Courtesy of the artist.

My inspiration comes from the nature surrounding the area where I live in the south of Sweden, on an island in the Baltic, from the human body, and from within. The nearness of water and the open landscape creates a lot of light in various shapes, and the way that this light alters objects and scenarios provides a constant challenge. I began my career a long time ago as a P.E. teacher, and my fascination with the body and movement has continued. In a painting, colors and space add dimension to movements and gestures, transforming them into statements about existence. I focus on the feeling or mood and translate it with color. Whether the final work is abstract or figurative lies in the eyes of the beholder.

annakajsa.se

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Faste refers to the pieces in the show as “protoforms,” a term which relates both to the experimental nature of making prototypes and also to the idea that while the shaped canvases on which he works have more dimension than a typical painting, they exist in the realm of planar-image and illusion, never actually achieving the fully-dimensional existence of free-standing sculpture. The fact that they appear to be about to do so is the source of their kinetic appeal. While Faste’s protoforms reference the tradition of “picture-as-object” pioneered by Frank Stella, the figures move beyond static representation into the realm of what is known commercially as kinetic styling—capturing the implied velocity of an object-in-motion and delivering the impression of energy caught in the act of conversion into material form.

Faste’s work has its genesis in image research; his work references contemporary trends in industrial and product design. Through careful study of contemporary culture, the artist has gathered a lexicon of repeated shapes and patterns related to the architectural, technological, and psychological trends his work explores. Faste’s multi-planar canvases are bent into three-dimensional representations of these forms, then gessoed and smoothed so that all canvas seams are concealed. Next, some sections of the canvas are masked, while others are air brushed with slick acrylic hues and shades, creating an illusion of depth reiterated by the play of color across conjoined planes.

Trygve Faste, Protoform Small Blue Yellow, 2013. Acrylic on canvas, 6.5 x 16 x 2.5 in.

When finished, each of the pieces is given a title that references the specific colors that comprise its surface gloss.  One of the most interesting aspects of the figures is the implied prism outside the frame. The figures explore the ways lines emerging from specific but unrepresented points of origin in dimensionally organized space, and the way the angles these lines create catch and refract light. The relationship between color and form in each piece is both kinetic and dynamic. The effect Faste achieves is that of observing light in the process of being bent, as if he were able to capture the moment immediately preceding the transformation of light energy into perceivable matter.

Stills of Faste’s creative process can be viewed at trygvefaste.com.  They reveal that while it is easy to interpret Faste’s work as “futuristic,” to do so may be naive.  While his process is technologically sophisticated, the media the artist incorporates in his finished figures (wood, canvas, paint,) are relatively primitive. Seen from this angle, Lightspeed is a visual reiteration of the first (ancient) law of the conservation of energy.  Faste’s work suggests that everything we consume originates as particle and wave. It suggests that matter is merely energy manipulated, through the process of design, into material forms intended first to stimulate, and then to satisfy desire.

By Beth Russell

The post Lightspeed: Trygve Faste at Ruth Bachofner Gallery appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

For Immediate Release:

Adriatic Wonder: the Work of Davor Vukovic

Broadway Gallery, 473 Broadway Fl. 7, New York, NY 10013.

October 16^th – 29^th 2013

Opening Reception October 17^th 6-8pm

Broadway Gallery is proud to announce an exhibition featuring the new work of Davor Vukovic.

His most recent and largest paintings (300×300 cm) are to be shown in the artist’s second one-man exhibition at New York’s Broadway Gallery in October 2013. Although they depict the sea, islands, and submarine landscapes in tones of dark blue and indigo, they also reflect the sky, the infinity of the space, and the moving of myriads of stars and galaxies. The work involves reflections of dark and light sky with the bottom of the sea on the surface and in the deep water. These shades, spots, and effusions of paint evoke Monet’s large-format paintings, although they are carried out in a completely different way by using the techniques of action painting. The background, due to the artist’s tectonic moves in the process of constructing and deconstructing, emerges on the very surface of the painting like islands emerge from the sea. They are the images of brightness and the future, but also of the depths of infinity where we can easily vanish and disappear in the artist’s ecstasy. These paintings reflect our experiences and our collective inner anxieties with the unknown.

When we indulge in them, we see the tide and the ebb and flow through the magma of paint. We see the glittering flicker of the sun, the moon, and the stars on the surface of the axiomatic, Vuković most recent works pulsate in harmonic rhythm so that the dense radiant open colors of the coast, undersea, and the islands, are poured into his paintings like the sea itself. They are as transparent as watercolor paintings but also saturated with ultramarine blue, the trademark color of the people living in southern Croatia.

On one side, there is the impression of fragile diffusion, instability and motion, the permanent interaction with the sea, the sky, the light, and the chromatic and tonal varieties of color. On the other hand, hidden from our eyes, there is the static nature of archipelagoes, their primordial character, their hidden connection to the land, their deep roots in the ground – an almost metaphorical paraphrase of the artist’s being.

Davor Vukoric is a Croat and was born in 1951. While he initially studied economics, his artistic instinct led him to enroll at the Fine Arts Education Center in Zagreb. It was here that Vukoric mastered his understanding of form and composition, and began culminating his own style. Since 1995 he has been a member of the Croatian Association of Artists and Likum. He has had more than 50 solo exhibitions and 25 group shows. He works and lives in Zapresic. Croatia.

The post Announcing Adriatic Wonder: the Work of Davor Vukovic appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Courtesy of the artist

Although I am a ceramic artist, glass is an essential part of my sculptures. What fascinates me about glass is the way light penetrates the glass, how the rays travelling through the work make the colours shine and glow, and how the ever-changing light transforms the work. In my sculptures, ceramic forms the frame and glass gives it a new dimension – a dimension of space and timelessness.

paivilappalainen.com

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Courtesy of the artist.

Unfortunately, the high-quality photograph can’t display the distinguishing feature in my work. The circles which filled all the works are holes in the canvas.

This can disadvantage the viewer’s first impression when looking the works.

The sense of the “BEYOND THE APPEARANCE” collection means the gaze has to cross the craters and it is forced to go beyond the first picture. The wall, which is the background of the works together with the light, which seeps in through the holes to create an extraordinary network. The colours and the material combine to create the third dimension.

jirinanazzanipola.it

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CD: What was the overall design aesthetic and philosophy?
N: The work of Nucleo consists of innovative, unique objects longing to continue the tradition of Italian artists. The pieces are an intensified investigation about human beings and the exploration of space and time – past, present, and future. Our handmade objects are collectively made, shared, and discussed.
Each artwork is original, made entirely by hand. Crafted without the use of molds, the finished pieces reveal signs of imperfections, making them one-of-a-kind and unrepeatable. Our designs are a composite of new and up-cycled materials.

CD: What changes, material or conceptual, has the studio experienced through the years?
N: Over the past 15 years a lot has changed. Projects have been born as a result of consequences. The most radical change has been the starting points for our new projects. We continue to research errors made in our past work and let them influence us; a drop of color that falls to the floor and explodes, or the fear that arises when something turns out not as we planned.
The origination of new work comes from “errors” and so-called negative emotions, like ‘fear,’ that come about while making the work.

CD: What is Nucleo working on at the moment?
N: Investigating the themes central to human life: love, fear, family, work, religion, politics, sex – Nucleo is working on a new project, a mirror of our society. Using a series of histograms, statistics, and a control group, Nucleo will make its first attempt at an open-loop collaboration. The final design will be presented at Design Miami at Art Basel.

We are also researching our first two-dimensional process. Using laser engraving we are exploring the usage and formation of “lines.” Lines as graphics without color, lines as the traces left by moving points, and lines as tension.

Resinite table courtesy of Nucleo

CD: At Design Miami last December. The Resin Fossil Table was the highlight of my experience. What inspired its creation?
N: The idea behind the Resin Fossil Table is the ever-present presumption that the future of our designs will be fossils themselves. Resin is a “materic” trace, where we find an imprint of the original item, in the same way that the implementation of the process that creates the object leads to the destruction of the original. The table consists of a single empty block that accurately traces the object from which it takes shape.

CD: I reviewed the making-of photos on your website, the process is fascinating! Could you elaborate more about the process and what makes it so unique?
N: The making becomes so unique because it is obtained through a destruction process. First, we made a true-scale model of the table in polystyrene. This model became the mold of the resin table. The model was covered with resin and fiberglass. When the resin became strong enough, the model was destroyed using a solvent. That definitely makes it a unique piece.

CD: I also loved how, when lit properly, the table looks like a glowing, frosted artifact that could exist somewhere in the Arctic. How does lighting affect your designs, in particular The Resin Fossil Table? Do you experiment with different methods of presentation? Ideally, where would this table live?
N: Really, I never imagined the Resin Fossil Table in the Arctic, because the inspiration was the fossil. But you aren’t the first to have said that it looks like frosted ice. But, of course, one of my secret dreams is to design the ice hotel in Sweden.

Light and shadow play an important role in our pieces. Light plays with transparency and reflection while shadow defines volume and density. Though we rarely use lights inside our objects. Playing with different thicknesses between the top of the table and the sides produces the effects of light. The top is more transparent than the sides, which allows the light to run through the table and glow from all angles.
Ideally, the table would live in Brazil in a concrete house of Oscar Niemeyer.

CD: What appeals to me about the Wood Fossil pieces is the relationship between preservation and mystery. What was the first piece from this series and what influenced the creation of the following pieces? Where is the wood sourced from and is there a significance about their origins? Would you say these pieces take discarded, yet loaded, information (the wood) and encapsulate them to preserve their meaning?
N: Since I was a child I was fascinated with fossils. I loved the insects that were encapsulated in the resin. With resin we started thinking about fossilization, with wood, we open ourselves to the amber chapter.

What is impressive about fossils is that they are like a time machine; the inclusion in the resin makes the fossil eternal. On one hand, it is a great responsibility. On the other hand, it is the relation between people 1000 years from now that will find our work.

The first objects of the Wood Fossil Series are single pieces of wood encased in a block of epoxy resin. The wood is up-cycled, found in an old storage timber. The block of resin keeps the relationship alive with the dissolving piece of wood; it is a game of presence and absence, lightness and weight, challenging the laws of gravity.

The type of wood used in making the Wood Fossil’s isn’t important. The fact that it is a “souvenir of the last century” is crucial. It is a collection of memories, up-cycled into new forms. The souvenir as an evidence of memories, the souvenir as a gift for those who were not there, the souvenir as a triumph of life experienced.

Nucleo explores materiality and experiences as well as points of reference, fragile, lost, and strong. The memories of the past century have been re-found through discarded materials marked from an era. Full of scars, the material holds stronger characteristics than when it was new.

Nucleo has restored and preserved memories, mummifying fragments of the past, mixed up with physical presence, and their contemporary existence. By creating “souvenirs of the last century,” Nucleo’s objects are innately designed for the future.

The post In Conversation: Caitlin Diaz talks to Nucleo appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

I resumed in the arts a few years later when I started taking ballet classes while living in Denver, where I was renovating houses. When a knee surgery prevented me from dancing, I signed up for a drawing class. I was immediately reabsorbed, and the instructor said that I should be “doing this full-time.”  That was all I needed to hear.

I then moved to New York and started studying drawing and painting at the Art Students League, as well as studying art history on my own. I elected not to get an MFA because I thought it was strange to be judged proficient in an art form, and I couldn’t stand the thought of any more theory.

LO: What are the ideas in your work and what is your working process?
CS: I started out as a painter, depicting abstractions with representational components that were concerned with movement and space. There was always some form of depth and space in them. My first mature work, a series of paintings entitled Architectural Gems, were jewel-like geometric constructions with gold edges, almost like cloisonné. They have a lot in common with my light installations now.  After a certain point they had lost their vitality, and I started painting pulsating objects made of many colors and textures set on colored fields.  At first the fields were made of woods stained with rich colors. I then discovered reflective pigments, which offered the possibility of greater depth so that my paintings could move in and out of space. I got especially carried away with interference colors, which look opaque or transparent depending on the angle of light relative to the viewer. They are usually placed over black, but I played with them on different colors instead, so that the backgrounds would change color as the viewer walked around the paintings. I also worked with iridescent grounds, and at one point placed a series in deep open boxes with neon light behind the paintings. The area between the inside of the boxes and the paintings looked like a frame of light. That was my first work with light, and it took me some years to get back to it. I really wanted to continue, but it was difficult to find a place to start—the specter of learning about the behavior of light, the various technologies available, electronics, and fabrication was daunting.

LO:At a certain point you began to create work with light to expand on spatial and color concerns you where exploring in your painting.  Please elaborate more on this progression in your work.
CS: Before I got back to making art, I was renovating houses in Denver. I was essentially altering space within a structure, which is what I do now with my installations. Doing renovations while studying dance gave me a strong sense of how I moved through space, and how I responded to it. I was especially happy if I could change the feeling of the house from dark and gloomy to light and expansive. It was thrilling to me that I could completely transform a space using color, texture, light, and scale.

This sense was further developed after I moved to New York. I saw a lot of dance performances in the minimalist era when there were no sets or costumes. The lighting design—especially Jennifer Tipton’s—created the entire theatrical experience spatially, perceptually, and emotionally. When I saw an installation of Robert Irwin’s at Pace that involved light (“1,2,3,4″), I realized that I could do that with visual art as well, and wanted to get back to that sense of space. I couldn’t do that with painting.

You can carve volumes out of light, but it is immaterial so you can move through it. It beams into you, and it also surrounds you. Because of its range of color and scale, it has the capacity to elicit a great range of feelings. The way I work with it I can use the knowledge of color I developed when painting, and can also play with transparency and reflection.

Carol Salmanson, Lot’s Ex-Wife (Pass the Salt), 2013. Fluorescent-edged, plexiglass, prismatic reflective sheeting, steel
48″ W x 72″H x 48″D

In my installations, I’m responding to the site, so they usually end up using architectural elements. In my small work of the last few years, I’m bringing back the gestural abstraction that was in my paintings, and using the shapes and colors of LEDs to make work that hangs on a wall like a painting or drawing. I am using the wiring as a drawing and the LEDs as paint and form.

LO: Why do you think art is important to people and to the world?
CS: Images, both moving and still, and other kinds of visual stimulation are very important to the way we negotiate the world. We are bombarded with them every day, and people now have a more keenly developed sense to visual stimulation than ever before, even though fine art and art appreciation are rarely taught in schools. Obviously, this is because technology has so rapidly changed the way that we can see everything. But many kinds of fine art are still dependent on physical presence for the viewer to experience its scale and texture, so visual art has a hard time touching as many people as do the art forms that can be easily reproduced and acquired. Art museums are packed, so there is still some kind of human need.

LO: What advice would you give an artist who has just arrived in NYC and who is not sure where to begin?
CS: Get to every museum and every gallery show that he or she can.  (Of course, that means that there’s no time left to make art, so maybe no one should listen to me.) And, ignore fear. Or better yet, welcome it because that means that whatever causes it is something he or she should be doing.

LO: Who are your favorite artists and why?
CS: My taste is always changing, and I guess that is due to what I am working on at the time. Right now I am enthralled by the mid-century Constructivists—especially those from South America (such as Lygia Pape, Lygia Clark, Rafael Jesus Soto, and more)—and Soviet concrete architecture. That stuff knocks my socks off, and my recent installation Hercules Lite and my sculpture Lot’s Wife (Pass the Salt) are heavily influenced by these sources. I love that I can use a form similar to a structure made of heavy concrete, but get the opposite effect from transparent and reflective materials.

Still, there are some sources that never change. Byzantine mosaics are my first love. The rich style of their color and imagery always moves me deeply, and the way they are integrated with their architecture and use the light streaming in their windows is awe-inspiring. Persian miniatures are a staple, for the same reason ironically: the way they bend space to communicate depth, and their colors work together to create an effect that I can’t stop looking at once I start. They are so small, and yet to me they feel so big. I also love the theatricality of Robert Irwin. Matisse never disappoints, and I see something different every time. I think it goes without saying that Dan Flavin is…. well, I don’t even know what the right word is for his work.

LO: What are your upcoming projects?
CS: I have a solo show in the fall at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.  Also in the fall, I’ll have my first curatorial endeavor, a show called “The Language of Painting” that includes artists who use color and line without paint. In January, I’ll be doing a window installation as part of Time Equities’ Art in Buildings program.

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Clarity, 2009, 58 x 42 inches, oil on canvas

Being an artist is all about vulnerability. Some artists are pretty afraid of this, creating a product that feels very closed-off and protected from the prying eyes of their viewers. Becky Franco is not one of these artists.

Her large realist works on canvas are now on view through May 18^th at SOHO20 Gallery in Chelsea.

Franco puts herself right out there, finding a connection with the viewer by exposing them to the most intimate moments of her own life. Her work displays the most intimate corners of her domestic life, chandeliers, mirrors, tables, and chairs all peer back towards the viewer. Titled Chosen, the show posits the idea that these objects are actually the ones that chose us, and not the other way around. They make one reflect on who they are as we contemplate our relationship to these objects that are common signifiers of a certain level of comfort and affluence.

As stated by the artist in a recent statement,

“My interiors are concept driven and  at first sight seem clichéd, passé and give a conventional appearance, but on second inspection possess emotional and cultural tension. The objects subsist together in ‘space’ and start to stare back at us, becoming somewhat unsettling to the viewer, once we adapt to the incongruity one welcomes the unusual viewpoint.”

Franco’s chops as a painter are on vivid display, so much so that the engaging concepts her work is loaded with come to the forefront secondarily. Once they hit you though, their grip is unavoidable. Its an engaging show that is worth repeated visits. Go see it before it’s too late.

By Matthew Hassell

The post Becky Franco: Chosen at SOHO20 appeared first on NY Arts Magazine.

Image courtesy of Minus Space.

Few have such a compelling hold on the use of color as Sandford Wurmfeld. A life-long student of the perceptual nuances of pigment, Wurmfeld’s current show highlights his ability to subtly infuse canvasses with a spectrum of hues. Initially coming across as monochromes, the work in Light and Dark reveals itself to be just the opposite.

The artist has created complicated polychromes of gently nuanced gradients of pigment. They are structured around a tightly ordered iteration of his signature grid compositions and initially appear to be either black or white. Upon closer inspection, the plethora of subdued hues begin to delight the eye and open the works up as veiled worlds of chromatic encounters.

March 29th – May 4th
Minus Space
111 Front Street, Suite 226
Brooklyn, NY 11201 USA

The exhibition closes May 4th and is very worth an extended visit.

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