Cover by Andrea Galvani
Lovely Daze Issue #3: When I Am Alone, Everything Is So Surreal, revisits André Breton’s almost-century-old Surrealist Manifesto* with a collection of artists’ writings and artworks.
*In the Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, Breton defined the term surrealism as: Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express, either verbally, or in writing, or by any other manner, the real functioning of thought. Dictation of thought in the absence of all control exercised by reason, outside of all aesthetic and moral preoccupation.
publisher/editor/designer ~ charwei tsai
editors ~ kelly carmena, lesley ma,
and sabrina shaffer
contributors ~ rita ackermann, aa bronson,
santiago cucullu, david kennedy-cutler,
andrea galvani, n.s. harsha, federico herrero,
james hoff, jungil hong, lee mingwei,
justin lowe, jean-lou majerus,
cristina rodriguez, julian seidl,
eyeam soreel, and su-mei tse
cover ~ andrea galvani,
la morte di un’immagine #5, 2005
copyright ~ lovely daze, fall 2006
CONTRIBUTORS
RITA ACKERMANN was born in Budapest. She immigrated to the US for an education of pop in 1991 and has lived and worked in New York since.
AA BRONSON lived and worked as one of the three artists of General Idea from 1969 through 1994, when his two partners died. He now lives and works as a solo artist in New York City, and also as the Director of Printed Matter, Inc., an artists’ bookstore.
www.aabronson.com
KELLY CARMENA was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and now lives in New York City.
SANTIAGO CUCULLU was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina and currently lives in Milwaukee. Recent solo exhibitions include a new project at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. Group exhibitions include: 2006 Singapore Biennale, 2004 Whitney Biennial, and How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age at
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
DAVID KENNEDY-CUTLER was born in Sandgate, Vermont in 1979. He lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
www.niceandfitgallery.com
ANDREA GALVANI was born in Verona in 1973 and currently lives and works in Bologna and Milan, Italy. He has participated in many exhibitions in Italy and abroad, including his recent retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Monfalcone, Gorizia, Italy.
N.S. HARSHA was born in 1969 and currently lives and works in Mysore, India. Recent exhibitions include: Singapore Biennale; The Artist Lives and Works at The House of World Cultures, Berlin in 2006; Indian Summer at L’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, Paris in 2005; Another Passage to India at Ethnography Museum, Geneva, Switzerland; Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India at Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, Australia, Asia Society, and Queens Museum of Art, New York, USA in 2004.
FEDERICO HERRERO was born in 1978 in San José, Costa Rica where he currently lives and works. He studied painting at Pratt Institute, New York from 1997-1998. He has exhibited at Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice in 2006; Aichi EXPO in Japan in 2005; Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville in Paris, curated by Hans-Ulrich Obrist in 2002; and 49th Venice Biennale, curated by Harald Szeemann, where he received the young artist’s prize in 2001.
www.blowdelabarra.com
JAMES HOFF is a writer and editor living in Brooklyn, New York.
JUNGIL HONG was born in Seoul, Korea. Jung’s favorite past time was sneaking into a peanut field and eating raw peanuts from the ground. In 1986, the Hong family moved to suburban New Jersey, where they spent weekends fishing in a murky canal next to Highway 1. Jung currently lives in Providence, Rhode Island, watching hawks on temple tops and waiting patiently for DJ Jazzy Jess’ mixtape.
LEE MINGWEI was born in Taiwan and currently lives in New York City and San Francisco. Lee was raised in a dual Buddhist-Catholic background. As a child, he spent his summers at a Chan (the Chinese ancestor of Zen) monastery where he learned the simple power of concentrating on daily activities. Lee eventually moved to the US and attended a Benedictine high school in California. He earned a BFA in Textile Arts from the California College of Arts in 1993, and an MFA in New Genre Public Art from Yale University in 1997.
www.leemingwei.com
JUSTIN LOWE was born in 1976 and currently lives and works in New York City. He received a MFA from Columbia University in 2004 and a BFA from Hampshire College in 2000. Solo exhibitions include Helter Swelter at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery, New York, 2006; Collecting Pictures in the Brain Hotel at Sculpture Center, Long Island City, 2005; and Waterfall at The Wrong Gallery, New York, 2004.
LESLEY MA is fascinated, distracted, and inspired by Texas.
www.tastingsalon.com
JEAN-LOU MAJEURS is a teacher based in Luxembourg. He leads an educational program at the Luxembourg penitentiaries. He has a passion for 20th century furniture design as well as for the arts. He often works in close collaboration with Su-Mei Tse.
CRISTINA RODRIGUEZ is a Colombian artist and designer living in New York City. She received a BFA in Industrial Design at Rhode Island School of Design and recently finished a year of Fashion Design at Parsons New School of Design. She is currently designing textile prints, working on her drawings during free time, and preparing for her third illustrated travel book project in India and Bhutan.
www.crwork.net
JULIAN SEIDL lives and works in New York. She graduated from Hampshire College in 2000 in Art and Photography. Selected exhibitions include: On The Beach at Printed Matter, and The Image-World at the International Center of Photography in New York.
SABRINA SHAFFER is preparing for her return to (and Charwei’s departure from) New York City.
www.otabo.com
EYEAM SOREEL is a poet, an artist, or a critic based in Urk. His work has received wide international acclaim and he has exhibited and “exposed himself” as he prefers to call it- in some of the world’s leading galleries. His last massive show, Nueva Galería Difusión, October 2002, Bogotá, was controversially shut down by Colombian authorities after failing a supposed health inspection. “Soreel might be the last true artist to understand that in order to make the inner the outer, matter must be modified”, as Colombian author Juan Carlos Donado has said about Soreel’s work. “In what seems to be the last attempt to truly address the issue of representation (Vorstellen), Soreel immerses the spectator in a network of references that aim to underscore what I have otherwise referred to as pathology,” stated philosopher Roy Ben Shai has recently stated in the journal Cinemaesthetics (No. 17, Spring/Summer 2006). Notwithstanding the anathema cast upon him by the artistic community –his last conference in New York ended when the audience booed Soreel off the stage for his notion of Bedford Design/Entertainment – the artist has decided to publish yet one more time.
CHARWEI TSAI enjoys riding her bike around Thompkin’s Square Park where friendly neighbors and cute dogs hang out. She now looks forward to joining her first artist’s residency in Paris on New Year’s Day in 2007. And though she does not enjoy bread and cheese so much and
prefers authentic Taiwanese beef noodle soup, (especially from Lai Lai where she hangs out exclusively) she will stick faithfully to her fortuneteller’s words and remain confident that 2007 will be another amazing one.
www.charwei.com
SU-MEI TSE is an artist based in Luxembourg and Paris. She uses various media (videos, photographs, installations, objects…) in function of the core idea she wants to express. Sound, rhythm, and music are also important components in her work, which are characterized by a placing in suspension, moments of silence and an invitation to a degree of introspection. Su-Mei’s work has recently been exhibited at Peter Blum Gallery, PS1 in New York, Albion Gallery in London, and at Casino, Forum d’Art Contemporain in Luxembourg.
~ special thanks to grandma, mom, dad, sis, keisuke, lots of aunts&uncles&cousins. sabrina, lesley, kelly, tina, sarah, ama, cristina, angelita, grigoris, faustina, terresa, marat, bebe, irene, ronnie+duke+ jason+eugene+ryan+johan+gang, lewis, juan carlos, ana maria, maria, fabrizio, yulin jie, mingwei, su-mei, jean-lou, susan, aude, andy, yoko, jason, chris liu, yonatan, alex, shunyi, nigel, adam, danny, leif, pat, and max chen. howie, whitney at altria, rita, lizzi, julien, hisham, jorge, lansing-dreiden, dan, aa, max, julian, justin, rachel, james, cat, printed matter, dimitrios, dave, nice&fit, andrea, cai+studio, federico, santi, harsha, sb2006 staff, jung, the artists’ galleries, taipei lai lai sheraton, and of course, most of all, and again, all the contributors!