Hey Sound of Art supporters,

If you haven't heard already, I'm launching the Art Fag City Rob Pruitt Art Awards and Auction* this Thursday. From the blog:

I’ve been trying to keep the Art Fag City Rob Pruitt Art Awards and Auction updates from completely taking over the blog, but benefits are such an enormous undertaking that at some point you just give up and hope people will find them as fascinating as you do. I’m not exactly an unbiased source, but with the auction items we release today, I can’t imagine there being any question over whether you should attend. As greg.org tweeted yesterday evening, “A live staging of Richard Prince’s deposition is only in the like 80th pctile of crazy in @artfagcity’s benefit auction”. That’s an exaggeration of course — I’d give that re-enactment a far more generous crazy ranking — but the point is well made. You simply won’t find more unique experiences and objects anywhere else.

With that in mind, I direct readers to our Collectrium auction page (also available via download), where the full list lives in all its glory. A few highlights:

• Relationship advice from Genesis P-Orridge
• Tea with John Giorno (Warhol Diaries), Debbie Harry (yes, that one), artist Scott Kilgour and Johnny Reinhold in William S. Borrough’s old home.
• Stephen Petronio Company invites you behind the scenes (Buy it now option available)
• Hennessy Youngman outgoing voicemail (Buy it now option available)
• A topless girl with a towel around her head and an iron captured by Richard Kern
• 20 Rob Pruitt-branded ice bags filled with melted ice, entitled “The Party’s Over”.

I doubt I’ll be ruining any surprises when I say that this last lot will be placed at the end of our live auction, nor that our rebranding to “The Art Fag City Rob Pruitt Awards* Not affiliated with Rob Pruitt, now affiliated with Rob Pruitt” is forthcoming. At Art Fag City we believe in complete transparency.

We also believe in efficiency. Those who wish to avoid lines this Thursday should fill out our bidder form in advance here. Those who can’t attend but wish to place an absentee bid can download our form here. Those who wish to see ANDREW ANDREW DJ will just have to attend. The pair are our latest edition to the event and I couldn’t be happier. They tell me they will be playing bid-friendly music throughout their set (6:30 and 7:30.)

In equally good news, I’m pleased to announce that artist William Powhida will be presiding over the award ceremony this Thursday. I don’t know what light he will chose to shine on the award categories and nominees, but I hope he will be able to shed some light on the relationship between baldness and art criticism. Also, I believe there’s a man and his horse nomination that needs some explanation.

What will not require any explanation are Nate Hill’s Bouncy Rides and Jennifer Catron and Paul Outlaw’s amazing food constructions for the event. There’s a forthcoming post about those performances anyway though, because they are amazing. Buy your tickets now. Space is limited.

Dear Sound of Art backers,

The records have been pressed! We're starting to organize shipping now, but because of the Holidays and Art Basel, we likely won't start sending the records out until the second week of December. You will have your records for Christmas!

Thanks,

Paddy

Aron Namenwirth, Untitled 19, 2005, Acrylic on panel, 48 x 36 inches"

Those looking for a little art to hang on their walls at an easy price are in luck. Participating artist Aron Namenwirth has donated the fantastic work above to the cause! Pledge $1,750 and not only will this piece be yours, but you will receive all kinds of perks. This means The limited edition LP with a print by Michael Smith, tickets to the show, the prized thank you tweet haiku and much much more!

Namenwirth has a long history here at the blog, as an early featured masthead artist, and the owner one of my favorite, but now defunct new media spaces, artMovingProjects. In 2007 I wrote this about his work:

Choosing political figures and current issues to reproduce in the form of medium to large scale, Namenwirth uses small sized jpgs as a visual reference point. The paintings are perfectly executed; each color beautifully working with the next and the images, materialize and dematerialize relative to the viewers position. In some sense, Namenwirth literalizes what might be an imagined physical relationship between the user and a jpg, in another the paintings simply rearticulate digital representations of political figures and issues.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY
Aron Namenwirth is a painter, media artist, curator, and co-director of the now defunct artMovingProjects which he founded in 1995. Aron was born in Ipswich Mass. He received his M.F.A. in Painting in 1987 from Yale with colleagues Lisa Yuskavage, John Currin and Richard Phillips. He works and lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Aron‘s work is involved in Contemporary American Politics, War and Consumerist Culture. He recently showed at Momentaart, vertexList. and Galapagos. Namenwirth’s animations have been screened at Diva in Miami. He has written and curated for Zing Magazine. His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, Time Out, Italian Vogue, and Broadcast on PBS and CNN.