Take Care of Yourself

Two weekends ago, I saw Sophie Calle's exhibit Take Care Of Yourself at Paul Cooper Gallery in Chelsea. When I had first read about it in Flavorpill, I was interested for two reasons: 1) I had recently put her book Double Game on my wish list after seeing and loving it in person; 2) The exhibit itself sounded fascinating.

The way the story begins may be familiar to some: Calle's boyfriend broke up with her.

The part that makes it a bit worse is: He broke up with her via e-mail, closing it with "Take care of yourself." *

And the part that makes it infinitely better: She had 107 of her friends interpret the e-mail, after which she compiled all of these interpretations into a traveling art exhibit.


It was schadenfreudian, fascinating, wonderful, hilarious, and a bunch of other things that I don't even have the capacity to put into words. All of the interpretations were so different – and done through so many different media – that this felt very far from the "shifting from painting to painting in the Nothern Renaissance room." **




The break-up letter (which was translated into English and available in a huge stack of copies at the door) was interpreted by dancers, singers, composers, writers, historians, a criminologist, social scientists, a mother, a children's book writer, a comic book illustrator, a typographer... the list goes on. Each piece was comprised of a photograph of the person interacting with the letter in some way, and their interpretation. The interpretations took the form of videos, manuscripts, layouts, and more.

Check it out. It's free, the weather is beautiful now, and it's open until 6 June. Helpful to know: The whole thing is in French. If you don't speak French, there are translations available at the door (which nobody told my friends and me when we walked in, so we spent our time there consuming this thing semi-viscerally until the absolute end. I kind of liked it that way).


* Here is a scan of the letter:

(This scan is from Polly-Vous Francais? ... I know, I said that I would bring the letter in and scan it myself, but twittish Johanna forgot.)

** Don't get me wrong. Rembrandt and Dürer and Bosch, oh my! I love all of them. But, generally (and after a few years), if you've seen one Madonna With Child...

Banksy's pet store

Within hours of Wooster Collective's announcement of the Banksy pet store two days ago, I started getting messages from friends all over the place. Some just sent the link, others regretted not living in New York. The general consensus, though, was: Awesome.

And they were right. I went to check it out with two visiting friends last night. For the those who haven't read about it by now: Banksy opened a pet store in The Village... or so it appears, at first. Upon closer inspection, one quickly realizes that it's not exactly the pet store it seems. The people walking by who didn't look more closely actually just kept walking, not realizing what they were missing.


Going inside the pet store to look at the snoozing leopard reveals that it's actually a moving fur coat.


Other bizarre animatronics inside the pet store – among the not-for-sale merchandise like pet food and toys – include a monkey watching television amidst pizza leftovers and beer, a swimming fish stick, and overwrought Tweety Bird and tanks of wiggling meat products.




TV-watching monkey from Johanna on Vimeo.
As Wooster Collective mentioned, one wouldn't have any clue that Banksy was responsible for this had they not told us (or had we not been friends with Banksy himself). Very cool.


Pet store windows from Johanna on Vimeo.


Pet sausages from Johanna on Vimeo.
The whole thing had an absurd, Science of Sleep-style surreality about it. I thought at one point to myself, "I wish life were like this." I quickly took it back, though, because then tiny strokes of curio-genius like this one wouldn't be as special.

[image of sleeping leopard from the outside borrowed from Wooster Collective]

Color Chart: Reinventing Color

This is part 3 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.


I went to this member preview at the MoMA with my friend Diana. It was definitely a breezier one than Design and the Elastic Mind, but no less thought provoking. It was pretty self-explanatory and centered around the emotional and spiritual power of color. A really interesting part was that the exhibit was brought to us by Benjamin Moore paints.

Anyway, I was very surprised by how many well-known artists were featured. I am not sure why? Anyway, there was stuff by Rauschenberg, Ruscha, Warhol, Duchamp, Jasper Johns and Damien Hirst, among others. I was most delighted by these four:

Jan Dibbets, Colorstudy (close-ups of cars):


Ruscha, News, Mews, Pews, Brews, Stews & Dues (screenprints using mortar & pestle-crushed ingredients like baked beans, mango chutney, tulips, caviar and axle grease):


John Baldessari Common Memory Colors:


Dan Flavin Untitled (my favorite, I love love love light installations):

This one's around until 12 May, get thee to a nunnery the MoMA!

Stefan Sagmeister - Things I Have Learned In My Life So Far

This is part 2 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

This was the perfect followup to Design and the Elastic Mind. I went straight from the MoMA to Deitch Projects for the final day of this exhibit. It coincided with Sagmeister's book release, which could be purchased at the gallery. This one was really engaging and visually stimulating, which I definitely needed at the time.

The second I walked in, I thought of Tahiti, which I couldn't really explain since I have never been there (all I know about it are Gaugin's paintings). I realized what it was when I walked to the back room though: a wall completely wallpapered with bananas.




Some of the lessons that we saw through his art (he had a series of photographs lined up, each one with a different word on it):


- Everything I do always comes back to me
- Starting a charity is surprisingly easy
- Having guts always works out for me
- Drugs are fun in the beginning but become a drag later on

Here was a cool part: dozens of little sketchbooks with hanging pencils. I drew a seahorse in one.


Sadly, I can't recommend this exhibit because it's over. You can buy the book, though.

Design and the Elastic Mind

This is part 1 in a mini blog series: Smaller Versions Of What I Had Planned. I can't let all of the "to blog" ideas that I had floating around in my head disappear, even if they may be irrelevant by now. Here's a brief rundown of stuff I saw & went to that I had to go back six pages in my Flickr stream to reference.

"I think your blog is getting jealous-child syndrome and feeling alienated because of your Tumblr." - Satish

He's right. I turn to my Tumblr in times like these, because it takes less time to post a quote, a photo or a short anecdote than it does to write a long-ish piece on here. I'm sorry :( there really is no excuse. I have thought about taking an hour of time out of my sleep schedule every day so I can squeeze everything in, but really I don't think it would help. Someone at an Adcenter board meeting once mentioned that however much time you're given for something, it will take that long. Regardless of whether it's a week or a day, the same task will fill that amount of time. Nevermind, then.

Design and the Elastic Mind
I went to the member preview at the MoMA with Satish. Everybody can find a number of sources about this exhibit by now, so I won't get into detail about every single part of it that I loved (even though I filled four pages in my journal that day). For anybody who hasn't read about it though, it was full of stuff that showed designers as changing from form givers to essential interpreters. The elasticity part referred to grasping progress (in technology and the world) and making it one's own.



The exhibit was separated into small scale (nanostructures), human scale (interactions with others) and large scale (cities, www, the world, the universe), making it really easy to navigate. That being said though, do not go to this exhibit unless you have a lot of time and mental energy. Going through the entire thing, reading and thinking took us around two and a half hours. SO interesting though!

One of the things I wrote down was a water-moving system that used the Fibonacci sequence to circulate millions of gallons of water with minimal energy. There was some awesome visualization, like what the entire Internet looks like (by the way: it looks like fireworks); aircraft navigation paths; computer chess thinking paths; etc. Relatedly, the NY Talk Exchange was so incredible you should visit this link if you only click on one in this part. Oh god there was so so much more. Shoes that stored your walking & stair climbing energy throughout the day and then were used to power small electronics that night in your home; children's science ideas (including the caption "This is a squiggle. It is a plant that has been genetically somethinged"); more more more.

Visit this nerdy and fascinating collection of ideas, it's up until May. Oh, and the entire thing uses Courier Sans :D

yay for Amber.

sunshine cupcake
Originally uploaded by tokyohanna.

I am dedicating this post to Amber because she inspired me not long ago to visit the Design Triennial at Cooper Hewitt. Well, I loved it, and I am grateful. Thank you.

This morning, Patrick sleepily asked me to tell him a story. I told a story of two girls walking through a magical city together - one with lights and colors that looked like a kaleidoscope and walking through a cartoon. Where you could taste the blue floating cloud shapes and yellow floating triangular shapes. Well, the exhibit was much like that. colors and swirls and lines and lights everywhere. and soothing sounds. It was a synaesthete's world, I bet. I loved it all. It took me forever to get to, but it was worth it. The museum i.d. sticker thing is an orange SQUARE. love.

It was cold and gray and foggy all day, and it made the Upper East Side look even MORE strange to me. What an alternate universe. At first I felt physically uncomfortable walking west on 91st through Lexington, Park, etc. but then I realized that it's really kind of pretty up there. Not for me right now in my life, but nice in a very specific way.

Getting to the Lower East Side was a nightmare. I finally gave up in SoHo, got out of the subway and walked. From the middle of the museumvisit I was feeling faint and weak from not eating. It made the mesh of colors and sounds and shapes even more intense to me, I bet. I finally got to teany, and had a wonderful meal of tomato soup (I keep forgetting they serve soup in those little tall mugs), vegan BLT and teanychino. I didn't want them to think I was a greedy brat, but I still wanted dessert, so I paid and went to Sugar Sweet Sunshine. I wasn't in a fancy mood, so I just asked for a sunshine cupcake, and what I got was a pink one. delicious. Getting home was a breeze.

Notes from my Moleskine from the museum:

Tom Scott's knitwear reminds me of early Issey Miyake. Judy Geib Plus Alpha makes me remember why I love art nouveau so much. swirling and organic shapes in the thinnest thinnest gold. chunky emeralds that are as they were found. hammeredly framed in gold.

Google has a space in this exhibit. good. "transformed the way [we] access information."

Wow, I was just talking about blik yesterday.

Tobias Wong's work makes me think of Dadaism for the 21st century.