I wish it was so easy as the line scribbled on the back of the current issue, “I took my troubles to Madame Rush.” This fortuneteller or a soothsayer in the song, “Love Potion Number Nine,” makes one realize there are times we all wish we could foresee an exquisite awfulness. But in real life our troubles are never recognizable, or even exquisite. They are rude, tragic, horrific; what they are, are the most difficult individual, personal confrontations.

And, like all things difficult, first comes shock, followed by complete and utter sadness, the inevitable why, then weirdly and slowly realization, not at all tempered by the inset of memory, and maybe somewhere, although it hasn’t happened yet, acceptance. I suppose this is “death” and death is the most difficult thing.

Things happen, completely out of control, somehow there doesn’t seem to be a god. Where is the responsibility? What could have been done to safeguard tragedy? Questions dog even those remotely acquainted. Why. Time has no remorse, almost. Or begrudgingly makes even a few days, much less moments, seem different. Without-ness sets in. Honor. How do we honor the ones we love, we care for? We want legacy to endure and to somehow make lost ones memory not be simply a supplement, but a pure addition to their meaningfulness.

Since the last issue, two exceptional individuals/contributors to issue #20 have lost their lives. Both young and completely inspiring individuals, they left us long before giving us the full breadth of their creative and ultimately scorching spirit.

I mention these two contributors here, specifically not in any order. Romaine Coulombe. Luis Miguel Suro.

Both of you, you young angels carry forth. You infiltrate us through your own rendition of “Love Potion Number Nine.” Each of you spreads your magic, sadly, posthumously, but also truly beautifully and even disarmingly. Even now, you give us peace through your work. Thank You. Thank you for letting us celebrate your beauty, your love, your humanity, your thoughts, your work, your penultimate generosity. Those that know you, and those who you reach even now, are only just beginning to appreciate your worth.

Devon Dikeou
editor/publisher

Luis Miguel Suro
I invited Rodolfo Rivera to join this artist project by asking him to realize a series of decorative oil/canvas flower patterns for ceramics, a practice he has been realizing in the last 40 years in my father’s ceramic workshop in Tlaquepaque, I intend to demonstrate that a painting, strategic for decorative and visual purposes only, can, by switching materials (like oil/canvas), open a strong reference to the presence of flowers and nature’s interpretation in the history of art.

Dennis Scholl
Is a collector living in Miami Beach, Florida and Aspen, Colorado. He and his wife Debra have been collecting together for 27 years. Much thanks to uber-curator and friend, Dean Sobel, for his assistance and advice on this project.

James Hyde
Aren’t photographs ghosts of vision?
“What you see is what you see”, Frank Stella 1966
“Anything essential is invisible to the eyes”, Antoine de
Saint-Exupery, The Little Prince

Lawrence Seward & John T Koga

Jenny Holzer
I offer United States government documents detailing machine guns, mortars, launchers, flying bankers, exceptional discretion, Defense Intelligence and reorganization, redaction, Gulf oil, collective self-defense, WMDs, Republican Guards, Bush, collateral damage, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq, and when to end military operations.

Melanie Flood
is a photographer and curator living in Brooklyn and makes her $$$ as the Photo Editor of THE NEW YORK OBSERVER. Melanie met Jenny Holzer at Printed Matter on a rainy summer night in 2002.

Benjamin Paker Donaldson
My uncle is a Priest. His upbringing was Unitarian. In his twenties he decided to become an Episcopal monk. In his forties he became a Catholic. Throughout this spiritual path, he has always been generous enough to take me into the priories he lived in, and to let me see something of his life in these extraordinary places. It would always surprise me at people’s curiosity about these places when I mentioned my visits with him. I began to photograph some of the priests he knew, and the locations they lived a few years ago. Some rooms in these priories seem new and very modern, others have remained as they were in the 1970s. The decor is one not necessarily chosen by it’s occupants . The attachment of this home to a public place of worship is also fascinating to me. “Work from home” is almost right in this case.

The act of giving all material wealth, yet living in a furnished dwelling and being provided for creates an interesting conundrum. These occupants are very different from, and also the same as anyone else on the street on an average day. The difference is a profound one for me-the devotion of one’s life to a spiritual pursuit. The sameness is as profound for me as well-my uncle, the very funny, lanky tall man that lives this life.

Lisa Kereszi
These pictures were made behind-the-scenes in places of worship and residence for Catholic priests. They are not meant to be documentary, but are instead more like little religious experiences in most every one: the detail in a priest’s supple skin, the statue of Moses next to an electrical socket, the friar showing us “THE WAY”. The golden light falling on a crucifixion painting appears to be a manifestation seeping up from the giant Bible below. The soft orange carpet beckons us upstairs, but a tasteful,
cursive “Private” keeps us from making that first step.

Matt Murphy
Lives and works in New York and other places and Is addicted to making things, little digital cameras and sketchbooks.

Michael Scott King
Three years ago, Michael Scott King moved with his wife Heather from New York City to Denver, but the reason why escapes him. “Something happened,” he tells us, “Something that at the time seemed world altering and cataclysmic, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was.” Although he misses New York “With madness akin to syphilis,” he notes that a lot has changed over the past three years. “You can’t even get decent drugs in the East Village anymore. It’s the apocalypse!” Mr. King is the author of a large body of work, most of which is up for sale. “Everything must go,” he adds, “Our prices are INSANE!”

Marcel Dzama

Jonathan Horowitz & Rob Pruitt
“Peacock Hill” was a collaborative project between the two of us—an extension of our gay life together—and, like zingmagazine, a curatorial crossing. Artists, musicians, performers, and a horse were invited to come and make art, perform, and chill. Every weekend the doors were thrown open to the public, welcoming them to the curious happenings and a vegetarian feast. This selection of photographs is from the forth coming book, “Afterlife on Peacock Hill,” which celebrates the magical family that haunt the black gothic mansion in sleepy Fleischmanns, New York.

Sebastiaan Bremer
“perhaps we should see everything in perspective”
“what perspective eternity-eternity and perspective are incompatible.”
“Perspective was discovered in the 15th century up till then god had always fitted very naturally into the space of the painting, a madonna with child for example, but that space itself was unnatural. He simply sat on a throne in the blue sky, above the madonna, with some circles and stars above him; or on the left you had st dionysus wearing an elegant mitre in a dungeon and on the right later after his head had been chopped off, and in the center christ, naked on the cross hundred of years of years earlier, surrounded by the apostles in bishops robes; all of that in one impossible space in one impossible moment.but with the discovery of natural perspective , natural space and natural time were defined.someone on a chair in the sky would fall down, and things that followed each other could not happen simultaneously. so that was the beginning of the end of eternity.

“Do you perhaps mean that since then nothing can worm its way from the heavenly side through the vanishing point in perspective to this world?

You hear me say no such nonsense pity there is no heavenly side of the vanishing point how do you know? maybe it can no longer be made visible with artistic decency but perhaps its still there all the same “—
its much funnier properly translated and written by h.mulisch without me condensing it-
from: “The Discovery of Heaven” by Harry Mulisch-

Mark Bradford
Is an artist living and working in Los Angels, California.

Christine Y Kim
is the associate curator at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.

Romain Coulombe, ERic Laignel & Jessica Boukris
If England and the US remain the best providers of worldwide rock-‘n’-roll, most of the other countries have given birth to their own rock scene – a local one that after 50 years of imitation is now fresh, good and rid of complexes. But even if these bands often make a big hit in their country, they’ re hardly know or even heard of outside their borders.

Faithful to its spirit of independence and underground creation, the zingmagazine crew asked me to collect some of the best French bands for a cd. The news spread pretty fast, and I’ve been surrounded by cds faster than I could imagine. After I listened to them very carefully, saw the bands on stage, I made the choice to give a chance to a very independent selection: 16 young rock-pop-electro bands, who are shaking up our musical landscape with their strong personalities.

Is this really a coincidence that they all sing in English? No, I wanted to give a lift to those who don’t care about he radio’s “French chanson” quotas. The photo on the cover of the cd is the work of the New York based artist Eric Laignel. thanks to the bands, to Eric, to Jessica Boukris, and zingmagazine—and thanks to you for talking the time to listen and look.

Enjoy it, and well . . . Let’s rock together!

Yuki Minami of Transplant Gallery on Ukawa Naohiro
As one of the busiest Japanese artists, Ukawa has been known as VJ/Graphic Designer/Director of music videos since 1990. His works, using the photo and digital images he has collected from TV, video, and flea markets over twenty years, show the chaotic environment his contemporaries have had. His style is a mix of John Waters, Jeff Koons, and Lucas Samaras. In recent years, he has started exhibiting works at galleries internationally.

Faile
is a three person creative team, hugging all things in art and design. Often they can be found in the early morning meeting for pancakes and strawberries. In the afternoons you will not typically find them because they will be having a nap. But in the evenings, rest assured they are working very hard. Although, you can always find Faile at: www.faile.net