Bad at Sports

This week we can catch up with the preeminent American Art Critic, Ben Davis from Art Net and talk about NFTs and whether this really is the future the hype demands, or whether this is a long con grift.   Ben Davis - http://www.benadavis.com/ Art Net - https://news.artnet.com/ Nifty Gateway - https://niftygateway.com/ Foundation.App - https://foundation.app/ Beeple - https://www.beeple-crap.com/  

Indoor recess cannot be stopped! This week we throwback to our interview with Brendan Fernandes and honor Canada's musical heritage.

On this episode of Bad@Sports the team travels to NADA Miami 2017. We speak with Justin Polera, designer or Exhibitionary, an iOS app and mobile optimized art guide, covering the latest exhibitions across the globe. We speak with Hubert Neumann and Alison Wolfson about their new model for art collection through Neumann Wolfson Art based out of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. And to close the show, we dish about fair culture with gallerist and collecter Avi Gitler. It is all worth the wait. 

In Part 2 of the Hilde Lynn Helphenstein (Jerry Gogosian) conversation, the discussion turns raw, vulnerable, and deeply structural. Hilde speaks candidly about burnout, public vilification, online pile-ons, and the emotional cost of living as a persona inside an unforgiving attention economy. She describes losing followers overnight, being labeled with extreme political accusations, and watching the art world take visible pleasure in her public failures while remaining silent during her successes. She recounts the personal toll of constant media exposure, professional pressure, and economic precarity: marriage collapse, total exhaustion, and a year-long withdrawal from work following multiple suicide attempts. Jerry, she explains, has evolved from a meme engine into a living, walking performance — where even the most banal moments of daily life become content whether she wants them to or not. The episode confronts what it means to live as a meme in a broken matrix of attention, validation, and misrecognition. The conversation pivots into economics and geography. Drawing on her business school training, Hilde walks through quantitative tightening, interest rates, the collapse of NFTs and crypto, and the bursting of the 2022 speculative bubble. She frames art explicitly as a Veblen good — a luxury asset that fails first when the economy tightens. She argues forcefully that New York is no longer an artist city, but a financialized transaction hub. Instead, she advocates for artists to relocate to affordable cities like Chicago or even small towns, building localized collector bases rather than chasing validation from elite centers. What emerges is a sharp, pragmatic model of survival: cultivate 12 lifelong collectors, embrace regional ecosystems, make work for people you actually live with, and stop imagining museum permanence as the only measure of success. Hilde rejects the mythology of infinite institutional validation, arguing instead for circulation, use, disposal, and lived attachment. The episode closes on the tension between speculation and sustainability, between global markets and local communities, and between career branding and genuine artistic life. Hilde Lynn Helphenstein / Jerry Gogosian https://www.instagram.com/jerrygogosian/ New Art Dealers Alliancehttps://www.newartdealers.org/ John Waters https://www.johnwaters.com/ Peaches (musician/performer) https://peachesmusic.net/ Beeple (Mike Winkelmann) https://www.beeple-crap.com/ Maurizio Cattelan https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/maurizio-cattelan Brice Marden https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/brice-marden-1577 Magnus Resch https://www.magnusresch.com/ Pace Gallery https://www.pacegallery.com/ Roxy Theatre, San Francisco (The Roxie) https://roxie.com/ Soho House https://www.sohohouse.com/ Ice Palace Studios, Miami (Art Fair Venue) https://www.icepalacestudios.com/ New York MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) https://new.mta.info/ Federal Reserve (The Fed) https://www.federalreserve.gov/ Whitney Museum of American Art https://whitney.org/ Chicago, IL https://www.choosechicago.com/ New York City, NY https://www.nyc.gov/ Dahlonega, Georgia https://www.dahlonega.org/ Miami Beach, FL https://www.miamibeachfl.gov/ Basel, Switzerland https://www.basel.com/en  

At NADA Miami 2025, Bad at Sports' Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Hilde Lynn Helphenstein, better known to most of the art world as meme-lord and art-world agent provocateur Jerry Gogosian. In a conversation that swings between dead serious and totally unhinged, Hilde traces the unlikely origin story of Jerry: a near-fatal tick bite in Hudson, NY; weeks in the ICU where she went blind, deaf, and lost the use of her hands and feet; and the eight-month bedridden period that led her to start making art-world memes "six or seven a day" just to stay sane.  She explains how Jerry Gagosian—a name cheekily mashed up from Jerry Saltz and Larry Gagosian—became an anonymous voice for the insiders, registrars, assistants, and "world's oldest interns" of the art world. Positioned "at the cutting edge of stating the obvious," Jerry's memes mined the absurdities of art fairs, galleries, power, and self-seriousness, often circulating so widely that even Arne Glimcher at Pace blasted one to the entire staff. For Hilde, the memes were "fast food," while the deeper writing and podcasting they spawned became the real work. The episode also dives into Hilde's hatred of artspeak, her love of Pixar movies as real art, and the gulf between what artists claim their work does in press releases and what's actually visible in the work. She riffs on turning incomprehensible exhibition texts into literal film scripts, skewers academic pretense, and praises the raw "holy" feeling of walking into a gallery without any language or theory at all.  In the second half of the conversation, Hilde talks about going to business school at NYU Stern after years inside galleries and the market. Learning macro- and microeconomics, statistics, and reading things like Enron's 10-K filings gave her a new lens on the art world as a distorted, unsustainable luxury market in a broader service-and-finance-based U.S. economy. From there, she and the hosts push into the hard questions: oversupply and under-demand for art, MFA pipelines, self-censorship, the moral theater of "perfect" artists, and why she believes most art schools should probably be consolidated or shut down. Hilde Lynn Helphenstein / Jerry Gogosian https://www.instagram.com/jerrygogosian/ Jerry Saltz https://www.vulture.com/author/jerry-saltz/ Larry Gagosian https://gagosian.com/ Arne Glimcher https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/arne-glimcher/ Ben Davis https://news.artnet.com/author/ben-davis Kenny Schachter https://www.artnet.com/artists/kenny-schachter/ Magnus Resch https://www.magnusresch.com/ Barbara Kingsley https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-kingsley-5b6b2411/ Delvin Duarte https://www.instagram.com/delvinduarte/ Keith Boadwee https://www.keithboadwee.com/ NADA Miami https://www.newartdealersalliance.org/ Art Basel Miami Beach https://www.artbasel.com/miami-beach Pace Gallery https://www.pacegallery.com/ Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) https://www.moca.org/ NYU Stern School of Business https://www.stern.nyu.edu/ San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) https://sfai.edu/ SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission) https://www.sec.gov/ Enron (corporate reference) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron Vancouver Art Gallery https://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/ Pixar https://www.pixar.com/ Up (Pixar Film) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1049413/ Inside Out (Pixar Film) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2096673/ Soul (Pixar Film) https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2948372/ The Diving Bell and the Butterfly https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401383/ John Wick https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2911666/

Recorded at the Stony Island Arts Bank / Chicago Architecture Biennial tailgate In this wild, funny, and unexpectedly heartfelt tailgate episode, the Bad at Sports crew — Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Jesse Malmed — sit down with sculptor and arts worker Andi Crist in front of the Stony Island Arts Bank during the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The conversation moves fluidly between jokes about heated bamboo floors, fake Uber snacks, soggy bottoms, and bees swarming the microphones — but at its core, the episode is an unusually generous portrait of an artist who's spent years inside the hidden labor structures of museums, galleries, and fabrication shops. Crist discusses her debut solo museum exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Live Laugh, Labor: Thoughts on Usefulness and Other Myths. She traces her evolution from preparator and art worker to exhibiting artist, unpacking how years of installing, patching walls, and fabricating for others shaped her own deeply self-aware sculptural practice. Her work twists familiar objects — especially extension cords, wet floor signs, and museum benches — into uncanny, absurd, and often poignant ceramic sculptures. A major highlight is Crist performing, in full BBC British-schoolmarm mode, the ChatGPT-generated Jane-Austen-style text she inscribed onto a handcrafted wet floor sign. The hosts derail repeatedly into laughter but also probe serious questions about labor visibility, materials, usefulness, and what it means to "gussy up" the hidden structures of the art world and present them as art. Throughout the episode, Crist reflects on her Southern-to-Chicago shift, her years of preparator culture, the pleasures and irritations of coiling cords, the aesthetics of infrastructure, and her dream of sneaking her replica Art Institute bench into the museum permanently. Her practice sits at the intersection of devotion, mischief, and craft — a perfect "match" for Bad at Sports tailgate chaos. Andi Crist https://andicrist.com/ EJ Hill https://ejhillart.com/ Jamila James (curator; formerly ICA LA, currently at Carnegie Museum of Art) https://cmoa.org/people/jamila-james/ Justin Witte (Director/Curator, Cleve Carney Museum of Art) https://cod.edu/academics/arts_communications/departments/art/faculty/witte.aspx Cleve Carney Museum of Art https://theccma.org/ Stony Island Arts Bank https://rebuild-foundation.org/arts-bank/ Chicago Architecture Biennial https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ The Art Institute of Chicago https://www.artic.edu/ UIC School of Art & Art History https://artandarthistory.uic.edu/ Columbia College Chicago — School of Visual Arts https://www.colum.edu/academics/school-of-visual-arts/ Mary Berry (Great British Bake Off) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Berry Prue Leith https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prue_Leith Great British Bake Off https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_British_Bake_Off Hobby Lobby https://www.hobbylobby.com/ Michaels https://www.michaels.com/ Play-Doh Fun Factory https://shop.hasbro.com/en-us/product/play-doh-fun-factory/ (representative product link) Far Side (Gary Larson) https://www.thefarside.com/ Let Me Google That For You (LMGTFY) https://letmegooglethat.com/

Recorded live at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago / CAB Tailgate In this live MCA tailgate episode, the Bad at Sports crew — Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, Brian Andrews, and Jesse Malmed — sit down with Chicago Tribune and Hyperallergic critic Lori Waxman to dig into the past, present, and uncertain future of art criticism.   Lori Waxman speaks candidly about being one of the last remaining "paper critics" in the Midwest, the strange privilege and responsibility of writing for a general audience, and the realities of practicing criticism in a media ecosystem that has largely abandoned it. The conversation moves between the lightly chaotic and the deeply reflective: the team discusses accountability, gatekeeping, democratization, descriptive vs. evaluative criticism, and the uneasy role of critics in shaping a city's cultural memory. A major portion of the episode is devoted to Waxman's long-running performance project "The 60 WRD/Min Art Critic," which she describes as part-service, part-performance, part-publishing experiment — one that temporarily gives a community something most cities no longer have: a local critic writing about local work. From describing her process of writing in public (fully clothed), to fielding questions about dead artists, visibility, taste, and how critics navigate their own spreadsheets, Waxman opens up her practice with humor and clarity. The episode also includes reflections on Chicago's art ecology, journalism's collapse, how artists use reviews, and what it means to keep going when the platforms keep disappearing. Names Dropped — With Links Lori Waxman 🔗 https://loriwaxman.com/ Duncan MacKenzie 🔗 https://badatsports.com/author/duncan/ Brian Andrews 🔗 https://badatsports.com/author/brian/ Ryan Peter Miller 🔗 https://ryanpetermiller.com/ Jesse Malmed 🔗 https://jessemalmed.net/ Dan Attoe (artist) 🔗 https://www.danattoe.com/ Jerry Gogosian (Instagram art-world persona) 🔗 https://www.instagram.com/jerrygogosian/ Tali Halperin (artist/curator; Chicago-based) 🔗 https://tlihlprn.com/ (closest authoritative source) Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) 🔗 https://mcachicago.org/ Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) 🔗 https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ Masthead Brewing / Mast Brewing 🔗 https://mastheadbrewingco.com/ Chicago Tribune — Arts 🔗 https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/visual-arts/ Hyperallergic 🔗 https://hyperallergic.com/ Other People's Pixels (artist website hosting) 🔗 https://www.otherpeoplespixels.com/ Documenta 🔗 https://documenta.de/en WLPN-LP 105.5 FM Lumpen Radio 🔗 https://lumpenradio.com/ Bad at Sports 🔗 https://badatsports.com/ The 60 WRD/Min Art Critic 🔗 https://60wrdmin.org/ Mavis Beacon (reference to "Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing") 🔗 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mavis_Beacon

Recorded live at the CAB6 × MCA Tailgate This episode was recorded as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB6) activation on the plaza of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, where Bad at Sports staged a series of open-air interviews, community dialogues, and tailgate-style broadcasts. Artists, architects, students, and the public intersected in a shared social space designed for porous conversation. Episode 920 features Tony Lewis, whose practice has shaped Chicago's contemporary drawing discourse for more than a decade. In this conversation, Tony Lewis joins Bad at Sports for an unscripted outdoor interview on the MCA plaza during the Architecture Biennial. The discussion moves fluidly between Lewis's formative years in Chicago, the evolution of his drawing practice, his relationship to language systems (notably shorthand), and the material intelligence behind works that incorporate rubber bands, graphite, or constraint mechanisms. Lewis reflects on mentorship, studio discipline, the importance of failure and patience, and the way drawing becomes a long-term conversation with materials. He speaks candidly about the Chicago art ecosystem, the emotional dimensions of his practice, and the shifting sense of scale and intimacy in his recent work — including his Louis Bag series and large graphite constructions. The episode captures an artist thinking in real time about endurance, attention, vulnerability, and artistic friendship. ·       Drawing as a full-body practice: constraint, tension, rubber bands, architecture of line. ·       Language + shorthand: transcription, coded systems, linguistic compression. ·       Chicago as a site of artistic maturation: community, humility, seriousness. ·       Material intelligence: graphite as dust, weight, pressure, residue. ·       Patience and endurance: long timelines for developing works. ·       Professional evolution: moving from iconic early works to quieter, more intimate forms. ·       Artistic friendship and trust: collaboration, studio visits, long-running dialogues. ·       Shorthand Drawings / Gregg Shorthand–based works ·       Rubber band constructions & torn-grid drawings ·       Graphite floor drawings / powder dispersion works ·       Louis Bag series  ·       Wall-based large graphite sheets under tension NAMES DROP-ed  ·       Tony Lewis - https://massimodecarlo.com/artists/tony-lewis ·       Kevin Beasley (referenced indirectly in relation to material practice) - https://caseykaplangallery.com/artists/beasley/ ·       Nate Young - https://www.moniquemeloche.com/artists/36-nate-young/works/ ·       Theaster Gates - https://www.theastergates.com/ ·       Michelle Grabner - https://www.michellegrabner.com/ ·       Kerry James Marshall - https://jackshainman.com/artists/kerry_james_marshall ·       William Pope.L - https://www.miandn.com/artists/pope-l ·       Rodney McMillian - https://vielmetter.com/artists/rodney-mcmillian/ ·       Amanda Williams - https://awstudioart.com/home.html ·       Rashid Johnson - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2830-rashid-johnson/ ·       Charles Gaines - https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/21845-charles-gaines/ ·       Torkwase Dyson - https://www.torkwasedyson.com/ ·       Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) - https://mcachicago.org/ ·       Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ ·       Shane Campbell Gallery - https://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/ ·       School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) - https://www.saic.edu/   Image Sarah Hudson

This week, Bad at Sports hits the road and heads north to Sheboygan and Kohler, Wisconsin — where art, industry, and community collide. We drop into the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and the Kohler Arts/Industry Residency program to see how a small Midwestern town sustains one of the most ambitious intersections of art and manufacturing in the country. Michelle Grabner and Jodi Throckmorton. From toilets to terracotta, brass casting to bathroom design, Kohler has been quietly incubating radical artistic practice for decades, embedding artists in its factories while JMKAC builds a civic platform for art environments, vernacular traditions, and contemporary experimentation. We talk with artists, administrators, and community members about what makes this ecosystem work — and why Sheboygan might just be the weirdest, most wonderful art town in America. John Michael Kohler Arts Center @jmkacKohler Arts/Industry Residency Kohler Co. @kohler   Name-Drop Jodi Throckmorton  - https://curatorsintl.org/about/collaborators/7932-jodi-throckmorton Michelle Grabner - https://www.michellegrabner.com/ John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) — https://www.jmkac.org/ Kohler Arts/Industry Residency — https://www.jmkac.org/arts-industry/ Kohler Co. — https://www.kohlercompany.com/ Art Preserve (JMKAC's satellite museum) — https://www.jmkac.org/art-preserve/ Arts/Industry Alumni (sampled in conversation): Beth Lipman — https://www.bethlipman.com/ | @beth_lipman Ann Agee — https://www.annageestudio.com/ Jeffrey Clancy — https://jeffreyclancy.com/home.html Ashwini Bhat — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/ashwini-bhat-reverberating-self/ Pao Houa — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/pao-houa-her-the-imaginative-landscape/ Lily Cox-Richard  — https://www.jmkac.org/exhibition/water-sprouts-and-remains-an-unfolding/ Sheboygan community — https://www.townofsheboyganwi.gov/  

This week we sit down with Amanda Ross-Ho, whose large-scale sculptures, staged environments, and uncanny translations of domestic and studio life have made her a vital presence in contemporary art. Recorded in Chicago around her latest exhibition, the conversation spans everything from monumental t-shirts to the politics of labor, and from the intimacy of the studio to the spectacle of the art fair. Ross-Ho reflects on how she mines personal and collective archives, the humor and seriousness in her work, and the ways she uses scale to destabilize the familiar. We also talk about teaching, generational shifts in art-making, and what it means to sustain a practice over the long haul.   Listen & Follow   Amanda Ross-Ho - https://hammer.ucla.edu/made-la-2025/amanda-ross-ho @amandarossho   Name-Drop  Amanda Ross-Ho — https://www.miandn.com/artists/amanda-ross-ho | @amandarossho Mitchell-Innes & Nash (Gallery) — https://www.miandn.com | @miandn_gallery Cherry and Martin (Gallery) — https://www.artforum.com/news/los-angeless-cherry-and-martin-gallery-closes-237707/ MoCA Cleveland — https://www.mocacleveland.org/ | @mocacleveland Whitney Biennial — https://whitney.org/exhibitions/the-biennial | @whitneymuseum Art Basel — https://www.artbasel.com/?lang=en | @artbasel Frieze Art Fair — https://www.frieze.com/fairs/frieze-london | @friezeofficial Los Angeles art scene / UCLA — https://www.arts.ucla.edu | @uclarts EXPO CHICAGO - https://www.expochicago.com/ Chicago Architectural Biennial 6 - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/

  This week, we print big or go home. Bad at Sports cast their eyes to New York from the safe confines of the Chicago Architectural Biennial booth at EXPO 2025 to talk with the legendary Two Palms studio in the guise of Alex Slattery. If you've ever stood slack-jawed in front of a monoprint the size of a small car or a woodblock cut so large it needed its own logistics plan, chances are Two Palms was behind it. Since the 1990s, David Lasry and company have been redefining what printmaking can be—working with artists like Carroll Dunham, Elizabeth Peyton, Mel Bochner, Cecily Brown, Terry Winters, Chris Ofili, Dana Schutz, Richard Prince, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, and yes, even channeling the ghost of Andy Warhol. From delicate gestures to total madness with ink and paper, the studio's collaborations are as unpredictable as they are radical. We talk risk, scale, failure, and discovery—the alchemy of artist–printer collaborations that make Two Palms a force in contemporary art. Along the way we wander through stories of impossible woodblocks, ink disasters turned into triumphs, and why printmaking might just be the most punk medium of them all. So pour a glass, sharpen your barens, and get ready to nerd out about the future of prints.   Two Palms https://www.twopalms.us/ @twopalmsnyc   Name-Drop  Carroll Dunham — https://www.presenhuber.com/artists/carroll-dunham#tab:slideshow Elizabeth Peyton — https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/elizabeth-peyton Mel Bochner — http://www.melbochner.net/ Cecily Brown — https://gagosian.com/artists/cecily-brown/ Terry Winters —https://www.terrywinters.org/ Chris Ofili — https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/chris-ofili/survey Dana Schutz — https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/dana-schutz Richard Prince — http://www.richardprince.com/ Chuck Close — https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/chuck-close/ Jeff Koons — https://www.jeffkoons.com/ Two Palms — https://www.twopalms.us/ Marilyn Minter — https://www.twopalms.us/featured-works/marilyn-minter Stanley Whitney — https://www.twopalms.us/featured-works/stanley-whitney Ana Benaroya — https://www.twopalms.us/featured-works/ana-benaroya David Paul Lasry — https://www.nga.gov/artists/21067-david-paul-lasry Alex Slattery — https://www.instagram.com/alexslattery/ EXPO CHICAGO - https://www.expochicago.com/ Chicago Architectural Biennial 6 - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ Institutions that love these prints: Whitney Museum of American Art — https://whitney.org/ MoMA — https://www.moma.org/ The Met — https://www.metmuseum.org/  

Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller drive up to the Dunn Museum in Libertyville, IL to talk with legendary comics painter Alex Ross. Known for Marvels, Kingdom Come, and decades of redefining superhero realism, Ross reflects on his career trajectory, his education at the American Academy of Art, his influences (from Neal Adams to Dave McKean), his early breaks with Now Comics and Leo Burnett storyboarding, and his transition into large-scale mural projects for Marvel and DC. The conversation ranges from comics history, realism in superhero depictions, variant cover economics, the physicality of superheroes, to America's appetite for dystopian narratives versus a return to the "pure Superman." Ross is candid, funny, and deeply reflective about the comics medium, painting, and storytelling.     Name-Drop List Artists & Writers Alex Ross — https://www.alexrossart.com/ | @alexrossart Neal Adams – https://nealadams.com/ George Pérez – https://www.tcj.com/george-perez-1954-2022/ Jack Kirby – https://kirbymuseum.org/ Dave McKean – https://www.davemckean.com/ Neil Gaiman — neilgaiman.com | @neilhimself Chris Ware – https://art21.org/artist/chris-ware/ Jim Lee — https://www.dc.com/talent/jim-lee @jimlee Todd McFarlane — https://mcfarlane.com/ @toddmcfarlane Erik Larsen — https://imagecomics.com/creators/erik-larsen  @eriklarsen1138 John Tobias (Mortal Kombat) – https://www.mobygames.com/person/3326/john-tobias/ Tim Bradstreet — https://www.splashpageart.com/artistgalleryroom.asp?artistid=83 @timbradstreet Frank Casey (Ross's Superman model) – chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://news.wttw.com/sites/default/files/article/file-attachments/The%20process_Ross%20at%20work.pdf Institutions & Companies Dunn Museum (Libertyville, IL) — https://www.lcfpd.org/museum/ @lcfpd Marvel Comics — marvel.com | @marvel DC Comics — dc.com | @dccomics American Academy of Art (Chicago) — Leo Burnett (advertising) – https://dev.leoburnett.com/ Now Comics (Chicago, defunct) Eclipse Comics (defunct) FASA (publisher of Shadowrun, BattleTech) – https://shop.fasagames.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=68 Mortal Kombat franchise — https://www.mortalkombat.com/en-us  @mortalkombat Pop Culture References Kingdom Come (DC) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_Come_(comics) Marvels (Marvel) – https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/the-marvels/umc.cmc.6nb1ii3n99o7rewjyq8whcsuu Shadowrun RPG – https://store.catalystgamelabs.com/collections/shadowrun Vampire: The Masquerade (White Wolf) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vampire:_The_Masquerade The Boys (Amazon Prime) – https://www.primevideo.com/detail/The-Boys/0KRGHGZCHKS920ZQGY5LBRF7MA Invincible (Image Comics / Amazon) – https://www.amazon.com/INVINCIBLE-SEASON-1/dp/B08WJN83XZ Peacemaker (HBO) – https://www.hbomax.com/shows/peacemaker-2022/a939d96b-7ffb-4481-96f6-472838d104ca Brightburn (film) – https://tv.apple.com/us/movie/brightburn/umc.cmc.4pkvqa1b6mf30wtx66vor37fq Image: John Weinstein

In Part Two of our late-night conversation, Bad at Sports digs deeper into the remarkable trajectory of Kenny Schachter. From law school dropout to autodidact philosopher, from Sotheby's bidder to artist and teacher, Schachter traces the unlikely path that brought him into the heart of the art world — a place he insists remains strangely conservative despite all its pretenses of progress. The discussion moves between personal history and systemic critique. Schachter recounts the role of art in surviving trauma, loss, and addiction, and why surrounding himself with works by others has been both solace and education. He reflects on the stubborn conservatism of the market, celebrity crossovers from Johnny Depp to Julian Schnabel, and the tension between wanting freedom and the systems that resist it. For Schachter, art is both a lifeline and a way to comment on the world's chaos — a practice rooted in generosity, curiosity, and contradiction. This episode captures him at his most reflective and most biting, moving from humor to vulnerability and back again. Highlights • Schachter's first encounters with Twombly, Rauschenberg, and Frankenthaler at the National Gallery. • The shock of Andy Warhol's estate sale in 1988. • Dealer-to-dealer hustling as an unlikely entry into art. • Why "there are no rules" is his best definition of being an artist. • The paradox of an art world that markets rebellion but runs on tradition. Names Dropped Andy Warhol I.M. Pei, https://www.pcf-p.com/about/i-m-pei/ Chase Manhattan Bank, https://www.jpmorganchase.com/about/art-collection Christie's, https://www.christies.com/en Sotheby's, https://www.sothebys.com/en/ Phillips Auction House, https://www.phillips.com/ Patrick Drahi, https://www.artnews.com/art-collectors/top-200-profiles/patrick-drahi/ Leonard Lauder, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/leonard-lauder-sothebys-klimt-matisse-1234751922/ The Pritzker family, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/pritzker-art-collection-sothebys-breuer-1234751864/ Elaine Wynn, https://www.christies.com/en/events/the-collection-of-elaine-wynn Wyatt Kline, https://unframed.lacma.org/2014/01/28/contemporary-friends-acquire-ten-new-works-by-artists-from-around-the-world Alex Burns, Felix Reuter (Ryder), https://felixreuter.bandcamp.com/ Guerrilla Girls, https://www.guerrillagirls.com/ Old Friends Gallery, https://www.oldfriendsgallery.com/ David Letterman, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Letterman The Suburban, http://www.thesuburban.org/

This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller find themselves in Chicago with curator Bianca Bova and the indefatigable Kenny Schachter — artist, writer, teacher, collector, and provocateur. What begins as a conversation about Schachter's exhibition at Old Friends Gallery — featuring chicken-assisted artworks and bronze casts forged in Slovenia — quickly expands into a meditation on the art world itself. Schachter reflects on his collaborations, his obsession with foundries, and his refusal to keep resources secret. The group debates the zero-sum mentality of the art market, why artists sabotage themselves, and how absurd projects (sometimes with actual chickens) can be the most serious acts of art-making. Equal parts candid and comedic, the conversation cuts across auctions, art fairs, and the everyday realities of teaching. Expect reflections on generosity vs. gatekeeping, the fragility of the art system, and what it means to make art that is more conceptual than commercial. Highlights • Chickens as collaborators and muses. • The foundry in Slovenia that casts Rudolf Stingel's panels. • Why keeping fabricators secret is a sign of weakness. • Auctions as democratizing, even anarchic, art spaces. • The necessity of art in a divided and compassion-starved world. Names Dropped Kenny Scharf, https://kennyscharf.com/ Kenny Schachter, https://www.kennyschachter.art/ Bianca Bova, https://www.biancabovagallery.com/ Billy Connolly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Connolly Rudolf Stingel, https://gagosian.com/artists/rudolf-stingel/ Tobias Rehberger, https://pedrocera.com/artists/tobias-rehberger Paul Thek, https://whitney.org/exhibitions/paul-thek Giacometti, https://www.moma.org/artists/2141-alberto-giacometti Jerry Saltz, https://nymag.com/author/jerry-saltz/ Cy Twombly, https://cytwombly.org/ Jasper Johns, https://whitney.org/artists/653 Robert Rauschenberg, https://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/ Joan Mitchell, https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell Helen Frankenthaler, https://gagosian.com/artists/helen-frankenthaler/ Georgia O'Keeffe, https://www.okeeffemuseum.org/ Andy Warhol, https://www.warhol.org/ Joseph Beuys, https://walkerart.org/collections/artists/joseph-beuys Sigmar Polke, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/sigmar-polke-2213 John Cage, https://www.johncage.org/ Devendra Banhart, https://devendrabanhart.com/ Brad Pitt, https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/09/19/brad-pitt-debuts-his-sculptures-in-finland Cindy Sherman, https://www.hauserwirth.com/hauser-wirth-exhibitions/cindy-sherman/ Robert Longo, https://www.robertlongo.com/ Julian Schnabel, https://www.julianschnabel.com/ Old Friends Gallery, https://www.oldfriendsgallery.com/

This week, Bad at Sports reconnects with one of Chicago's most beloved curators and cultural instigators Ox-Bow School of Art's Executive Director, Shannon Stratton. From founding Threewalls to serving as Chief Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York, Stratton's career is a masterclass in weaving together artists, audiences, and institutions. We talk about building spaces for experimental practices, sustaining feminist and craft-centered discourse, and what it means to return to Chicago after reshaping the curatorial conversation nationally. Stratton dives into the ethics of hospitality, the politics of craft, and why sometimes the most radical thing you can do is set the table. Recorded live at EXPO 2025 in the loving space provided by the Chicago Architectural Biennial 2025 Photo by Dominique Muñoz @domo23   Name-Drop Shannon R. Stratton - https://www.shannonraestratton.com/about Threewalls — https://three-walls.org/ Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) —https://madmuseum.org/ Haystack Mountain School of Crafts —https://www.haystack-mtn.org/ MCA Chicago — https://mcachicago.org/ Textile Society of America —https://textilesocietyofamerica.org/ The Center for Craft — https://www.centerforcraft.org/ Naomi Beckwith (curator) — https://www.guggenheim.org/about-us/staff/naomi-beckwith Julia Bryan-Wilson (art historian) — https://arthistory.columbia.edu/content/julia-bryan-wilson Jenni Sorkin (art historian) — https://arthistory.ucsb.edu/people/jenni-sorkin EXPO CHICAGO - https://www.expochicago.com/ Chicago Architectural Biennial 6 - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/

This week Bad at Sports goes full meta, talking about talking about art. We sit down with Ben Davis, National Art Critic for Artnet News and author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class, to unpack the state of art criticism in 2025. Davis has been one of the sharpest voices charting the relationship between culture, economics, and media—at once insider, outsider, and always keeping his mom in mind. From the collapse of traditional publishing to the weird vacuum left by social media, Davis doesn't just describe the cracks in the system—he names them, theorizes them, and points to where something new might emerge. We talk ZIRP (zero-interest-rate phenomena), the rise of click-driven media, what AI means for art, and why communities matter more than markets. Listen & Follow Ben Davis on Artnet News - https://news.artnet.com/search/Ben+Davis  @benstoppable https://www.benadavis.com/ Name-Drop Artnet News — news.artnet.com https://news.artnet.com/search/ Brooklyn Rail — brooklynrail.org AI / ChatGPT — openai.com/chatgpt Neil Young — neilyoungarchives.com Slayer — slayer.net   Image care of... https://c4aa.org/our-research/interviews/ben-davis/  

Recorded live from the Chicago Architectural Biennial's booth at EXPO Chicago, Bad at Sports tailgates with artist Edra Soto and designer Dan Sullivan—Chicago's unofficial art-world power couple. Soto unpacks her first solo art fair booth at Engage Projects, where monoblock plastic chairs, airbrushed T-shirts, and Puerto Rican vernacular architecture collide with memory, loss, and celebration. Sullivan, founder of Navillus Woodworks, riffs on craft, Ikea hacks, and the business of making high-end furniture while moonlighting as Soto's collaborator and fabricator. "Dan helps." What starts as a playful conversation about paparazzi, beer coolers, and chairs spirals into a meditation on grief, Puerto Rican cultural identity, and the design politics of everyday objects. Along the way, we hit Bad Bunny, the Bear restaurant, euphemisms around death, Catholic ritual, and the French (yes, the French). We close out with music talk—Sullivan on his bands Nadnavillus and Arriver—and a standing invitation for Bad at Sports to share the stage. Death, dying, lawn chairs, and punk rock. Welcome to EXPO. Artists & Designers Edra Soto Instagram: @edrasoto https://edrasoto.com/home.html Dan Sullivan / Navillus Woodworks Instagram: @navillus_woodworks https://navilluswoodworks.com/ Ryan Peter Miller Instagram: @ryanpetermiller http://ryanpetermiller.com/ Miguel Aguilar (Kane One) Instagram: @kane_one_   kane-1.com https://www.3arts.org/artist/miguel-aguilar/ Susan Gomes George Ortiz Instagram: @georgeortizphotography https://www.georgeortizphotography.com/ Bad Bunny Instagram: @badbunnypr  https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/459095/bad-bunny-puerto-rico-residency-history Institutions / Venues / Events Engage Projects Instagram: @engageprojects https://www.engage-projects.com/   Chicago Architecture Biennial Instagram: @chicagoarchitecturebiennial https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/   EXPO Chicago Instagram: @expochicago  expochicago.com WBEZ Instagram: @wbezchicago  wbez.org/about  105.5 FM Lumpen Radio (WLPN‑LP) Instagram: @lumpenradio   lumpenradio.com  The Franklin (project space) Instagram: @thefranklinoutdoor (site-run by Edra Soto & Dan Sullivan)  https://thefranklinoutdoor.tumblr.com/ABOUT The Bear restaurant (Sullivan furniture) This refers to the TV show The Bear on FX,  Art Basel Instagram: @artbasel artbasel.com The Armory Show Instagram: @thearmoryshow  thearmoryshow.com NADA (New Art Dealers Alliance) Instagram: @newartdealers  newartdealers.org  Color Factory Instagram: @colorfactoryco  colorfactory.co  Electrical Audio (recording studio) Instagram: @electricalaudio  Tenement Museum (NYC) Instagram: @thetenementmuseum  https://www.tenement.org/  Cultural Figures & References Yolanda, Lucetta, Anita (Puerto Rican celebs) Gilberto Santa Rosa Lil' Kim, Lil' Romeo, Neil Young, Slayer, Jeff Koons   Bands & Music Navilus (Dan Sullivan's project) https://navilluswoodworks.com/ Arriver (art-metal band) image courtesy of Engage Projects

In this lively and insightful episode, Bad at Sports hosts a roundtable conversation with Dirk Denison (Founding Board Member of the Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB)), David Salkin (Designer, Curator, and Board Husband), and Jennifer Armetta (Executive Director of the CAB). Together, they reflect on the impact and legacy of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and its shifting forms of experimentation, urbanism, and civic engagement. The episode explores the curatorial frameworks of CAB, the roles of education and public space, and how architecture becomes a lens through which cities reimagine themselves. Names Dropped: - Dirk Denison - https://www.dirkdenisonarchitects.com/ - David Salkin - https://www.davidsalkin.com/ - Jennifer Armetta - https://www.engage-projects.com/ - Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ - Venice Architecture Biennial - https://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/2025 - CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal - https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/exhibitions/dress-rehearsal-chicago-architecture-biennial-2023 - CAB 6: Shift - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/ - Chicago Architecture Center - https://www.architecture.org/ - Graham Foundation - http://www.grahamfoundation.org/ - Studio Gang - https://studiogang.com/ - MASS Design Group - https://massdesigngroup.org/ - Jeanne Gang - https://studiogang.com/people/jeanne-gang/ - Open House Chicago - https://www.architecture.org/open-house-chicago/about – Burnham - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Burnham – Frank Llyod Wright - https://flwright.org/ – the ID at IIT - https://id.iit.edu/ – Mies - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Mies_van_der_Rohe – Louis Sullivian  - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Sullivan - Professor Landis - https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/professor/1239455 - Rahm Emmanuel - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rahm_Emanuel

We meet Paul Pfeiffer inside his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago to talk about ghosts, spectacle, and the metaphysics of sports. Known for erasing athletes from footage and turning stadiums into stages of worship, Pfeiffer opens up about boxing as performance, the haunted loop of fandom, and building media rituals in the Philippines. Also: parrots, Deion Sanders, lip sync monks, and the death of the moment.   Names dropped: Deion Sanders - https://www.instagram.com/deionsanders/?hl=en  Manny Pacquiao - mannypacquiao.ph The Bible (yes, the text) - https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/hail-satan?srsltid=AfmBOoqTwkeDSDwxOmlvVLQX8QQduw8ehfzt3sYzUMFMvJO-_ym35hOg Tom Gunning - https://cms.uchicago.edu/people/tom-gunning Joshua Oppenheimer - https://cream.ac.uk/people/josh-oppenheimer/  DJ Spooky (Paul Miller) - djspooky.com Gina Osterloh - ginaosterloh.com Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago - mcachicago.org Biennale of Sydney - biennaleofsydney.art Contemporary Art Gallery Vancouver - cagvancouver.org

We sit down with curator Rachel Adams to talk about institutional evolution, artists as infrastructure, and how curatorial practice shifts between museums and biennials. Rachel reflects on working with artists like Cauleen Smith, Liz Magic Laser, and Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, the power of slow curation, and why she's drawn to hybrid spaces that defy the market. Along the way: phantom titles, artist contracts, Minneapolis moments, and a manifesto in a box of ice cream bars. Cauleen Smith cauleensmith.com   Liz Magic Laser lizmagiclaser.com   Beatriz Santiago Muñoz lima.art   Candice Hopkins indigenousnewyork.org   Nato Thompson https://www.natothompson.com/about   Christina Vassallo columbusmuseum.org   Sarah Schultz mplsart.com   Alison Hearst themodern.org   Andrea Andersson riversinstitute.org   Franklin Sirmans pamm.org   Mary Jane Jacob https://never-the-same.org/interviews/mary-jane-jacob/   Independent Curators International (ICI) curatorsintl.org   image: Asad Raza, Orientation, 2022. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Field Studio.