Some Art by Andre Kan

I've been working with Andre Kan at the gallery I operate in the east end called Project Gallery. He's exhibited in a couple of shows we've curated, and has a lot of focus and good work ethic in his practise as an artist. His work has evolved in the short period of time we've worked together and I'm interested to see what direction he will take next.

Sheltered 2013

Some Paintings by Jenny Morgan

I came across some oil paintings by Jenny Morgan a couple months ago and they really stuck with me for their striking viceral and raw aesthetic. She's a 25-year old artist living in NYC At first I didn't really find them visually pleasing, but interest lead to empathy that lead to re-perceiving beauty, as it often does.

We Are All Setting Suns

Some Music By Alt-J

So the other week I came across the band ∆, pronounced Alt-J for the Mac keyboard command. These British indie-electro rockers have some upbeat yet seductive tracks and a slew of mesmerizing videos. The first I came across, "Fitzpleasure", was actually a video produced by COSA, a production company based out of Paris, France. The visuals are directed by Guillaume Cagniard, and set to the song are four minutes of sensory bliss.

Some Music Type-Writer Stuff

This is a pretty cool gadget I came across on the internet, it's a Music Typewriter that was first patented in 1936 by Robert Keaton from San Francisco, California. It pretty much does what you'd expect from looking at it, types music notation on a sheet of paper lying under the typing mechanism. There aren't many Keaton music typewriters and most are in museums and private collections. It was marketed in the 1950s and sold for around $225.

Some Illustrations by Jon Han

I've been reading (and collaging) a lot of magazines lately, and feeling a lot of appreciation for illustrations I find in them. Jon Han is a great example of one of these illustrators, he frequently does work for the New Yorker, LA Times, New York Times and many more. Here are some of his illustrations I like a lot.

Illustration for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist

Some Art by Gavin Worth

Gavin Worth is an interesting and versatile self-taught artist. He works in many media including sculpture, painting, drawing, paper and design. In my opinion, he is a particularly talented sculptor and illustrator. Here's a video of a wire sculpture he did that reveals a face at a specific angle, though every other angle is just as important.

Wire sculpture by Gavin Worth

Some Food Stuff

I posted something by this group before, but they an interesting way of visually illustrating information about random things with a nice clean and pleasing aesthetic. This is them on complimentary food pairings.

Some Music by Portishead

So I went to see Portishead on Monday night with some people at the Sound Academy. I was looking forward to this show for a long time and it definitely did not disappoint. The Bristol based band has been together since 1991 and this was their first time in Toronto in 14 years. They fired up a great set track after track, and their selection from previous albums was really well-rounded. This was a great performance by some serious musicians.

 Glory Box Live in Roseland, NY (1997)

Some Toys from the 1980s

This is a great nostalgic piece of some toys from the 80s, a lot of which I remember playing with. For me, especially the transformers which I was pretty obsessed with as a kid. And this guy manages to maneuver a lot of the toys with just one hand.

The King of Legoland

Titled "The King Of Legoland", the video was directed by Micaël Reynaud with music by the Hunting Charlie's Band. You can check out his tumblr here.

Some Music by Rostam

Rostam Batmanglij is a multi-instrumentalist for Vampire Weekend and one of the founders of Discovery, he is a ridiculously talented musician, artist and producer. Here's a digital single he released online last week called 'Woods'.

ROSTAM - Wood

He met Vampire Weekend while we has Columbia University for Music, and started up Discovery after recording with Wes Miles, the vocalist from Ra Ra Riot. The blend of his influence in both bands is pretty apparent from this song by him. You can see that he has a lot of middle eastern influences in his music, and there's a kind of lively jungle feel to his writing. His work with Vampire Weekend is a bit more poppy whereas Discovery is a bit more electronic and funky.