OUT OF REACH Randy Regier’s toys.
|
The latest incarnation of Randy Regier's NuPenny Toy Store installation is sequestered in Portland's Bayside neighborhood, tucked under an overhang behind the white-washed New System Laundry building on Parris Street. The project is a spark in the dark amid concrete and parking lots, its most exciting aspect the prospect of stumbling upon it, bewildered. While discreetly advertised in the perfectly appropriated font of the New Systems signage, the installation stands as an intervention in shifty Bayside, its potential energy abounds. After garnering attention from renowned tech/culture blog Boing Boing last week, Parris Street should be getting some extra foot traffic, and it's well deserved.
The toy store is rendered completely in grayscale, with zippy toy robots, spacecrafts, and automobiles fabricated by Regier in his trademark vintage aesthetic lining the walls and seemingly launching into space from the countertops. Complete with register and office supplies, the store appears ready for sales, but as we learned from First Friday's "Grand Not Opening," the shop will remain closed. The offerings are only visible through the front doors and a small side window, aided by a convex mirror that reflects the un-seeable interior.
In his artist statement Regier writes: "[P]erhaps most compelling for me was to attempt to create a physical place and occurrence that appears as if in a dream — familiar and believable yet somehow out of our grasp — in the physical sense but also slightly out of reach of our collective memory. Because of this the door of the NuPenny store is always locked and all text has been rendered in Teletype punch-tape code." This code, elusive as text always seems to be in dreams, can be translated using a code card found on the store's Web site. A penny left on the floor 10 inches from the front door more immediately breaks the divisions of dream and reality, grayscale and color, and memory and present, taunting the viewer with its access — an ambassador to Regier's multi-dimensional dreamscape.
Related:
Snacks, Phoenix critic wins grant, Ghost stories, More 
- Snacks
The most substantial item in the assortment of dances by the Trey McIntyre Project last weekend was an oddly proportioned 20-minute meditation on climate change and Glacier National Park. McIntyre, whose company appeared at the ICA as part of the CRASHarts series, has gotten a lot of press exposure as an up-and-coming choreographer with serious ideas.
- Phoenix critic wins grant
It was announced earlier this week that Phoenix contributing writer Greg Cook's art blog, the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research, has been awarded a $30,000 endowment from the Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant Program, which rewards "commitment to the craft of writing and the advancement of critical discourse on contemporary visual art."
- Ghost stories
For all of the excitement that surrounded Wilco on the Maine State Pier or Sufjan Stevens at Port City Music Hall or the various sold-out Ray LaMontagne shows of the past year, there is no question that last Sunday's Phish show at the Cumberland County Civic Center was the biggest thing to hit our fair city in a very long time.
- Spelling-bound
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee is a harmless enough little confection for, say, when you've had enough high-protein Shakespeare.
- The Carols of Christmas
One can't just break out into Christmas carols, even in this warm and fuzzy season.
- Joyful noise
From the clamorous arrival of some ghetto hot wheels to a scorching gospel finale, Best of Both Worlds warms up The Winter's Tale . The third entry in American Repertory Theater's Shakespeare Exploded! Festival, this sizzling and soulful gloss on the Bard's late romance mines Shakespeare's time- and realm-hopping fairy tale.
- Wanting more
After its triumphant traversal of the complete Béla Bartók string quartets at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Borromeo Quartet was back for a free 20th- and 21st-century program at Jordan Hall, leading off with an accomplished recent piece by the 24-year-old Egyptian composer Mohammed Fairuz, Lamentation and Satire.
- Wild about Harry
What I want to do — what most photographers want to do — is write Harry Callahan a love letter. At the very least, he deserves an elaborate thank-you note for innovating or validating 80 percent of the successful photographs we ever took.
- Looking DuBack
Looking backward, history seems a whole lot more orderly than it does while you're living it.
- Séance
Rachel Berwick's art is concerned with conjuring ghosts — in particular the spirits of creatures or peoples near extinction or already died out.
- Book Review: The Tin Drum
There are — and have always been — two Günter Grasses. There's the Grass who was born in Danzig and the Grass who was born in Gdansk.
- Photos: Boston expressionism at Danforth Museum
Photos of the works of expressionist artists David Aronson, Henry Schwartz, Gerry Bergstein and at the Danforth Museum in Framingham.
- Less
Topics:
This Just In
, Entertainment, Toys, Arts, More
, Entertainment, Toys, Arts, Shopping, CULTURE, Randy Regier, Randy Regier, gadgets, Lifestyle, Less
