3/23/2006

Tom Sanford

51 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great show Tom! Best show up right now.

Anonymous said...

I dont know how I feel about glorifying violence. On the one hand I like glory. On the other I like violence. Violence and glory together? I could get high off the fumes alone.

People make choices. The naked truth is that no one likes to be played. And I am not about to hand in my shark fin. I haven't used it yet.

Taper the ends and blaze away, I say.

Anonymous said...

Opening was packed if that is any indication, personally i don't know anything about this Artists background, but they remind me allot of victim mentality, less skilled, shallower Kehinde Wiley = the stylization leaves me hanging. sort of scene surfing, neither heroicising, or expressing any emotions, - i don't feel 'violence' in them they leave me blank.

Anonymous said...

As a white guy- I think a rap video is in order. I got a lot of ideas. What do you think?

Anonymous said...

Guess he's not concerned with shelf life-

Corny said...

Toms Painting called Passion Triumphs over Reason depicts Kehinde Wiley riding on Tom who is transformed into a jack-ass, it's hilarious.

Corny said...

exu, they feel historical to me like a Rubin's painting of Marie de' Medici at Marseilles disembarking from a boat.

Anonymous said...

its kinda sad that the viewer wouldn't know that'
'lil kim' unless tom painted the necklass, that says something about his skill level doncha think?

Professor Mouth said...

Exu, you got owned! Marie de Medici. Delicious.

Anonymous said...

He has a great painting of Kate Moss and babyshambles guy. It is obvious it is them.

Anonymous said...

Best afterparty ever!

Professor Mouth said...

Anyone could tell it's Lil' Kim from the single tit hanging out. Get with the program, whitey.

Anonymous said...

yeah,ehem..forgot about that one-

triple diesel said...

SHALLOWER than Kehinde Wiley? Kehinde Wiley is the shallowest! The sterile surface, generic rendering, and general lack of soul is shallow. Tom S. uses humor, history painting, and a low-brow language to examine hip-hop imagery. It's a complicated blend of critique and celebration and especially challenging because he is White - not shallow at all.

Anonymous said...

I have often wondered about this artist if he has a true love and identification for hip hop and the street culture or if it is all ironic and critic of it?

Corny said...

I think Tom's got a lot of love for Hip Hop, he transformed himself into Tupac, the motivation for that project seems in part to be hero worship

Anonymous said...

my impression from Kehinde Wiley collaborations and work i have been to, heroicies lifts and celebrates his subject(s) with a kinda good humored wink to the cannon on his way up... I do enjoy his journey into P and D, figure ground.

Low brow nods are not new or interesting in and of themselves, Tom Sanford seems to be more economically minded and bamboozled, i 'get them' to much, very plug and play and glib with the christian icongraphy

Anonymous said...

Check out the Thug4life project on the link corny posted for the Tupac thing...

zipthwung said...

Figure groun Pand D are not new in and of themselves, and in fact I've seein it in a lot of places. Pointing to PandD as a selling point is like pointing to a car and going "chrome"

I do like the conversation KW and TS have it looks like - Ivey to Ivey, vine on vine.

I am not a non-sequitur, everything I say makes sense.

Anonymous said...

In "Mcnugget Orgy" the unadmiring side is definitely out-all the bad tastes in one,and includes white"Paris clones-its all bad,here

Professor Mouth said...

You're right, zipthwung. My apologies.

Anonymous said...

Just a reminder the 2006 Whitney Biennial is bad.

Anonymous said...

this is terrible. Very predictable...Kehinde's retains some aura of respectability even though they are obvious one note gimmicks....These might be better if they were even more trashy but the painting is so stale and by the numbers.

Anonymous said...

I've known this artist for a while so my opinion could be taken as a bias or as information. His paintings are totally unrepentant in their examination of American consumer culture,violence and celebrity. Far from being crassly commercial he's always resisted career pressure from various sources to tone down his imagery.How many artists today are making big, ambitious paintings without photoshop and assistants? Go to the Whitney and go to his show on the same day and you'll see the difference between bad-ass and half-ass. Much love for all Juxtapoz artists in the Artforum world.

Anonymous said...

I love ths show at koenig!!! Sanford really put himself out there. I think the work is far more interesting than KW!!
Thanks Tom!!

zipthwung said...

"Anonymous said...
this is terrible. Very predictable...Kehinde's retains some aura of respectability even though they are obvious one note gimmicks....These might be better if they were even more trashy but the painting is so stale and by the numbers. "

Aura of respectability? Is that like a cloak of charisma? I dont see how you can say this is predictable and then say kehinde has some nebulous IT factor? WTF?

Are you objecting to the narrative vs. Kehinde's more iconic?

Anonymous said...

zipster I'm lovn'u today

Anonymous said...

this is off the subject but Im trying to remember the name of an artist and maybe you all would know. He was a black figurative painter who blossomed in the 70s I think and his stuff looks like a cross between early matisse and piero della francresca, kind of subtlely trippy offbeat pastoral scenes. He died a while ago without ever gaining much recognition. ring any bells?

Anonymous said...

Comparing Kehinde Wiley:
i think that both ultimately are treading a similar terrain, contemporary pop icon and/or friends and each employ techniques from Art history to canonize them however conclude with different ends. i in no mean ment to set up quantitate conversation as to 'good' or 'bad' - i am just interested in the very different effect.

i didn't say PandD in itself makes me cum, i don't find everything chromed amazing but i did see a bright purple chromed car go by recently and the effect was so dazzling under the sun i exclaimed - "chromed car"

thx corny, that painting (which i have seen in person) reminded me that it is prob. more a personal taste thing that makes me prefer one over the other, - and prob. when researched a response to there influences as well - Sandford comes off as a little more tongue-in-cheek and KW as sexier

Anonymous said...

IN RSEPONSE TO ZIP.... I think both suck just about equally..this is definitely more juxtaposy while KW is more mainstream artmag freindly..thats the aura I meant...I think KW's shit is entirely predictable too...plus that painting in the armory really made me laugh, when he hit the viewer over the head by having the two models hold an "Italian Renassaince Painting" textbook or something to that effect

Anonymous said...

anon 9:34, "painting is so stale and by the numbers."

gots to disagree with you there, the paint isn't stale at all. The surface is glossy and slick like Valdez, the color is snap crackel poppy.

Anonymous said...

my bad missed the "both to shallow to compair" from zip.

i guess i find this hard to swallow they both seem to be dealing with complex issues in digestable ways for me.

ok fine i admit it i am a sucker for spectical and the marching band added alot for me at the KW. opening.

anyone see this it blue my mind..

Anonymous said...

I think most of the criticism of Tom's work in comparisson to K.W.'s is centered around K.W. being Black, and therefore his working being somehow "More Authentic" than Tom's. This, however, is profoundly racist, and also misconstrueds the work of both artists. Tom's work deals directly with a larger nexus of American popular culture, something secondary (though quite strongly linked) in K.W.'s focus on the contemporary african american male. Art historical references abound in both, but this is a sympum of art making in 2006 and is no reason to link these artist's work.

Anonymous said...

i had no idea what tom's 'race' was personally or i would have brought it up.

Anonymous said...

reminds me of something ernie barnes might have done if he wanted to make a foray into current pop culture. like "sugar shack" cameos. very indebted to west indian folk art in terms of style.

Anonymous said...

Questionnnn:
Bob Thompson. There was a small show of his work at the Whitney a few years ago.

Anonymous said...

bob thompson is who you mean i think.

Anonymous said...

there is not enough Violence and not enough glory i want more they seem tame. but does anyone know what happened on Sept 27 2005?

Anonymous said...

I really wanted to dislike this work before I saw it, but now think it's great. They're packed with creative details. I don't know how 'smart' they are, but they're just great objects, like dutch still-lifes. It's nice to see work that hits people so directly and doesn't take itself so seriously...

Anonymous said...

See Sandow Birk

Anonymous said...

no mas

Anonymous said...

P.U.!!!
i guess i have to schlep to chelsea to see it in real life but i hate what i see here and on website.

Anonymous said...

this guy needs photoshop or a projector! he can't draw lil kim. what good is a culture critique if the personalities have to wear nametags

Anonymous said...

If you don't think he can draw you should look at his watercolors. They are amazingly good.

Anonymous said...

Now that my day is over i feel safe to post. thanks for putting me on the blog painter!

yo, white stupid - lil'kim often wears that nameplate, and on the likeness thing, kim never looks the same twice with all her new looks and surgery, so difficult to know how to paint her, besides on that one i was thinking more about memlink than kim as far as the likeness is concerned.

anyway, thanks y'all for the feedback.

Painter said...

Hi Tom. Thanks for coming on. Congrats on your show.

Anonymous said...

is that real coke on the frame of the kate moss pete painting? Great show Tompac!!

Anonymous said...

thanks for coming on tom. I do feel bad about how negative the comments here are, but its to be expected in this type of forum...it kind of lends itself to harsh honesty. It is real cool that some of the artists show up..props to you if you're brave enough.

Anonymous said...

honky - it is sweet n low, i keep the real sugar for myself. thanks for the props, it means a lot coming from the king of thievin-white-boy-art.

zipthwung said...

Sweet and low causes cancer. You should be ashamed of yourself.

ungoogleable said...

This show was ok. The Banks Violette drum set in the painting was a bit insider huh? I don't know. I didn't like the whole Illustration style of the work. Not my cup of tea but I did get a chuckle here and there. I need more than that from a painting though.