with a particularly British sense of lyricism.