Collectors.

The Collector(Chloe)

2011

oil on canvas.

26 x 18 inches

Aoelian Electric Guitar

Ever since I travelled to NYC's antipode, Cape Leeuwin, I've been obsessed with making an aoelian electric guitar. Thanks to Gabe and Ritchie for building such a beautiful instrument. I traded Gabe this painting for the fabrication. Rigging it 30 feet off the ground was a massive challenge, especially when you're overtired, but the Boesky boys rallied and smacked some sense into me when I was using stainless steel cables.

Never Records Part Deux

The Never Records logo was designed by artist/musician Jason Farrell. Jason is the graphic designer for Washington D.C.’s Dischord Records and played in the bands Swiz, Bluetip, and Retisonic. The sign over the front counter was made by the “queen of foamcore” Brandi Merolla. Brandi was the art director for this Tower from 1983-1986. A kiosk of her window and store displays is located across the room from the front counter.

Punk legend Arturo Vega has created the Never Records bulletin board. The bulletin board contains annoucements for real events as well as fictional ones. Two of Arturo’s posters will be editioned and signed and available for purchase in No Longer Empty’s store. Arturo designed Never Records a t-shirt as well.

Arturo convinced Richard Hambleton to paint one of his world famous shadows on the wall of the store by the front entrance, right next to luminist painter Jake Berthot’s poster on the pillar as you walked in the front door of the shop.

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Artist Brent Birnbaum appeared at the opening dressed as "Ice Ice Maybe". He signed autographs on a limited edition reproduction of a painting by Tom Sanford. View images the opening night here.

Michelle Matson made our "employee of the month" out of paper. I call him Herb.

Lessons Learned, Secret Knowledge Confirmed.

Nicholas Brooks, 2010

Never records even had a head shop. Artist Nicholas Brooks created a mini meth lab installation inside of our front counter. And the counter itself was even a working water pipe, for display purposes only of course. Rumor has it there was some "heavy hitters" at the opening trying out the bong/front counter. Nick may have gotten kicked out opening night but he made many visitors happy with his "performance".

All of the stickers on the front counter and around the store were designed by Allison Hester and Doug McQueen. The photos on the side of the counter are by photographer John Bush. And the poster on the front of the counter was made by Shane Caffrey. For a more detailed description please consult the Never Records Zine. The good luck dollar and Sadam Hussein dollar is by artists Johnny T and his brother Crispy T.

To the left of the front counter is a bin containing the workd of two artists, Josh Shaddock and Nathan Gwynne. Both Records are for sale. Josh’s 7” records are $10 and Nathan Gwynne’s double LPs are $50 a piece.

“New Order”, Josh Shaddock

Shaddock has taken the lyrics and sent them to a song writing service that takes lyrics and sets them to music. Customers of this service choose what genre they would like the song to be and what style of vocal they would like to have. Shaddock then pressed 500 copies of the rearranged song on vinyl 7”s.

Rock and Roll Record, Nathan Gwynne 2009 (Edition of 50)
Double LP, 33 1/3 rpm, 12 inches
Black vinyl with black ink stamps on white labels and black enamel silkscreen on white gatefold jackets. Side one is the sound of the artist repeating the word "rock" continuously. Side two is the artist repeating the words "and roll" continuously

There were three video stations aroud the store. The first display on your right as you entered the store is a loop of five short videos by artist Mathew Bradley. These include actual music videos for bands like Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

The second looped video is by DCKT artist Josh Azzarella. It is located on the front of the pillar to the left of the front counter. Entitled “The funk of Four Hundred Years.”Azzarella has edited Michael Jackson and all of his actors and dancers out of the Thriller video. We are left with a desolate nightscape, the sound of crickets and billowing fog rolling across the sets.

The last video station is located behind the front counter and contains videos by Ethan Minsker, Ramiken Crucible, and James Woodward, as well as a short program selected by Lauren Rosati from Artist Pension Trust’s catalog.

For a complete list of artists please click here.

To watch video of the show by my dear friend Ethan Minsker click here.

Never Records

Practically every week during my adolescence, with the regularity of a parishioner, I visited Yesterday and Today Records in Rockville, Maryland. It was there where I communed with the spirit of Punk, Ska, Mod, and Rock and Roll. It was there where I learned about politics, sex, existentialism, style, and fashion. Yesterday and Today was more like a social library, a meeting place for musicians and artists, than a retail space. Never Records is my love letter to the record store. In the ruins of the one of the great retail giants of the end of the last century, a casualty of modernity and the Great Recession, we will reclaim the spirit of music and commune amongst the wreckage.

Ted Riederer, January 14^th, 2010

Welcome to Never Records the record store within an art exhibition within a retail space. It is our intention to confuse you and to be as inscrutable as possible. This brief introduction is an attempt to alleviate the symptoms associated with disorientation.

Never Records is a multi media multi-artist installation composed by artist/musician Ted Riederer. Constructed toresemble a functioning record store, including record bins, poster racks, large reproductions of fictitious album covers, and a stage for in store appearances, Never Records Includes over 40 artists, record labels, and musicians. Ted Riederer’s interactive installation is part Max Ernst part Hi Fidelity.

Everything in the store, including the stickers on the cash register is art. Many things are for sale and many things cannot be bought or sold.

In the Heart of Nowhere.

Ted Riederer, 2010.

“In the Heart of Nowhere” is a transcendental poem composed like a ransom note with the blacked out

covers of over three hundred record albums. Blacking out all of the album covers except for the words and phrases he chooses, Riederer places the albums in sequence in two record bins(12ft. each). Re-appropriating album images, Riederer illustrates his poem with record covers where the title and band name have been painted out. The poem must be read by flipping through the racks. The records were donated by Yesterday and Today Records, Academy Records, Elevator Music, Asian Man Records, and Sacred Bones.

Located throughout the store are a series of album covers and posters made by over twenty different artists. Some of the artists include: Damon Locks, Dario Robleto, Olaf Breuning, Bob Gruen, Evan Gruzis, Steven Bindernagel, Tim Clifford, Exene Cervenka, Jason Losh, Arturo Vega/Dee Dee Ramone. Many of the covers are of fictional bands, some are simply images of the artists work presented as album covers, and some have a more creative twist. Artist Jeff Beebe takes records he abhors, in this case an Album by Mariah Carey, and re-labels them with records he adores in an attempt to exorcise pop demons. Marylin Minter’s posters, located on either side of the front counter, actually hung in Tower records in this location. They were advertisements for an album Minter designed in 2000 called “O:Operatica”.

The pyramid in the center of the store is a Sacred Bones Records kiosk. Sacred Bones is an actual record label from Brooklyn that hand prints their album artwork underneath Academy Records in Williamsburg. These records are for sale and vary in price from $7 for a 7” record to $15 for a 12” record. Saced Bones is hosting a showcase of their bands in February on our in store stage. Please see our concert listing for more info.

Our Stage was designed and painted by artist James Rubio. Throughout the course of the show Never Records sponsored five nights of performances. Our goal was to bring some of the most cutting edge acts from New York, Chicago, and Boston. Performances included nights sponsored by ((audience)), The Antagonist Movement, Cleopatras, and Sacred Bones. We also featured musicians Azita and Animal Hospital.

Look Book (UF 15-30). Ryan Sullivan, 2009.

Mounted on the East side of the pillar to the left of the front counter, Ryan Sullivan’s poster rack contains abstractions of the covers of the ten most influential albums of his life. These posters depict albums by R.E.M., Nirvana, Tom Waits, Radiohead, Frank Zappa, and more.

On the South wall of the store is a CD rack. San Francisco based artist Stephanie Syjuco has created over two hundred bootlegs of all the music she has ever downloaded illegally or copied from friends. The CDs are actually lo-res pictures of CD covers glued to cd sized pieces of wood that are wrapped in cellophane. These objects are numbered and signed in an edition of three and are available for purchase at the low price of $9.99. Please feel free to take CDs off of the rack or go to the merchandise counter and browse through the rest of her collection.

Playing the painted drum.

Playing the painted drum.

Oil on Canvas.

48"x60"

Often, the only way I will consider a performative project complete, is by documenting that performance in a painting. A surprising turn occurred when i wanted to render the marks the roses made on the drum heads. I dipped drumsticks in oil paint.......

....and then I played the painted drums.

Primal sound

I have also been working on a series of molded records based on Rainer Maria Rilke's essay entitled Primal Sound.

"What is it that repeatedly presents itself to my mind?

it is this: the coronal suture of the skull(this would first have to be investigated) has–let us assume–a certain similarity to the closely wavy line which the needle of a phonograph engraves on the receiving, rotating cylinder of the apparatus. what if one changed the needle and directed it on its return journey along a tracing which was not derived from the graphic translation of a sound, but existed of itself naturally–well: to put it plainly, along the coronal suture, for example. what would happen?"

This has also led me to recast the Doc Martens I bought in 1986 in record albums, Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra's These Boots.

The boots made an earlier appearance in 2008's St. Antipode.

drums and roses.

I have been doing a series of performances where I get a drummer to play the drums with roses. The stiffness of the rose stems allow them to function as drumsticks, and the listener can hardly tell the difference.

My recent work has been focused on my lifelong relationship with music as a sociopolitical tool, and a tool for self-reflection and meditation. Music was an instrument of redemption during my troubled adolescence, and I seek to recast the musical instruments in various ways in an attempt to emphasize their transcendence.

The sculpture is the aftermath of the performance. The rose pedals wither over time.

Snare and Roses, 2009.

oil on canvas.

24" x 18"

(The drums start to kick in towards the end of this clip, the entire performance was 10 minutes long)