SODIUM FOX IN SAN DIEGO

Last weekend I visited the San Diego Museum of Art in Balboa Park with my wife and daughter. We were exploring the not-as-kid-friendly-as-one-might-expect exhibit animated painting when we stumbled upon Jeremy Blake's Sodium Fox. Blake, you might remember, died last year in an apparrent suicide shortly after his long-time partner Theresa Duncan died as a result of an intentional overdose.

Sodium Fox is a whimsical mix of neon, low-brow art and pop culture kitsch. Blake collaborated with Silver Jews frontman David Berman and the result is a film that kinda sort of coheres like a narrative. Berman's prose is both plucky and poignant. Visitors can follow the narration (through January 13) with transcriptions of the voice over in both English in Spanish. Given the circumstances of Blake's death, the opening line is particularly spooky:

I'm definitely the kind of man who knows when it's over.

Or, as they say in Mexico:

Definitivamente soy el tipo de hombre que sabe cuando se acabo.