ArtPress

Oblong's g-speak: the 'Minority Report' OS brought to life

2008-11-15T09:23:00.003-05:00

Not really an art post, but I could see where this has tremendous possibilities for the arts. Similar to the movie "Minority Report".

Nelly Agassi

2008-11-03T21:23:00.002-05:00

I cannot find much on this artist except her cv and that she lives and works in Israel. Her body based fabric pieces are reminiscent of Janine Antoni or Rebecca Horn and are incredibly striking.

Gerhard Richter at Serpentine Gallery

2008-11-03T21:16:00.001-05:00

from serpentine gallery:

"Gerhard Richter (born Dresden, 1932) is one of the world’s greatest living artists. Since the early 1960s he has tirelessly explored the medium of painting at a time when many were heralding its death. He has produced a remarkably varied body of work, including photography-based portrait, landscape and still-life paintings; gestural and monochrome abstractions; and colour chart grid paintings. This autumn, the Serpentine presents 4900 Colours, a major new work comprising bright monochrome squares randomly arranged in a grid formation to create stunning sheets of kaleidoscopic colour.

4900 Colours comprises 196 square panels of 25 coloured squares that can be reconfigured in a number of variations, from one large-scale piece to multiple, smaller paintings. Richter has developed a new version especially for the Serpentine Gallery exhibition: 4900 Colours: Version II, formed of 49 paintings of 100 squares.

4900 Colours is in the context of Richter’s design for the south transept window of Cologne Cathedral, which replaced the stained glass that was destroyed in World War II. Cathedral Window, unveiled in August 2007, comprises 11,500 hand-blown squares of glass in 72 colours that are derived from the palette of the original medieval glazing."

Phonographantasmascope

2008-10-13T12:52:00.002-05:00

Photographer Gregory Crewdson

2008-10-03T19:48:00.002-05:00

Gregory Crewdson was born in 1962 and received a BA at SUNY, Purchase and an MFA at Yale University. His photographs are included in numerous museums and public collections around the world. A European retrospective of his work began at Kunstverein Hannover, Germany (2005) and traveled to institutions including Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; and the Hasselblad Center, Sweden. Crewdson is a faculty member of the Department of Photography at Yale University and lives in New York City.

His photographs are completely staged odd realities that make you look twice. There is a sense of deja vu with his work, a sense that something is just not right.

Jon Burgerman -

2008-10-03T19:43:00.002-05:00

John Burgerman studied art foundation in Bournville, Birmingham and then Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University.

His work is hand-drawn characters. He said, "Even though it's often scanned into the computer I don't want it looking too clean and 'photoshopped'." The characters are often linked together in one seemingly connected line.

His influences range from art shows to computer games, Saturday morning cartoons, and adverts to sweet wrappers and root vegetables.

Frank McCauley

2008-10-03T18:02:00.002-05:00

Frank was my roomie in undergrad and the guy I got into any trouble with. We have since parted ways but still keep in touch quite often. He has revamped his website from the ground up and warrants a mention here if not solely for the crazy background on his home page but more importantly for his amazing prints/paintings he's been creating.

From his website:
"My work investigates the distortions of language and logic, by looking at ways in which technology can influence perception. It does this by exploring instinct and irrational comprehension. When I take the everyday person as my subject it is put through a process in which its features are distorted, suppressed, or intensified in the service of expressing something beneath or behind the observable surface. That is, something which is best implied in the slippage between the recognizable and what is unexplained or mysterious.

In my work there exists a fascination with the relationships between private and public, reality and fiction, object and representation, and also the dynamic interplay between the individual and structures or masses. Some of my processes include: disrupting narrative flow, piling up disjointed fragments, incorporating references to prior images and texts, isolating figures to emphasize their role as personifications of concepts, and using images with multiple associations to draw attention to many layers of meaning and the necessity of interpretation. All these means serve to frustrate a straightforward reception of the image, which would consume the work for the story told, or the information conveyed."

Fudge Factory Comics

2008-10-02T07:24:00.002-05:00

I came across Travis Millard's site Fudge Factory Comics when researching for my super heroes project. Sort of reminds me of the old Garbage Pail Kids cards I used to collect when I was a kid.

advancedbeauty.org

2008-09-09T21:08:00.002-05:00

"Advanced Beauty is an ongoing exploration of digital artworks born and influenced by sound, an ever-growing collaboration between programmers, artists, musicians, animators and architects.

The first collection is a series of audio-reactive 'video sound sculptures'. Inspired by synasthesia, the rare, sensory experience of seeing sound or tasting colours, these videos are physical manifestations of sound, sculpted by volume, pitch or structure of the soundtrack.

The films embrace unusual video making processes, the visual programming language Processing, high-end audio analysis and fluid dynamic simulations alongside intuitive responses in traditional cell animation. Each artist was given the same set of parameters to work within; to start, finish and exist within a white space, creating a seamless coherence, all sculptures sharing the same white environment."

Click the image below to watch an HD trailer for the upcoming DVD.

www.advancedbeauty.org

Naked Toys

2008-08-07T20:33:00.002-05:00

I came across this designer, Matt Kirkland, who in one of his "stupid projects" has taken various animatronic toys and stripped them of their beloved fur. They are quite interesting in their birthday suits.

Luke Lamborn

2008-07-27T13:56:00.003-05:00

Syracuse Computer Art Grad. From his website:

"This video series documents extraordinary occurrences captured by a passing videographer. The title and direction of the series are a reference to the writings of anthropologist Carlos Castaneda who studied ancient shamanistic methods of experiencing the world paranormally. He described "square millimeters of opportunity" as momentary and radical shifts in perception, during which amazing events are possible. Video compositing and special effects are used to actualize these moments."

Sean Hovendick

2008-07-27T07:30:00.002-05:00

Sean was a colleague of mine at Syracuse University who created interactive, engaging, yet austere works through video, physical computing, and other media.
"I am very curious as to what makes men act the way they do. My own mannerisms and ideology seem to clash with particular identities of men both portrayed in the media and in society alike. Often I find myself critically analyzing the identity of males while at other times I feel myself conforming to a stereotype to simply fit in. I seem to be in a constant state of flux—on an endless journey searching for who I am—tormented by the oddity of the mediated persona. I attribute this contradictory existence with my lack of a father figure and the consequences of using of mass media as a surrogate parent.

In general, my work is a critical assessment of media’s omnipresence and the effects of its power to influence our society. In particular, it reflects the alienation of the male identity in regards to behavior learned from mediated reality. I draw inspiration from the way in which mass media is used for entertainment, information and social connectedness and the unconscious issues that arise with such dependence. These issues of persuasive media and the effects of mediated reality are the driving forces of my life and work—both of which concerned with the impalpable human identity evident in our stereotypically based culture." (© Sean Hovendick)

www.studiofusion.com

Time to start posting again

2008-07-26T20:49:00.002-05:00

I have noticed that the majority of the traffic to my website comes not from people actively looking for my work, yes, it's humbling, but from searching for an entirely different, usually much more popular artist that I wrote a brief article about on this blog. This does however drive traffic to my own site. So, and don't hold me to this, but I am going to try to cover a new artist, show, or something else I think is interesting twice a week. This should keep me actively engaged in looking at new work, while also helping me to establish what one of my colleagues once called "google juice". Stay tuned.

Rotating Wall by Richard Wilson

2007-06-08T14:55:00.000-05:00

Work by Richard Wilson,
very similar to Gordon Matta Clarke (image to the left). Wilson's video can be viewed below.

There is an exhibition at Renew Rooms in Wood Street giving full details about this amazing installation.

'The most daring piece of public art ever commissioned in the UK', Turning the Place Over is artist Richard Wilson’s most radical intervention into architecture to date, turning a building in Liverpool’s city centre literally inside out. One of Wilson’s very rare temporary works, Turning the Place Over colonises Cross Keys House, Moorfields, and will be launched in June 2007 and will run through until end of 2008.

Co-commissioned by the Liverpool Culture Company and Liverpool Biennial, co-funded by the Northwest Regional Development Agency and The Northern Way, and facilitated by Liverpool Vision, the project is a stunning trailblazer for Liverpool’s Year as European Capital of Culture 2008, and the jewel in the crown of the Culture Company’s public art programme. (http://www.artinliverpool.com/biennial/biennialarch/news/)

Richard Serra 40 Year Retrospective at MOMA

2007-06-05T11:03:00.000-05:00

YouTube video below but a NYTimes interview can be viewed here.

Absolutely amazing website

2007-03-04T13:46:00.000-05:00

In the new genre of video, computer based work, this website has got to be near the top, absolutely amazing.

Incredible Folding Couch

2007-02-05T10:44:00.001-05:00

Laurent Perbos

2007-01-20T22:54:00.000-05:00

Interesting artist that transforms everyday sports equipment into odd works of art, similar to older work by Gabriel Orozco.

Thomas Demand

2007-01-17T13:30:00.000-05:00

Although I can't find a current exhibition for him, I find his work incredibly austere, and his ideas about memory and perception are interesting in relation to my own work.

"In the photo, a stairway leads up to an open door in the side of an airplane. Haven't you seen this somewhere before? Yes, usually there's a visiting dignitary standing at the top of the stairs waving to the press and fans. But there are no people in this photo. And the backdrop isn't real. German artist Thomas Demand (b. 1964) made it entirely from cardboard, colored paper and glue.

Demand bases his paper models on found images, reproducing their perspective, color, and scale. The airplane photo Gangway (2001), for example, mimics a news photo of the Pope visiting Berlin. The other three photos (and one series) in Demand's debut solo show in Japan are reconstructions of gold bullion, an empty locker room, tenement apartments, and leaves. Demand builds the paper models full-scale, meaning the airplane and stairway were built the same size as a real airplane and stairway. The prints, too, are 1:1 scale-Gangway is over two meters high-giving a clear view onto the rumpled surfaces and loose edges of Demand's paper-thin memories. "They're like windows," says the artist.

Windows into the past, perhaps. Demand, trained as a sculptor, never keeps his paper creations. He builds them, photographs them, and then destroys them. Though superficially similar to the miniature-paper Mercedes and AmEx cards of Chinese funerals (both address the transitory), Demand's models are more like movie sets. They exist to be photographed and last only as long as the shoot. And in this process of documentation, sculpture and photograph become one.

Movie sets are made to look as genuine as possible, down to real Coke cans and faux wood grain. Demand (who has made several short films), however, strips away fine details like text, producing too-clean, generic versions of things. The tops of the gold bars in Bullion (2003), for example, are embossed with a simple circle, not origin and purity stamps. Even his trash looks new; the crumpled cup under the bench in the locker room scene Kabine (2002) was never used for drinking, only as a prop to signify "used cup."

Another unusual-and the most overtly political-piece in this show is Public Housing (2003), a pinkish photo of roughly constructed modern apartment buildings next to an empty playground. Demand's source image in this case was not a photo but the drawing on the back of a Singapore $10 bill.

Demand is a one-man scene shop creating images that anticipate dramatic moments. Yet there are never any people in the photos; the drama is forever suspended. This absence focuses attention on the uncanny stillness of Demand's photographic trompe l'oeil. Ironically, the sets are analogous to figures in a wax museum; they are both very real and very fake."

140 Napkin Quotes: Dad Puts Drawings & Quotes On Daughter's School Napkins

2006-12-22T10:05:00.000-05:00

For those of you who I haven't told, AK and I will be having a girl! With that in mind, I came across a Flickr photoset that includes 140 napkins a dad drew on for his daughter when she was in school. They aren't cutesy little drawings, most are quote, some are just a little weird.

Tom Friedman

2006-12-18T15:04:00.000-05:00

Tom Friedman is one of those artists, that if you are an artist, you love to hate. His use of simple materials in complex ways always has be asking "why didn't I think of that". He gets his art supplies from drugstores, candy stores, the human body, and the supermarket. Friedman relentlessly invents intricate objects out of a range of household materials, such as styrofoam, masking tape, pencils, toilet paper, spaghetti, toothpicks and bubble gum. His work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both beautiful and playful. Friedman's ability to transform common objects into something new, his devotion to material perfection, the way he
conceptualizes the action of the artisan, enables him to elevate the ordinary to the status of art.

(© Images are the property of Tom Friedman, text from http://www.designboom.com/portrait/friedman.html)

Wooster on Spring Project

2006-12-16T09:09:00.000-05:00

Wooster on Spring, the exhibition with Elias Cummings, the new owner of 11 Spring Street, will open in Lower Manhattan in less then one week.

The exhibition, a three celebration of 30 years of ephemeral art, will take place for three days only, and then all of the artwork will be destroyed.

The artists who's work will be showcased include Shepard Fairey, WK, Jace, Swoon, David Ellis, FAILE, Cycle, Lady Pink, London Police, Prune, JR, Speto, D*Face, JMR, Blek Le Rat, John Fekner, Bo and Microbo, Above, BAST, Momo, Howard Goldkrand, Borf, Gaetane Michaux, Skewville, Michael DeFeo, Will Barras, Kelly Burns, Abe Lincoln, Jr, Thubdercut, Judith Supine, Rekal, Maya Hayuk, Anthony Lister, Stikman, You Are Beautiful, Gore-B, Elboe-Toe, MCA, Jasmine Zimmerman, Plasma Slugs, Diego, RIPO, The Graffiti Research Lab, Txtual Healing, Mark Jenkins, Dan Witz, Iminendisaster, Rene Gagnon, and many other surprise guests.

So here are the days and times for the three day open house:

Friday, December 15th: From 11am to 5pm
Saturday, December 16th: From 11am to 5pm
Sunday, December 17th: From 11am to 5pm

On Sunday, December 17th at 3pm there will be a panel discussion with many of the artists attending.

The location is 11 Spring Street (Spring and Elizabeth). For the first time in perhaps more than 25 years, the doors of 11 Spring will be open to the public.

Contemporary Chinese Art at the Robischon Gallery

2006-12-16T08:25:00.000-05:00

Force of Nature

2006-12-15T13:08:00.000-05:00

Force of Nature is a collaborative project co-curated by Mark Sloan and Brad Thomas of the College of Charleston and Davidson College. 7 institutions have come together to support and host 10 Japanese artists who primarily work in ephemeral, nature based materials. The gallery I curate, the Sumter County Gallery of Art, will host the capstone exhibition in May of 2007, bringing together drawings, models, photographs, and some work from all 10 artists. The work pictured above, by Motoi Yamamoto, will be recreated at the Sumter Gallery location. For more info visit the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art The Flickr photoset can be viewed here.

Sergio Prego

2006-12-12T10:13:00.000-05:00

Sergio Prego typically examines our set notions of space and of time's linear development. For his first exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, Sergio Prego will present two films and large sculptures where time is suspended and space is manipulated.

The new film Black Monday depicts a small explosion and plume of smoke captured from several viewpoints in the artist's studio. This single moment is fixed in time then manipulated with a computer to upset the usual relationship between space and time, creating what appears to be a three-dimensional sculpture in video.

Solarys, Prego's most recent film, also explores the conventional notion of linear time and attempts to cause friction between the simple documentation of an action and the narration that results from these related elements. The film directly references acclaimed Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky's 1972 cult classic of the same name. Filmed through the tunnels and streets of Tokyo, Prego utilized four cameras to capture the “futuristic” landscape. In the original film, the future was represented as a contemporary highway scene. Here the notion of the future has been updated. With several cameras recording simultaneously inside and outside of the car as Prego travels through the cityscape, he is able to give different perspectives on the same view.

In homage to Bruce Nauman, Prego constructed Sunoise, a large sculpture comprised of two fluorescent tubes joined by mechanical arms. Each light moves independently of the other, folding and rotating as though dancing in the gallery. In another part of the gallery, Prego presents his newest sculpture made of large sheets of damaged metal in an attempt to alter our perceptions of space.

Spanish artist Sergio Prego was born in San Sebastian in 1969. Prego works in many different fields of media including video, photography, performance art, installation, and sound. Prego has exhibited extensively in the United States and abroad, most recently at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga in Spain, Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and P.S. 1 MoMA in New York. Prego also created a special installation at the Palazzo delle Papesse-Centro Arte Contemporanea in Siena in 2005.

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