We’ve been following MP3Tunes, an online music locker, since it launched in late 2005. It’s come a long way since then. Today the service has 500,000 users, and has released a variety of new products to help those users get access to their music from almost any Internet connected device.

The core of the service is a music locker. It finds music on your hard drive and then backs it up online over a period of days. You can then log in and stream that music from a browser.

But the service is a lot more interesting than that. It will also sync your music across devices, making sure, for example, that iTunes has the same song library on each of your computers. It will also grab those iTunes playlists and make them available elsewhere as well.

They’ve recently inked a deal with Roku and are in beta. MP3Tunes users can stream music that they previously only had on their hard drive through their television on the Roku device. Logitech has also built MP3Tunes into a variety of devices, including this Wifi Internet radio. More devices are coming shortly, says MP3Tunes.

But the best part of MP3Tunes are the mobile apps. The Android application in particular is extremely useful. If you buy a song on the Android via the built in Amazon store, for example, you can easily upload that song quickly to MP3Tunes, and then have it available on, say your iPhone or iPod touch (as well as your desktop and everywhere else). MP3Tunes is calling the syncing behavior behind these application “Buy Anywhere, Listen Everywhere” – see the video below:

A number of other third parties have built MP3Tunes into their software and devices as well via a robust open API. I’m a big fan of music services on my mobile devices since getting actual song files onto the device is usually cumbersome and requires at least a purchase or a tethering. I use MOG on my android device and am quite happy with it.

But I also like the idea of just having access to my entire music collection – all 60 GB of it – on any device at any time. I’m a long time user of MP3Tunes, and I’ve recently upgraded from the free version to the 100 GB of storage.

Soon we’ll all have a variety of music streaming services to choose from – from Apple and Google’s upcoming products to the MOGs and Spotifys of the world. But all will likely have a hefty monthly subscription fee of $10/month or so for any kind of mobile access. I already have my core music collection on my hard drive, bought and paid for (for the most part). I really don’t see a need to pay $120/year to keep paying for that music. MP3Tunes gives me a viable reason to keep just buying music outright and downloading it.

All this assume, of course, that MP3Tunes wins the longstanding EMI Group lawsuit against them. In the meantime, though, I like the service.

MP3Tunes is free for 2 GB of storage. They are moving to 10 GB free in the near term, and 50 GB is $40/year. 25% of active users upgrade to a paid version, says the company.

Welcome to the new music week. This one is full of '70s flashbacks. Sheryl Crow tries to convince us that she's a '70s Southern soul singer, Marc Cohn channels his inner Cat Stevens, Big Head Todd & the Monsters make us believe we're still living out of a 1970s VW van, and rapper Rick Ross lays down some tracks that feel like the great '70s soul sides… until you hear the lyrics. Ouch. I don't remember the '70s like that.

SKIP: Sheryl Crow, “100 Miles From Memphis”

Sheryl Crow wants you to know she digs soul music. She's all about peace and love and keeping it groovy in a '70s, “Superfly” kinda way. She's recruited Southern soul musicians and producers Doyle Bramhall II and Justin Stanley to convince you. She's written new songs with funky '70s horn lines to convince you. She covers Terrence Trent D'Arby's supremely soulful (if not '70s) song “Sign Your Name” with Justin Timberlake to convince you. She covers the Jackson 5's “I Want You Back” to close the deal. Listen to the tracks, and you'll swear you've grown a 'fro and are waiting for your bell-bottoms to come back from the cleaners. Put Crow's voice into the middle, and something goes wrong. Sheryl Crow is a great singer; she's just not a soul singer. And this album needs a soul singer. It pains me to say it, because I wanted to play this all summer.

WATCH the music video for Sheryl Crow's single “Summer Day.”

SKIP: March Cohn, “Listening Booth: 1970″

Forever caught in the shadow of his 1991 hit “Walking in Memphis,” Marc Cohn's new album (only his fifth in a 20-plus-year career) goes for covers instead of originals. As Cohn explains it, he spent his misspent '70s youth in a local record store, previewing new albums in a listening booth. Now the husky-voiced singer and his producer, John Leventhal, have deconstructed the songbooks of Paul Simon, John Lennon, Van Morrison, Cat Stevens, and eight other coffee-house classics. The problem? It's kind of a bore. Tempos slow to a crawl, and the volume rarely goes above a whisper. It's all very tasteful, but I wish they'd spent the time writing some new songs. Pick up some old vinyl if you want to recapture 1970.

WATCH Marc Cohn and John Leventhal discuss making “Listening Booth: 1970.”

PLAY: The Books, “The Way Out”

The New York duo return with their first full-length album since 2005's “Lost and Safe.” Vocalist Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong don't record songs as much as they throw sounds against the wall. “The Way Out” plays more like an audio sequel to “Blue Velvet” than it does a collection of tunes. Every track is a twisted tour through another private room where you're eavesdropping on someone's sordid secrets. The album is not easily ignored nor understood, and you may indeed be looking for the way out before it's over. Still, it's compelling as all hell and will give me something to tell my shrink at my next session.

WATCH the music video for the Books' song “A Cold Freezin' Night” .

PLAY: Big Head Todd & the Monsters, “Rocksteady”

Twenty-four years on, Big Head Todd & the Monsters are still super-jammy. While such contemporaries as Dave Matthews Band have shot into the mainstream stratosphere, BHTM play to a smaller but loyal legion of followers who dig their reliable, mid-tempo, laid-back grooves. “Rocksteady” doesn't mess with the formula, save for an appropriately dirty cover of Howlin' Wolf's “Smokestack Lightnin'.” Otherwise, it's sweet hippie bliss. Play it if you're a believer or if you have some patchouli and tie-dye you need to wear.

WATCH Big Head Todd & the Monsters perform the single “Beautiful.”

PLAY: Rick Ross, “Teflon Don”

The formula is simple: Rick Ross recruits Jay Z, Kanye West, Raphael Saadiq, Erykah Badu, Ne Yo, John Legend, and nearly every other hip-hip/neo-soul superstar to bring forth the rhythm and the rhyme. The rhythm is undeniably booty-quaking. You will move despite yourself. The rhyme, on the hand, is a baser affair: the usual two-dimensional playbook about n***as, b****hes, and the joys of telling people to f-off. What's a guy to do when his body wants to groove, but his mind wants to move beyond tired misogynistic hip-hop grandstanding? I guess that's why God invented the Roots. Play the music. Skip the rhymes.

WATCH the music video for Rick Ross' single “Super High.”

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Music Unites has joined with Rolling Stone magazine this summer to present the “In Tune” concert series featuring unplugged performances by emerging and established bands. Brooklyn-based, critically acclaimed indie veterans The Fiery Furnaces, led by brother and sister duo Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger, will kick off the series with an intimate performance this Tuesday overlooking New York City from The Cooper Square Hotel Penthouse. On the road for 12 months, this is the last stop on their tour and the final chance to hear them before they began working on their new album.

“We're honored to have The Fiery Furnaces be part of Music Unites and welcome them to our community,” says Michelle Edgar, founder and executive director. “It's exciting to work with a New York based group that shares the same vision as we do and we're excited to work together and support their charitable endeavors.”

Proceeds from the event benefit Music Unites Youth Choir, made up of children from the city and its five boroughs in partnership with Young Audiences New York. Members practice weekly and are given access to well-known cultural venues for performances and the support they need to follow their dream and form their talent. Music Unites is proud to announce that the first year has been successfully funded for the choir and the organization is hoping to reach its goal of funding it for three years by fall.

“We haven't done a lot of charitable work or fundraisers. When something really special comes along its nice to be able to say yes,” Eleanor says of joining with Music Unites. “The last benefit we did was for Obama before the election so we try to choose carefully. It was hard to say no to this since it's such a great cause.”

Music has always held a special place for the Friedbergers and they have a deep understanding of the importance of choirs. They started Fiery Furnaces in 2000, but were actually involved in music much younger being raised within a musical family. Their 2005 album “Rehearsing My Choir” features their grandmother Olga Sarantos reflecting on her life and interacting with her younger self. “Our grandmother was a choir director of her church for forty years and music was always something that was very normal. It wasn't something reserved for a special occasion. We sang at family holidays. I think it's a really important part of growing up.”

Along with sponsoring a choir, Music Unites also works to keep music education in schools, something that had a deep impact on Eleanor. Despite being four years apart, she and her brother had classes together. “My brother and I both really valued our public school education especially in terms of the music. We were lucky we went to a public school where we had music classes when we were really young from the age of five to sixth grade. We had them every day or three days a week,” she continues, recalling the affect her teacher had on her. “I'll never forget him. He was this old guy who had polio as a child and had a cane and braces on his legs. You would think the kids would be scared of him but we all loved him so much.”

With the Music Unites Youth Choir children are given the opportunity to have this same kind of influence on their lives, helping them develop and grow their skills and give them direction.

“It's a shame that all kids don't have someone like that in their lives who can make music seem fun and not scary, not corny, not–just seem really natural. Our teacher was so encouraging to everyone. I think having a role model like that is really important,” says Eleanor.

Prior to the Fiery Furnaces, Matthew was a special education teacher and incorporated music into his lessons. “My brother's great gift is as a musician so when he worked in Special Ed it came naturally to him to try and use music as a tool for teaching. Some of the kids were nonverbal so music worked to get things across to them. It was a big part of the curriculum.”

Another main focuses of Music Unites is to offer children opportunities for music education, but to engage them in different genres and expose them to the many varieties of music. Eleanor still listens to the music she grew up on, noting memories of Classic Rock Record in Chicago. “I still love Led Zeppelin and the Beatles and The Who and Rolling Stones and all that stuff I've always loved.”

When asked what advice she would give to kids trying to make it in the music industry, Eleanor humbly stated that she thinks they can probably teach adults something. “Things are so confusing right now. Young kids probably have an advantage on us. They are born into this new technology that we knew nothing about. We're trying to get our heads around it still. They're going to be Twittering out of the womb. They're going to be recording on their computers and uploading it instantly to MySpace whereas to us it still feels weird to do that. We're still stuck in the old model of the music industry. I think young people have a lot to teach us in the way that the industry is going.”

Being through management companies in the past and currently without a manager, the brother and sister have even semi-seriously debated hiring a youth. “We were half joking about hiring a really young kid to be our manager, like a 12-year-old. I think that would be really cool. The young kid manager would decide everything from what our album cover would look like to what clothes we were going to wear, what songs we were going to play. Maybe we'll still do that. You have to be on your phone or online constantly. I don't want to do it. I just want to perform and make music.”

The Fiery Furnaces play different from tour to tour, trying to make it a different set. For the last ten shows of the year they have been playing an hour long 30 song medley with quick changes in a way that Eleanor describes to be “like a sporting event.” They days leading up to the charity event, the band had several New York performances at Brooklyn Bowl and Mercury Lounge. They've also moved from using lots of keyboards and synths to just playing guitar, bass, drums, vocals and creating a “rock n' roll dance party.”

For the Music Unites and Rolling Stone event they will be playing an acoustic set. Alexandra Richards will also be performing a DJ set. While Eleanor calls it a “privilege” to play in front of people, the people watching and listening know the privilege is all theirs.

For $10 a month, MOG offers a library of 8 million songs that users can stream over 3G and Wi-Fi, as well as download direct to their phone. It's the first app in this space that's really made us consider the monthly fee in exchange for the ease of access to a massive collection of music. Right now, MOG is offering a 3-day free trial (no credit card required, so it isn't one of those “you need to call to cancel” scams) to tempt users with its vast collection and feature set. And we have to admit, we're tempted.

The app is much like the one we saw at SXSW in March, providing an “all-you-can-eat” service that surpasses competitors with its ability to download any music available on the service for offline play. It's library of 8 million songs – while smaller than Rhapsody's 10 million – is certainly impressive, but immediately showed some gaps and possible bugs on first inspection. For example, when searching for “The Stereo” – a pop-punk group – the app listed a number of their albums alongside those of “Stereo” – a club/dance electronic group. While this is understandable, all of “The Stereo”'s albums were shown as available, but clicking on the “play album” and “download album” buttons did nothing, as it turned out no songs were actually available. Beyond this, initial tests of the catalog had varied results, with some more rare albums showing up and others not.

Two features, we think, really set MOG's mobile offering apart and they are its radio feature and the ability to download songs, albums and even entire discographies to save locally for whenever 3G is iffy or unavailable. The radio feature, which is much like Pandora, streams music according to whatever artist you chose. It has a slider to tune the station between focusing solely on songs from that artist to sampling songs from similar artists to anywhere in between. As for downloads, songs are downloaded as 64 kbps AAC+ unless you turn on the “high quality downloads” in the settings, which selects a 320 kbps MP3 format, but we found the audio of the low quality just fine for some ear buds. Of course, if you actually have some decent headphones or speakers, you may chose otherwise.

The final aspect of MOG mobile is music discovery. MOG offers a few ways to discover new music, from the just-mentioned radio feature to user created playlists – a feature we know many were excited to see with (still unavailable in the U.S.) Spotify. When searching, you can chose the standards – artist, album or song – as well as playlists. It's a great way to find new music that others are listening to. Beyond that, MOG offers its own charts for popular songs, albums and artists, as well as a selection of popular albums, radio stations and playlists.

The $10 service includes both Web and mobile access, meaning you can set up playlists, browse music and interact with the library on the website before letting the app sync everything to your phone. Unless you're really into creating you're own playlists, however, we see little need for the website. And if you find yourself traveling or on-the-go often, MOG mobile seems like a great way to constantly have access to new music. As for the bugs and glitches, we hope to see them fixed up along the way, but for now they don't get in the way too much.

Artist Creates Windshield Rainbow And An Awesome New Car Prank

Artist Helmut Smits placed six dabs of acrylic paint on a windshield, just above the wiper blade. The resulting Roy G. Biv rainbow pattern is both clever and a potentially delightful prank. Highly recommended for cranky targets.

This prank is especially recommended for those who drive cars with a single wiper blade.

Send an email to Ben, the author of this post, at ben@jalopnik.com.

“Falling Into Ends” New Paintings by Liat Yossifor. June 11- August 30 Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt Germany | Frankenallee 74 | D-60327 Frankfurt a. M.

Powerful art and extreme nature have a lot in common. This spring when the Icelandic volcano grounded all European planes and the most arresting images cascaded through my internet browsers – so much so that I had to catch my breath – my mind immediately went toward the work of painter Liat Yossifor.

Smoke erupting from Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Getty Images 2010

The last time I wrote about Yossifor's work was 2007. Southern California was engulfed in smoke from the wildfires and the palette of the sky has descended into a muted orange grey — the entire region was thrown into an altered state. At the same time, the daily casualties of the war in Iraq streamed through our televisions and for those of us not in the military– it was all perfectly the abstract. It was through Liat's paintings of battle scenes in her exhibition “The Tender Among Us” — with the twisted bodies below a similarly muted atmosphere — that I started to feel a connection to the war.

“The Tender Among Us” 62 x 72 in. Oil on Panel 2007. Liat Yossifor

Yossifor has created a technique where she paints portions very thickly but moves the paint around with a fine sturdy brush which renders the surface more like sculpture. The reflecting light and the painting itself change with each step as you walk toward and around it. While some artists' work stay within the same series of notes, Yossifor's work steadily transforms and each exhibition captures a state of that evolution. That her latest body of work has figures emerging from black as thick as the tar washing up in beaches off the Gulf of Mexico is surely a coincidence, (or is it? one never knows), in person she is not dark at all, but a bright, fiery burst of energy and intellect — a painter's painter. I caught up with her while she was finishing a three month residency at a Kunstverein in Frankfurt and just opened her solo show at Anita Becker Gallery in Frankfurt.

KB: You have been a recent resident at the Deutsche Borse Residency Program at the Frankfurter Kunstverein for three months. What was the program about and what was it like for you?
LY: The residency program hosts two residents at a time: an artist and an art historian, a writer, or a curator. My experience here has been a rich one — from the people I met to the collections in the museum row in Frankfurt to the Kunstverein's own programming to much more. For example, I finally saw Beckmann's The Night at the k21 museum in an exhibition entitled Silent Revolution, and I completely lost myself in front of the most beautiful blue and black Rothko. The Städel Museum, just minutes from the residency, has a room with all my favorites: early Baselitz, Kirchner, and Dubuffet. I also love that this particular Kunstverein in Frankfurt exhibited works by Max Beckmann when he was still unknown.

KB: How has this experience affected your new work?
LY: Before coming to Germany, I felt that a shift in my work was coming, and in my mind, I saw the new paintings, but I also felt a little crippled in my LA studio, going back and forth between old and new processes. Then, I came to Frankfurt and encountered the new studio, new light, new experiences, and new materials (I began working on rough linen). All of these changes contributed to the shift in the work.

“Falling into Ends” 71 x 63 inches. Oil on Linen. Liat Yossifor Courtesy Gallerie Anita Beckers

LY: In some ways I believe that, in Los Angeles, I was making black paint surfaces on panels that were condensed and object-like, while in my stay here I became more interested in pictorial space. The heavy black texture element in my new work is done in layers that are on top of thin layers on linen; whereas before, the thick layer of paint was done at once and all over, sealing the surface tightly. I am not crossing out the heavy object-like “walls” that collapse inward from before for the new thin layers on linen; rather I am imagining them together. There just seems to be more possibilities now.

KB: How would you describe the new work compared to “Tender Among Us” or your other work?
LY: I am using a lot more symbols than in my previous work. I have a large collection of images at this point of statue-like national monuments, of soldiers from various wars, and of paintings of soldiers (specifically from post war I German painting). I think of these references as documents and archetypes and also as ideas that are nostalgic and broken, like painting itself. I see painting as a medium that abstracts and confuses the “subject” — nothing is specific or hierarchal; a shape is a shape. Also, in painting, the idea of a return is not linear because history is always present. My attraction to these qualities in painting is how nothing stays fixed, so the most stubborn symbol or idea falls apart. When I decided to work with old strategies (such as post-World War I German painting), I was not aware of how troubling a relationship it would be. In a way, it made me very aware of today's post-war reaction in art (or the lack thereof), and things came around to full circle, which was interesting — to be connecting identities (mine and German) across time.

“The Monument” 180 x 160 cm Oil on Linen. Liat Yossifor. Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers

LY: (cont.) Ideas flip in my head; for example, the monument is not just a failed idea, but also a shape that still impresses me. I'm working with thin cadmium red lines that separate large black shapes in the paintings. One tiny red mark in a black painting changes the whole composition. Then, when I insist on repeating a small red line, it becomes a “thing” too, not just a guide or a line. It's fascinating for me at the moment, to allow these symbolic color combinations – often used for propaganda – to mess with me, to let them manipulate the way I see space, and to see the red mark gaining more and more power compositionally as I repeat it and see it deepen. I am painting the soldiers freely in the sense that their medallions, uniforms, hats, and flags are a mixture of various styles and origins. I find myself making a mass of bodies, where the soldiers melt into each other, and are grouped together for the sake of the overall structure of the painting. They seem to me to be celebrating an end of a war, or its beginning; moreover, they seem to be gathering but it is not clear for what. For me, their state of becoming “one” is both heroic and pathetic.

“Falling Into Ends” Detail 1

KB: I think of your work as one that requires a slow viewing. Has that changed? How do you approach the viewing of your own work now?
LY: I am thinking right now about two experiences when viewing the work: one that is immediate and structured, such as bright red lines separating black space, ultramarine blue peeking through black shapes; and the other that is the experience of making up the slight differentiation between one black shape next to another and of the figures that are trapped in there. The bright red and blue lines work like a quick grid and an armature — they get the eye moving fast. I have been resisting the quick viewing of art for a while now because I wanted to slow down the act of seeing and to challenge myself to accept information in layers. This reminds me that I was just looking at a black Ad Reinhardt at the Falkwang Museum. It was so quite to slowly see the grid, and I felt like the surface was very flexible still, maybe even still wet, because it was changing so much while I was looking at it. But over time, for my own work, that has begun to be less interesting for me, and maybe even a little stubborn of me to continue to focus on slowing down time when seeing can happen in many ways and tempos at once. What's wrong with fast? Or more accurately, why not have multiple (simultaneous) tempos to view the painting?

“The Lovers (Soldier and Mask) 70 x 35″ Oil on Linen. Liat Yossifor Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers

KB: What's next for you?
LY: My next show will be at Angles Gallery in Los Angeles, January 2011

“Falling Into Ends” New Paintings by Liat Yossifor. June 11- August 30 Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt Germany | Frankenallee 74 | D-60327 Frankfurt a. M.

Artist Births Jedi In Seven Months Flat

Robert Burden, the time lapse painter who's graced Gizmodo before with his He-Man Battle Cat and Voltron paintings, is back. The latest is “Birth of a Jedi.” And no, that's not a third leg coming out of the Tauntaun.

The oil on canvas painting took seven months to complete, and measures an impressive 10'x7'. Toward the end o the video you get a few closeups of the characters used in the painting, and again, impressive is the word—I just hope the return on investment was worth it!

Update: Since some of you asked, and they wrote me just now, I'm happy to report that the music in this video is available for free at Blackstone Heist. [Robert Burden]

Send an email to Jack Loftus, the author of this post, at jloftus@gizmodo.com.

“Falling Into Ends” New Paintings by Liat Yossifor. June 11- August 30 Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt Germany | Frankenallee 74 | D-60327 Frankfurt a. M.

Powerful art and extreme nature have a lot in common. This spring when the Icelandic volcano grounded all European planes and the most arresting images cascaded through my internet browsers – so much so that I had to catch my breath – my mind immediately went toward the work of painter Liat Yossifor.

Smoke erupting from Eyjafjallajokull volcano. Getty Images 2010

The last time I wrote about Yossifor's work was 2007. Southern California was engulfed in smoke from the wildfires and the palette of the sky has descended into a muted orange grey — the entire region was thrown into an altered state. At the same time, the daily casualties of the war in Iraq streamed through our televisions and for those of us not in the military– it was all perfectly the abstract. It was through Liat's paintings of battle scenes in her exhibition “The Tender Among Us” — with the twisted bodies below a similarly muted atmosphere — that I started to feel a connection to the war.

“The Tender Among Us” 62 x 72 in. Oil on Panel 2007. Liat Yossifor

Yossifor has created a technique where she paints portions very thickly but moves the paint around with a fine sturdy brush which renders the surface more like sculpture. The reflecting light and the painting itself change with each step as you walk toward and around it. While some artists' work stay within the same series of notes, Yossifor's work steadily transforms and each exhibition captures a state of that evolution. That her latest body of work has figures emerging from black as thick as the tar washing up in beaches off the Gulf of Mexico is surely a coincidence, (or is it? one never knows), in person she is not dark at all, but a bright, fiery burst of energy and intellect — a painter's painter. I caught up with her while she was finishing a three month residency at a Kunstverein in Frankfurt and just opened her solo show at Anita Becker Gallery in Frankfurt.

KB: You have been a recent resident at the Deutsche Borse Residency Program at the Frankfurter Kunstverein for three months. What was the program about and what was it like for you?
LY: The residency program hosts two residents at a time: an artist and an art historian, a writer, or a curator. My experience here has been a rich one — from the people I met to the collections in the museum row in Frankfurt to the Kunstverein's own programming to much more. For example, I finally saw Beckmann's The Night at the k21 museum in an exhibition entitled Silent Revolution, and I completely lost myself in front of the most beautiful blue and black Rothko. The Städel Museum, just minutes from the residency, has a room with all my favorites: early Baselitz, Kirchner, and Dubuffet. I also love that this particular Kunstverein in Frankfurt exhibited works by Max Beckmann when he was still unknown.

KB: How has this experience affected your new work?
LY: Before coming to Germany, I felt that a shift in my work was coming, and in my mind, I saw the new paintings, but I also felt a little crippled in my LA studio, going back and forth between old and new processes. Then, I came to Frankfurt and encountered the new studio, new light, new experiences, and new materials (I began working on rough linen). All of these changes contributed to the shift in the work.

“Falling into Ends” 71 x 63 inches. Oil on Linen. Liat Yossifor Courtesy Gallerie Anita Beckers

LY: In some ways I believe that, in Los Angeles, I was making black paint surfaces on panels that were condensed and object-like, while in my stay here I became more interested in pictorial space. The heavy black texture element in my new work is done in layers that are on top of thin layers on linen; whereas before, the thick layer of paint was done at once and all over, sealing the surface tightly. I am not crossing out the heavy object-like “walls” that collapse inward from before for the new thin layers on linen; rather I am imagining them together. There just seems to be more possibilities now.

KB: How would you describe the new work compared to “Tender Among Us” or your other work?
LY: I am using a lot more symbols than in my previous work. I have a large collection of images at this point of statue-like national monuments, of soldiers from various wars, and of paintings of soldiers (specifically from post war I German painting). I think of these references as documents and archetypes and also as ideas that are nostalgic and broken, like painting itself. I see painting as a medium that abstracts and confuses the “subject” — nothing is specific or hierarchal; a shape is a shape. Also, in painting, the idea of a return is not linear because history is always present. My attraction to these qualities in painting is how nothing stays fixed, so the most stubborn symbol or idea falls apart. When I decided to work with old strategies (such as post-World War I German painting), I was not aware of how troubling a relationship it would be. In a way, it made me very aware of today's post-war reaction in art (or the lack thereof), and things came around to full circle, which was interesting — to be connecting identities (mine and German) across time.

“The Monument” 180 x 160 cm Oil on Linen. Liat Yossifor. Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers

LY: (cont.) Ideas flip in my head; for example, the monument is not just a failed idea, but also a shape that still impresses me. I'm working with thin cadmium red lines that separate large black shapes in the paintings. One tiny red mark in a black painting changes the whole composition. Then, when I insist on repeating a small red line, it becomes a “thing” too, not just a guide or a line. It's fascinating for me at the moment, to allow these symbolic color combinations – often used for propaganda – to mess with me, to let them manipulate the way I see space, and to see the red mark gaining more and more power compositionally as I repeat it and see it deepen. I am painting the soldiers freely in the sense that their medallions, uniforms, hats, and flags are a mixture of various styles and origins. I find myself making a mass of bodies, where the soldiers melt into each other, and are grouped together for the sake of the overall structure of the painting. They seem to me to be celebrating an end of a war, or its beginning; moreover, they seem to be gathering but it is not clear for what. For me, their state of becoming “one” is both heroic and pathetic.

“Falling Into Ends” Detail 1

KB: I think of your work as one that requires a slow viewing. Has that changed? How do you approach the viewing of your own work now?
LY: I am thinking right now about two experiences when viewing the work: one that is immediate and structured, such as bright red lines separating black space, ultramarine blue peeking through black shapes; and the other that is the experience of making up the slight differentiation between one black shape next to another and of the figures that are trapped in there. The bright red and blue lines work like a quick grid and an armature — they get the eye moving fast. I have been resisting the quick viewing of art for a while now because I wanted to slow down the act of seeing and to challenge myself to accept information in layers. This reminds me that I was just looking at a black Ad Reinhardt at the Falkwang Museum. It was so quite to slowly see the grid, and I felt like the surface was very flexible still, maybe even still wet, because it was changing so much while I was looking at it. But over time, for my own work, that has begun to be less interesting for me, and maybe even a little stubborn of me to continue to focus on slowing down time when seeing can happen in many ways and tempos at once. What's wrong with fast? Or more accurately, why not have multiple (simultaneous) tempos to view the painting?

“The Lovers (Soldier and Mask) 70 x 35″ Oil on Linen. Liat Yossifor Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers

KB: What's next for you?
LY: My next show will be at Angles Gallery in Los Angeles, January 2011

“Falling Into Ends” New Paintings by Liat Yossifor. June 11- August 30 Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt Germany | Frankenallee 74 | D-60327 Frankfurt a. M.

Chinese Artist Knits Ghost-Like All-Wire Motorcycle

All other wire-frame artists, you have been served. Chinese artist Shi Jindian doesn't just bend wire for his art, he crochets it into shapes like this Chiangjiang 750 motorcycle with sidecar. Amazingly, it makes for a more reliable machine.

Send an email to Ben, the author of this post, at ben@jalopnik.com.

New York Graffiti Artist Attempts World's Most Awkward Police Bribe

19 year-old Arnaldo Eusebio was busted by cops last night in Manhattan with tagging gear. He tried to get out of it via a classic police bribe. Only he was really awkward about it.

According to the New York Post Eusebio was caught on Sheridan Avenue near 164th st. at 3 a.m. After being detained, he, told the cops: “I heard that if you give a cop money, they will let you go. All I have is 10 bucks. I just want to see if you'll let me go.” Then he pulled a $10 bill from his shoe.

Poor kid. On the bright side, Representative James Traficant's first bribery scandal didn't go much better. This kid's got a bright future in politics followed by a seven-year prison sentence.

(via Gothamist)

Send an email to Adrian Chen, the author of this post, at adrian@gawker.com.