New Art Works

Josh Keyes

2012-03-26T17:58:00.000-06:00

Josh Keyes' style is reminiscent of the diagrammatic vocabulary found in scientific textbook illustrations that often express through a detached and clinical viewpoint an empirical representation of the natural world. Assembled into this virtual stage set are references to contemporary events along with images and themes from his personal mythology. Josh Keyes' work is a hybrid of eco-surrealism and dystopian folktales that express a concern for our time and the Earth's future.

Josh Keyes was born in Tacoma, Washington. He received a BFA in 1992 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA in 1998 from Yale University. Keyescurrently lives and works in Portland Oregon.

Marina Abramovic

2012-03-26T16:49:00.000-06:00

Childhood

Marina Abramovic was born in 1946 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia to parents who held prominent positions in the Communist government. Her father, Vojin, was in the Marshal's elite guard and her mother, Danica, was an art historian who oversaw historic monuments. After her father left the family, her mother took strict control of eighteen-year-old Abramovic and her younger brother, Velimir. Her mother was difficult and sometimes violent, yet she supported her daughter's interest in art. While growing up, Abramovic saw numerous Biennales in Venice, exposing her to artists outside of Communist Yugoslavia such as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Louise Nevelson.

Early training

Abramovic studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Belgrade (1965-1970), and at Radionica Krsta Hegedusic, Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb (1970-1972). It was in the early 1970s that she began creating performative art, initially creating sound installations, but quickly moving towards works that more directly involved the body. During this period she taught at the Academy of Arts, University of Novi Sad (1973-1975).

Mature period

In her early work, Abramovic often placed her body in danger: she took drugs intended to treat catatonia and schizophrenia (Rhythm 2, 1974); she invited viewers to threaten her body with a variety of objects including a loaded gun (Rhythm 0, 1974); and she cut her stomach with a razor blade, whipped herself, and lay on a block of ice (Thomas Lips, 1975). She has suggested that the inspiration for such work came from both her experience of growing up under Tito's Communist dictatorship, and of her relationship with her mother: "All my work in Yugoslavia was very much about rebellion, not against just the family structure but the social structure and the structure of the art system there... My whole energy came from trying to overcome these kinds of limits." Accordingly, these rebellious performances, which took place in small studios, student centers and alternative spaces in Yugoslavia, ended by 10pm, the strict curfew set by her mother.

Abramovic created these pioneering works when performance art was still a new, emerging art form in Europe, and until the mid 1970s she had little knowledge of performances being done outside Yugoslavia - even then, she learned of such work only through word of mouth. But in 1975, while in Amsterdam, Abramovic met the German-born artist Frank Uwe Laysiepen - known as Ulay - and the next year she moved out of her parents' home for the first time to live with him. For the next 12 years, Abramovic and Ulay were artistic collaborators and lovers. They traveled across Europe in a van, lived with Australian Aborigines, and in India's Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and spent time in the Sahara, Thar and Gobi deserts. Their works, which they performed in gallery spaces primarily in Europe, included Imponderabilia (1977), in which they stood naked in a narrow doorway, forcing spectators to pass between them; Breathing In/Breathing Out (1977), in which they inhaled and exhaled from each other's mouths until they almost suffocated; Relation in Time (1977), involving them sitting back to back with their hair tied together; Light/Dark (1977), in which they alternately slapped each other's faces; and Nightsea Crossing (1981-1987), a performance in which the pair sat silently opposite each other at a wooden table for as long as possible. When Abramovic and Ulay decided to end their artistic collaboration and personal relationship in 1988, they embarked on a piece called The Lovers; each started at a different end of the Great Wall of China and walked for three months until they met in the middle and said goodbye. They have had very little contact with each other since that point, both proceeding independently with their artistic work.

Late period

After this separation from Ulay, Abramovic returned to making solo works; she also worked with new collaborators such as Charles Atlas (on Biography, 1992); and she worked increasingly with video (such as in Cleaning the Mirror #1, 1995). In 1989, she began making a number of sculptural works, Transitory Objects for Human and Non-Human Use, which comprise objects meant to incite audience participation and interaction. In addition to her performances during the 1990s, Abramovic taught at the Hochschule der Kunste in Berlin and the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1990-1991), as well as the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Hamburg (1992). Beginning in 1994 she taught for seven years as a performance art professor at the Hochschule fur Bildende Kunste in Braunschweig, Germany.

She was awarded the Golden Lion for Best Artist at the Venice Biennale for Balkan Baroque (1997), and in 2003 she won a New York Dance and Performance Award ("Bessie") for The House with the Ocean View (2002), performed at Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. In 2005, she restaged performances by artists such as Vito Acconci and Bruce Nauman, as well as her own Thomas Lips (1975) in an exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum called "Seven Easy Pieces", for which she earned a U.S. Art Critics Association Award.

While many artists, including Abramovic, made very little effort in the early 1970s to capture their performances on film or video, feeling that the true performance could never be repeated, she has since argued for the importance of continuing the life of these works through re-performance. She has said, "the only real way to document a performance art piece is to re-perform the piece itself." To that end, the Museum of Modern Art recently held a retrospective exhibition - its first ever for any performance artist - that included performances of her work and a new piece, The Artist is Present, performed by Abramovic herself. For the full duration of the 2010 exhibit, she would sit across from an empty chair in which museum visitors were invited to sit opposite her for as long as they liked.

LEGACY

Abramovic, who has referred to herself as, "the grandmother of performance art," was part of the earliest experiments in performance art, and she is one of the few pioneers of that generation still creating new work. She has been, and continues to be, an essential influence for performance artists making work over the last several decades, especially for works that challenge the limits of the body. Although she does not view her own artwork through the frame of Feminist Art, her confrontations with the physical self and the primary role given to the female body have helped shape the direction of that discipline. Her commitment to giving new life to older performance works - both hers and the works of others -- led her to create the Marina Abramovic Institute for Preservation of Performance Art, set for a 2012 opening, in Hudson, New York. This non-profit organization will support teaching, preserving and funding performance art, ensuring an enduring legacy for her performances and, more broadly, for the ephemeral art form itself. About this Institute, Abramovic has said, "Performance is fleeting. But this, this place, this is for time. This is what I will leave behind."

For more information: http://www.theartstory.org/artist-abramovic-marina.htm

Wangechi Mutu

2012-03-23T10:37:00.000-06:00

Kenyan-born Wangechi Mutu has trained as both a sculptor and anthropologist. Her work explores the contradictions of female and cultural identity and makes reference to colonial history, contemporary African politics and the international fashion industry. Drawing from the aesthetics of traditional crafts, science fiction and funkadelia, Mutu’s works document the contemporary myth making of endangered cultural heritage.

Piecing together magazine imagery with painted surfaces and found materials, Mutu’s elaborate collages mimic amputation, transplant operations and bionic prosthetics. Her figures become satirical mutilations. Their forms are grotesquely marred through perverse modification, echoing the atrocities of war or self-inflicted improvements of plastic surgery. Mutu examines how ideology is very much tied to corporeal form. She cites a European preference to physique that has been inflicted on and adapted by Africans, resulting in both social hierarchy and genocide.

Mutu’s figures are equally repulsive and attractive. From corruption and violence, Mutu creates a glamorous beauty. Her figures are empowered by their survivalist adaptation to atrocity, immunized and ‘improved’ by horror and victimization. Their exaggerated features are appropriated from lifestyle magazines and constructed from festive materials such as fairy dust and fun fur. Mutu uses materials that refer to African identity and political strife: dazzling black glitter symbolizes western desire that simultaneously alludes to the illegal diamond trade and its terrible consequences. Her work embodies a notion of identity crisis, where origin and ownership of cultural signifiers becomes an unsettling and dubious terrain.

Mutu’s collages seem both ancient and futuristic. Her figures aspire to a super-race, by-products of an imposed evolution. In this series of work, she uses old medical diagrams, to convey the authenticity of artifact, as well as an appointed cultural value. Satirically identifying her ‘diseases’ as a sub/post-human monsters, she invents an equally primitive and prophetically alien species; a visionary futurism inclusive of cultural difference and self-determination.

Damien Hirst

2012-03-22T14:26:00.000-06:00

Damien Hirst was born in Bristol in 1965. He grew up in Leeds with his mother, Mary Brennan, and his stepfather. He took a foundation course at Leeds School of Art before applying for college. He was rejected by St. Martin's but moved to London in 1986 when he was accepted onto the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths College, graduating in 1989. While still a student in 1988, Damien conceived, organised and promoted "Freeze", an exhibition held in a Docklands warehouse. The show featured several of Damien's pieces, and work by 16 of his fellow Goldsmith's' students.

This amazingly successful self-promoted exhibition is widely believed to have been the starting point for the "Young British Artists" movement. After seeing Damien's work at the show, Charles Saatchi (ex Thatcher ad-man), began to collect his work and exhibited it in the first "Charles Saatchi's Young British Artists" show. In 1990, Saatchi bought Damien's A Thousand Years. Since then, he has produced a body of work that, admired from the start by collectors and curators, has also proved extraordinarily provocative. In 1992, he commissioned the piece The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living for about US$32,000. He has organised a succession of exhibitions that have helped to define a generation.

Damien's generation is one completely different from previous generations of artist. The Young British Artists are characterised by their independence, their entrepreneurial spirit, and their media savvy. Most promote their own shows, and are financed privately instead of by the Department of National Heritage establishment. This way, they needn't worry about being "discovered" by the conservative governmental agencies, and instead tend to draw in private patrons, like Saatchi.

The central, though not exclusive theme of Hirst's work has been an exploration of mortality, a traditional subject that Hirst has updated and extended with wit, verve, originality and force. He is best known for a series of works (The Natural History series) in which dead animals are presented as memento mori in forms ironically appropriated from the museum of natural history rather than of art. Their titles suggest a range of readings and reveal the thoughtfulness of his approach. The artwork itself has a visual power that is virtually unmatched by any possible description of it. One cannot really hope to understand it, or even visualise it without experiencing it firsthand. This, many people believe, is the reason Damien was short listed for the Turner Prize in 1992.

Even his own supporters do not always acclaim his work. The popularity of Hirst's unique brand of artistic statement tends to cycle in phases of favour and disdain. In April 1993, Hirst's God sold at the highest price of any of his pieces to date: 188,500 pounds. In October 1993, however, his exhibit Alone Yet Together, which consisted of a cabinet holding 100 fish suspended in small tanks of formaldehyde, was set to auction for nearly 150,000 pounds. The bidding closed at only 85,000, and failed to sell. His piece entitled Loss of Memory is Worse Than Death (a steel cage encasing several vitrines which contained a surgical mask, gloves, and a syringe) also failed to sell, closing at 55,000 pounds (less than half of the maximum expected bid).

Damien blames this occasional lack of success not on the public, but on the press. He says that the media convinces the public to believe the art critics' erroneous assumptions about art, so the public accepts these opinions without ever actually viewing the art. In this manner, the public is alienated from an art world that they could find very enjoyable if they gave it a fair chance. Many people who agree with this idea also believe that the art critics themselves are influenced in their opinions by the media. They go in to review a work of art with a preconceived opinion, and do not allow the art to affect them the way it should. By distancing themselves from the art, they are cheating themselves of the full experience.

Some members of the media argue this point, saying that the art is not accessible to the public, that they cannot understand it without an art degree. Damien argues that the public has the ability to understand and appreciate art because of their extensive visual background knowledge. People view complicated visual structures in advertising and understand it, and art is merely another form of those visual structures. He claims that if people were to attend art shows as frequently as they see films and advertisements, they would understand the art. He believes, "the same visual intelligence and visual language are used to understand films, advertising, and art".

Even so, Damien constantly has to explain his work. Besides the controversial animal exhibits, there are sculptures, spot paintings and spin paintings. Damien now insists that when the spin paintings are displayed, they are equipped with a mechanism that makes them revolve on the wall because he was tired of people asking which way was up. The spot paintings have become somewhat of an icon of Damien's work. They have become so recognisable as Damien's theme that he actually brought suit against British Airways in 1999 for an advertisement campaign for their low-cost airline, Go, which used the motif. In that same year, Damien was asked to create a special spot painting to send into space for the Beagle II mission to Mars in 2003.

There are also many recurring themes in Damien's work. One such theme is cigarettes - see his piece Party Time as an example. He views the act of smoking as a microcosm within itself: "The cigarette packet is possible lives, the cigarette it's own actual life, the lighter is God because it gives fuel to the whole thing and the ashtray is a graveyard, it's like death". Damien is also fascinated by the fact that smoking is a "theoretical suicide" in the sense that it is not deliberate self-inflicted death, but people know it will kill them and they continue to partake. He stated that "the concept of a slow suicide through smoking is a really great idea, a powerful thing to do".

Another consistent theme in Damien's work is medical paraphernalia, (with which he has been obsessed for many years). The inspiration for his pharmacy pieces was the desire to make art that people really believe in, like they do medicine. "Pharmacies provoke an idea of confidence, of trust in minimalism. I love medical logos, so minimal, so clean, there's something dumb about it". His pieces like Substitute, Holidays/No Feelings and God are meant to parody the Western notion that medicine and chemicals can help a person to cheat death. "You can only cure people for so long and then they're going to die anyway... You can't arrest decay, but these works suggest you can".

Damien's works relating to empty, confined spaces "draw their power entirely from the narrative instincts of the viewer". One sees a tiny cage-like enclosure, confined by glass, with a desk, chair, and other objects that are normally meant for human interaction (see He Tried to Internalise Everything and The Acquired Inability to Escape). And then one notices the emptiness - the lack of human presence in this familiar scene. "It is almost impossible to avoid mentally inhabiting it. This transforms the viewer's function from that of an exploratory intelligence, to that of a rather doubtful collaborator (or victim). This is work which asks to be experienced, not solved." The fact that they are encased in glass allows the viewer to interact with the art, but it is a frustrating interaction. "The intellect is still engaged, but it is an intellect involved in an anxious body, viscerally conscious."

Damien says, "I really love glass, a substance which is very solid, is dangerous, but transparent. That idea of being able to see everything but not able to touch, solid but invisible. The slits in the glass are very important to the works, you need some sort of access". In pieces where the glass structures enclose, say, a rotting animal carcass (A Thousand Years), that access can be a bit much for some viewers, as the smell is sometimes overpowering, but it is a major part of the experience of the works. The smell draws the viewer in undeniably, they experience the piece and are not allowed to distinguish themselves as mere observers. This is part of what makes many of Damien's works so engaging and frightening.

Many of Damien's animal works are unlike A Thousand Years in that they are not supposed to go through any more natural processes. In fact, he goes through an immense amount of trouble to completely preserve them in formaldehyde. Many have questioned Damien about whether he is bothered by the possibility that corpses will eventually rot anyway. He replies that he is not concerned because he claims that the idea is more important than the actual piece. As long as they last until the end of his own lifetime, he doesn't care what happens to them after.

Damien's "Natural History" series, the works involving the animals preserved in formaldehyde, are probably his most famous, and definitely his most controversial. But his own attitude towards the animals is emotionally distant. They are "so deadened by their transparent aqua tombs that it becomes difficult to reconcile what they look like with the reality of what they really are. In this respect, they are as distant from cows or pigs as the filling of a Big Mac or BLT". One such example is Mother and Child, Divided, a piece from his exhibition "Some Went Mad, Some Ran Away" for which he was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995. Damien says, "I want to make people feel like burgers. I chose a cow because it was banal. It's just nothing. It doesn't mean anything. What is the difference between a cow and a burger? Not a lot... I want people to look at cows and feel 'Oh my god', so then in turn, it makes them feel like burgers."

His emotional distance from the animals also allows him to make his work sometimes sickeningly funny. In This Little Piggy Went to Market, This Little Piggy Stayed Home, each half of a bisected pig in tanks of formaldehyde, slide past one another on an automated track, separating and putting themselves back to together over and over again. He says, "I hope that it makes people think about things that they take for granted. Like smoking, like sex, like love, like life, like advertising, like death... I want to make people frightened of what they know. I want to make them question." He achieves this by incorporating common objects into his work. "Ordinary things are frightening. It's like, a shoe is intended to get you from one place to another. The moment you beat your girlfriend's head in with it, it becomes something insane. The change of function is what's frightening... That's what art is."

Not everyone, though, is so emotionally distant from the animals in Damien's art. Many people either can't stomach it, or have some moral objection to it. Damien has received many letters of protest, and even some threats. While the negative reaction to his work is perhaps understandable, it is not necessarily warranted, as the animals he uses are purchased from slaughterhouses, and many have died of natural causes. Damien himself is actually sympathetic to the animals, taking something purely banal, and pointing out the reality of its existence. "I hope [the viewers] feel sorry for the cows".

However, it's not just the objectors who cause problems for Damien. In 1994, he had an extreme amount of trouble getting his art into the United States to exhibit it. The first piece was delayed at US Customs until it was established that the animals were considered art and not food. Then a piece that was to be displayed in New York City was banned by the Health Department because they were concerned about the "odors and fluids created by the rotting process". And finally, the US Department of Agriculture banned a piece from another New York show because of the temporary ban on British beef. Damien explained: "They were worried that if someone ate it, there was no evidence that the formaldehyde would kill BSE (mad cow disease). I told them that nobody's going to eat it but they said that's not the point. I told them that if anyone ate it, the formaldehyde would kill them anyway, but they said that's not the point either". After two days, Damien convinced them that this piece was also to be considered art, and not food.

In August of 1995, another New York gallery banned Damien's Two Fucking, Two Watching, which involves a dead cow and bull copulating by means of a hydraulic device. The piece was not preserved in formaldehyde, but rather was left to rot away. New York health officials were concerned that it might "explode" (if it were sealed shut, the methane gasses would build up and shatter the glass), or "prompt vomiting among the visitors" (if it were not sealed shut, as the odor from the rotting carcasses would be "overwhelming"). So Damien brought in a new piece, which was preserved and would have none of these problems. "The new cow piece replaces the one I really wanted to do, the dead cows fucking, without formaldehyde. We called up the environmental department and told them what we'd have: rotting animals, but with filters to clean the air. They said 'if you do that we'll shut you down'".

He faced a vaguely similar situation in 1999 when there was a mass of controversy over the "Sensation" exhibition when it arrived in Brooklyn, New York. Though there was a small bit of protest over Damien's work in the show by PETA, it was overshadowed by the uproar concerning a painting by fellow YBA Chris Ofili. Mayor Giuliani attempted to ban the painting and eventually to shut down the show entirely, but ultimately the only effect of his protests was an extraordinary amount of publicity for the Brooklyn Museum of Art and the show went on as planned.

In the same year, Damien's art-installation-turned-restaurant, Pharmacy, which he had set up with PR legend Matthew Freud, became simply an installation for an exhibition at the Tate Gallery. This was followed very shortly by the sale of the restaurant to The Montana Group after plans fell through to expand the fine dining venue into a chain of smaller fast food joints.

The Pharmacy restaurant is just a glimpse of Damien's interest in art beyond the conventional media. His work encompasses all media - paintings, sculptures, video, and everything in between. And he has a steadily growing interest in pop music. He has designed cover art for albums by the Eurythmics, and in 1995 he directed a music video for the Blur song "Country House." He was part of an art and film exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1996, where he showcased his first short film called "Hanging Around". The film featured music by several of his pop star friends from London.

In 1998, Damien himself became involved in a pop group, Fat Les, who recorded two singles that year, appeared at Glastonbury (but didn't perform), and who were accepted to participate in the Music Industry Soccer Six of 1999. There were plans for a Fat Les feature film in 2000, with their first full-length album as the soundtrack, but due to the tremendous flop of their World Cup single, those plans fell through. Damien co-owned the record label, Turtleneck, with actor and friend Keith Allen.

Since even before the inception of Fat Les, Damien has worked on several "side projects" with Keith Allen. In 2002 alone, Damien designed the sets for Glastonbury, a play about the Glastonbury music festival, and designed and directed Breath, the 30-45 second film version of Samuel Beckett's 1969 short. Keith Allen stars in both.

Damien's work has been exhibited widely, in Britain, Korea, the USA, Australia, and countries all over Europe. His work is included in many private collections (most are owned by Charles Saatchi), and in quite a few permanent collections at public museums and galleries. He is represented by London's White Cube, and shows regularly there. He now lives in Devon with his sons Connor (b.1995) and Cassius (b.2000) and girlfriend Maia Norman. He works at his home and in London.

Robert Rauschenberg

2012-02-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Robert Rauschenberg was born in Port Arthur, Texas in 1925, he imagined himself first as a minister and later as a pharmacist. It wasn’t until 1947, while in the U.S. Marines that he discovered his aptitude for drawing and his interest in the artistic representation of everyday objects and people. After leaving the Marines he studied art in Paris on the G.I. Bill, but quickly became disenchanted with the European art scene. After less than a year he moved to North Carolina, where the country’s most visionary artists and thinkers, such as Joseph Albers and Buckminster Fuller, were teaching at Black Mountain College. There, with artists such as dancer Merce Cunningham and musician John Cage, Rauschenberg began what was to be an artistic revolution. Soon, North Carolina country life began to seem small and he left for New York to make it as a painter. There, amidst the chaos and excitement of city life Rauschenberg realized the full extent of what he could bring to painting.

Rauschenberg’s enthusiasm for popular culture and his rejection of the angst and seriousness of the Abstract Expressionists led him to search for a new way of painting. He found his signature mode by embracing materials traditionally outside of the artist’s reach. He would cover a canvas with house paint, or ink the wheel of a car and run it over paper to create a drawing, while demonstrating rigor and concern for formal painting. By 1958, at the time of his first solo exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery, his work had moved from abstract painting to drawings like “Erased De Kooning” (1953) (which was exactly as it sounds) to what he termed “combines.” These combines (meant to express both the finding and forming of combinations in three-dimensional collage) cemented his place in art history.

Scott Fraser

2012-01-26T14:18:00.000-07:00

ARTIST STATEMENT
by Scott Fraser
There are many artists and genres that interest me and have influenced my progression as an artist, and I appreciate both historical and contemporary works. Van Eyke, Vermeer and Vander Wyden share the list with Lucien Freud, Joseph Cornell, Paul Klee and Frank Auerbach. I am particularly attached to the London school along with a group of contemporary Spanish realists. Of these, Lopez Garcia and Isabella Quintanilla impress me the most.

I have had an interest in painting since I was a young boy and my parents, who have always been very supportive, framed a small painting of roses that I did at age 3. It now hangs in my studio as a reminder of my early aspirations. I remember going to the Chicago Art Institute frequently as a boy, especially enjoying the works of Picasso. I went off to art school at the Kansas City Art Institute which was also pivotal. There they set me free to experiment with concept in a rich, dynamic environment. After leaving KCAI, I started out slowly, painting, learning and finally selling my work. This took a number of years. At age 27 I went away to Europe which turned out to be one of the most influential periods in my life. At this time, I had the opportunity to view first hand the artwork that I had previously only been able to admire in books. The Flemish artists spoke to me, especially Vermeer and his Woman Pouring Milk. Seeing this work altered my path as a realist painter, and was a catalyst for me changing from the figure and landscape to still life. Van Eykes alter piece in Ghent, made a lasting impression, and I was greatly inspired by a small work by Gerard Terborsh titled Gallant Conversation. I also had the good fortune to be able to see a Francis Bacon show at the Tate Gallery, and Las Meninas at the Prado, both of which I will never forget. It was during this time that I developed a more personal narrative style which found a voice in Still Life painting. I am still growing and developing this voice, and am never at a loss for what to paint next since the possibilities within the genre are endless.

The contemporary art world is not a place where a person can sit back and get too comfortable and I try not to confuse myself with all the isms that pop up in art. I am constantly looking to expand my knowledge, vision and expertise, and I feel most comfortable when I can experiment with imagery that is outside the box. I find I learn more with my larger work, so I try to take on one or two large projects a year that I can really sink my teeth into.

I certainly have been influenced by teachers, friends and art history. I also think it is easy to get too heavy and serious about art, so I havent followed any one school of thought. My paintings are very personal, with one work often evolving from another in a series of cycles. Much of my imagery is inspired by my surroundings, my background and family. My children have been a huge and ongoing inspiration for me, not just by way of the objects that have been incorporated into my paintings, but in the mind set they have shared with me. It is their honest interpretation and unaffected exploration of the natural world that has really opened my eyes and that I have tried to apply in my own work.

Alex Kanevsky

2012-01-25T09:38:00.000-07:00

To look at a painting by Kanevsky is to look at it for the first time, even if one has visited the piece before. By condensing the structure, content and assorted ephemera of a given scene into a single, saturated moment, refigured forms and gestures are continually impelled to the painting’s surface only to recede in accommodation of future findings. Such honesty and freshness is rooted in Kanevsky’s fidelity to a naïve gaze, an exercise in which the faculties of knowledge are constantly reset so as to stave off tidy assumptions about how things work or what they mean.

By remaining open to an ever-evolving vision of the world, Kanevsky’s paintings deliberately defy stylistic and thematic pigeonholing in an art world obsessed with taxonomic boundaries. His manner of painting is instead motivated by a desire to generate dialogue between subjective personal perception, external reality, and the tenuousness of translation. As Kanevsky explains, “if painting is a form of language, I attempt to create a language, foreign to all but myself, and then say a few things in that language in such a way that would make them clear to anybody who listens, even if the language remains foreign to the listener.” In order to reconcile these fissures between self-expression and communication, between the real and the represented, Kanevsky adopts a technique predicated on the idea of continuous exchange, or fluid conversation. By building up diaphanous layers of paint – each describing a singular, fleeting frame – the resultant painting becomes a palimpsest of elapsed time, like a photograph blurred due to a slow shutter speed. The almost cinematic quality of the compositions’ temporal and spatial siting echoes the dynamism and intensity of Kanevsky’s brushstrokes, which further amplify the sense of motion that both constitutes and defines his sense of the world. These subtly abstracted figures and landscapes work to free the viewer’s own gaze, thereby revealing what unifocal depiction compels us to overlook.

Energy and movement, however, are counterbalanced by an equally palpable sense of stillness. This quiet is manifested in the deeply contemplative moods his paintings evoke and the ethereal quality produced by their visual vigor. Such a paradoxical coupling of forces is exquisitely embodied by Polish Rider 2 (2010), in which the stillness of a hunting horse at rest is held in check by the potential energy contained within the animal’s powerful musculature. The horse’s anonymity, the indeterminate positioning of its rear legs and the dematerialized torso of its rider elicit an ambiguity that nimbly suspends tranquility and flight in favor of an otherworldly middle ground.

Karen Hollingsworth: Windowscapes

2012-01-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

Karen Hollingsworth is known for her unique light, airy “windowscapes”. In the past the artist painted interior spaces, now she includes an open window that acts as a portal into the space beyond. Her large oil paintings often depict subject matter that is fairly minimal, chairs and ordinary interior settings, however what attracts many viewers is the mysticism evoked by the movement of the air and the ocean breeze through the curtains.

For Karen, a painting is about the feeling it evokes. Although there are no figures present in her windowscapes, it is difficult to deny the implications of vacant chairs in such an empty space. Karen is interested in creating the “impression of looking through that room and seeing the view outside the room.

“I love to create paintings that evoke a sense of the familiar,” says Karen. “To blend the common objects of everyday life, placed within the interior of a room, with a glimpse of the ocean or mountains through an open window. My windowscapes are intended to provide the viewer with a sense of solitude and well being. A comfortable world bathed in sunlight and warm breezes. For me, a painting is successful if “I wish I were there.”

Esao Andrews: Illustration meets Painting

2011-12-20T22:39:00.000-07:00

Esao Andrews

Esao Andrews received a BFA in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts.

Prior to to being a painter, he work as an Illustrator and flash animator.

His paintings are imaginative with a dark melancholy emotion. they are somewhere between a dream and a nightmare in high definition.

Wendy Wagner: Bright Colors and Youth Innocence

2011-12-20T21:55:00.000-07:00

Wendy Wagner

Artist Statement

I embrace youthful innocence through complex and accomplished artistic methods, both hand-made and high-tech. This has become my distinctive make-believe world that I express in painting, drawing, ceramic, soft sculpture and animation.
There are many things going on in my “world” that I play out intuitively on the canvas with a variety of mediums (pencil, colored pencil, tinted gesso, acrylic paint, oil paint). Working in series, I have themes inspired by my childhood, pets, family, and fantasy. I take these images and transform them into an intimate and surreal vocabulary infused with personal nostalgia and dreaminess.
My current body of work shows the emergence of a bubble shape frame, like a “pow” in a cartoon panel. This shape represents a portal or vignette for portraits, other dimensions, or childhood memories. With a crisp, decorative edge, it brings homage to my graphic design background and interest in children’s cartoons. I am referencing endearing and funny moments from family photographs. These works are about exploring our individual personalities. I show this through a balance of unflinching realism, abstraction, and humor.
This year I have expanded my vocabulary to installation. Making my own patterns and sewing soft sculpture interpretations of elements in my paintings, ceramics and animations creating an entire “wendy world” .

Eric White: Realism and Bending our Sense of Perception

2011-12-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Eric White

Eric White received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design.

He finds inspiration in metaphysics and iconic pop culture of years past. He uses a combination of mixed source materials in a photoshop-esque format and translates them with a technicaly refined painting.

His paintings force the viewer to question what They are looking at. After the initial thoughts one tries to relate it to similarities and compares it to its likeness of reality.

Dan Witz: Realistic Painter

2011-12-19T11:18:00.000-07:00

Dan Witz

Dan Witz Went to Cooper Union in New York. (One of the oldest institutions for higher learning.)

His paintings deal with the identity of human beings in modern societies. He become well known during the Street Art Movement.

Kent Williams: Figurative, Neo-Expressionistic, Bold Realism with Abstraction

2011-12-18T18:03:00.001-07:00

Kent Williams

Kent Williams graduated from Pratt Institute in New York.

He has built up a formidable reputation as a powerful contemporary figurative painter. His is a bold realism with combined attributes of abstraction and neo-expressionistic sensibilities. His work is characterized by strong gestural forms combined with areas of arresting detail, rendered with rich dynamic brushwork.

Williams’ approach to his subjects is often subjective and intense. Whether through multi-figured compositional complexity and suggestive narrative, or with the straight-forward lone human form, there is often autobiographical narrative at play. Favorite models, friends, and the artist himself all play a role in the human story of his paintings.

Kris Lewis: Surrealism and Portraiture

2011-12-17T16:20:00.001-07:00

Kris Lewis studied at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. He is influenced by Alfonse Bougereau, Andrew Wyeth, Hans Holbein, Albrecht Durer, Hieronymus Bosch, Gustav Klimt, Antonio Mancini, and Jules-Bastien LePage.

Reverence for masters of old is apparent in his depiction of the human figure, which he uses for hidden stories, delicate emotion, and universal truth.

James Jean - Romantic and Lyrical

2011-12-17T11:21:00.001-07:00

James Jean received a BFA from The School of Visual Arts in New York City in 2001

His artwork is influenced by Henry Darger, Neo Rauch, Chris ware, plus many others.

"The paintings and illustrations are often suffused with a dreamy romanticism and lyricism worthy of Maxfield Parrish, even as Mr. Jean subverts those and other isms.

- "Jennings, Dana. "The Power of Fairy Tales". "Comics Canonization". The New York Times. August 18, 2011

Sylvia Ji

2011-12-17T09:06:00.002-07:00

“Sylvia Ji was born in 1982 in San Francisco to artistic parents. Ji’s interest in art was implanted at a very young age when she would look through her mother’s sketchbooks and watch her father paint. In her art, she explores themes of beauty, sexual provocation, and social notions of femininity juxtaposed against the dystopian reality of modern cities to create highly charged paintings of women. Some of her paintings are symbolic reflections of herself, portraits of people she knows or just nameless faces set in a landscape of fleeting beauty. She graduated with distinction in 2005 from the Academy of Art University of San Francisco with a Bachelors in illustration and already had her first ambitious and successful solo show while still in her last year of school. Since then she has been in high demand, keeping continuously engaged in an onslought of numerous shows on the West Coast. Currently, she has works on display in both San Francisco and Los Angeles galleries.” (bio from The Art Print) Ji is participating in Fecal Face‘s 10 Year Anniversary Show September 10, 2010 at the Luggage Store Galleryin San Francisco.

Erik Sandberg: Very Hairy Children

2011-12-17T00:46:00.001-07:00

Erik Sandberg

In 2002, Erik Mark Sandberg received a BFA with distinction, from Art Center of Design in Pasadena, CA, and studied with former Gemini Gel Master Printer Anthony Alan Zepeda from 2003-2007. From 2006 to present, he has taught at the Art Center College of Design, Otis College of Art and Design, and California State University Northridge, concurrently. He currently resides and works out of Los Angeles, Ca.

http://www.eriksandberg.net/

Gregory Euclide: Environmental Artwork

2011-12-16T22:40:00.000-07:00

Gregory Euclide is an artist and teacher living in the Minnesota River Valley. His reverence for the natural world originates from his childhood in rural Wisconsin, where he developed an appreciation for nature. The interconnectedness of the environment and culture led Euclide to explore how landscape (a way of viewing the land) is tied to the actual treatment and use of land.

Euclide received his MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, and was awarded two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants through the National Endowment for the Arts and a Jerome Foundation Residency through the Blacklock Nature Sanctuary. His work was featured in Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape at MASS MoCA (May 2008 – April 2009) and was most recently included in the exhibition Otherworldly at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York. Euclide’s work is currently on view at the Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, New Jersey in the exhibition Deconstructing Nature, and in Small Worlds, opening in November at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio.

http://www.gregoryeuclide.com/

Jonathan Viner/Weiner

2011-12-16T22:16:00.002-07:00

Jonathan Viner

Jonathan Viner* was born in 1976 in New York, and was raised up and down the east coast of the United States. After receiving a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998, he moved to New York City where he continues to live today.

Viner’s work draws upon a broad range of cultural influences that include a variety of Old Masters, contemporary American pop culture, and psychology. A significant theme in his work is the exploration of power relationships, particularly as they relate to safety and danger.

The subtle hues and rich value ranges of Viner’s skillfully crafted oil paintings help to create an atmosphere of palpable tension. While his subjects are carefully delineated, Viner’s work offers the viewer space for contemplation, introspection, and conversation.

Viner’s paintings and drawings are the subject of a 2006 monograph, “Tranquil Aftermath”, co-published by Jonathan LeVine Gallery and Murphy Design.

*Jonathan Viner is also known as Jonathan Weiner.

http://www.vinerstudio.com/

Jason Thielke

2011-12-16T18:11:00.000-07:00

Jason Thielke

Jason Thielke graduated from Northern Illinois University with a B.F.A. in 2000

He primarily works with graphite and color pencil. He is influenced by the style of Gustave Klimt. The drawn shapes create a textural volume to the figures. Marks are applied with haste to elicit emotions juxtaposing soft feature with hard angular lines. He is increasingly working with positive and negative space to create the ideal composition.

http://www.jasonthielke.com/

Mel Kadel: Found and Stained Papers

2011-12-16T16:15:00.000-07:00

Mel Kadel

Mel Kadel is originally from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She graduated from Moore College of Art in Philadelphia. She works with paper, drawing, transparent layering of paints, and repetition of imagery and shape. Her work is dreamlike evoking a childlike aura. The colors, lines and shapes are playful and precise. These elements create a well resolved composition and design.

http://melkadel.com/

Andy Warhol: Painter and Film Maker

2011-12-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

Andy Warhol: He is considered to be the most well know artist in the world. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1928

He is the leader of the Pop-Culture Era

These are some of my favorites.