New Jerseyy

New Jerseyy is a gallery based in Basel and run by curator Daniel Baumann, artists Tobias Madison and Emanuel Rossetti, and graphic designer Dan Solbach. With support from Nordtangente-Kunsttangente, the gallery has recently staged projects such as Ei Arakawa’s “M.A.V.O.E. (killer COMMERCIAL)”; Ei Arakawa, Gela Patashuri, and Sergei Tcherepnin’s “Shindisi Autocenter”; and the group show “Bridges and Tunnels” at Hard Hat in Geneva.

1. CÉDRIC EISENRING AND THOMAS JULIER

   Eisenring and Julier, students at Zurich University of the Arts (and much younger than Jesus Gioni), spent several months in Berlin. Shocked by the vibrant creativity of a city eager to be recognized for new architecture and design, they started taking a photographic inventory of what they saw. The result was a series of eighty-nine books, self-published and lazily bound, with laconic titles such as Eighteen Pots and Information Display at O2 World (both 2009). While reminiscent of Ed Ruscha’s photographic documentation of urban space, Eisenring and Julier’s images are hauntingly devoid of the optimistic playfulness seen in the older artist’s work—a shift that makes you wonder where the terror of urban design is headed next. Go to www.newjerseyy.ch (“Books and Videos”) to see for yourself.

   Cédric Eisenring and Thomas Julier, Information Display at 02 World, 2009, photographs from artists’ book, 8 1/4 x 11 3/4".
2. BÜRGIN’S SCHLUGGSTUBE

   As if buried by history, the best and the most beautiful bar in Basel can be found in the heart of the Old Town. Surrounded by guilds, fountains, libraries, and secondhand bookshops, this small, very hidden, family-run business on Rümelinsplatz is situated where, with the three-day exception of carnival, a deathly silence reigns. But with supremely extravagant decorations and a vertiginous atmosphere that often holds until the early morning, it’s not surprising that this open-latest spot has a dedicated cult following.

3. TBILISI, GEORGIA

   See you there.

   A painting by Rita Vitorelli installed on the roof of a gas station next to the future site of the Tbilisi Center for Contemporary Art, Georgia, November 8, 2007.
4. OTHER BOOKSTORES

   Everybody needs a little bookstore around the corner—it’s the essential Berlin feeling—so we particularly admire author Larry McMurtry (who still uses a Swiss-made Hermes 3000 typewriter for all his writing, including the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain) for running Booked Up in Archer City, Texas. Although the town’s population is less than two thousand, McMurtry claims to have 450,000 titles and not one art book. (It’s a lie.) Of course all the cool, niche shops we like have more or less the same stuff—no doubt because we all surf the same famous-for-being-unknown websites—but nevertheless we helplessly love checking out these places. Don’t miss Motto (Berlin), Boekie Woekie (Amsterdam), Booked Up (Basel), Printed Matter (New York), Torpedo (Oslo), Donlon Books (London), Castillo/Corrales (Paris), Ooga Booga (Los Angeles), etc.

   Interior of Booked Up, Archer City, TX, July 2006. Photo: Andrew Jones.
5. NAOMI TANI, MODAE NO HEYA (TILIQUA, 2006)

   “In 1979, after reigning for five years as [Japanese film company] Nikkatsu’s ‘Queen Of S&M,’ Tani retired suddenly and unexpectedly at the height of her popularity. She later gave her reason as, ‘I never wanted to disappoint my fans by showing an unflattering face. That’s why I’ve always refused to do a comeback. Nobody is free from aging. I want to exist in the audience’s memory as a forever blooming flower.’ She celebrated her retirement by issuing a vocal album entitled Modae no Heya. On this disc’s recent re-release in CD format, a reviewer commented of Tani’s vocals, ‘There’s a worldliness in her voice and a maturity which suggests she’s seen it all . . . There is however a fragility to her voice, a cracking sense of the truly erotic, the unseen, the taboo which drapes each syllable” (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Tani). Get the music and forget this horrible text. Oh, Wikipedia.

6. TONY DUQUETTE

   We first read about the groundbreaking, fantastic interiors of Tony Duquette (1914–1999) in a hipster architecture journal several years ago, but it wasn’t until coming across his monograph in artist Marlie Mul’s Berlin apartment that we got the idea for “Death of Samantha/Season of Glass”—our October 2008 exhibition—which, in addition to Duquette and Mul, included Lovaygenzkenguytonpfeifferzobernig. Using artifacts (e.g., Castilian castle doors and Burmese temple ornaments) to create a distorted, DIY historicism, Duquette designed sets and costumes for the San Francisco Ballet, Broadway, and 1940s and ’50s Hollywood (e.g., Vincente Minnelli), as well as interiors for Doris Duke, J. Paul Getty, and Norton Simon. He was the interior designer of Elizabeth Arden’s Irish castle, not to mention the first American ever to stage a one-person exhibition in the Louvre.

   View of “Death of Samantha/Season of Glass,” 2008, New Jerseyy, Basel.
7. NILS BECH

   We met Nils last April at the Dark Fair in Cologne and were immediately taken by his voice, his music, and his sexy stage presence. Shortly afterward, Dan was in Oslo visiting artists Ida Ekblad and Eirik Sæther when he heard Nils again. The evening was beautiful, ending with drinks at bar Robinet—where Nils works and a favorite retreat of the band Turbonegro’s Happy Tom. A month later, Nils came to Basel to sing at Ida’s exhibition: His first song was acoustic and gave everyone goose bumps. The concert continued into the street, and later on, at the Mamma Lucia restaurant, he capped it off with his cover of the Smiths’ “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out.” Never.

   Nils Bech performing at by:Larm music festival, Oslo, February 2008. Photos: Anne Valstad Erichsen.
8. FRODE FELIPE SCHJELDERUP

   Rockscaliborgh, subtitled Frode’s Metal Magazine, and Trash Metal Attack (First Wave of Black Metal) are handwritten magazines and books illustrated with black-and-white drawings. The latter remaps the world according to the history of black metal, listing such first-wave bands as Bathory, Bulldozer, Celtic Frost, Hellhammer, Mercyful Fate, Sabbat, Samael, Sarcófago, and Venom. This autumn, Frankfurt-based artist and Schjelderup’s childhood friend Yngve Holen will publish Rockscaliborgh and Trash Metal Attack on xym.no, a Web-based publishing project he started with Marlie Mul. Schjelderup lives and works in Stavanger, Norway.

9. PROVENCE: AN EIGHT-ISSUE MAGAZINE DEDICATED TO HOBBIES

   PROVENCE’s first issue, “P” (“R” was published in October, with “O,” “V,”. . . to follow), brings together Richard Prince’s “Menthol Pictures,” 1980, Folkways Records covers collected by techno label Dial cofounder Peter M. Kersten, a group of pictures from a PowerPoint lecture by Merlin Carpenter, as well as Basel-based artist Kaspar Müller’s “Chelsea 4; Liverpool 4” and German artist Andrea Legiehn’s essay on American Gigolo (breakout roles for Richard Gere and Lauren Hutton). Editors Daiga Grantina, Tobias Kaspar, and Hannes Loichinger launched the new publication at a café this past June during Art Basel, and it was one of the few really good things we saw that week. With this first issue, the editors offered photocopies of Ghislain Mollet-Viéville’s photo spreads and advertisements. A legendary “agent d’art” of the 1970s and ’80s, Mollet-Viéville used his apartment as a showroom and always appeared in his own ads. Another pile of photocopies documented John Knight—“the toughest artist of his generation” according to Colin de Land—while a vitrine displayed the full subscription of Interiors that Knight had sent to Basel-based architect Fumiko Gotô in 1982–83 as part of his Journals Series, 1977–. Long life to the deep space of endless footnotes.

   Issues of Interiors magazine sent to Fumiko Gotô as part of John Knight’s Journals Series, 1977–, and installed during the launch of PROVENCE as part of an exhibition curated by Egija Inzule at Cafe Hammer, Basel, June 2009.
10. THE LOBBY OF THE CONTINENTAL HOTEL BELGRADE

    This is the summit of late-1970s, pre-postmodern steampunk interior design. / On January 15, 2000, it was the site of Serbian career criminal and paramilitary leader Željko Ražnatovic’s assassination. Better known as Arkan, Ražnatovic was notable for organizing and leading the ethnic cleansing of the Yugoslav wars. / According to its own homepage, “The Continental Hotel Belgrade with its 415 rooms provides all services of the 5 star hotel. This includes 2 restaurants, banqueting facilities up to 1.400 persons, indoor swimming pool, fitness, sauna, open air tennis court, business center and 24 h room service.”