Spook

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Matt Copson Sob Story, 2016
‘Sob Story is a hand-drawn animation and a new installment in the artist’s ever-growing saga of Reynard the Fox. In the film we enter a grandiose cave in which Reynard (or at least his head) is being roasted alive on a slowly revolving spit. He struggles to deliver a death-bed speech and a plea for his innocence.’

 

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Katharina Fritsch Ghost with Pool of Blood, 1988
‘Painted polyester, Plexiglas and lacquer’

 

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Claude Wampler Droolie Andrews, 2019
‘A Glow-in-the-Dark painting, approximately 16′ x16′, activated by a light show produced by 7 theatrical programmed LED lights mounted on pedestals.’

 

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Stuart Brisley And For Today … Nothing, 1972
‘British performance artist Stuart Brisley’s And For Today … Nothing, 1972, was staged in the depths of a run-down, shabby building in London. A dirty bath was filled to the brim with black water and rotting meat, where flies and maggots festered away. Brisley lay naked in this dirty mess every day for two weeks, with his head positioned just far enough above the water so that he could still breathe. Small groups of visitors were then invited to enter the building and observe him in this vulnerable, half-dead state. Subjecting his body to an almost intolerable situation, Stuart Brisely drew viewers’ attention to the fragile line between life and death, an attitude which would have a profound impact on the contemporary art that followed. This performance was part of a group exhibition at Gallery House, Goethe Institution, London, but the smell of cold water filled with decaying offal became so disgusting that all the other artists forced him to leave.’

 

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Meret Oppenheim Little Ghost Eating Bread, 1934
Oil on canvas

 

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Tobias Bradford Third Person (open-world fantasy), 2026
‘Third Person (open-world fantasy) is a mechanical and animatronic installation consisting of a life-sized foam cast mechanical self portrait. The figure is actively playing the fantasy video game Skyrim through a videogame controller connected to a laptop. The body of the figure is controlled via mechanical ropes and cams where as the thumbsticks on the controller are driven by an external system of servo motors and wires programmed to go back and forth, left and right at random intervals. The game as such is played uninterrupted, the avatar -lost and confused- runs until it dies, usually by wolves or a cliff drop. The work as such plays itself, and overarchingly becomes an ode to the longing for disembodiment, or inhabiting a different body, corporeal detachment or existing, prospering and dying in a different world.’

 

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Isabelle Frances McGuire Digesting Duck Entry Level Position (2020)
‘Digesting Duck Entry Level Position is an abject drinking-fountain in the form of a vomiting figure, a silicone lifesize doll with pallid flesh and stringy black hair, crouching inside a beat-up cardboard box as it expels liquids. Inspired by an eighteenth-century French automaton of a gold-plated duck that would appear to consume, metabolise and excrete kernels, McGuire’s work animates the body’s basest functions. As liquid leaks from the figure’s mouth into cups or bowls, you get the uneasy sense that the work is dying. Notably, this body doesn’t move – it’s merely a receptacle through which fluids pass. The down-on-its-luck figure rehearses the icky discontents of the passive work required to keep the body alive.’

 

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Sue de Beer The White Wolf, 2018
‘The White Wolf uses the classic werewolf narrative as a lens through which to explore broader themes of transformation, memory, and the psychology and physicality that form our sense of self. The film, which is set on a fictional island off the coast of New England in the late 1980s, follows the intersecting experiences of several characters connected through a medical clinic, to a secret history shared by inhabitants of the town.’

 

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Dennis Oppenheim Material Interchange, 1970
‘Fingernail lodged between gallery floorboards. Stage Splinter.’

 

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Richard Hawkins Disembodied Zombies, 1997 – 2000)
‘In 1997, Richard Hawkins started a series of prints called “Disembodied Zombies”; these were digitally collaged images of male models and actors, their decapitated heads taken from glossy magazines. The creepy zombie-like heads, adorned with abundant blood-like drips, were graphically presented on colorful backgrounds. The series was a doorway to personal and collective obsessions with the body, beauty and erotic desire. Hawkins is a key figure in LA not only because of his own work, which perfectly synthesizes the “Sunshine & Noir” aesthetic with which LA is identified, but also because his influence as a teacher at Art Center is felt by many younger artists.’

 

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Lonnie Holley I Woke Up…, 2018
‘The first real artworks I made were tombstones for my young niece and nephew, who lost their lives in a house fire. I was honouring their death, and ever since I think I’ve always been honouring the death of something. What it’s taught me is that we need to grab something positive from every life, because that’s where knowledge and wisdom come from. We should try to grab it before it turns into history.’ — LH

 

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Peter Peryer Gone Home, 1975
‘Tributes have been paid online by New Zealand’s art galleries, museums, artists and fans of eminent photographer Peter Peryer who died on Sunday. Peryer received several awards for his work and also became a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 1997 for his contribution to photography. One of his more famous works, a picture of a petrified dead cow, made international news and had the German government attempt to remove it from an exhibition.’

 

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Marianna Simnett Leda Was a Swan, 2025
‘Simnett’s work examines the perception and imagination of the (human) body. In the works she has created to date, the themes of sickness and the intervention of medicine figure large. Themes of contamination, disease, violation, sexuality, identity, and metamorphosis. Central to surrealist visions are issues of vulnerability, autonomy, and control. Simnett cites empathy, trauma, catharsis and the embodiment of these as important themes in her practice. Throughout her body of works and the works themselves is a nonlinear narrative of “bodily dread”.’

 

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Andy Holden The Structure of Feeling (A Ghost Train Ride), 2020
‘An art exhibition where you can ride a ghost train through it. The ride takes 40 minutes, with carts leaving every five minutes. ‘The Structure of Feeling’ takes viewers on a trip through a cartoon landscape of the artist’s own devising. The journey – on motorised carts along predetermined tracks – sends you through desert, woodland, a haunted library and an abandoned city. It’s a show filled with animated films and 3D movies about melancholy, physics and, you know, the meaning of life.’

 

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Alessandro Bavari METACHAOS, 2010
‘Metachaos, from Greek Meta (beyond) and Chaos (the abyss where the eternally-formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks in precise morphology, and it is characterized by mutation and mitosis. In fact the bodies represented in METACHAOS, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality they are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, an hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct of violating the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a philological continuum in human species, bringing the status of things back to the primordial broth.’

 

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Sarah Sitkin Human Leftovers (2017)
‘‘creepy’ and horror’ are terms I struggle to transcend. I use materials and techniques borrowed from special effects, prosthetics, and makeup (an industry built on the foundations of those words) but the concepts I’m illustrating really have nothing to do with gore, cosplay, or horror… moving a person out of their comfort zone is the first step in achieving vulnerability, and in that space, a person may allow themselves to be impacted. I am deliberately making work that aims to bring the audience to a state of vulnerability.’ — SS

 

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Mike Nelson The Coral Reef, 2000
‘The Coral Reef is the installation as scary novel. Horror and the gothic haunt Nelson, but in this extraordinary creation it is not vague creepiness he creates. It is the creepiness of our time, the strangeness of our cities, the paranoia of this absurd age. As soon as you enter the door marked The Coral Reef, you are in a seedy world of – what? Ratty hotels, call-centres, terrorist cells, taxi offices – you are not sure what exactly what the interstitial, transient rooms and antechambers you pass through or glimpse through dirty windows are, or where. But a machine gun and a mask left on a worktop is almost superfluous to the atmosphere of menace. An overwhelming sense both of abandonment and anticipation sucks you into what feels like a narrative about terror and conspiracy.’

 

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SOCIÉTÉ F.P.T.P. Le Cri de Johnny (2010)
‘A myth crumbles as soon as we know that the famous very manly cry of Hollywood cinema, the one who alerted the jungle — this Tarzan, aka Johnny Weissmuller — comes from a clever mix between the song of an Austrian yodeller, the cry of an American hyena and the musicality of a sound engineer.’

 

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Christopher Winter Spook-a-rama, 2008
‘Spook-a-rama, a series of eerie, darkly comic works by the Berlin-based artist, Christopher Winter, opens at Edelman Arts on October 30 with a séance. Intended to summon the spirit of Hans Holbein the Younger, the concept is unorthodox but hardly unheard of. As Winter explains: “Victor Hugo used a method called Turning Tables to talk to spirits. These conversations with writers and poets who also drew for him inspired my own Holbein Table.” Should such spirits choose to speak and/or actually to draw for Winter and his audience remains to be seen. But the séance sets a spectacular stage for one of Edelman’s most intriguing full-house installations. Named in honor of the former Ghost Train in Coney Island and featuring paintings, drawings, sculpture, and video, viewers are invited to hover over a gruesomely Germanic abyss: an abyss defined by hallucinatory landscapes and peopled by strangely sinister looking children and the spectral vision of legendary artists such as Durer, Kippenberger, and Picasso.’

 

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Matthew Day Jackson Me, Dead at 38 (2009)
‘Facing death head on, Brooklyn-based artist Matthew Day Jackson wants to put our fear of dying to rest in his Me, Dead ongoing series that imagines his end in various mortifying ways.’

 

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Michael Mersereau Various (2020)
‘Michael Mersereau (b. 1977) is a multidisciplinary media artist and filmmaker. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, US and holds an MFA from Mills College (Oakland, California) and a BFA in Painting/Drawing from the California College of the Arts (San Francisco, California). Mersereau splits his time between San Francisco Bay Area and Montréal, Québec.’

 

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Ann Lislegaard Oracles, Owls – Some Animals Never Sleep, 2012 – 2013
‘A few years ago, I saw Blade Runner by chance when I turned on the television in a hotel room in Amsterdam. I had seen the film several times before, and I had also read Philip K. Dick’s novel, but this time, I was utterly fascinated by the owl. What I saw made me think about the potential narratives that lie hidden within the silence of objects. So it made me think: What if this intriguing and secretive creature were to suddenly receive a voice? What would it say, and how would it say it? This was the initial idea for the piece: giving this animal a voice.’ — AL

 

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Mary Ellen Mark Various, 1977 – 1992
‘Mark traveled extensively since her first trip to Turkey on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1965. Her pictures of diverse people and cultures are groundbreaking images in the documentary field. Her essays on runaway children in Seattle, circuses and brothels in India, Catholic and Protestant women in Northern Ireland and patients in the maximum security ward of Oregon State Mental Hospital demonstrate original and insightful ways of examining each theme. Her photographs are compassionate and factual.’

 

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Bubba Sawyer Chainsaw 3-D mask unboxing, 2019
‘The horror Zone: Hey bubba who’s your favorite leatherface witch movie ? Bubba Sawyer: The horror Zone 74 always. The Greek Pianist: I noticed you don’t have the “Grandma” mask that Leatherface briefly wears in the original. I think it would be a great addition to your collection man 😁. Bubba Sawyer: I forgot about that one I’ll eventually get it.’

 

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Bloober Team SA Layers of Fear, 2016
‘Layers of Fear is a first-person psychedelic horror game with a heavy focus on story and exploration. Delve deep into the mind of an insane painter and discover the secret of his madness, as you walk through a vast and constantly changing Victorian-era mansion. Uncover the visions, fears and horrors that entwine the painter and finish the masterpiece he has strived so long to create.’

 

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Nicola Samori Various, 2016 – 2019
‘Nicola Samori’s dark, Baroque-inspired oil paintings are skillful reproductions of classical portraits and still lifes on canvas, wood, or copper, purposefully destroyed to negate classical representation and question painting itself. His process entails “skinning” his painted figures with a palette knife or diluent, layering another image on top, and repeating the process until images fuse and signs of erasure and scratching dominate the reworked surface.’

 

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Tobias Bradford Emergence, 2022
‘London-based Swedish artist Tobias Bradford confronts viewers with remarkable animatronic sculptures that inspire a complex range of responses.’

 

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Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen Vinyl Terror & Horror, 2015
‘Sound artists Camilla Sørensen and Greta Christensen have developed their own destructive brand of turntablism. Reminiscent of that artist who took a knife and some sandpaper to pristine black vinyl, this duo carefully destroy, cut up, reform and reconfigure record players and records. They throw shards of record on to deformed decks, filling the already uneasy gaps with glass shatters, creaking classical symphonies and needle chaos.’

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** James Bennett, Hey. Oh, ugh, on the moving. I feel you, bud. My eyes actually filled in the missing ‘l’ all on their own. Strange. And congrats, exciting! Best of luck with the schlep in the meantime. ** Dominik, Hi!!! The biscuits aren’t amazing. You just have to really like biscuits and accept that you’re in France and settle. I never feel sad when love’s mouth, face, neck, and whole upper body are covered in vomit… 💦🤤, G. ** Adem Berbic, There were actually co-winners of the Best Actor Prize — Charlie/Andre and Ange/Extra. So one prize, two trophies. ‘Noriko’s Dinner Table’ … can’t remember if I’ve seen it. I’ll check. Maybe. I think so? Perturbing or askew … I mean, I guess I get it? I think most things strike me that way, but not the escort/slave enunciations in particular? Okay, eyes out for an email. And, yeah, it does look like it’s going to be unpleasantly warm at the week, motherfuck! ** _Black_Acrylic, Nice. Well, it is good to know where the fire exists are. Are you already planning out your screen print? ** Ilan valdes, Hi! I think I’ll be in Paris for at least the earlier part of October, and maybe in November, I’m not sure yet. So it sounds like that could work. I’ll email you. Cool. And congrats on finishing your novel! ** Carsten, Thanks. As I said up above, both Charlie and Ange co-won, and, yes, very deserving. I’ve never read Césaire’s plays. Sounds rather disappointing. Too bad. Not seen that Peck film either. Interesting. Me, I watched Ozu’s ‘Green Tea Over Rice’ for my Zoom club, and it was sublime like basically all Ozu films. I’m reading a novel by Theo Casciani because I agreed to blurb it. This week I’m going to a screening of Roy Andersson’s ‘Songs from the Second Floor’, my favorite of his films, because I’ve never seen it projected. ** laura w., It seems like you’d have to plan a trip to Pittsburgh just to visit that museum as I don’t know of anything else there that’s very magnetising. ‘The Quick and the Dead’ is probably my favorite of Williams’ novels too. The film based on it isn’t very good. Don’t feel defeated. You’ll win, for sure. Weekend was fine, just the festival and way too much time spent in airports waiting for delayed flights. ** Bill, Thanks. Charlie Jacobs and Ange Dargeant co-won the award. I didn’t know Glacier Bay Books. Thanks. At a glance it looks most fruitful. Envy re: Crossroads. Here L’Etrange Festival is about to start, mostly ‘adventurous’ horror-adjacent films I’m not excited about, but a few curiosities in there. Gaspar Noe’s films got their start there. And we world premiered ‘Like Cattle Towards Glow’ there. ** Laura, Well, hello! Thank you for the dip. My/our scripts? One of these days. Jean Rhys is great. But her most famous novel, ‘Wide Saragasso Sea’, is her least good. Don’t start there. Our early Autumn might be a sham since heat is supposedly making an ugly return later this week. Hopefully briefly. I’m only working on the texts we need to try to sell our new film to possible investors. No fun at all, but part of the deal. Take care, pal. ** Dev, The Rose Parade is pretty nice. Those flowers-only floats are quite impressive in person. When I was a teen, sleeping on the sidewalk overnight while getting baked on pot and wasted on beer in order to watch the parade up close was the thing everyone did every New Years Eve. And you can go watch them being built for the few weeks before, which is maybe the best part. I’ve always been a bit afraid to watch ‘Ishtar’ given its hideous reputation, but, yeah, that’s obviously the reason to, isn’t it. I like May’s films and writing in general. When I was growing up, my mom was really into the records that she and Mike Nichols put out when they were a hip comedy team. Anyway, I’ll give that mess a look. Thanks, man. ** HaRpEr //, Paul Morrissey was definitely a strange guy. You probably know his politics were very right wing, which is hard to reconcile. You definitely sound to be in excellent shape for your novel’s challenges. ** Steve, I wonder if there could be a good riposte to that comment. Hm. Maybe saying it sounded more like Yoko Ono? Nah. No, we tragically had no time to go to Kongeparken. Still sad about that. I remember when those kinds of drive-through wild animal parks were everywhere. We had at least two in or around LA, all defunct for I guess obvious reasons. There’s still one here in France apparently, much beloved by the Far Right for mysterious but no doubt fascinating reasons. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, Thanks! That happened at the Stavanger Indie International Film Festival in Norway. Prayers (even though I don’t know to pray) about the job interview. So … thumbs up? Agnes Varda, which film? I find more than friendship relationships hard pretty much always. I’ve given up on them. I had a number of them, and I never did them well. But obviously most people consider such things nirvana, I guess. So am I telling you to be cautious? Maybe not because I’m not a good judge. But embracing your deep emotions is good if not crucial even. I guess it’s just knowing when those emotions should go public or not? Luck with all of that and everything, my friend. ** Right. I think Halloween is starting to encroach on my post making inspiration, and it’s only just barely September. See you tomorrow.