RIFF MARKET

RIFF MARKET VS. THE ARTS AND CULTURE OF NORWAY
WELCOME BACK ZACH AND BRANDON

Lindstrøm
Studio B
February 10

Tom Sandberg
P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center
February 11

Not that they have more in common than visits to that Thor Heyerdahl museum, it just sorta worked out this way, and who knows what other Norway-type events I missed in the mean. Weirdly the first time I saw Lindstrøm play live was P.S.1 Warm-Up July 2005, then a gig at the Tribeca afterwards, then at Blå in Oslo in August same year. I remembered him taking his time on builds, vamping round, rubbery loops for five or six minutes before letting them break into "Another Station" or "There's A Drink..." or "The Contemporary Fix." He's a tease, fine, but Saturday was near-infuriating sometimes, to the point that people gave up the stationary bob-in-place and just stayed stationary, waiting for him to give the song the go-ahead. When he did it was bliss obviously, but I don't remember being tooled like that in a while, my mood so violently backed and forthed.

The other exhibits that opened at P.S.1 Sunday might make more noise, esp. this one and this one, but I really liked the Tom Sandberg show. From what I understand, the Norwegian b&w photographer's work has never been shown U.S. museum-wise, ever, and he's apparently a pretty famous dude so what took us so long, etc. Like you, I don't go hard for landscapes, but there are a few really moving ones here, where the contrast is so muted you sorta have to strain your eyes to make out the shapes, and to me seem more honest to reality than the eyepopping high-contrast approach to b&w photography which strikes ig'nant me as the norm. Especially since I remember printing some pretty shitty low-contrast shots in the Prep darkroom, and being so happy when I realized all I had to do was develop the film longer and my prints would look drastically better.

My favorite shot is of this baby on a blanket on a beach. It's set up to be really dramatic, the baby looming large in sharp foreground focus with the immediate background and everything else beyond left blurred, unfocused--I know for a fact a lot of my friends' parents hired professional photographers to take shots like this so I'm assuming you know what I'm talking about, or at the very least have seen Rodney Dangerfield in Easy Money. Anyway if you know what I'm talking about, normally the photographer will shake a baby rattle or a funny-looking stuffed animal or something to keep the baby's attention, the face looking forward to the camera, and he'll take a shitload of shots in hopes that one of them will turn out. Sandberg's photo is this baby with his head down, ostensibly one of the "failed" shots. I say ostensibly because really the baby's head almost looks burrowed into his body, like the baby's caught onto the photographer's trick and the baby's so angry that this photographer thinks he can trick him that this baby now refuses to lift his head no matter what.

81 RIFFS

Labels: art, disco, live