BlackBook Magazine

Drawn from the far corners of the Big Apple, four artists share bounty from their compulsions to create.

Jay Gard

Jay Gard’s journey leading to a solo gallery show of cryptically crafted hardware began with an art school prank in his native Germany. “It was a very conservative, old East German art school,” the 23-year-old sculptor explains, “where there are many ugly bronze statues on the campus. I removed a statue of a sunbathing woman, and replaced it with a new one made out of copper.” The faculty, unimpressed by Gard’s rebel act, and angered that he damaged the original statue (“there was a little dent on an arm… I couldn’t pay for the repair… ”) booted him from campus. Gard took the opportunity to travel to America and quickly landed a job as multimedia artist Tom Sachs’s assistant. “He teaches me to work faster, to be less precise than we’re taught to be in Germany,” Gard says of Sachs, who has become a mentor, introducing Gard to owners of the Half Gallery (writer Bill Powers, designer Andy Spade, writer James Frey). Inspired by “watching and studying New Yorkers,” Gard taps into themes of ambition, power and control in his disarming, yet volatile renderings of real and imaginative industrial components. The above installation, “plywood,” is a New Yorker’s spoof on the cheap construction of so many edifices in L.A. (thus the appropriation of the legendary Hollywood sign). Explaining the meaning of “guitar parts,” one of his favorite pieces in the show, Gard decodes the goal of communication, 21st century-style: “It has a button for tone, a button for volume. When you hit the right volume and tone, you can get what you want.”

Stockholm-born electro-pop songstress Lykke Li has big plans for the future: bankruptcy, literary snobbery and rehab.

Life on the road for Swedish pop singer Lykke Li means never having to say you’re bored. “I just saw my schedule, and I’m not going to have time to breathe for like the next year, but whatever, I love this.” With her plaintively percolating debut CD Youth Novels attracting an intense following at home and abroad, the feisty 22-year-old siren plans on going the way of so many legends before her: “First, I need to become an alcoholic, go to rehab and lose all my money,” she says, and then reconsiders. “Wait, I don’t have any money. So I’d have to get it first, and then lose it.”

An island oasis, poised to become the world’s newest art mecca, aims to bring curatorial VIPs to the UAE.

Brace yourselves -- the Louvre and the Guggenheim are moving to Abu Dhabi. A Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim and a Jean Nouvel-helmed Louvre will soon be cultural hot spots on Saadiyat Island, a 10.4 square mile “island of happiness” (both literal translation and marketing slogan) less than half a mile from Abu Dhabi’s shores. The island, which has, until now, been totally undeveloped, will over the next 15 years become a luxury community complete with residences, hotels and resorts, museums, restaurants and shops, a performing arts center and even a New York University satellite campus. While its main purpose is to boost tourism to the UAE, developers expect a year-round population of 150,000.

Photographer Leigh Ledare doesn't simply picture his mother naked. He also takes naked pictures of her.

Ansel Adams liked nature. Terry Richardson prefers the informality of the point-and-shoot. Leigh Ledare, well, he digs his mom. The photographer recently released a book of images, Pretend You’re Actually Alive, which features his mother, a 59-year-old ballerina-turned stripper, in various stages of undress. Some of the pictures include lingerie and boyfriends; many feature a come-hither gaze that wouldn’t be so jarring if the photographer weren’t her son. Ledare, 32, says the project began about eight years ago, when he paid his mother a visit in Seattle. “Basically,” he says, “I arrived home one Christmas, and I hadn’t seen her in a year, and she came to the door completely naked.”

Photographer Ryan McGinley took to the road last year, touring America with three assistants, 16 models, and over 4,000 rolls of film. The result? 150,000 shots of young, naked bodies, which were then pared down to 50 for his show “I Know Where the Summer Goes,” named after an early B-side by Belle and Sebastian (see number three). Here, McGinley gives us the soundtrack to his current cross-country tour.

Perhaps you've already thrilled to our "Rich Man's Frug" evening-wear fashion shoot from BlackBook's August 2008 issue. But why stop with just a few photos of hot young models prancing about in ritzy duds? Check out our behind the scenes gallery of the shoot, which is guaranteed to include lots of strutting and at least one BlackBerry.

Sure, you've already seen the interview and photo shoot with Ugly Betty star America Ferrera from BlackBook's August 2008 issue. But for dessert, check out a few extemporaneous shots taken during the session at New York's Socialista. You may experience a little blurring, plus a little too much special-effects smoke. Real Americans won't object, though.

On the subject of art, you’ve heard the skeptic standing in front of, say, an Alexander Liberman “Circle Painting,” ponder, “Well, I know what I like. But is it art?” Or is it just a circle that a Montessori geometry teacher may have rendered in oil on canvas with a protractor for a brush? When is a urinal a urinal, and not a Duchamp “readymade,” and so on?

Can reality TV stomach Margaret Cho’s raunchy realism? The notorious all-American girl lets it all out on "The Cho Show," debuting this month on VH1. Below, a prim list of the top ten things she hates.

1 Static electricity. I hate it. I just fucking hate it -- especially when I’m taking my computer out of the X-ray machine at airport security. I wish I had oven mitts because it always gives me a big shock. Sparks come off and shit. I can’t even express in words how much I hate it.

Give 'em the old razzle-dazzle with an ensemble of fall's most elegant evening wear. Smoking! Photography by Nelson Simoneau, styling by Bryan Levandowski. And as a bonus, check out our behind-the-scenes gallery from this shoot.