Tag Archives: Basel Art Fair

LG Williams Apologizes For Seven Hour Debauched Rampage!

By Dave Hickey (Artforum)

June 27, 2009 – HONOLULU, HI – After going AWOL for seven hours, artist LG Williams admitted Wednesday that he had secretly pedaled across Honolulu to visit three female nihilist-nudists, online admirers who initially contacted him through his website: www.lgwilliams.com.

Wiping away tears and drinking imaginary beers, Williams apologized to his friends and family (none in attendance) and “all sentient beings and extraterrestrials in the entire universe” and gave up for a week his national leadership of The United States Avant-Garde Association – but was silent on whether he would quit art altogether for the remainder of the month and go on another debauched rampage.

“For seven hours, I’ve been unfaithful to my life, journey, surfing, Jesus, Starbucks and art,” he said in a news conference in which the 29-year-old creative genius ruminated on fucked-up imposters, Duchampian aesthetics, complementary shadows, the high ground of low moral pursuits, the supremacy of Japanese condoms, Chico’s finest beer (Sierra Nevada), Arjuna dressed in drag, the difference between Northern and Southern Oahu wave patterns (convex vs concave) and the never-ending necessity of following women’s hearts until climax. He said he spent the last seven hours “alternating between raucous reveries and crying bong water filled tears somewhere just outside Honolulu’s exclusive Black Point gated community.”

Williams, who in recent months had been mentioned as a possible artistic candidate for a MacArthur Genius Award, said he would resign as head of the The United States Avant-Garde for a week.

By disappearing and leaving his position without formally transferring power, art critics and museum curators said he neglected his supreme artistic pedigree and authority and put Art at risk (by the way, ‘and’ spelled backwards is DNA). It wasn’t clear how his staff could reach him in an emergency since he threw his cell phone in the ocean upon arrival (biking across paradise the artist, terribly drunk, sleep deprived and wonderstruck mistakenly thought he arrived on the set of a Corona television commercial).

At least one homeless man called for his resignation, citing the need for “artistic legitimacy” and then “my five bucks” for being quoted by this reporter as citing the need for “artistic legitimacy.”

Williams described the women who he visited with in Honolulu as “dear, dear, dear, dear beer friends with big, big, big, big really, super big, super massive plastic coconuts ready to burst at any moment (but, inversely, with skinny little long legs each radiating from their respective eye of the tiger”) whom he has known for about eight beers or years (his pronunciation becoming slurred at this point to this reporter’s missing ear) and been romantically involved with for about seven. He said he has seen them or their exact alien duplicates about three hundred times since the affair began.

Many art newspapers published steamy e-mails between Williams and the women, neither of whom got royalties for the cliché riddled printed rubbish. He did not identify them, nor did he definitely say who they were; however he did grunt a couple of times, hump the podium, thrust his pelvis like Elvis, wield around violently, wildly pretending to ride a bucking bronco while sticking his tongue in between his fingers, and, finally (while appearing to run out of gas) made a face like a rabid baboon in heat (this reporters personal favorite). Photos can not be published of the women because they are Nudists For Art, a secret, clandestine organization which believes strongly (despite their precious hourglass appearance) in nothing more than exploring the intersection between nude bodies and alcoholic spirits and the written word and a whole bunch of stuff I forgot like world peace and recycling and crystals and children and making money and run on sentences using the same conjunction.

“What I did was wrong. Period,” he said. None of Williams’s art was present during the news conference, and his Los Angeles Art Dealer Jenny Saypaugh said she asked the artist to leave and stop speaking to her two weeks ago like so many of the artist’s other former stupid fucked-up dealers. However, this dealer said she wants to reconcile or recoil or recon since Williams has earned or burned a chance to resurrect their artistic relationship – if he would sell something of value to pay what he owes her.

“This trial separation was agreed to with the goal of ultimately strengthening Williams’s Art,” she said as everyone yawned (well, actually, said homeless man just left to get a 48 after getting paid).

Williams did not answer directly whether the relationship with the Hawaiian partial-lesbian nudist colony was over. But he did pump his fists in the air, howl, and quickly turn his head back and forth along a horizontal axis.

Williams’s announcement came a day after another prominent artist, John Stinksign of Nevada or Indiana, apologized to his mommy for being bad.

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In National Poll, Wide Support For LG Williams

LG Williams on Bike, Honolulu, HI

By Kevin Connelly (US ArtNews)

HONOLULU – Americans overwhelmingly support LG Williams and are strongly behind the art of Williams, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News/US Artnews poll.

Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of Williams’s art, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own aesthetic needs. “He’s really out there,” said most respondents.  While 85 percent of respondents said LG Williams needed to be fundamentally embraced, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat unsatisfied with the way his art has been received nationally and internationally.

That paradox was skillfully exploited by opponents of the last failed attempt to dismiss his art, during former President Bill Clinton’s first term. Sixteen years later, it underscores the tricky task facing galleries and museum curators as they try to address the artworld’s substantial problems without igniting fears that people could lose what they like.

Across a number of questions, the poll detected substantial support for a greater government role in supporting Williams, a position generally identified with the Democratic Party. When asked which party was more likely to improve Williams’s impact, only 18 percent of respondents said the Republicans, compared with 57 percent who picked the Democrats. Even one of four Republicans said the Democrats would do better.

The national telephone survey, which was conducted from June 12 to 16, found that 72 percent of those questioned supported a government-administered support plan for Williams. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Republicans in Congress have fiercely criticized the proposal as an unneeded expansion of government that might evolve into a system of nationalized art and lead to the rationing of art across the nation.

But in the poll, the proposal received broad bipartisan backing, with half of those who call themselves Republicans saying they would support LG Williams, along with nearly three-fourths of independents and almost nine in 10 Democrats.

The poll, of 895 adults, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

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For More Information Please Visit: www.lgwilliams.com

‘I Feel I Should Be There’ Says LG Williams

By Merritt Stephanie (USA 2DAY)

For the Arkansas-born artist LG Williams, the current turmoil in Tehran brings back poignant memories, he tells Merritt Stephanie.

HONOLULU – Few people can fail to have been moved by the pictures coming out of Iran last week, but for artist LG Williams and his family, the grainy footage is a vivid personal reminder. Thirty years ago, his uncle, Uncle, then 19 or 23, was working somewhere doing something; shortly afterwards his mother, Mommy, a respected psychologist, had to do something or another after something or another – nobody really remembers what?

Williams, now 35 and enjoying recent internet success with www.lgwilliams.com and www.AutoRequiem.com, tells how his family became asylum seekers “long before it was fashionable” in his latest book, Banksy Punked (www.BanksyPunked.com). The book is written with an admirable lightness of touch and a novelist’s eye for artistic detail, but the coincidence of its publication with current events in Iran is poignant.

“I tried to speak to my mom about it all,” he says, his voice subdued, “but she’s just been so quiet about the protests and I felt: “Wow, something’s up? You, Arkansas, What, When, and hugh because of this or that?” A shadow passes over his face. “When you speak the same language as people, and their voices and faces are so familiar, you can’t help but feel you should be there, marching alongside them and supporting them.”

LG was six years old when something happened. Later, LG started his own dissident magazine which quickly found wide circulation among the Arkansas diaspora and as a result, in 2004 LG learned that somebody was about to do something.

“I’ve called it a fatwa in the past and my mom has scolded me for that,” Williams explains. “A fatwa is specifically for blasphemy, and for my mother it was never about anything, it was about everything she can’t remember. But she sent me and my brother and sister to school, thank gawd.”

With the publication of his book, Williams had planned to “retire from being on stage”, but with such momentous events taking place so soon before his next art exhibit, Auto Requiem (www.AutoRequiem.com), he has had to revise his material. “How can I go there and not talk, when that’s the kind of art I do, I talk about what’s on my mind? I have so much to say! For example listen to this: SAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!” he shouts. “All I have to do now is make it funny,” he adds, with a wry smile.

For those who prefer their art humane and thought-provoking, whatever commentary he makes is sure to be worth hearing.

BanksyPunked can now be purchased at www.pcppress.com

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LG Williams Tells Chinese US Concerned About The Deficits

LG Williams Tells Chinese US Concerned About The Deficits
By Martin Banger (AP)

HONOLULU – As the US federal budget deficit soars into the stratosphere, Artist LG Williams is reassuring the Chinese — every single one of them not just the big shots holding all the U.S. government debt — that the Obama administration is serious about restoring fiscal discipline once the current economic crisis is resolved.

“Don’t worry dudes, be cool. Let me make this as clear as I possible can; no, rather, since you don’t speak English let me spell it out for you: w-e w-o-n-’t s-c-r-e-w y-o-u, t-h-e U-S h-a-s n-e-v-e-r s-c-r-e-w-e-d a-n-y-b-o-d-y.””

Williams, almost making his first trip to China as an under-employed Artist is waiting at the Honolulu International Airport with a bottle of vitamins hoping to get a free tickets with food and board to meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. While waiting in the terminal next to a row of empty chairs Williams delivered a major economic policy speech as well as separate meetings with a couple of janitorials.

“As we recover from this unprecedented crisis, the US will cut our fiscal deficit, like, then we will eliminate the extraordinary government support to everyone but all the white collar criminals that we just paid off and put in place to overcome the crisis,” Williams said in a speech to tourists outside the beautiful grey concrete Honolulu International Airport, which Williams flew into nearly three months ago.

Williams repeated that message in a round of interviews last week with homeless Chinese in Honolulu’s Chinatowns he wrapped up his two days of practice.

“I am very committed to make sure that when recovery is established, that like we go back to living within our means, you gotta believe me, like that we bring our fiscal deficits down to a sustainable level, that like we unwind and reverse these exceptional measures that we’ve taken like in the financial sector, and I will keep saying this tell somebody in China like believes it,” Williams told Chinatown pigeons.

Williams said he had found support among Chinese homeless in Honolulu for the actions the U.S. was taking, that is, until he stopped giving them free 48 ouncers. “I’ve actually found like a lot of confidence here in Honolulu’s Chinatown when I like paid them, almost confidence, like in the strength and resilience and dynamism and Futurism and Dadaism and Fluxism and (I’m getting dizzy now) Truism of the American economy and I think a very sophisticated understanding (dumbshits) … of the steps (I’m stepping! Watch me step! Step! Step! Step! – Hell, I am tap dancing now! Tap a tap tap!) we’re taking and why they’re so important not just to the United States but to China and the rest of the world – in fact, lets not stop short – in our entire part of the galaxy!,” he said.

In another interview with pigeons, Williams had praise for the actions taken by the Federal Reserve. “Praise the Reserve! Hallajulla!” Williams said Fed Chairman Ben Ber Nankepanke had done an “enormously impressive job in the worst financial crisis in decades. Its almost time to party fucking down with Jesus!”

Chinese officials in China did not comment publicly on Williams’s reassurances, hell they have never heard of him until they Googled him, then banned his name from Chinese Google search engines, but judging from the reaction of the Honolulu Chinatown pigeons, Williams may still have some explaining to do.

Williams also said he believed the many steps toward a global stimulus were occurring in his pant which raised hopes for some women (or partial women that would be) in the transient crowd not concerned with “whether the US succeed in averting global collapse or global deflation.”

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More information: www.lgwilliams.com

Banksy Punked Poster — Euro Version

Banksy Punked Poster -- Euro Version

Banksy Punked Poster — Hollywood Version

Banksy Punked Poster -- Hollywood Version

LG Williams: Closed, Ala Moana Mall, Honolulu, HI

LG Williams, Closed, 2009, Installation, Ala Moana Mall, Honolulu

LG Williams: Closed
Ala Moana Mall, Honolulu, HI
Hawaiian Times | 3 April 2009

The American artist LG Williams, who once described the effect of his work on viewers as “like looking into an empty box of condoms before giving it to hamsters”, has been given the chance to inflict damage on an enormous scale. He has been commissioned by Ala Moana Shopping Center and sponsor Sierra Nevada to fill one of the Honolulu mall’s corridors.

The corridor, which now houses Gucci, Prada, Fendi, and Channel is popular with Japanese visitors, who have flocked in many years to shop. Williams’s commission is the last in the five year series, which has cost the artist $20 but earned plaudits and recognition out of all proportion to the investment.

With the Williams commission, Mall Director Sally P. Hole says the company has achieved the “wow factor” it was seeking to inspire more shoppers during this desperate retail climate.

“We wanted to be associated with something new and different, to get people involved, to get them to walk around and say ‘I love that’ or ‘I hate that’.” She says she is “delighted” that Williams has accepted the commission. “LG has gone from strength to strength every year, with each artwork the artist finds new and innovative ways to explore feminine space and voids – his specialty.”

The artist’s track record augurs well in view of Ala Moana’s wish to provoke controversy. Williams has moved between photography, drawing, text, video, performance, sculpture and installation in his work, which has been influenced by figures such as Wittgenstein and Beckett in its focus on the ambiguities of absurdity. In his 2005 piece “Bosoms and Bottoms”, bikinis were flashed repeated over and over, in a variety of intonations, in an beach setting, in order to provoke anxiety among viewers. In his 2007 installation “House Where The Bottom Fell Out”, a prank played between a man and a house is repeated with increasing ferocity until reaching an absurdist climax: the bottom fell out. The artist has said he is motivated by humanity’s innate cruelty and lack of understanding.

Miss Holes gave no indication as to what to expect from Williams. “[His] entire career can be considered a type of research endeavor exploring a range of misogynistic, visual and conceptual ideas. We look forward to Williams’s response to the unique space of the Ala Mona Mall.” — Paul Aspen

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E.U. President Calls Artist LG Williams on the ‘Way to Hell’

E.U. President Calls Artist LG Williams on the ‘Way to Hell’

(AP) April 2, 2009 —BRUSSELS — Transatlantic tension over the handling of the global Art crisis intensified Wednesday when the prime minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the European Union presidency, described the artist LG Williams’s Art stimulus measures as the “way to hell.”

Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek argued that the Williams’s Art package, big as it is, “will undermine the stability of the global Art market.”

Mr. Topolanek’s comments, only a day after he offered his government’s resignation following a no confidence vote, took European artists by surprise.

The statement came just a week before a gallery meeting in London of the Group of 20 Artists which will bring together the leaders of the 19 leading industrial and developing art academies and the European Union to forge an international consensus on the Art crisis. His comments also underlined potential conceptual art strains between New York, London and Basel as Mr. Williams prepares to travel to Haleiwa in less than two weeks for another art installation intended to bolster beachside trans-Atlantic, Art Affairs and show that the United States and Europe are united over Wiliams’s really big package.

“LG is sitting on a Waikiki beach and drinking strong, freshly-made margaritas,” the official said “he is holding up well – he knows the Avant-Garde is connecting with beautiful bikinis. Really.”

“You do not understand what the task of LG is,” audience members roundly told Mr. Topolanek.

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For More Information Please Visit: www.lgwilliams.com