Monday, December 22, 2008

Link to check out

Hey everyone! You should all take a look at this site. My friend Alex who was also in Miami had a fancy press pass and was able to take pictures in the art fairs. See what was being shown.

have a good break!


http://thereweretentigers.blogspot.com/

Saturday, December 6, 2008

miami

so, things got off to a rough start - my flight was cancelled on Thursday and then the following day my substitute flight was three hours late! I got into Miami around 6pm and headed straight to Basel (they close up promptly at 8pm) I got to see very little. My dear friend artist, Zoe Charlton, had been there all day and guided me to her favorite booths. Speed art-ing! Today I plan to spend the day in Wynwood, an area of miami where a lot of off shoot art fairs are located. I will collect as many postcards as possible for you guys and try my might at taking sneaky pictures as well. There's a lot of amazing stuff yet to check out-- I'll keep you posted.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Fainting Ladies

Intuition in art making definitely exists- not sure about the fainting ladies, though....
Speaking as an artist, I create series of works based on an idea, generally topics unrelated to art. I spend a lot of time researching and thinking about this "idea", but the artwork I create is immediate, intuitive and without pre-planning. I depend on my mistakes or "my little experiments" (as I like to call them) to guide me through the process.

Another consideration to make is that the artists we visited are in an MFA program--a place where they are required to explain process and think and re-think every decision in their studios-- all this eventually leading to their thesis. Intuition can be a tricky topic to articulate during thesis review.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Random thoughts on this morning:

I thought meeting with the MFA students this morning was pretty interesting.  I found their processes and how they transitioned from one medium or type of work to another to be the most fascinating.  For some reason, I found it almost surprising to hear several of them talk about the process or steps they took in order to end up with a final project.  

I think I was (naively) under the impression that visual art was somehow different from a written manuscript or even a choreographed dance in that it didn't require premeditation, drafts, or revisioning (Likewise, Mozart could sit at a piano as a child and create sonatas on the spot; Seinfeld keeps a notepad on his night stand in order to record jokes that "come to him" in the middle of the night... this is where my delusion is coming from, I think).  I've seen artist's sketches, models, and visual aids, crafted in order to better understand how the final product should be created but I guess I attributed those to the artist's uncontrollable "planner" personality traits...

Not that I thought an idea for a painting or sculpture magically appeared out of thin air but apparently, somewhere along the line, I subscribed to the romantic idea that visual art is this organic, involuntary act that is created while lightening crashes in the background and ladies faint in disbelief.  Good thing I'm taking the class!  




P.S. A fun security envelope pattern Google found for me.


Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Galleries and Artists I Liked


Hey everyone! It was good to see you all today and I hope you all are doing well :)
Here are the galleries and artists that interested me : :


  • Like the Spice Gallery
Like the Spice is a contemporary gallery in the burgeoning neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and is as much about community as it is about art. Like the Spice is striving to reach out to our neighbors and once again entice the average passerby off of the street, so that everyone can care about art as much as the seasoned connoisseur.


  • John Zaso
http://www.johnzaso.com/

John has been obsessed with clean lines and bright colors and this theme is still present in his work.


  • Jason Bryant

Bryant's paintings are often confrontational, yet inviting, questioning the viewer's notions of reality and how these notions can be blurred or reinforced by film.










  • Metaphor Contemporary Art
Metaphor contemporary art exhibits new works of exceptional quality by emerging and mid-career artists. Our focus is on art that surprises, engages and challenges the viewer


  • Gabe Brown.
Brown creates painterly rebuses that tease the mind.






  • Ch’i Contemporary Art
Committed to exhibiting vibrant contemporary art by living artists: both mid-career and emerging. Ch’i exhibits works in two distinct styles: abstract, textural or fragmented figurative.


  • HeeSook Kim
Herbal imagery conveys nature's spirituality as found in Taoism. I also use herbal medicines like alternative ones found in America to explore the cultural exchange between Eastern and Western cultures






  • Elise Freda
“Mystery appeals to me. Each painting is a glimpse, a continuing conversation with the visual world.”





  • Parker’s Box
The gallery is committed to championing the work of both American and overseas artists whose practice and attitudes are innovatory while being instilled with curiosity towards both the mechanisms of the contemporary world, and the mechanisms that can operate within a work of art

  • Stefan Sehler
Developed the ability to position himself, in an intriguingly precise juggling act, on the razor's edge between opposing and complementary territories of painting. The orchestration in his work of an evolving dynamic between representation and abstraction has helped to create a respected position for him in Europe…





  • Farmani Gallery
  • Andrea Altemuller
the deepest of our human experiences
are those which are removed
from the daily routine.“
robert musil--- Some years ago I found this poem. These words express in a perfect way, what I feel about taking pictures.


  • Maryanne Bilham
In Divine Eros we look to these women’s stories to remind us of this heart wisdom and to prompt us to question what role these qualities play in our own lives. Finally, these stories remind us that the heart is the doorway to our own direct connection with the divine and to our own capacity as mystic.





  • Phil Borges
Our great wealth of cultural and ethnic diversity is disappearing at an alarming rate. On average, every two. I have devoted most of my photographic work in advocacy of the people where this extinction rate is the highest—the remaining indigenous people of our planet.
The question that BRIDGES asks, and attempts to address is: what would happen if we gave these children a voice and connected them to our children on a platform that allowed an equal exchange?

Monday, November 10, 2008

Contemporary Artists- Notes from second meeting

Contemporary Artists


Kojo Griffin- http://www.kojogriffin.com/home.html
Gallery- Salt Works Gallery
Atlanta Gerogia
http://www.saltworksgallery.com/

Artist Statement-

his website has a spot for it but its not filled in. I guess he hasn’t finished it yet?
Some info from press releases- The paintings in An Acausal Connecting Principle mark a bold departure as well as a new beginning for Griffin. Griffin’s signature anthropomorphic characters have been retired. The eight new paintings explore Griffin’s exciting and bold exploration into the act of painting. Instead of an overarching idea connecting each work, Griffin approaches each painting on its own, with the subject matter chosen chiefly as a carrier of technique and process. The resulting paintings are confident and audacious, each delving into territory that is both accomplished and experimental. Quality Pictures is pleased to announce Swing States of Mind, the gallery's second exhibition of work by Kojo Griffin. In Swing States of Mind, the Atlanta artist debuts six new paintings of arresting visual and creative depth. These psychologically charged pieces will be complemented by a selection of Griffin's paintings, drawings, and prints
from the past eight years. Tracing the creative evolution of this restless artist, Swing States of Mind not only signals an exciting new direction for Griffin, but also looks to history for a more profound understanding of the present. Griffin's new paintings find a cast of familiar figures returning from an extended absence. The psychologically bruised animals that populated Griffin's early work have reappeared, although time has not been especially kind. Rendered damaged and ghostly, the morose, upright creatures now inhabit a stark interior space - as cold psychologically as it is architecturally. Griffin's brushwork strikes a tense harmony of abandon and control here, as fierce strokes of deep, moody hues push up again the artist's command of the figure.
My comments- Kojo Griffin uses ink, pencil and acrylic on paper and canvas. Whether he is using his well know hybrid animal-people or another anonymous human-type representation, Griffin’s work always addresses highly charged emotional and psychological issues. He is most well known for his work dealing with victimology and violence. Often times his backgrounds are abstracted with patterns that help lend an understanding of the characters he depicts.



Jeff Wall- no website
Gallery- Marian Goodman Gallery
New York (Chelsea), New York
http://mariangoodman.com/mg/nyc.html

Artist Statement- couldn’t find one, probably because he is too famous.
Some info from press releases- After a brief but eventful career that embodies the hopes and humiliations of African Americans at mid-twentieth century, the hero of Ralph Ellison's celebrated 1952 novel Invisible Man retreats to a secret basement room on the edge of Harlem. There he patiently composes and reflects upon the story we are about to read. "I am invisible,” he explains, "simply because people refuse to see me.” Making pictures out of stores was once the main business of the visual arts. The rising modernist tradition consigned the practice to the margins of advanced art; for most of the past century, "illustration" has been a term of contempt. In this large, richly detailed and thoroughly absorbing photograph, Wall has all but single-handedly reinvented the challenge. The novel's eloquent prologue is short on specifics, except one: the 1,369 lightbulbs that cover the ceiling of the underground lair. Starting with this fantastic detail, Wall scrupulously imagined in his Vancouver studio the concrete form of Ellison's metaphorical space. Ambitiously reviving a forgotten art, he made visible the Invisible Man.
My comments- Jeff Wall is a very famous photography from Vancouver, Canada. He makes very large works and puts them on huge light boxes (a quotation of the advertisements in subways), which creates a glowing effect. Wall’s photographs are always staged but meant to look as if they were chance. His works always addresses the awkwardness of people in their space. He likes to photograph marginalized people in typical situations.




Shepard Fairey- http://obeygiant.com/
Gallery- John LeVine Gallery
New York (Chelsea), New York
http://JonathanLeVineGallery.com/

Artist Statement- couldn’t find one, probably because he is too famous.
Some info from press releases- In some circles, Shepard Fairey is known as one of the most prolific and notorious street artists of his generation, creating memorable graphics that have spread through urban centers all over the world.When Fairey was a member of the 13-to-18 demographic, he lived in Charleston, S.C., where his obsessions were skateboarding and punk. He chose to go to the Rhode Island School of Design because he had a vague idea that he could make a living in a visual field. He got interested in screen printing. "What happened at RISD was that immediately people were talking about 'What's your major gonna be?' And people that were going into painting thought they were superior to people that were going into illustration, because"--he adopts a fey art-snob voice-- "'Illustration is commercial. I'm not compromising for anyone.'" Fairey majored in illustration. He believed, he says, that his fellow students who had chosen to be painters were already compromising their work and were likely to do so even more as they moved into the world of fine-art galleries. He also admits that he was "scared" of the fine-art world. "I did blow it off. Because...," he pauses for a long moment, "honestly, I didn't think that I had the talent to make it in that world." One night in 1989, when Fairey was still at RISD, he had a friend over who wanted to learn how to make stencils. Fairey flipped through a newspaper and picked out a picture of Andre Roussimoff--or Andre the Giant, the (now deceased) professional wrestler best known for his role in The Princess Bride. The friend balked because the image was too "stupid." Fairey was intrigued. No, he countered, it's cool. It's cutting edge. "Andre the Giant," he told his friend, "has a posse." They proceeded. Next to the smeary image of the wrestler's face, Fairey scrawled "Andre the Giant Has a Posse." He took the results to Kinko's and made stickers and slapped them on stop signs and in clubs. Then--randomly, in places like his local grocery store--he started hearing people talk about the stickers, asking each other what it might mean. So he put up more of the images, in New York City and Boston. He encouraged others to join in, with stickers, spray-paint stencils, and wheat-pasted posters. Later he shifted away from the longer tag line to the concise "Obey Giant," and started making visual variations, reworking the face in Russian constructivist styles and working it into different graphic contexts. Strictly speaking, what Fairey was doing and encouraging was illegal. Yet it was subversive to no obvious end. It was a kind of self-reflexive enterprise: The point of putting up a lot of Obey images was to see how many Obey images could be put up. Meanwhile, Fairey had started making T-shirts, and in the summer after his junior year, he started a printing business. He wrote off the fine-art world altogether. "I looked at it like this: I can be seen as cool and creative and somebody that's bringing great stuff into the realm of, you know, pop culture and skateboarding and punk music, in just whatever Dada goof-off stickering. Or I can be seen as not that talented in the fine-art world." He laughs. "So naturally I'm gonna gravitate to where I think I can succeed." Can you call someone a maverick if he works for multinational corporations? Can you call him a sellout if he's willing to risk arrest for the sake of self-expression? Can you call him a self-promoter if his most famous images are unsigned? Just as the "meaning" of Fairey's street visuals depends on who's looking, the answers to those questions vary according to who's asking. But wherever you come down, the underlying issue is one that resonates: Many entrepreneurs wrestle with the problem of integrity--the tension between what you want to do and what the market is willing to pay you to do. As hard as it is to craft a vision, it can be even harder to stick to it, to avoid letting pragmatism descend into compromise, to keep alive the idealism that inspired you in the first place.
My comments- Shepard Fairey’s move from street artist to commercial artist is epic. Also, I hope no one takes offense to this, but he is obsessed with Obama. I mean I am a liberal, but wow. Shepard Fairey is a graffiti and graphic artist. He does screen prints, buttons, and illegal wall art. He is most well known for his Andre the Giant and Barack Obama images. He has worked for many musicians including the Black Eyed Peas and Ozzy, making posters and album art. Fairey makes politically charged art using bold colors with an intensely graphic aesthetic.




Roland Fischer-
Gallery- G Fine Art
Washington, DC
http://www.gfineartdc.com/

Artist Statement-

none
Some info from press releases- A principal figure in the contemporary German photography movement, Roland Fischer's imagistic aesthetic evolved from his foundation as a conceptual portrait artist. Earlier bodies of work include a tonal series of monks and nuns and his LA portraits of women immersed to bust level in monochrome pools. He uses the same formal approach and illuminating insight in his recent large-format photographs of skyscraper façades. In these, he merges the detached psychology of direct portraiture with the abstract possibilities of painting, creating a unifying conceptual underpinning. Rooted in the formalism of new German photography, Fischer's façades reveal a preoccupation with the visual hallmarks of early modernist abstract painting, such as structure, color, rhythm, reductive shapes, geometry and surface effect. He translates these painterly concerns through the language of photography by shooting his subjects frontally and cropping them tightly into architectural fragments. Fischer strips the buildings from any urban context and denies them their mass, ultimately rendering them into decorative visual fields. Fischer controls any distortions through digital means and prints in large format, deliberately alluding to large abstract paintings, but keeps the slick photographic surface. And yet we recognize that these are building facades, structural membranes that function like skin, keeping interior private realms separate from the outer public world. On the one hand, these facades are frontal portraits of nameless buildings, each a member of a vast corporate culture. Pursuing this path of anonymous portraiture, Fischer leaves his photographs untitled, adding only the city name as documentary residue. On the other hand the facades are lush visual fragments that, like a theoretical hologram, contain a greater aesthetic whole. In our accelerated culture that glorifies quick and compressed communication such as soundbytes, logos, and synopses the fragment may ultimately prove the most revealing.
My comments- Roland Fischer is a German photographer. His early works in tonal portraiture is arresting in it’s frontality and large scale. His work is crisp, clean and bright. His new works, photographs of office building facades may seem to be a break with his previous photos but in fact it is just a new mutation. He still exhibits his photographs in a large scale with bright color and frontality. In keeping the titles the city names he does lend a interesting glimpse of the portrait of the city. The dynamic between abstraction and biography is an interesting new tension to his work.




Ran Ortner- http://www.ranortner.com/
Gallery- Ch’I Contemporary Fine Art
Brooklyn, New York
http://www.chicontemporaryfineart.com/dynamic/artist.asp?artistid=72#control

Artist Statement-

none
Some info from press releases- none
My comments- Ran Ortner is both a painter an an installation artist. In both mediums his works are huge and create a sense of a threatening sublime. Ortner’s paintings are of super-realistic waves, they are almost mannered in style. His instillation has an interest in sand and how sand can look like waves and water. His work is arresting in size and is a powerful reference of nature’s sublime. Please visit his website to see the installation work, its all in flash and I couldn’t find still jpgs to copy and paste.

New York Galleries- Notes from 1st meeting

John Stevenson Gallery- http://www.johnstevenson-gallery.com/

Throughout its 20-year history, 
John Stevenson Gallery has been the 
advocate for artistic virtuosity — for the 
hand of the artist, as well as the eye. From our origin, as the first gallery to specialize in art photography handcrafted in rare processes, our curation has expanded to include artists who also create conceptualist works, in paint, bronze, 
ceramic, and collage. We continue to offer a distinctly defined and 
unique collection, unlike any other. Notes: Very well designed website, art is mostly decorative.

Cy DeCosse’s interest in photography began with his work as an advertising agency art director. In the early 1950’s, when he graduated from art school and accepted his first job, photos were replacing illustrations and becoming the language of advertising. Cy realized that in order to really understand photography, he had to do it himself. He bought an old Exa camera, turned the coal cellar in his basement into a darkroom, and began shooting everything around him, from beer foaming over a glass to ants climbing out of their holes.

Hugh Shurley: I call my series of photomontages, Anatomy of Image. They are an exploration into the idea that our past is always in our presence. My work is an attempt to look inside at the hidden history that is buried within each person, place and possession. Each photomontage contains several transparencies that once stacked upon each other, read as a whole. Every layer in construction holds some memento, some token of the past, something hidden, buried and awaiting discovery. Within each layer I am conscious of how creating an opaque and transparent spaces allows for a sense of movement, of dimensional depth. It is my hope that viewers will discover and delight in the examination of my works, finding something new if now familiar.



MagnanEmrich- www.magnanemrich.com

Magnan Emrich Contemporary was established by art dealer Alberto Magnan and his business partner Ed Emrich in 2006. The Gallery is dedicated to showcasing contemporary Latin-American art and special projects. In addition to establishing its own program, the Gallery invites guest curators to inject new concepts and knowledge of Latin-American art. Alberto Magnan continually searches for new and exciting artists in an effort to expose Latin-American arts and culture to a wider audience.

In 2003 Magnan, a native of Cuba, began a documentary on Cuban arts conducting interviews with artists in both the U.S. and in Cuba as well as documenting prominent figures such as Alicia Alonso, Director of the Cuban National Ballet and Pio Leyva, singer and musician for the Buena Vista Social Club. This project inspired Magnan to conceive an exhibition showcasing Cuban and Cuban-American artists of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000. It also brought Magnan's focus back to his true passion as a gallerist, inspiring him to tap into the under-represented group of emerging Latin-American artists by opening a second gallery Magnan Emrich Contemporary.



Eva Davidova: Born in Bulgaria. Went to school in and works in Spain. Photographs. People, mostly nudes, in weird supernatural situations.





Sofia Maldonado, Puerto Rico 1984: As an Artist, she admires her country's rural landscapes, along with the chaos of the city and the abandoned structures within them. During her undergraduate studies she painted numerous murals, with or without permission, in abandoned buildings, barrios and indoor spaces as a way to bring beauty to each site. By creating her own visual language with bright colors and flowing brush strokes that simulate nature, she recieved recognition as a mural painter in her country. Sofia's artwork is a blend of fashion trends, the Latina female aesthetic and various street culture elements, such as skateboarding, graffiti, public art, reggaeton and punk music.



Serrano Contemporary/Sonnet Gallery- http://www.sonnetgallery.com/

Established in 2000, Serrano Contemporary/Sonnet Gallery highlights the works of emerging, mid-career and established artists from around the world. Through its exhibitions, the gallery seeks to serve as a bridge uniting distinctive visions from varied cultures, and to spark dialogues among the expressions and energies of its featured artists.

Gallery director and founder Ramses Serrano started his career in Caracas, Venezuela, opened his own gallery at age 25 in Sarasota, Florida, and in February 2008 expanded to New York’s Chelsea art district. The gallery exhibits contemporary works of art in all media, maintains an inventory of select works by its featured artists, and offers access to modern masters.



Born in Russia, Rita Zimerman and her family left the motherland and moved to Israel when she was four. Her love for art began when the family moved to Italy shortly after that, and she began learning the classical skills and techniques of figurative painting. When she moved to the U.S. and attended Ringling College of Art and Design, she switched direction toward more abstract work.

Recently, Rita has been using mixed media with acrylic paint, making whimsical and funky works that evoke a surreal, outlandish world. Inspired by the Austrians Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele, Rita uses decorative elements such as glitter and felt in her works, many of which integrate drawing and painting together. She works spontaneously, meaning that a painting can take either an hour or a week to make.



Tim Jaeger: A scholarship receipient and 2002 graduate of Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, Tim Jaeger is now director of a local gallery in the resort coastal town.

Recently named one of the city’s five rising artist talents by Sarasota Magazine, the 28-year-old artist was awarded the prestigious 2006 John and Mable Ringling Fellowship Grant and a 2007 Artist Residency and Fellowship at Chateau L’Hesperit, Moncaret, France. Jaeger’s figurative and abstract work on canvas reflect a passionate and wide-ranging vision. His images display his spontaneity and unyielding energy, and are highly emotional expressions of his response to the world around him. Whether it’s a painting of a woman’s face, a chicken, an abstract diptych, or a tribute to a formative painter in his life, such as Gauguin, his work consistently causes pause and reflection.

Marian Goodman Gallery- www.mariangoodman.com

For over twenty years, the Marian Goodman Gallery has played an important role in introducing

European artists to American audiences and helping to establish a vital dialogue among artists and

institutions working internationally. The Marian Goodman Gallery was founded in New York City in late 1977 and has recently expanded to include an exhibition space in Paris. In 1965,prior to the establishment of the gallery, Marian Goodman founded Multiples, which published prints, multiples, and books by leading American artists, such as Richard Artschwager, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Smithson, and Andy Warhol. From 1968 to 1975,Multiples worked with European artists, introducing early editions by Joseph Beuys, Marcel Broodthaers, Blinky Palermo, and Gerhard Richter to American audiences.



Christian Boltanski: Award winning, heavily exhibited French artist. Portrait photograph instillations, look like altars or tributes. Multiple portraits in B and W built into instillations.



Ch’i Contemporary Fine Art- http://www.chicontemporaryfineart.com/

Established in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in 1999 and directed by Tracy Causey-Jeffery is committed to exhibiting vibrant contemporary art by living artists: both mid-career and emerging. Ch’i exhibits works in two distinct styles: abstract, textural or fragmented figurative.



Christine Sciulli is a video/installation artist working in New York City. Born with poor eyesight, the blurry world provided a steady stream of intrigue for Christine Sciulli. After getting glasses, she was a constant fixture in her father's wood and metal shop. She holds an Architectural Engineering degree from Penn State University and an MFA in Combined Media from Hunter College.



Sy Gresser has been sculpting in stone and wood for over 50 years.He was groomed originally for a career in business and had received advanced degrees from the University of Maryland. Then through the encouragement of a friend, he enrolled in a summer carving class at George Washington University. From that moment on, Sy ahs carved stone. He studied further at the Institute of Contemporary Fine Art in Washington, D.C. where he met his mentor, Bill Taylor. Sy Gresser believes that art celebrates human existence on a spiritual level and transcends the ideas of religion- any religion as well as the ideas of race.? He feels that his sculpture have a universality of line and form mixed with what he calls, " impossible juxtapositions.