The vast reservoirs of affection we have for Devendra Banhart never quite run dry – and that goes triple for visual artist Chris Cobb.
Cobb, the guy in charge of the color-coding book trick at Adobe Books a year and a half ago, is exhibiting art revolving around Banhart, a former SF Art Institute student, at New Langton Arts in San Francisco. The show opens tomorrow, July 11, and will be up through July 15.
A Chris Cobb image of Devendra Banhart and his band in action.
The artist e-mails: “I asked Devendra to send me some relics from his tour for my show and he did. I will also be showing a bunch of photos of him with the Hairy Fairy Band…. I know Devendra from when I did the Adobe Books installation where I rearranged all of the books by the color of their spine.”
Chris Cobb redesigns Adobe Books. Courtesy of www.chriscobbstudios.com.
Yeh! Fetishizing rock stars! That wonderful Banhart can stomp on our spines any time. Whoops, did I just write that? Oh well, we can guess that Karl Lagerfeld probably seconds that emotion — word has it he has accumulated quite a portfolio of Banhart pics and that’s why he asked him to play the recent Chanel runway show. Ooh la la.
Other artists to look out for at that New Langton show, titled “Five Habitats: Squatting at Langton” and curated by former CCA curator, now White Columns director Matthew Higgs: writer Dodie Bellamy will exhibit a selection of the late writer Kathy Acker’s clothes. Bellamy will discuss “Digging Through Kathy Acker’s Stuff” on July 12 at 7 p.m. – promising to meditate “upon relics, ghosts, compulsive shopping, archives, make-up, our drive to mythologize the dead, Acker’s own self-mythologizing, the struggle among followers to define Acker, bitch fights, and the numina of DNA.”
Additionally Tussle’s Alexis Georgopoulos will present ARP in the smallest space at New Langton. The gallery offers: “Georgopoulos has chosen the intimate idea of getting together with a friend or acquaintance to share a cup of tea, to take a moment, to slow down, and perhaps, reflect. Georgopoulos places a table, a tea set for two, and two speakers in the space. In this intimate, almost cocoon-like setting, the music Georgopoulos has composed as ARP will play as a backdrop. The music itself is minimal in its use of drone, repetition, inertia, tranquility/tension and is informed by a wide variety of composers, among them Charlemagne Palestine, Ralf Hutter & Florian Schneider-Esleben, Terry Riley, and Franco Battiatio.”