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The Sound at South Beach

jolanta — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 18:00:07 +0000

NY Arts has its eye on artist Wes Kline. Kline will take on ArtCenter/South Florida, the cultural epicenter of South Beach’s Lincoln Road that welcomes more than 100,000 visitors per year. The center is extending his exhibition MINOTAUROCRACY through March 17 as part of Subtropics XXII: Miami’s Biennial of Music and Sound Art. His works are strange, inviting and open to interpretation.

Wes Kline, Sleeping (Architect/Theseus), 2012. Archival ink print, 40
x 50 in.

The Sound at South Beach

Kline states “The show Minotaurocracy began when I stumbled on a film by the artist Hans Richter that was a kind of propaganda film for a particular type of Modernist architecture. I was inspired to recreate this film, and flew to Zurich and Berlin to photograph and record sound at the same locations as Richter, almost eighty five years after he first filmed them. In a sense, the work that I’m making is an appropriation, a tracing, or a recreation, of Richter’s film.

“For me, including sound that intermittently percolates through the gallery was a way of creating a ‘field’ that unifies the other objects in the space. There are two sounds that are repeated – that of an orchestra tuning, and the phrase ‘simple forms never intrude.’ The first of these sounds emphasizes that the ‘archive’ that I’m presenting is temporary, like music, and is a kind of a ‘rehearsal’ of an archive. The second is a quotation pulled from Hans Richter, which I’m using as a mantra for Modernism. Whether this phrase is a good, bad or ambivalent thing is for the viewer to interpret.”

Wes Kline, Minotaur, 2012. Transparency print, 76 x 48 in. Courtesy of the Artist and ArtCenter/South Florida

“While I was in Switzerland and Berlin, I used microphones to record sounds in and around the buildings that I photographed for the project. These sounds range from children playing to the humming of heating units. For my performances I mix these loops and fragments of sounds live in the gallery, recreating the buildings as ephemeral structures that disappear as they are being built.”

“I like that the audience at ArtCenter/South Florida is both people connected to Miami’s art scene and visitors to Miami, who are ‘migrating’ through the gallery. This itinerant condition echoes some of the migrant qualities I hope to bring out in my work. Miami has such an exciting and experimental art scene, that it’s a real privilege to be part of that dialogue.”

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Joyce Melander-Dayton Interviewed By Edward Rubin

jolanta — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 17:47:04 +0000

Edward Rubin: You’ve made a lot of interesting, and I might add, major changes in your life. First you moved from Minneapolis to Santa Fe. You also stopped being a representational painter and now work primarily in 3-dimensions using textiles, fabrics, glass beads, wool, and wood veneers. What made you switch gears so radically?

Joyce Melander-Dayton: After a while I would paint these objects and I would paint them really, really well, really hyper-realistically, and it seemed almost absurd. I wanted to be that realistic but I found the rendering of the object itself, no matter how true to life, sort of redundant.

Joyce Melander-Dayton, Metamorphosis, 2012. 34” x 23” x 7” wool, glass, beads, styrofoam support. Courtesy of the artist.

Joyce Melander-Dayton Interviewed By Edward Rubin

Edward Rubin: You’ve made a lot of interesting, and I might add, major changes in your life. First you moved from Minneapolis to Santa Fe. You also stopped being a representational painter and now work primarily in 3-dimensions using textiles, fabrics, glass beads, wool, and wood veneers. What made you switch gears so radically?

Joyce Melander-Dayton: After a while I would paint these objects and I would paint them really, really well, really hyper-realistically, and it seemed almost absurd. I wanted to be that realistic but I found the rendering of the object itself, no matter how true to life, sort of redundant. I realized I was using this as a vehicle for really working with color and different textures. I didn’t want to be known just for my ability to render stuff. I wanted to make a thing itself and not a reproduction of something that already existed.

ER: The difference between Minneapolis and Santa Fe is like night and day. I am assuming that this move had a great affect on you.

JMD: It did. It changed my way of thinking, seeing, and feeling. If you read Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Arch Bishop you will understand. The way it is in Minneapolis is you look at the natural world as its periphery. You’re living in the city and the land is somewhere out there. You move to New Mexico or any place like that and you realize that you are surrounded by this gigantic expanse of landscape. The sky is big, the land is big, and it makes your thinking bigger, freer. Just having this around you opens your mind to different possibilities. I don’t think that I could do the work I do in a place that didn’t have big giant horizons and crystal clear air where colors pop. In Santa Fe there is no haze. Everything is crisp.

ER: Your work involves crocheting, weaving, embroidering, sewing, beading, felting, and jigsaw cutting, all traditional craft methods, and yet your work has always been a lot more about art than craft.

Joyce Melander-Dayton, Metamorphosis, 2012. (Detail) 34” x 23” x 7” wool, glass, beads, styrofoam support. Courtesy of the artist.

JMD: It isn’t craft. A lot of craft implies some sort of functionality and this is not. I don’t think that there should be a difference between art and craft. I think we’ve forgotten how to use our hands. The tendency is to put down people who use their hands. I am particularly bothered by too much technology getting in the way. I know that people can use technology to make things but the only way they’re using their hands nowadays is when they use their mouse to click on screen icons.

ER: Though there is a through line in all your work, meaning each of your works are immediately recognizable as coming from your hand, yet each work is totally unique. Where do you get your ideas?

JMD: It’s all intuitive. This is my big beef with people who primarily use fabricators; because ideas are a dime a dozen but if you sit there and spend a bazillion hours working something through ideas do come. I think that working with your hands that much jogs your brain, your subconscious.

ER: Let’s talk about your wall sculpture, Metamorphosis. It looks organic, almost alive, like a wayward colony of spores. How did the various shapes in this work materialize?

JMD: I go hiking a lot. I see mushrooms. I see stuff growing on trees. But I never think I am going to make something that looks like this. It just sort of pops into my head and I go, “Oh yeah that’s kind of like what I saw on that hike.” But then you take it other places. You don’t just reinterpret your hike, you take it to someplace new. I am very much influenced by being outside, and I bring the nature back into my studio.

ER: Can you tell me about Harvest? This seems to be a new direction for you.

JMD: It is. In Harvest, I have all of these Styrofoam balls that I’d knit around. I then throw them into the washer to felt them, which shrinks the wool to fit the ball. Then I add the details. This is my first piece whose elements are not wholly attached to the wall. They actually pop off the wall. I am interested in creating works whose elements are suspended in air, perhaps even hanging from the ceiling. This is a direction that I want to explore.

ER: Looking at your work closely, which it demands, is like looking at the inner workings of an ornate clock. Each exquisitely bejeweled work is intricately constructed. How long does it take for you to create a finished work?

JMD: That’s the worst question on the planet. You don’t want to know that because then you would never do it. Laughs. Because I work on multiple pieces at once they all evolve over months to a year. Some of them take a couple years to complete. Theme and Variations took 2 or 3 years to complete. Of course, I am always working on a number of pieces at the same time.

ER: When I think about the intricacy of your work and the time it takes for you complete an individual work I cannot help thinking of Penelope who spent 20 years waiting for Ulysses to return home. I am sure that she did a lot of embroidery. Even Madame Defarge, from A Tale of Two Cities, spent every waking hour knitting the names of those to be guillotined during the coming French revolution. Tell me about your relationship to your work. It must take a lot of patience.

JMD: My relationship to my work is all about process. I love the process: taking an idea and bringing it to life. It’s all about creating. I have no attachment to the finished product itself. For me, it’s all about making it, the journey so to speak, and of course patience and dedication, both of which have always come naturally to me.

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Brothers’ Game

jolanta — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:49:29 +0000

Fraternal twins Alan and Michael Fleming have been living together since childhood, and collaborating in their shared space since 2005. That is, until Alan moved from Chicago to New York. With time apart, their dynamic evolved. “This exhibition marks a temporary hiatus in our collaboration. Not that we stopped making work, but that after many years of collaborating, we were suddenly forced to make our work in a new way since we were now living in two different cities,” says Michael.

Alan and Michael Fleming, Rock Paper Scissors, 2011. Courtesy of the artists.

Brothers’ Game

By Maria Anderson

For “GAME ON,” the Fleming brothers created two distinct bodies of work: one from the year they were separate, and the other from after they reunited. Their collaborations take various forms, including performance, video, drawing, and sculpture. “We are both interested in the shift toward sculpture in our practice, but we wanted to maintain the physicality of our prior performance and video work. I think we achieved that through certain pieces in the show like Rock Paper Scissors (2012),” says Alan. No matter the form, play and physicality are deeply involved, and their surroundings are treated as locations for experimentation, escape, and play.

We’re all aware of the myth of twins possessing a psychic connection that surpasses sibling intuition. The Fleming dizygotes aren’t necessarily drinking the Kool-Aid, but they do play around with the idea of twin ESP to try to get a sense of what their collaboration means in both situations, together and apart.

While separated, the two attempted to continue their collaborative art-making through objects such as postcards and Polaroids, calendars and clairvoyance games. These served as records of communication, and provided fodder for “GAME ON.” They even mailed an empty box back and forth, titled A Sea Shanty, which accumulated postage like barnacles over the year. Rock Paper Scissors (2011) took form as hand sculptures embodying three games Alan and Michael played in which neither knew the result until they installed the Chicago iteration of “GAME ON.” In an interview for Threewalls Gallery, Michael explains why they chose to portray Rock, Paper, Scissors. “We were really interested in this idea of a really ephemeral game that we would play when we were younger that was kind of a low-stakes game. But, that if we stretch it out over time and distance, and we embody it in this classical medium, it becomes something larger than itself, or something larger than a game between us. It becomes this metaphorical, conceptual object.” For Psychic Color Calendars (2011), they tried to focus on the same color every day for thirty days, and recorded the results on the calendars. These exercises and games were a way to stay connected despite the separate studios and thinking environments, and reflect an effort at examining each side of communication, its antecedents, pauses, and erasures. French sociologist Roger Caillois believed games must contain the following traits: fun, separate, uncertain, non-productive, governed by rules, and accompanied by the awareness of a different reality. Though the Flemings’ play does not adhere to all of these, it is interesting to note that many of these qualities are key elements in their games as well as in their collaborations.

Alan and Michael Fleming, Psychic Color Calendars, 2011. Courtesy of the artists.

In the second body of work, the Flemings examined the mechanics of a mental reunion and resumed play. One of the pieces, Who’s Bad? (2012), is a single-channel video of Alan teaching Michael to dance. Alan has years of training in hip-hop, break dance and other styles. The backdrop is the Brooklyn subway stop Hoyt Schermerhorn, where Martin Scorsese filmed Michael Jackson’s music video, “Bad.” According to critics, the video helped MJ’s image become edgier, and the video has over 53 million views on youtube. Alan describes how they decided to create a rawer, unrehearsed video. “After I had been teaching Mike the moves, we were becoming precise, performing the whole combination. But when we started to look at the footage, we were struck by the moment of learning. So, I told Mike, ‘Don’t learn any choreography before you get to the subway.’ The only times he would learn were in front of the camera. So, I would introduce new material to him, explain it, and he would have to learn it on the spot, on site, with people looking.” As a result, the unedited video shows a learning experience rather than a final product.

The Fleming brothers received their MFA from the Performance Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, which they attended as a collaborative. This is the second iteration of GAME ON—the first took place in Chicago—and the brothers’ first solo exhibition in New York. The two are currently based out of Brooklyn.

Alan and Michael Fleming have shown their collaborative works throughout the US as well as abroad. Their videos have been screened in Copenhagen, Lviv, Ukraine, Rio de Janeiro, and Berlin. They are current fellows in the AIM (Artist in the Marketplace) Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and International Artists in Residence at the NARS (New York Art Residency & Studio) Foundation. They have performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, and the Factory for Art and Design in Copenhagen.

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Encounters In The Virtual Feminist Museum

jolanta — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 15:02:43 +0000

What separates Pollock from many other writers on feminist art history is her refusal to consider femininity solely as a barrier to accomplishment or recognition (though she accepts the importance of discrimination in art history), rather she posits it as a positive and complex artistic accomplishment. The feminine for Pollock is rather the renegotiation of the masculine gaze “in order to install in culture some other means of signifying subjectivity and shaping meaning from the hitherto unsignified space of feminine differences.” This position is not revolutionary, but rarely is it given such sustained scholarly attention.

“Is there a difference we can reclaim that stems simply from the gender of the author?”

Griselda Pollock. Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum: time, space and the archive. 280pp. Routledge, 2007.

Encounters In The Virtual Feminist Museum
By Madeleine Jones

On 10 March, 1914, Mary Richardson visited London’s National Gallery to see Valázquez’s Rokeby Venus, an iconic representation of female beauty. Richardson paused before the painting, apparently in contemplation of what a 2003 BBC documentary described as “the most smackable backside in art,” then whipped out a meat cleaver concealed on her person, and slashed the painting several times before being restrained. Shortly afterwards she announced that the mutilation was a protest against the arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst: “If there is an outcry against my deed, let everyone remember that such an outcry is an hypocrisy so long as they allow the destruction of Mrs. Pankhurst and other beautiful living women.”

Close to a century later, Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art at Leeds University, finds that there are still feminist battles to be fought in the Museum—and that they are to be fought for the museum itself. Encounters in the Virtual Feminist Museum is a multi-faceted, subtle, and frequently convincing insight into the gender politics and cultural valances surrounding the exhibition (broadly understood) of art, and an ambitious revisionist art history that offers a fresh look at the lives and work of scores of important (and often under-appreciated) women artists, and juxtaposes them in a bold, imaginative, and often extremely productive manner.

The book opens with some postcards from the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, showing off its new acquisition, Canova’s Three Graces. The cards show details from the statue: hair curled up above the nape of a neck; three bottoms; a close up of one bottom. The postcards lead into a formidably learned and theoretically sophisticated discussion of the politics of exhibition, which moves easily from the 19th century origins of art photography, through discussions of youth and old age, hermaphroditism, 1970s jeans adverts, and the fetishization of hair. Finally, we reach the Mnemosyne Atlas, the collection of over 1000 art images in reproduction that Aby Warburg arranged in the 1930s to show the development of form and expression in Western art. It is an apt image for Pollock’s book, which she consciously adopts.

Antonio Canova, The Three Graces (Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia), (1815-1817), Marble, 68 x 38 x 30 in. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Scotland.

The model goes some way to explaining the study’s frenetic variety, which is at once impressive and rather irritating. Pollock does not aim for sustained or systematic argument, but proceeds by piling on and juxtaposing more images, artists, analyses. Where this approach is successful, it is exhilarating to read. But elsewhere, too often, one is left with the impression that the forward movement is arbitrary, and that any general conclusions might have been altered, had only a different set of images or artists been thrown together instead.

The three chapters of Part One deal with issues in museum history. The next chapter (Part Two) figures itself as a gallery: a floor-plan is given for the arrangement of the works discussed in the “virtual museum.” But in the final three chapters, Part Three, subtitled “After Auschwitz,” the book-as-gallery device is dropped, and we find three biographical discussions of groups of women artists, with no obvious relation to the issues surrounding art collection or exhibition.

These extended biographical passages are some of the most enjoyable in the book. Readers might object to liberties taken in Pollock’s thumbnail sketches of artists’ lives (as she acknowledges, there is no way of knowing whether Charlotte Salomon listened to Walter Benjamin’s radio shows as a child, or visited Frida Kahlo’s Paris show) but Pollock’s combination of Marxist-influenced insistence on the importance of material and social circumstances for the cultural output and sensitivity to artists’ personal experience is beguiling.

Yet for all her fascination with artists’ lives, Pollock draws back from saying that these determined their artistic production: “Is there a difference we can reclaim that stems simply from the gender of the author? No.”

While the book’s miscellaneous quality means it lacks overall coherence, it is admirable that individual discussions never seem cursory—Pollock is clearly on top of her material. There is much of value to anyone interested in theoretical issues surrounding museums and in feminist art; general readers will find much that is new in the discussion of artists; many readers will appreciate the wide range of material covered. Most of all the book is to be applauded for showing that even in a culture where it is often assumed that feminism has achieved all it can and further discussion can amount only to truism, feminism can make a complex and nuanced contribution to artistic discussion.

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Katherine T. Carter’s Anthology of Art Advice

jolanta — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 18:03:48 +0000

Ms. Carter recently published “Accelerating on the Curves: The Artist’s Roadmap to Success,” designed to assist artists with career management through practical information on effective marketing strategies tailored to individual levels of accomplishment and lifestyle.

Mary Hrbacek: How did your background influence your desire to manage a company that promotes art?

“An artist needs a strong history of sales and a solid collector base in order to gain gallery representation in a major American city.”

Katherine T. Carter’s Anthology of Art Advice
Mary Hrbacek

Mary Hrbacek: How did your background influence your desire to manage a company that promotes art?
Katherine T. Carter: My Florida orange-growing grandfather instilled an independent spirit during my formative years; by his example, I ultimately learned to trust my unique entrepreneurial approach to my business. By working with institutions, galleries, and critics, I strive to create synergistic and interdependent solutions for success in today’s contemporary art world.

MH: What is your background as an artist?
KTC: As a practicing artist I have had over 20 one-woman exhibitions in museums, and leading college and university art galleries nationwide. I have received five reviews in The New York Times alone, one with noted critic John Russell.

MH: Please talk more about what your business does for artists.
KTC: Our programs teach artists to become strategists and tacticians, who guide their own careers. Rather than waiting to be ”discovered,” I suggest exhibiting in not-for-profit institutions (museums, art centers, college and university galleries), before pursuing commercial galleries in major cities. I’ve found that dealers want to “go into business” with mature artists who have the support of collectors, curators, and critics.

MH: What simple tips would you give artists to help them succeed?
KTC: An artist needs a strong history of sales and a solid collector base in order to gain gallery representation in a major American city. With a proven track record, this goal may be achieved in less than a decade; for others it may take two or three times longer, depending on the quality of his or her accomplishments.

Attention to each strategic area of your career development is vital. Establish a balance between exhibitions, sales, awards, honors, and reviews, a crucial component to name recognition. Following your best instincts on your own behalf is clear productive thinking, and a strategy to follow—without apology. Artists must invest in themselves through promotion, marketing, and public relations, to garner reviews for professional recognition. This leads to thematic curatorial attention that may generate prestigious exhibitions in the nonprofit sector. Sales to art patrons–or to friends and family provide a base of collectors and loyal following, along with performance credentials that make affiliation with a recognized commercial gallery a possibility.

MH: Should an artist focus first on making great work, then on promoting/showing etc?
KTC: A cohesive body of work that reflects the investigation of a particular concept, forms the basis for introductions to curators, gallerists, critics and collectors. If unprepared, it may be years before an art professional would seriously re-consider your work.

MH: How important is it to get out and about to openings?
KTC: Going to openings is fine, as long as you focus on a desired result. If you believe a gallery is appropriate for you, support the artists in the gallery by attending the openings. This may lead to studio visits and crucial introductions.

Upcoming projects…
Upcoming in December 2010 is the conclusion of a 15 venue tour for the artist John Kingerelee at the University of Texas at Austin’s new Visual Art Center. In 2012-2013 over thirty solo exhibitions are scheduled nationwide for our artists/clients. (www.ktcassoc.com)

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ArtPalmBeach Fair’s 15th Anniversary

jolanta — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:26:20 +0000

ArtPalmBeach promises its best fair yet for its 15th anniversary showing, running January 19 through 23 at the Palm Beach Convention Center. In celebration, more than 70 international galleries will present works and the fair will debut an extensive program of premiere events, special exhibitions, topical lectures, museum tours, art performances, and exclusive VIP programs. All forms of contemporary art will be on display, including painting, sculpture, photography, design, fine art glass, video, and installations from modern and cutting-edge artists.

Among the highlights at ArtPalmBeach 2012, attendees can expect a special Beth Lipman installation…

“All forms of contemporary art will be on display.”

Courtesy of ArtPalmBeach.

Art Palm Beach Fair’s 15th Anniversary
Ashlea Heck

Among the highlights at ArtPalmBeach 2012, attendees can expect a special Beth Lipman installation, presented by Heller Gallery (New York, N.Y.) coinciding with her exhibition opening on January 18 at the Norton. Stephen Knapp, represented at the fair by Elaine Baker Gallery (Palm Beach, FL.), will present a 35-foot installation and light performance. Besharat Gallery (Atlanta, GA.) will present a one-man photography exhibition of Luis Barba, featuring new monumental works and a personal appearance by the artist. Michael Taylor, a pioneer in the American Studio Glass Art Movement, will present “A Geometry of Meaning” exhibition and personal appearance, sponsored by Ruth Lawrence Gallery (Rochester, N.Y.). A tribute to the “50th Anniversary of the American Glass Art Movement, 1962-2012,” group exhibition and the book launch of Harvey K. Littleton: A Life in Glass by Joan Falconer Byrd, will be sponsored by Maurine Littleton Gallery (Washington, D.C.). Additionally, the fair will honor the lifetime accomplishments of Japanese sculptor Jun Kaneko and will feature an exhibition of his major works sponsored by Elaine Baker Gallery (Palm Beach, FL.).

The fair will deliver a full program of a daily lecture and panel discussions, including Michael Kimmelman, chief critic of the New York Times, “The View from Over There, Over Here”; Jun Kaneko, “In Between”; William Warmus, former curator of Modern Glass at Corning Museum of Glass, will moderate the roundtable discussion “The Studio Glass Experiment–The First 50 Years 1962-2012”; a thought provoking panel moderated by Bruce Helander, editor-in-chief of The Art Economist; Willis “Buzz” Hartshorn of International Center of Photography, “The ICP Legacy and New Directions in Photography”; Ullysees Dietz, curator of Decorative Arts at the Newark Museum, “Ceramics as Art, Not a New Idea”; and Mark Leach, executive director of the Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art (SECCA) will present “The New SECCA and its New Directions in Contemporary Art.”

In 2011, ArtPalmBeach was marked with outstanding attendance and strong sales. The fair welcomed a record 28,000 attendees during the five-day run. For more information, visit www.artpalmbeach.com.

*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.

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Virocode: A Disappearance of the Source

jolanta — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 17:45:52 +0000

The Western New York collaborative duo Virocode will open an exhibition of photographic and video installation work at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery on October 21, 2011. Since 1987, Virocode has been exploring the intersection of science—in particular, evolutionary theory, biomedical technology, and physics—and popular culture through hybrid uses of video, photography, sculpture, and digital technology.

“The works touch on the ephemeral and invisible, using high-speed cameras to slow down time.”

Virocode, Source 1, 2011. Photographic print, 40 x 30 x 2 in. Courtesy of the artist.

Virocode: A Disappearance of the Source
Heather Pesanti

“As the intersection of technology and traditional media becomes an ever-increasing part of the global art landscape, Virocode’s practice brilliantly captures such moments through an innovative lens. Being based here in Western New York, they are accessible and beloved in the community,” exhibition curator Heather Pesanti.

Virocode is composed of the artist Andrea Mancuso and the medical researcher Peter D’Auria. The artists’ work captures and reveals performative actions generated from the confluence of man-made technology—such as cameras and sound triggers—and natural forces. In their most recent series, Evolving Moisture, the artists explore science, motion, and time through the movement of gases and liquids, including the rapid and potentially explosive expansion of energy. These explorations are related to the human body through spectacular photographs and digital videos. The works touch on the ephemeral and invisible, using high-speed cameras to slow down time so that normally unseen moments are rendered pure and beautiful.

For their exhibition at the Albright-Knox, A Disappearance of the Source, Virocode will show new works relating to their Evolving Moisture series, including static photo-sculptures, video projections, and a new experimental strategy that uses micro-loops of video/digital photographs that shimmer within framed LCD screens.

Virocode has exhibited work throughout the United States and in Europe, including at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and Impakt Festival in The Netherlands. Locally, Mancuso and D’Auria have exhibited at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, the Burchfield Penny Art Center, CEPA Gallery, and Squeaky Wheel.

A Disappearance of the Source is on view at the Alright Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo from October 21, 2011 through January 29, 2012.

*** This article was published by NY Arts Magazine, 2011. NY Arts Magazine is published by Abraham Lubelski. Sponsored by Broadway Gallery, NYC and World Art Media.

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The Museum of Modern Art Announces Cindy Sherman Retrospective in 2012

jolanta — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:44:23 +0000

This exhibition of Cindy Sherman will bring together more than 170 key photographs from a variety of the artist’s acclaimed bodies of work, for which she created myriad constructed characters and tableaus. The first comprehensive museum survey of Sherman’s career in the United States since 1997, it will draw widely from public and private collections, including the collection of The Museum of Modern Art. Sherman (American, b. 1954) is widely recognized as amongst the most important contemporary artists of the last 40 years, and arguably the most influential artist working exclusively with photography. Today her work is the unchallenged cornerstone of Post-Modern photography.

“Through her vision and skillful masquerades, Sherman has created an astonishing and continually intriguing variety of characters that resonate deeply within our visual culture.”

Cindy Sherman, Untitled #216, 1989. Chromogenic color print, 87 1/8 x 56 1/8″ (221.3 x 142.5 cm). Gift of Werner and Elaine Dannheisser. Courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

The Museum of Modern Art Announces Cindy Sherman Retrospective in 2012
The Museum of Modern Art

Working as her own model for more than 30 years, she has generated a range of guises and personas that are by turns amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting. To create her photographs, she works unassisted in her studio and thus assumes multiple roles as photographer, model, art director, make-up artist, hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress. Through her vision and skillful masquerades, Sherman has created an astonishing and continually intriguing variety of characters that resonate deeply within our visual culture.

The exhibition will showcase Sherman’s greatest achievements to date through the extraordinary range and evolution of her work, from her early experiments as a student in Buffalo in the 1970s to her recent large-scale photographic murals. The exhibition focuses on some of the dominant themes prevalent throughout Sherman’s work, such as artifice and fiction, cinema and performance, horror and the grotesque, myth and fairy tale, and gender and class identity. A selection of ambitious and celebrated works will be highlighted, including a complete set of the seminal Untitled Film Stills (1977-80) and a complete group of her 12 centerfolds (1981), and selections from major series such as fairy tales/mythology (1985), history portraits (1988-90), sex pictures (1992), headshots (2000), clowns (2002-04), fashion (1983-84, 1993-94, 2007-08), and society portraits (2008). In addition, a site-specific photographic mural produced in 2011-12 will be shown in the United States for the first time in this exhibition. The emphasis on new work presents an opportunity for reassessment in light of the latest developments in Sherman’s oeuvre. The exhibition’s structure acknowledges the artist’s serial working method while also allowing for multiple readings of her work.

Cindy Sherman will be on view at the Museum of Modern Art from February 26 – June 11, 2012.

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Works on Paper: David Lynch

jolanta — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 23:34:38 +0000

This exceptional book brings together a collection of more than 500 drawings dating from the 1960s by the renowned American film director, David Lynch. His artwork was first unveiled to the general public in March 2007 by the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain in Paris.

“The nature of these drawings allows us to dive into David Lynch’s universe and establish links between his artwork and his films.”

David Lynch. Cover of David Lynch, Works on Paper, 2011. coedition Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain/Steidl. Gottingen.

Works on Paper: David Lynch
Steidl & Fondation Cartier pour l’art Contemporain

Sketches, watercolors, or simple doodles, this vast collection—carefully conserved by David Lynch since his adolescence and regularly used by him as a source of inspiration—offers a unique glimpse into the artist’s creative process. Using all types of media, from Post-it notes to napkins, the diverse and complementary nature of these drawings allows us to dive into David Lynch’s universe and establish links between his artwork and his films.

This exceptional book, both in terms of its format and the quality of reproduction of the works, is a co-publication between the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and Steidl.

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Janet Kurnatowski

jolanta — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 01:06:06 +0000

In the early decades of the 20th century, abstract art was not part of the curatorial programs of the major New York galleries and museums. Although there were some initial flurries of exposure at the Armory Show in 1913, it was not until 1936 that artists working outside the genres of representation banded together to form the AAA as a forum for the discussion, exhibition and promotion of their work, where none had existed previously.

“This exhibition shows the recent work of 76 members of the American Abstract Artists, along with four guest exhibitors.”

Abstract Painting Flourishes at Janet Kurnatowski Gallery
Janet Kurnatowski

ABSTRACTION∞ (Abstraction to the Power of Infinity) celebrates the perseverance of non-figurative and non-objective art, including the practitioners, pioneers and those currently working in the traditions of abstraction. This exhibition shows the recent work of 76 members of the American Abstract Artists, along with four guest exhibitors. The works exhibited span a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography, installation and video, vividly communicating with color, line, form and texture.

As one of the few artists’ organizations born of the Great Depression, the AAA was a pivotal force in the development and acceptance of abstract art in the US. The group’s continued vitality after 75 years is a testament to the power and reach of these non-objective art forms and points to an infinite future for abstraction.

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