ryan mcginley + nowness: entrance romance.

I first started following photographer/artist/wunderkind Ryan McGinley more than 2 years ago, when I posted about his gorgeous (and still my favourite) photo exhibition “I Know Where The Summer Goes.” Since then McGinley has blown up huge and deservedly so. Expanding his visual scope from photography, he moved into film last year with a short for fashion house Pringle of Scotland starring Tilda Swinton.

Last weekend, in collaboration with LVMH-branded website Nowness, McGinley released an incredibly hot looking short film (shot partially by a Phantom Camera at 1500 fps) called “Entrance Romance (It Felt Like A Kiss).” I’m a big proponent of art not necessarily needing to be “about” something, so this is right up my alley. In the short, supermodel Carolyn Murphy shoots hairspray at a lighter, makes out with a wet dog, and has a few glass objects thrown against her head. I fucking loved it. What’s it about? Don’t know, don’t care. It seems so gleefully confident in it’s abject weird nothingness that I fully bought it.

Though the whole concept of filming shit being thrown at people isn’t original (the work of New York City-based photographer Meg Wachter comes to mind) the production value is through the roof and, plus, Murphy is simply incredible to look at. The look of serene intensity she maintains while knowing, somewhere, that a bowl full of goldfish is hurtling towards her is somehow completely fascinating. However, it’s the sly wave of sadomasochistic discovery that spreads across her face after being drilled in the head with a bottle of Heineken that really makes this worth the price of admission. Except that it was free… but you get my point.

Via Towleroad.

sigur rós + ryan mcginley: “gobbledigook”.

I don’t say this lightly, but Icelandic band Sigur Rós are so whacked out they make Björk look almost lucid. For this, obviously, I adore them. They are completely individual, with an ethereal, instrumental, other-wordly sound that seems to follow no musical convention… not any that we know of on Earth, anyway.

The first single from their new album “eð suð i eyrum við spilum endalaust” (With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly), is “Gobbledigook”, and for the video they’ve teamed up with one of my favourite artists – photographer Ryan McGinley, who’s also doing artwork for the album itself.

I recently posted about his latest exhibition, the subtly brilliant “I Know Where The Summer Goes”, and I’m thrilled to see how his earthy, naturalist, glowy photgraphic style translated to film. The result is quintessential McGinley: a beautiful, hazy, green, wood nymph-filled romp. Unfortunately, the vid won’t get nearly as much play as it deserves because everyone in it is naked. And for some reason casual, unsexual, artistic nudity is still a gigantic taboo in North America. We are so uptight over here it scares me sometimes…

Click HERE to download a high-res version of the vid. Here’s a YouTube link, but watch it right now. They’re getting taken down faster than they’re going up because the censorship-lovers are flagging it left and right.

(Director: Arni & Kinski.)

Via OMG

ryan mcginley: i know where the summer goes.

I’ve found a series of photos that I can’t get out of my mind. If visions you’ve only had in dreams and fuzzy flashbacks of nights that got out of hand were combined, you’d have the latest work of the amazing New York based photographer Ryan McGinley. And if you could take those moments, strip off all your clothes, take a road trip, light some sparklers, climb a tree, and live with absolute wild abandon, then you’d have his new collection “I Know Where Summer Goes”.

In the summer of 2007 McGinley took to the road with 16 models. Collaborating with his troupe and looking at inspiration from 60s and 70s nudist magazines, they shot an incredible 4000 rolls of film. McGinley has culled the 150,000 pictures created down to the 50 achingly brilliant photos that make up “I Know Where the Summer Goes”. I love the obvious freedom – not just from the removal of all your clothes – but a total freedom of form in the photos. Asymmetrical and organic, the essence of their locales infuses each photo. Not just through the presence of nature itself (anyone could just take a picture of the outdoors), but through the use of light and fog and movement the actual photos are sun-dappled and dusted with sand.

In what seems to have been some kind of pan-sexual road party, the photos are exuberant and splashed organically with light.  It’s like a ‘shroom trip brought to life in the dessert. There are so many simply perfect shots that I only have room for my absolute faves here, but you HAVE TO check out his website. You won’t be disappointed and the pictures are knock outs, one after the other.

There’s a definite modern-vintage feel to some of the shots, but I feel it comes more from a rediscovery than an attempt to look retro. It’s more a remembrance of a more care-free, less body-conscious, more pubic hair-friendly era. The photos are too unique to be a harkening back, and I feel it’s more like a re-claiming of freedom. That this kind of natural exuberance and love comes across as vintage is more a comment on our the stressed out state of our current media fear-mongering filled world than a throwback photograph. He’s reminding us of a joy and ease we’ve collectively forgotten.

If you’re in NYC, then “I Know Where the Summer Goes” opens tonight at Team Gallery in and runs to May 3,  2008. Someone please come and take me there. I need to go.

Via Jonah Samson @ Cool Hunting