Some welcome surreality, at the expense of the presidential candidates.

I think I might have seen one or two of these Robert Morris sculptures in person. But now there are several of them up at Sonnabend right now—me and Jim went last Caturday—and they look great: cuddly and rigorous at the same time, casually beautiful and slightly anthropomorphic. (Doesn’t that pink one look like a buh-gina?) More:

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Good nightstand reading material: A scholarly paper about the practise of head shrinking:

The enemy and those who accompany him are killed as expeditiously as possible. Although the Jivaro-Shuar are known to use blow darts and a curare-like toxin for hunting and, as mentioned, will exchange gunfire with their enemies in the hostilities exchanged before the battle proper is joined, the preferred method for killing in warfare is the use of a long spear thrown or thrust into the neck, as this not only accords with custom but also prevents the victim from crying out for assistance and may aid the beheading that is to follow.

Via New Shelton Wet/Dry. Image: Shrunken heads at the Ripley’s Museum in NYC. AP/Mary Altaffer.

His work is on view next month in a group show at the Met that includes Vik Muniz and Greg Crewdson, among others. Opens Nov 4—something to do to decompress after the election clusterfuck! More work:

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Baker’s got a show up now at Foxy Productions. Not sure if I buy the rhetoric, but it’s interesting, in that Baker’s very much a part of the faux-pastoral movement that you’ll see scattered around Chelsea these days:

In Civil Dusk – the period after the sun has edged below the horizon and objects are still distinguishable – Baker uses cloaks of fog, smoke, or dust, and disorienting inversions and combinations to make the known feel uncanny. Baker explores American landscape painting’s myths of expansion and freedom, and its conjuring of sentiment and the sublime.

More work:

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New show—opening party tomorrow. Interesting: King is a prof at Virginia Commonwealth U., alma mater of Tara Donovan. And lately I’ve seen quite a few solid artists coming out of there. Today’s art world is too wooly to imagine an “avant garde” school breaking out from the wilds—but VCU’s recent hits remind me of Black Mountain College in North Carolina, famous for breeding just about every genius of the 1960s: Merce Cunningham, Robert Rauchenburg, John Cage, and Buckminster Fuller, to name a few.

“The hope was that the the dead whale would be disintegrated by the blast.” Not so much.

Hilary’s a DG friend from waaaaaay back—we had art studios and English class together in college, and were also roomies for a time. Just last week, he opened a show at 11 Rivington. Hilary (who made all the sculptures) is partly known for using bees to make his work, as New York Mag explains in a good little slideshow here. Before you start emailing me about Thomas Libertiny and his bee vase, know this: Hilary got there first, working in the wilds of rural PA, and his works have a sumptuousness and rigor that puts Libertiny to shame. Go check out his work. He and Kevin are really smart guys.

Video for The Liar’s “Plaster Casts of Everything,” via Creative Reviews nice collection of recent music videos.

Awesome collection of images. This one from y.morytah’s zawsome flickr.