KRONOS Propaganda: October 2007

KRONOS: Sticking it to The Man since 2007!

"A raw, vital, open wound of art and music..."

WHERE IT'S AT...

Limbo...

HOURS:
________________
We have music shows every FRIDAY and SATURDAY night. Plus Acoustic Sundays, and music on other nights as well. Plus OPEN MIC MUSIC and POETRY NIGHTS. Plus art shows, theater, and lots of other stuff, so basically we're doing things all the time!

Address:

Limbo

Mailing Address:

KRONOS Art Gallery
Kevin Postupack, Director
PO Box 1352
Staunton, VA 24402

email: orbis500@hotmail.com

____________________________________________________________________________

WHAT WE'RE ABOUT...

KRONOS Mission Statement (Art Gallery):

When KRONOS opened its doors in April 2007 it redefined what an art gallery could be. Where once the artists were firebrands, revolutionaries, and standard bearers for a once-and-future culture, they have become timid followers of accepted trends with their eyes ever on the marketplace. Where once they rebelled against the Academy, against an entrenched art establishment that stifled creativity, they have become meek supplicants to an art world that values connections, awards, reviews, and resumes above the art itself. KRONOS repudiates all of what the art world has become. The ART is what it's about. All of it. Creativity, inspiration, the fire inside. And if it's not about changing the world it's at least about changing the individual when that spark is first ignited. And from the individual flows EVERYTHING. KRONOS believes in this spirit of rebellion; that many of the great artists of our time are laboring in obscurity, and its mission is to find them and put them on its walls. KRONOS challenges the viewer to share this belief and vision--to confront the artwork cold with the blinders removed from their eyes; with the voices of all those telling them how to think silenced once and for all. At KRONOS we think for ourselves, and we invite you to do the same.

KRONOS Mission Statement (Music Venue/Cultural Center):

Since its inception, KRONOS has evolved into an alternative cultural center, with a focus on teenagers, young people, and everyone young in heart and mind. We are progressive in our views on art and life and have become a safe haven from a world of complacency and close-mindedness. We value diversity, originality, and non-conformity and see this in our art and our music, since where else but in art and music can the life force be expressed more passionately and beautifully? We believe that when it comes down to it, the arts are one of the things that make life worth living, and our mission is to continue to add something beautiful and necessary to a world that at times doesn't seem to know how desperately it needs this.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

WHAT WE'VE DONE...

KRONOS as cultural center and music venue features events of all kinds to get the public involved in art and culture. Since our inception we've shown the work of over a hundred artists, and have featured bands and musicians from all over the country during our music nights. In addition we've had theater and poetry events, political events, martial arts exhibitions, and vaudeville. And we've also published two magazines (SAMIZDAT and THE METEOR), as well as a book of poetry from our publishing branch KRONOS Art Gallery Press.

____________________________________________________________________________________

WHAT WE LOOK LIKE... (This slideshow is from our original space. We hope to have a slideshow of our brand new space sometime soon.)

(Slideshow from KRONOS's Grand Opening Celebration on April 13 [Friday the 13th], 2007. In homage to Marcel Duchamp we put the lights out in "The Show" room for one hour and passed out flashlights to everyone so they would experience the art and the space in a totally different way!*)

*(Our second show had a case of Slinkies hanging from the ceiling in "The Show" room, creating a veritable forest through which the patrons had to wend their way to see the art on the walls. And when they brushed against the Slinkies they [the Slinkies] made very cool sounds and swayed back and forth!)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

WHAT WE WANT...

"Your theories don't interest me--put up or shut up! Let's see your work."
--Jackson Pollock

As the place for visionary, outsider, and emerging artists, KRONOS seeks artists in:

Painting--Mixed Media--Sculpture--Photography

abstract
avant-garde
controversial
cutting edge
disturbing
experimental
omniist
political
subversive
unique representational

We feature a solo artist in our gallery six times a year.

Send a CD or a link to your website. We respond promptly, although we will only contact you if we want to show your work, so please don't contact us after your initial query (unless we contact you). We regret that bad experiences in the past have made this policy a necessity.

KRONOS considers an artist solely on the work which she or he decides to present. KRONOS DOESN'T DO RESUMES! Any resumes sent will be burned in a ritualistic blaze; the artwork submitted subsequently shunned; the CD sent, cut up and assimilated into a giant mosaic.

KRONOS also seeks cool musicians and bands featuring ORIGINAL music for our MUSIC NIGHTS (see KRONOS LIVE MUSIC!), and happening poets for our POETRY NIGHTS.

And if you haven't figured out by now that KRONOS is unlike any other art gallery ON EARTH then you can GFY! And all you snobby gallery owners and artists who think you're too good for us can KISS OUR COLLECTIVE ASS!

"KRONOS Pollock" painting on landing page was painted by Charlene Schillinger, Samone Riddle, & Erin Taylor outside the gallery on a glorious April afternoon!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

OLYMPIC$ 4 $ALE!

It's hard to believe that at one time the Olympics were all about the amateur. The storied integrity of the amateur athlete, living like a monk in order to train in obscurity for that one moment of glory that came every four years. It wasn't about the "professionals", who back in the day were thought to sully whatever sport they played. (Think the early days of golf and Bobby Jones, who chose to never turn pro!) Professionals were all about money and endorsements and all the other distractions that were believed to be anathema to the true amateur athlete, his spirit, his soul, and indeed the spirit and soul of the Olympics itself! So it was with this in mind that I offer you this... The swimmer Michael Phelps just became the greatest Olympian ever, winning 8 gold medals in a single Olympics, surpassing Mark Spitz. And just a day or so since the historic event there is already a DVD on the market all about Michael Phelps's 8 gold medals!(!!) The money-making machine is ever-alert, ever-opportunistic, like a cancer transforming everything into dollar signs.

____________________________________________________________________________________

BIG CITY ART GALLERIES' MORAL BANKRUPTCY!!!

KRONOS found out about an EXTREMELY DISTURBING thing today in the world of art that all artists should be aware of. (Go to todayinart.com for April 2, 2008 to learn more.) The Walter & Mcbean Galleries (a part of the San Francisco Art Institute) recently held an exhibit that is reprehensible on so many levels as to be mind-boggling. A so-called "artist" named adel abdessemed was given an exhibit there which consisted of videos he made of a goat, a horse, a fawn and other animals chained to a wall and then bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer. The art gallery published the following blurb about the "artist" and his exhibit:

"Each killing occurs so quickly that it's difficult to determine definitively what has happened. Do these incidents represent slaughter or sacrifice? What are their social, cultural, moral, and political implications? Or are such questions now verging on irrelevance, as if something else altogether were taking place (or about to), something wholly other, unforeseen, unexpected? At once intimate and spectacular, abdessemed's work aims to convert the banal into the dramatic. Transforming everyday materials and images into unexpected and sometimes shocking expressions, his inventive gestures, as if by alchemy, work to undo dominant modes of perception and entrenched sociocultural norms--they work, in short, to generate new relevance for radical ideas and actions. Actively defying social, cutlural, moral, and religious taboos, abdessemed contrives to subvert common sense and knowledge, received wisdom, and established biopolitical systems."

Now if this isn't the BIGGEST CROCK OF SHIT that KRONOS has ever read! Once again, these are snuff films of animals being bludgeoned to death in the name of art! From this perspective I guess one can define Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz as art, and that adel abdessemed is in fact a "Mengelist"! This to KRONOS is almost unbelievable! (And once again the only kind of "modern art" to make it to the mainstream media is gratuitous shock-art while the REAL ARTISTS are still ignored en masse.) KRONOS deplores this utterly, and we urge thinking people everywhere to write letters of reproach and condemnation to the Walter Mcbean Galleries (exhibitions@sfai.edu) and the David Zwirner Gallery in NYC (angela@davidzwirner.com) which is unfortunate enough to represent adel abdessemed.

In closing, we include a copy of the letter KRONOS Art Gallery sent to the above two galleries:

Are you kidding me with your bullshit blurb regarding this so-called "artist's" horrendous exhibit (rightfully canceled--but the question is raised as to what "gallery" would be so fucked-up as to entertain this as "art" in the first place)? Instead of an exhibit and words of praise this freak should be arrested and forced to undergo psychological examination. People who kill defenseless animals without remorse, especially in a ritualistic way, are not artists but SOCIOPATHS! It just proves once again that the so-called high-end big city art galleries have their heads so far up their asses that they wouldn't know art if it bludgeoned THEM to death!... Now THERE'S an idea!

KRONOS Art Gallery

_____________________________________________________________________________________

They Still Don't Get It!

In 1911, the photographer Alfred Stieglitz invited a young Pablo Picasso to his (Stieglitz's) gallery "291" in New York City. It was to be Picasso's first one-man show. New York critics were outraged, and called the upstart Spaniard's work among other things, "the craziest emanations of a disordered mind, the gibberings of a lunatic!" The works were priced at between twenty and forty dollars, and only one sold to the public--a drawing Picasso made when he was 12. "I was ashamed for America," said Stieglitz, "to have to return them all." The entire collection of early Picassos could have been had for $2000. Stieglitz even went so far as to approach the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, asserting that it would be wonderful to keep all these paintings together in the States. The director responded that "such mad pictures will never mean anything in America" and he politely declined.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

This entry has been relocated to ART GALLERY 101 as "Lesson Twelve"...

_____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Please, for God's sake, kill yourself! You've fooled a lot of people over the years since you decided there was money to be made in art. And I suppose to give the devil his due your one true creation was that one need not be an artist at all to succeed fabulously in the NYC art world. But without a scintilla of artistry, artistic vision, or artist's soul the question keeps shouting itself out loud, "How the fuck did you do it?" They say a fool and his money are often parted (which I believe is your artist's statement), but that other saying that "you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time" hasn't caught up with you yet. Apparently, at pulling wool over eyes you are up there with the best of 'em, as evinced by the recent story about you in the new yorker (which from hereon will be written in the lower case in protest). Yes, you are a huckster of epic proportions! A true mountebank. A snake oil salesman par excellence. The mystery that remains is why you were allowed to happen in the first place, and why for God's sake and the sake of art you are allowed to continue. Surely there must be at least one America-despising terrorist group out there who instead of killing innocents en masse can focus on you, Jeff Koons, as symbolic of all that is wrong with America and launch a jihad against you (and hopefully blow up your "artwork" in the process). You say you are personally "bringing art into the 21st century". How very modest of you. The world is indeed made for those without a shred of self-awareness or self-examination; they can say anything and believe it to be true. Please, kill yourself! Kill yourself! But perhaps there is a reason for your unfathomable success. When was it when you made the pact with Satan? Was it one long afternoon of ticket-taking at the MOMA when you wished upon a dark star, and suddenly your vision of giant cuddly kittens (that you didn't even make yourself but hired out to others) became reality. And then there was the giant hedge in the shape of a puppy, and of course Michael Jackson and his monkey. Yes, you give kitsch a bad name and whenever the word "artist" is used alongside yours the English language is further demeaned. "The artist Jeff Koons..." That was the sound of me vomiting. Now I know you are a relatively young man but I urge you to take up smoking (200 packs a day should do it). In fact, I'll buy you the first carton. And if you ever decide to visit Virginia please come to KRONOS, but give me a day or two's notice, as I will round up a camerman and videotape myself kicking the living shit out of you. Being beaten like a yard dog on YOUTUBE may be the only artistic thing you'll ever do.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

President Bush just vetoed an anti-torture bill that would prohibit "waterboarding" and other "alternative" interrogation techniques.

Well, since our fearful leader has given the green light on torture, we here at KRONOS felt we should get in the spirit of things and torture everyone with this work from our personal fave, "the artist" JEFF KOONS... ENJOY!!!

_____________________________________________________________________________________

According to recent statistics, most of the world's billionaires and CEO's are men. Great! So here's how to solve all the world's problems. Infiltrate Victoria's Secret with Fem(inist)bots, and then when the rich guys exhibit their stereotypical behavior of dating and marrying 20-year-old hotties 30 or 40 years their junior they will really be inviting sleeper cells into their gargantuan mansions. And at a given signal all the fake Victoria's Secret plants (or rather implants) will simultaneously refuse all sexual congress with their Viagra-laced rich old guy hubbies until (and here is where we insert all the pressing problems of the world color-coded to each specific billionaire and CEO) said Viagra-laced rich old guy hubbies right the wrongs they have done in amassing their obnoxious and obscene wealth at the expense of everyone else and the earth.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

(Click on text to enlarge)

_____________________________________________________________________________________

YOU WANTA ANTAGONIZE ME
ANTAGONIZE ME MOTHERFUCKER
GET IN THE RING MOTHERFUCKER
AND I'LL KICK YOUR BITCHY LITTLE ASS
PUNK

I DON'T LIKE YOU, I JUST HATE YOU
I'M GONNA KICK YOUR ASS, OH YEAH! OH YEAH!
(--Axl Rose)

Or, to put it another way...

BREAK YOUR SPINE LIKE A JELLYFISH
KICK YOUR ASS MAKE YOU SMELL YOUR SHIT
(--Ice Cube)

Or still another, more civilized way...

____________________________________________________________________________________

Our fair city had a renowned luminary from the art world last night--Janine Antoni, an artist from New York City. She brought with her some really prestigious awards (which was why the local college brought her here in the first place). Aside from painting with her head (as the poster below attests) she also does artwork with lots of other body parts as well. As to whether the resulting artwork is any good or not is another story. (But did I mention she has those prestigious awards?) She also has a derriere that is reminiscent of Catherine Zeta-Jones in the trailer for that awful movie "Entrapment". In fact, if we could pan up the poster below we would see all the people behind her staring intently at her butt. But like all good artists she doesn't want to be pigeon-holed, so in a more recent piece she lies naked in a bathtub, all attractive and slim, while nearby cows walk around, ruminate, and occasionally stop by for a drink of her bath water. This raises several questions. One, how exactly is this art? And two, would she still get these really prestigious awards and exclusive NYC gallery representation if she were fat and unattractive? I submit that Janine Antoni is the founder of a new school of modern art--"Attractivism"--where one can do whatever pops into their heads as long as they look really hot while doing it! After all, the process is what it's about, and who wouldn't want to see some slim hot naked babe lying in a bathtub or gyrating around the floor in a black skin-tight cat suit!

______________________________________________________________________________________

MONEY FOR NUTHIN'!

"That ain't workin'! That's the way to do it! Money for nuthin'!" So goes the line from the old Dire Straits song. In the news recently is the 20-something college dropout who founded "Facebook" and turned down an offer of one billion dollars from Yahoo for its purchase. Now what exactly is "Facebook" one must ask, other than a glorified bulletin board? The people who join it do all the work! They put up all the blurbs about how they like bagels but dislike croissants. They post all the photos from their latest vacation, photos that everyone on Earth is just dying to see! In fact, the entire contents of Facebook is provided by its members, yet somehow this entrepreneurial genius 20-something college dropout gets the one billion. Oh I forgot, he turned it down (as experts say it's worth at least ten!) My question is, and imagine this shouted through one of those 20 foot-long Alpine horns from a mountain top in the Swiss Alps, "HOW THE FUCK CAN SOMEONE MAKE A BILLION DOLLARS BY IN ESSENCE DOING NOTHING?!" In today's world, if you make an Internet template on which teenagers and college students can talk about last night's date then you are in line for a mega-bonanza. Yet as far as I know, no one ever asks, "What exactly have they created?", or rather, "Is Life really that good?" It certainly is for the two 20-somethings who made "Life is Good" t-shirts and other endless paraphernalia. Only in America can someone become multi-millionaires by marketing a completely banal, insipid, vacant catch-phrase and having the masses gobble it up. So I must pose the question: What does this do for you, those of you who proudly wear this ubiquitous slogan on your t-shirts? Does it announce to everyone that you are woefully out of touch with world events? Life is indeed not that good in most places. (Ever hear of Baghdad?) How 'bout life is good for a Mexican immigrant? For an African with AIDS? For a woman in the United States concerned about her reproductive rights? The list is endless. Or perhaps the "Life is Good" t-shirt is a testament to pure narcissism: "Who gives a shit about anyone else! For me, life is good!" To greed: "I made my million, and I deserve it, so life is good, goddamn it! (And fuck the lazy slackers!") To solipsism: "I am so self-absorbed as to be the center of my own universe, and as God looked out, so do I and say, 'Life is Good!'" These things make me wonder if Americans are perhaps the stupidest, most gullible (and egocentric) people on the planet. But maybe I'm just going about it the wrong way. Perhaps I should start my own Internet template. Call it "Life Sucks" where everyone bitches and moans about how shitty things are, and everyone will log on to everyone else's site to see who has it worse off than they do! Or perhaps I can call it "My Self-Indulgent Life with Lots of Crappy Boring Photos", and then I can just sit around and wait for Yahoo to make me an offer...

____________________________________________________________________________________

KRONOS Propaganda

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

NELLY KATE @ KRONOS!!!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

TAE KWON DO & SAMURAI SWORD Exhibition!!!

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

FYI

MERCH TABLE

GFY

EVERYTHING YOU ALWAYS WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT KRONOS BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK...

WEBSITES

About Me

Blog Archive