Art Review

When Magic Happens

Dom Lombardi — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 02:16:48 +0000

When Magic Happens Dom Lombardi April 17, 2024 - 22:16

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RODNEY DICKSON AT HIS EXHIBITION, NUNU FINE ART, 2024

Rodney Dickson

Nunu FIne Art

Born in Northern Ireland in 1956, the young Rodney Dickson would one day learn first hand about violence, destruction and sacrifice. "The Troubles" (1968-98) was a very dangerous time in Northern Ireland, an indelible experience for Dickson that will often tinge his art in some palpable way. Over the past several years I have come to know him as a passionate and caring individual who is always digging deeper to find meaning through his art, often expressing those findings as acute emotion through color, or the capturing of individual souls through his stirring approaches to portraiture.

His current exhibition Rodney Dickson: Paintings at Nunu Fine Art, features those two distinctly different series. On the main, street level of the gallery are thickly painted, abstract works that attempt to defy gravity with their massive amounts of paint, as opposed to the lower level space that features numerous, overlapping, life-sized portraits of individuals that he has come to know during his times mostly in Asia, Great Britain and his home since 1997, Brooklyn, NY.

Upon first entering the gallery I was struck by the frenzy of paint applications in 17 (2023), an eight foot tall painting filled with a patchwork of colors and textures that are suggestive of rivers, rivulets, mountains and no-man’s land. Like an earth mover, Dickson pushes, scrapes, applies and piles up paint in obsessive and reactive ways churning up medium in such a frenzy that the paintings become energized and somehow personified. With this powerful physical presence and something of an implied nervous system, the residual energy in the paint twitches, ripples, and coagulates in voluminous swathes and layers that conspire for our attention. This raucousness of color and texture is balanced by the absolute boldness of technique, while the great variance in the thickness of the paint reminds us of the dynamism and focus of the artist.

Rodney Dickson, 18 (2022), 96 x 60 inches

Down a hallway toward the back of the gallery hang smaller, more intimate, but no less tactile paintings that present a chorus of challenging visual crescendos. If there is one common thread throughout these smaller works, it is their general tendency of vertical movement, while some have much more disrupted, scraped areas that wrangle the downward action. In one, 17 (2020), the entire surface of heavily applied oil paint has been disturbed, giving it a more dystopian, scorched earth effect. Perhaps this in one dark memory of the aftermath of an IRA bombing close to home.

Considering all the above, I do not mean to imply there is no hope here. There is, and it is clear in some of the larger works in the big room in the rear of the gallery, where the paintings tend to give the impression of something akin to weightlessness despite the thickness of the paint. In 8 (2020), the predominantly yellow composition set horizontally suggests a landscape, a combination that may remind some of Van Gogh’s Wheat Field with Crows (1890) sans the foreboding flying silhouettes. With Dickson’s 8, it’s more about flow and how we perceive wind, how we receive visual cues and information both directly and indirectly that are right in front of us, without the addition of the minutiae that seeps in from the periphery. Dickson appears to be saying here; find a focal point depending on your immediate needs, take in the extremes and avoid the in-betweens, go back to your easels, your blank pages, your instruments or your computers and filter the flow down to something malleable and promising.

We see this awareness again in 18 (2022) where Dickson primarily pairs the color opposites of red and green, which are largely moderated by black, white and yellow, as they float atop a white ground. Some may also note here that the artist sometimes cleans his paint scraping tool on the edges of the panels, which in turn subtly defines the borders while unconsciously redirecting our attention back into the center of action. In addition to the two main combating colors, Dickson adds small dollops of white and yellow right from the business end of the paint tubes, carefully punching up certain points in the composition that tacitly draw our eye to certain points of color confrontation.

Lower level installation view

Moving down a flight of stairs to the lower level, there hangs countless mystifying representations of individuals Dickson has come to know over the years, each staring right back at us with their soulful eyes. Some portraits are buried almost entirely beneath other paintings, while a few can be seen in full view, all painted on the sheerest of fabrics. The delicacy of the material, the watered down paint, the representational subjects and the way they are installed could not be more different from the paintings on wood panel upstairs. Yet there is that same depth of meaning, the same unique sort of passion that Dickson’s work always emanates. It is a truth, an unrelenting drive to project the intensity, the fleetness and the frailty of living everyday in a world that is so rapidly changing and all too often disappointing. But the artist must find their own sort of understanding, of finding and releasing the thoughts that are the hardest to keep unspoken. This is when the magic happens and Dickson attracts and amazes us with tantalizing directness.

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Deeper Wells

Dom Lombardi — Mon, 18 Mar 2024 23:33:13 +0000

Deeper Wells Dom Lombardi March 18, 2024 - 19:33

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Creighton Michael, Motif 1710, acrylic on oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2010

Motif: Creighton Michael

Schaffner Room Gallery, Pound Ridge, NY

Opportunities for artists come in many different forms, especially in exhibition spaces. Once you understand your station on the outside, looking in towards the big billion-dollar businesses at the top, it becomes like a chess game where countless artists vie for a variety of venues ranging from the more regional, community-minded spaces to the secondary level of high-end galleries in major cities throughout the world. The higher you aim, the more you need to be well-connected; otherwise, it's best to have your fleet of collectors do your talking. But who has that? After all, the market is in constant flux; what's in, who has the back story, where's the new vision; it's all subjective, controlled from the top down, often sociopolitical and rather unregulated.

With the increased overhead, especially when economic downturns are caused by natural or manufactured disasters, a noticeable percentage of mid and lower-level institutions close, and opportunities decrease. I've often thought of hybrid spaces, places where two businesses share a common space or building in places like Iceland, where a commercial gallery could lessen the strain of a fixed overhead when the level of needed population is not there. You see this in colleges and universities here, where not-for-profit galleries and museums are placed on campuses where it is a bit easier to keep the lights on and where a very dedicated staff works tirelessly to keep their programs relevant and inspiring.

Libraries, commonly thought of as locations for amateur artists, are increasingly exhibiting seasoned professional artists with substantial careers, which in turn broadens the reach of both the institution and the artist. When I wrote for The New York Times from 1998-2005, I recall reviewing excellent exhibitions at the Chappaqua Library Gallery and the Manhattanville College Library Gallery. The Katonah Museum is a product of the Katonah Gallery, housed in the Katonah Village Library.

Works on Paper: Serdar Arat (installation view), 2023

What first piqued my attention to the Schaffner Room Gallery adjacent to the Pound Ridge Library was a recommendation from a friend that Serdar Arat was exhibiting there, and I should take a look. Arat, also a long-time friend, an excellent artist, and a brilliant lecturer with titles like "Creative Flows: Islamic and Western Art" to "The Harlem Renaissance and Modernism," creates alluring painted reliefs, room-sized sculptural installations, and refined prismatic prints that address several topics such as architectural fluidity, the spiritual effects of color, and the depths of visual rhythms. His show at the Schaffner Gallery focused on his well-known prints.

That same friend who told me about Arat's past exhibition, Creighton Michael, has the current show at the Schaffner Room Gallery, which features seven key paintings from his Motif series. As an attendee of the opening, I was immediately impressed by an audience of mainly accomplished artists engrossed in the paintings at hand, which prompted stimulating conversation. The artist mentions in his statement, "...the Motif series is the product of two unique marking strategies both using a motion capture process but deviate in their use of time and color."

Creighton Michael, Motif 1810, oil on acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, 2010

Michael's approach is first to lay down what he refers to as his "deferred" ground of vibrant color. Here, we see leaf-like applications of transferred veneers of dry brush strokes that modulate slightly in intensity and opacity, all looking like flattened fall leaves or flower petals, only much more intense in color. Over this layer of acrylic "skins,' the artist applies the "direct" half of his process: oil paint in a mesmerizing matrix of thin lines in a color complement. This powerful element further triggers the underlying hues, creating a push/pull of optical sensations.

The Motif series is a tour de force of optical effects, as visual stimulation entices thoughts of things experienced. Like Hans Hofmann's paintings of the 1950s and '60s, when he was advancing as a teacher with his "push and pull" theory, or "expanding and contracting forces" thesis, there was that same sort of non-representational dance in space we see in Michael's paintings. However, unlike Hofmann, Michael's work has a more organic feel, suggesting ripples in a stream or a cluster of twigs atop fallen leaves. On the other hand, it is hard not to think of back-lighted stained-glass windows when viewing Michael's paintings, as the background colors always penetrate the foreground, or what would be the lead lines of the window, even when the foreground is a "fast" color like orange or red.

Ultimately, the Motif series is about the artist's deep understanding and distinctive use of color within the non-representational realm. Michael plays with our preconceptions of color and how it manages space and time, what we may have experienced peripherally, that curious something that disappeared when we turned to look. That is what gets in our subconscious. That is why these works have a lasting effect, something all artists hope to achieve.

Motf: Creighton Michael runs through May 4th, 2024. For more information, please visit https://poundridgelibrary.org/exhibit/

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Traumnovelle Inspired by Don Van Vliet

Gary Lucas — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 23:32:37 +0000

Traumnovelle Inspired by Don Van Vliet Gary Lucas January 30, 2024 - 18:32

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Captain Beefheart

"Chinese Fisherman" 1980, ink, watercolor, graphite & colored pencil on paper

Sunday, Jan 28th 2024

Just a little while ago, while napping on a cold, miserable Sunday afternoon in NYC. Made brighter by one moment of absolute radiant clarity out on the street -- but that was earlier. And only for a moment.

So after this one bright beam of sunshine on an otherwise dull day, I'm curled up on my bed dozing off fitfully around 4 pm, after a long spell gazing at one of my favorite Don Van Vliet artworks, entitled "Chinese Fisherman." It was a gift from Don (Captain Beefheart) back in 1980 when I had just begun playing and managing him. I own a bunch of his artwork which you can view here: http://www.garylucas.com/www/dvv/

That afternoon, scrolling through the gallery I created online and revisiting his fantastic artwork triggered something deep inside me. I was overcome by the beauty and Don's childlike sense of wonder -- there are real monsters lurking in the crevices of his artwork. It was all too much at that moment, and I thought I would lie down and ponder what it all meant.

"To sleep, perchance to dream…"

And I fell into a reverie which spiraled down, down into a deep dark dream, a dream in which I'm all alone on a couch, watching a black and white '50s-type television in a small room in someone's apartment, while a full-on party rages just outside the door and I'm glued to the tv screen in front of me, where a nameless handsome classic rock star du jour -- any day really, looking not too far afield from Rick Springfield circa 1974, with blow-dried thick black wavy mullet -- is being promoted on a late-night talk show.

And now he's about to perform live.

He's sitting there hunched over in a chair clutching his big semi-acoustic electric guitar, about to deliver a performance for a national TV audience from a remote recording studio in another town, surrounded by racks and racks of recording gear: limiters, compressors, reverbs, delays which fill the room wall to wall, metal shelving towering overhead behind him.

He's about to strum his guitar and sing for us (you and me and the late-night audience).

Just about visible behind him, seen through the glass window of a tiny vocal isolation booth, is his young black sidekick, who whips out a Hohner Marine Band harmonica in order to accompany our guy's new song -- a soulful blues.

They get on it -- and yet the sound coming out of the tinny television speaker is wildly discordant, almost painful to the ear.

It's like an invisible miasma has rolled into the studio on screen, taken over their session, and fogged up the audio transmission.

The blues harp is painfully out of tune and in the wrong key to the song the guitar player is attempting to perform. The guy has brought the wrong harmonica to the studio for their big number!

But as much as the sideman huffs and puffs and sucks and blows, trying to willfully bend the stream of notes emitting from his harp to make them consonant with the singer's blues, the result is a maelstrom of dissonance.

The guitarist is livid that his big moment on national TV is being wrecked and screams in frustration.

He jumps up out of his chair and turns around to rage at his partner behind the glass, who is frantically still trying to sweet-talk/browbeat the notes he's producing into submission, but it's no use.

The rockstar runs out of the room for a second and then returns brandishing a fire axe.

He starts wildly chopping at the wall of electronic equipment that limns the studio while his sidekick cowers in fear in his isolation booth.

A frail grey-haired granny somehow connected to the network rushes into the room to try and restrain the rocker to no avail.

He swings his axe ever more widely at the equipment, and the gigantic mass of equipment -- frantic potentiometers waving back and forth, lights fizzing and twinkling-- starts to topple forward.

The old woman tries her best to prop it all up ("That'll cost us millions!") -- by literally putting her bony shoulder to a collapsing shelve -- but she is no match for the unforgiving steel, which comes plummeting down on her slender frame, burying her under the rubble, crushing her body to a pulp on the floor.

Then the entire studio begins to come apart, acoustic ceiling tiles start to give way, and all comes crashing down around the rock singer and his paralyzed partner in the glass booth.

The TV screen in front of me abruptly goes blank -- and then turns to black and white confetti "snow" as if all the studio wires had just snapped, and the transmission had ended on a historic, horrifying live TV moment (not unlike Pinky Lee's 1955 live on-camera heart attack on NBC).

I cannot believe I've just witnessed this.

I spring up off the couch, and rush out of the room and plunge into the ongoing party.

I try my best to convey to my host and his guests the profound gravitas of the moment I've just glimpsed voyeuristically.

But they couldn't care less. They just party on.

And then I wake up.

WHAT A HORRIBLE DREAM!

"Dot's very interesting…and vot do YOU think, Mr. Lucas??"

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Transmew

Millree Hughes — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 03:29:17 +0000

Transmew Millree Hughes January 29, 2024 - 22:29

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Alex Ross

Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC

Through Feb. 3rd

What happens to us when we look at paintings? How does it change us? I don't mean the self-transforming state when the "real" is revealed behind the ideology but the adaption that you, the viewer, make on encountering an artwork, how we put ourselves into the mind and body of the artist. To look back for a minute at our creation.

Light is a factor in Alex Ross' beautiful new drawings at Miles McEnery. It's neutral and hard and comes from above. Close and to the immediate left of the image, like a watch mender's light. This differs from the traditional source angled from right to left, as in a Piero Della Francesca, high in the sky like an early Summer, late morning sun. This light is so close that you feel as if your head should cast a shadow on the paper. But it doesn't, and you feel subtly negated.

You expand in size, too. Ross has enlarged the object, and you swell to accommodate that.

Scale fluctuates poetically in his work. The post-painterly abstractors of the 90s were very keen to reinforce the principle that the scale of the work must be in some way relative to the body. In our post-computer, post-iPhone reality, we can't focus on this shibboleth because we are constantly zooming in and out to see who was in the background at a party. In Ross's work, not much thought is given to the image being larger or smaller than the original model.

His subject is an arrangement of thick Sculpey blobs abutting each other.

In "Modeling the Physical" 2023 (color pencil, graphite, crayon), a folding white shape makes way for the end of a deep sea tube. The look of underwater rock formations is undercut by an obvious fingernail groove. His favorite green reappears like the underside of a paw.

He's riffing on impasto painting, too, like Auerbach rendered by Glenn Brown. But here, the thick palette knife marks that try to represent something are replaced by a much slower image of highly considered shapes that are placed and manipulated theatrically.

The invocation of organic life at different scales seems to be used to remind us that the energies that govern and create life are equivalent. The river that smoothes the rocks, the way that cells arrange themselves on the edge of a leaf. Everything is animated by forces, a force?

It's why he uses Sculpey and sometimes plasticine. When we were young, we were closer to this energy; we responded to it without question. Our first creations in Play-Doh made us little Gods.

It feels good to 'be' the drawing, but we need something to hold on to. This is why I prefer Ross' drawings to his paintings. In the paintings, not much is made of the stroke, but his rendering ability in colored pencil is exhilarating! He can articulate light kicking back into a shadow from a brighter object. His hand creates a warm glow, waking up a landscape. And the pencil stroke scale is the real scale, the artist's hand.

It's orientating; we're back. Back in the body, riding the thumb, over the hills and into the valley below.

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Beautifully writen monsieur!

Art review review

Well, that certainly was one way to look at it! I like the 'underside of a paw' reference. Footprints, faces, sweets and unemployed, or retired balloons, or a clown's washing basket. I loved the review.

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Playmates of the Gods

Millree Hughes — Thu, 14 Dec 2023 14:50:48 +0000

Playmates of the Gods Millree Hughes December 14, 2023 - 09:50

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The Gathering, 2023 Oil on canvas 108 x 252 inches

Dana Schutz: Jupiter's Lottery

Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19th, NYC

Closes Dec 16th

Every Christmas, I wonder what I can keep and leave about the holiday. In poor Northern countries, it is still a time when you leave gifts of food and drink to help your neighbors get through the colder months. Some of its stories are a reminder of what's out there in the dark. Strewelpeter, the Rat King, the Grinch and Baba Yagar

Dana Schutz's show at David Zwirner is filled with mythic creatures. The Art World, maybe family members, and the public at large, all cast as grotesques. The paintings are humbling Hansel and Gretel, backdrop-sized. The sculptures are as massive as toys under a giant's tree.

In "The Hill," characters appear to be on a horse or at least on the back of one. Mr Punch leans against a canvas of blood-red marks, wielding a whip. A bespectacled character carries a beheaded goose, and a woman carries a skull, which is, in turn, illuminated by a lamp held by another. A female figure paints a fire in ecstasy; a long-nosed character in a dressing gown has his wolf foot on a book.

It's a corpora of barely tangible forces. Clumps of flesh, wildly waving legs and arms. They look like Henry Holiday's illustrations for "The Hunting of the Snark," and Edward Lear's drawings have been put in a blender with colored goop.

The paintings are littered with props. They must be allegories or symbols, but there are a lot of them, and I'm not given to reading paintings this much. I want them to open up in front of me in a picturesque way rather than illustrating a point.

The female figure in "The Gathering" is abstracted in pretzel fresh dough and posed behind a velvet rope; behind her is a brood of grotesque males. One is sitting at a table holding down a sliver of film. On the other side of this huge canvas, an old man sits in a director's chair, and behind him, the head rolls off a guru.

The over-elucidations are according to a script that I don't understand. Is porn bad, but the backroom boys don't care? Is the figure the artist, twisting in the wind while the kids look on?

"Won't someone please think of the children!"*

I went to look at Beckman for comparison. No matter how small his pieces are on my phone, the composition holds together. Schutz's sometimes don't; her characters frequently disappear into a brown sludge only leavened by luscious oily strokes. It looks like hesitation more than design, but perhaps it's meant to represent areas of thinking where things fall apart the way they do in dreams.

But in the sculptures, this doesn't happen. It's as if a small part of a painting has been plucked out, maybe only one or two figures. But now they are extant and visible all the way around. The play between sludge and poppy colors is gone, but now everything is rounded and more physical in blackened bronze.

Large Model, 2022, Bronze 90-3/4 x 59-3/4 x 48 inches

The chopped-and-screwed look of the paintings is now unbelievably solid. The pallet stroke, the shoveled-up, cut-up shards rendered in clay have a just-made quality. They spring from the head of Jupiter.

After going back a few times, I found that the paintings began to act as backdrops for these magnificent sculptures. Shutz's fairy tale figures are full of invention, but they come alive when they step out of the frame.

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These Captured Shadows

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 22:04:35 +0000

These Captured Shadows Robert Cochrane November 10, 2023 - 17:04

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The Shipping Forecast, 2023, mixed media on canvas

GARY STEER: Paintings In The Key Of Life

The Edge Theatre & Arts Centre, Manchester, UK

11-12 / 2023

Manchester-based artist Gary Steer's new show is a striking selection of his recent canvases, a feast for the eye and a treat to the soul; it both beguiles and challenges the viewer as a passport to their creator's interior world.

The work combines a meditative sense with one of mediation. Elegantly loose figures are clearly defined while maintaining a sense of mystery. Their primary feature is their facelessness, a suggestion of shadows stilled but never stilted by their moment of preservation.

His colors are boldly pastel, which adds to the sense of mystery. Reminiscent of the painter Marie Laurencin Steer's palette suggests a refined isolation quality but with an element of contentment. This reflective world offers elements of inclusiveness to those who engage with it.

The Potato Eater, 2023. Acrylic on Canvas, 50x40 cm

The distinctiveness of style means one is left with an instant ability to recognize the artist's aesthetic. A visual signature is defined in the mind. Settings are amorphous, domestic perhaps, or simply social, but resonate with an openness that permits those encountering them afresh to speculate.

With a somewhat cinematic quality a jerkiness of dreams, both decorative and defiantly subtle, these works are the continuation of a quietly steadfast output. Their sense of rapture and entrapment means they have yet to travel for others yet to see.

A quiet challenge to the eye with a sense of greeting and an aspect of goodbye.

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Creative Power

Mary Hrbacek — Sat, 04 Nov 2023 01:30:38 +0000

Creative Power Mary Hrbacek November 3, 2023 - 21:30

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"Heaven in Love," pencil and bronze powder on paper, 7’6 ½” x 19’ 8”, 2.30 x 6 meters, 2021

Sobin Park: Pictograph to Sign
Tenri Cultural Institute
Oct. 19 – Nov. 22, 2023

Tenri Cultural Institute presents Sobin Park: Pictograph to Sign, an exhibition of recent monumental multi-paneled pencil and powder works on paper, curated by Dr. Thalia Vrachopoulos. Among these works there is also a huge framed compilation of multiple sheets with small drawings mingled with lines of text. This body of work spans the years from 2021 to 2023 when Park experienced personal isolation of the strict Covid lockdown in China which was enforced to its final end in 2023. Korean-born Sobin Park lives and works in Beijing, China, returning to Korea to visit family. One of the most dominant traits of her art is the tremendous energy she instills into the enormous charged formats conflated with her personal style of mark-making. This endows the traditional symbolic narrative form of her works with a post-modern edge. Her feminine style of touch is delicate due to the graphite material, yet powerful, organic and creative; there is nothing manufactured or pre-processed about it. She does not insert photography or digital imagery into her harmonious formats.

Park's show reveals crucial shifts in her recent focus, as the signature female nudes and traditional swirling Chinese dragons have receded significantly, morphing into environments that suggest smoldering internal emotions within active landscapes of the body's unseen terrain. The introspective new works shed meaning on the experience of solitude the Covid lockdown enforced. Deeply felt narratives are articulated in somber dark tones, achieved solely with sanguine, pencil and bronze powder on paper panels. The scope of the immense "Heaven in Love" (7'6 ½" x 19' 8", 2.30 x 6 meters) 2021, signifies the life-view of an artist reacting to a world of uncertainty that encompasses danger, fear, harsh government reactions to violence, and limitations attendant to a global pandemic.

"New Myth," pencil and bronze powder on paper, 7' 2 1/2" x 19' 8", 2.20 x 6 meters, 2023

In "Heaven in Love," Park's individualized diminutive female has ebbed into the comfort of an inner cocoon amidst a spectral dragon that has lost its specificity, but is nonetheless imbued with eyes and sharp horns and hoofs, its leftover remnants. The artist experiences her own metamorphosis as her works transition into inner tableaux consonant with universal consciousness. The nestled embryo-like figure conveys a desire for security within the symbolic mother's womb that speaks of the love of the universe within us in our earthbound existence. The abundant overlapping pencil strokes create evocative biomorphic forms in plant, animal and human shapes; as such the format conjures a living universe suspended in the heavens, amidst tiny orb-shaped entities that may be interpreted as visible galaxies. Emotion responds organically before thought intervenes to modulate our raw feelings about unimaginable events. This scene evokes the emergence of creation at its early genesis in the womb. Asian emanation of a morphing symbolic dragon is associated with fertility and the heavens. In European tradition, fire breathing dragons connote chaos or evil.

Park shifts her focus in the four-panel piece entitled "The New Myth" (7' 2 1/2" x 19' 8", 2.20 x 6 meters), 2023 in which the iconography melts into the blackness of the extra dark pencil and bronze powder on paper. The dominant mossy-looking hill-form has segued into an independent creature with visible eyes above an open mouth that extrudes long tongue-like tentacles. While slightly frightening to the eye, this hazy manifestation of embodied emotion emits a sense of playful pleasure. In the bordering panel the artist creates a swarming snake seething with dense overlapping rounded pencil marks verging on a deep dark habitat whose core contains orange jewels. This panel exudes highly concentrated feeling, not easily analyzed. These rounded rings are recreated in the next two panels of the piece with varying levels of darkness modulated in the overlapped lines that surround it. A crawling creature on the top left hints at a hand with stubby fingers or teeth. The final panel in the piece replicates this section, displaying advanced light-dark contrast as the light accentuates the drama of the moving dark form.

Sobin Park's art follows the rhythms and cycles of nature in a dusk to dawn sequence of ever diminishing light. Her three-panel piece "Heaven in Love" displays a dragon-like being whose details are fading in the low contrast light one finds at dusk. The four related panels of, "New Myth," take up the narrative in "Heaven in Love" as the light recedes to the blackness of slumbering consciousness. These two works evoke individual consciousness as it evolves over the course of the night, to expand through dreams into the macrocosm of the outer universe. The dusky light begins to morph into tiny particles within the "Heaven in Love" format that relate to the structures in the heavens. The two right panels in "New Myth" correlate with the ever-brightening light, that illuminates the last panel in the growing glow of dawn.

In China, dragons are related to the four seasons and to the four directions. The dragon is the fifth sign of the Chinese zodiac, whose influence impacts people with energy and honesty. Black is related to the female principle or Yin in Daoist philosophy. Black corresponds to water, winter and to the north; it is linked with the earth and the moon. Sobin Park's work exemplifies the female principle as it relates to creative power, productivity and inventiveness. It is courageous, unique and relevant.

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Art of the Collage

Dom Lombardi — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 01:06:25 +0000

Art of the Collage Dom Lombardi October 17, 2023 - 21:06

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Susana Blasco (Spain), Lapsus, 2023, Paper Collage, 13 x 7 ¾ inches, 33 cm x 19.6 cm, Photo by artist

Altered Logistics: Contemporary Collage and Appropriation Art

October 30 – December 8, 2023

Curated by D. Dominick Lombardi and Maximo Tuja

Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany, 1919–1920, collage

As a method of creating art, collage has been gaining in popularity and importance since the early 1910's. There are numerous examples of the use of pieces of paper in a more utilitarian, decorative or playful way before the 20th century, however, when thinking of its beginnings in fine art, the Cubists Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque come to mind. They elevated collage to a fully realized modern aesthetic. A few years later, such luminary Dada artists as Kurt Schwitters and Hannah Höch, who specialized in photomontage, created collages using photographs, paper and a variety of found materials pushing the boundaries of collage even further. Additionally, I agree with a number of international art historians and critics that one of, if not the most significant work of the Pop Art movement decades later is Richard Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956).

Richard Hamilton, Just What is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, so Appealing?, 1956, collage, Photo: smarthistory.org

With ensuing generations, and right up to the time of this writing, collage has evolved into many forms, most recently digital collage, adding to its exposure and understanding as a prominent form of visual expression. And if you think about the theory behind collage, which is the combination of previous unrelated images, text, patterns and textures, you begin to see it as akin to the dreamscape, whereby various bits of 'reality' form a nonuniform 'Surreal' narrative -- just like the stuff that invades our sleep. This disjointed reality during sleep, which clearly references a 'collage mentality', can also be seen in other forms of Contemporary Art in the works of Neo Rauch, Faith Ringgold and Gilbert and George, while artists like Wangechi Mutu and Kara Walker continue to expand the possibilities of cut paper in Contemporary Art.

Kevin Mutch (Canada), The Artist’s Brain Paints a Picture, 2023, Digital Collage color print, Photo by Artist

For this exhibition, Maximo Tuja and I selected over 50 artists to represent a multi-national overview of the state and the influence of collage in Contemporary Art. In thinking about the selection process, I primarily chose art and artists that push both the boundaries of what one sees as the theory of collage, while still maintaining a clear link to the basis of the genre. What is collage but an open, and at times random process built on the assembly of discordant pieces -- a method of creatively juxtaposing visual elements that can be applied to all forms of expression from two dimensional art to filmmaking. For me, I look for works of art that apply a fresh way of thinking and applying the 'collective' theory of collage or assemblage, especially the types of images or narratives that seep through the filter of unconscious aesthetics in profound ways.

Jeanne Tremel (USA), Surfer Girl, 2021, hand-sewn fabrics, beach-combing finds/landfill items, found objects, Photo by Artist

The following are some thoughts from Maximo Tuja.

As I understand it, collage is already much more than an artistic technique.

In our present society, collage has long been embraced as a means of engaging with reality. From memes and social media feeds to music production, fashion, and even our own identities -- which often comprise a blend of diverse elements drawn from various contexts -- the collage mindset subtly permeates our lives. However, within the realm of art, definitions tend to resist change, and the concept of collage appears to be anchored in its past, predominantly associated with its glorious revolutionary beginnings.

Alvaro Naddeo (Brazil/USA), Quantum Entanglement Computing, 2023, Watercolor on Paper, Photo by artist

In contemporary art, collage extends far beyond its historical context. When selecting artists for exhibitions or projects, I explore the boundaries of collage as a medium, seeking its connections with other artistic practices that embrace the notions of appropriation and recontextualization, paying little attention to rigid labels and traditions. I am always drawn to that which lacks a definitive name and to the areas where definitions remain elastic and practice precedes discourse.

Miko Hornborg (Finland), The Spaces In Between, 2023, Paper Collage, 8 ½ x 13 ¾ inches, 21.8 cm x 35 cm, Photo by artist

Whenever I ask myself, "Is this collage?" I know I am on the right path, for it is at the frontiers where the definition of this practice is negotiated, and where the boundaries of acceptance shift gradually yet continuously.

Participating artists:

Alvaro Naddeo (USA/Brazil), Andrea Burgay (USA), Andrea Mortson (Canada), Ashkan Honarvar, (Norway), Carl Van Brunt (USA), Catalina Schliebener (USA/Chile), Charles Wilkin (USA), Cless (Spain), Creighton Michael (USA), D. Dominick Lombardi (USA), Daisy McGowan (USA), David Henry Nobody Jr. (USA), Dennis Busch (Germany), Donald Fodness (USA), Eduardo Recife (Brazil), Etty Yaniv (USA/Israel), Gary Emrich (USA), Goster (Peru), Hilary Kliros (USA), Isabel Reitemeier (Germany), James Gallagher (USA), Jeanne Tremel (USA), Jeron Eerosie (Netherlands), Joel Carreiro (USA), John Whitlock (USA), Jules Grace Berger (USA), Kevin Mutch (Canada), Lee Hoag (USA), Lola Dupré (Ireland), Margaret Roleke (USA), Mario Zoots (USA), Max-o-matic (Spain/Argentina), Miko Hornborg (Finland), Moses Hoskins (USA), Nicola Kloosterman (Netherlands), Pablo Serret de Ena, (Denmark/Spain), Paul Henderson (Canada), Samplerman (France), Steve Datz (USA), Steve Rockwell (Canada), Stratco Art (Germany), Stuart Bradford (USA), Susana Blasco (Spain), Tamar Cohen (USA), Tobias Fike (USA), Todd Bartel (USA), Yeon Jin Kim (USA)

Altered Logistics: Contemporary Collage and Appropriation Art will be at The Dowd Gallery, SUNY Cortland from October 30 – December 8, 2023. https://www2.cortland.edu/departments/art/dowd-gallery/

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Redefining with Wonder

C. Jefferson Thom — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 14:39:38 +0000

Redefining with Wonder C. Jefferson Thom October 2, 2023 - 10:39

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art museum

Photo credit: Marsy Gallardo

What is a museum? It seems to me that the likely answers to this question have remained fairly static for several hundred years now. For the most part they are a depository of art and artifacts from artists now dead and times since past. Museums are largely a reflection of things and people that came before, a look back. WNDR Museum is a break with that tradition where patrons are encouraged to stand in the moment, where the experience is happening, and look forward into the realm of possibility.

Opening March 22^nd in Seattle, this manifestation of WNDR is the northwestern reach of a concept that started in Chicago five years earlier. Like its unconventional way of spelling "wonder" it also seeks to change the way its audience experiences said emotion, chiefly through the interactive nature of their exhibits.

The museum's instillations are a division of pieces commissioned from outside artists and those created by WNDR Studios, the in-house artist collective. If there is one exhibit that is a stand-alone reason for you to go today, that would have to be "You Can Do Most Anything" by Andy Arkley. This multi-media sculpture encourages its audience to work with what the artist has provided to create their own songs. The viewer is presented with a panel of 16 buttons, each of which control a separate wooden sculpture decorated with colored lights and an accompanied musical track. By combining different buttons, different compositions and lights shows are born…

Photo credit: Marsy Gallardo

It's a little reminiscent of Casio keyboards from the '90s where you would press a key and a pre-recorded song would play, but far more sophisticated and the different tracks all mix and match surprisingly well. The sculpture has a commanding presence, not just with the wall of sound you can create with it, but it is physically large, and while its parts are whimsical and simple, their expansive size have an invitingly encompassing quality. I could have played with this piece for hours, but I reveled in the ten minutes I had to play and hope to do so again. From there I gravitated towards the WNDR Studios works like "Lake Shore Drive (LSD)" and "Light Floor" which have generative light screens that alter with viewer's interactions. These have a funhouse quality and are visually captivating. WNDR also hosts a Yayoi Kusama sculpture titled "Starry Pumpkin" which fits in well with the family it now finds itself in.

There was something that felt not-quite-complete about WNDR Museum, more like it was a work in-progress than something that has been fully realized at this moment in time. Given its experimental nature I imagine it shall continue grasping around in the unknown before it arrives at an ultimate identity, if it decides to arrive anywhere definite at all, but I truly hope it continues on this path and I look forward to returning in a year or so, just to see where they’ve wandered.

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A Norwegian Art Experience

Kathleen Cullen — Wed, 06 Sep 2023 22:02:57 +0000

A Norwegian Art Experience Kathleen Cullen September 6, 2023 - 18:02

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art collective

Stephanie Lüning, Collectivity Painting - No. I, Jeløy, Norway, Momentum 12. Photo: Stefan Schröder

The 12th Nordic Biennale of Contemporary Art running from June 10 - October 8 is a great reason to go to the Island of Jeløya, home to Alby Farm and the location of Galleri F15 and the MOMENTUM 12 Nordic Biennale of Contemporary Art. Begun in 1998, in this beautiful environment, the biennale is a pristine canvas that allows its audience to examine in a more poignant way the collective as a subset of the art world. For this 12th edition Momentum was a space where art met a wider public -- for local, global, residents, and non-specialists to interface. The Art Collective Tenthaus has been working together in various constellations since 2009. Characterized by an openness and process-oriented collaboration, Tenthaus involves local,national, and international art communities. As an inclusive collective, Tenthaus reimagines various contexts and platforms for artistic investigation, exploring what it means to be artists working with the public locally. Inviting artists beyond the established Western centers to respond to this beautiful environment, a pristine canvas allowing each Tenthaus member to examine the work of over 90 creatives, collectives, and institutions

The collective's appointment is in keeping with a wider shift in the art world towards new methods of curating -- as most notably evidenced by the artist collective Ruangrupas whose direction of Documenta 15 in 2022, was marked by allegations of antisemitic content within the installations. Momentum wished to provide a space for dialogue and diverse artistic practices and cultural exchange and it called upon Ruangrupas to support some of its projects. Around the central space is the Galleri F15, a two story space for workshops and performances with a focus on ecology, a protected nature reserve, five biotopes, and a cultural history from the 1800s. The Galleri F15 is one of the most prestigious exhibition venues in Norway, devoted to contemporary craft and indigenous arts. There is also a small museum Naturhuset which illustrates the anthropological, geological and faunal history of the place where artists Ann-Cathrin Hertlin and Mars Huke hosted sessions. As director Dag AAk Sveinar commented: "Sustainability, interdisciplinary, providing an inclusive approach for our audiences and a reconsideration of the past are at the core of the biennale."

"Tenthaus as an art collective is moving toward a model of polyphonic co-authorship. Polyphonic suggests the harmonic possibility of producing more than one independent melody at a time in a single composition," the collective said in a statement. "To a great extent, this is how Tenthaus functions; each individual practice both resonates and amplifies itself through collective work. We produce and involve many themes and curatorial ideas at the same time. In this way, we are able to explore a myriad of concurrences; subjects and artistic forms each carrying resonance and meaning."

Their idea for the Embassy Project involved other international Biennials -- to intervene through free projects such as podcasts, interviews, graphics or communication designs of actual objects like a kiosk made of wood and recycled materials from the Salangen Biennale II. Here's how they operate -- each member of Tenthaus curates an artist and the individual practice amplifies itself through collective work to produce many themes and curatorial ideas at the same time.

"Together as we gather, practices a gathering methodology."

What are the highlights of this collective field of curating? The Bread and Butter Workshop for Dummies transformed a book space into an exhibition space -- the exhibition is a site of bookmaking and publishing. As the biennale does not promote individual authorship but promotes collaborative processes, the B & B Workshops host, educate, and archive self-publishing for Taiwanese artists for 4 months.

Among the commissioned projects are Enrique Guadarrama Solis (Mexico), The P.R.I.N.T. Chronicles (2023); Gudskul (Indonesia), Stitching Ecosystems: Gudkitchen-Tentskul (2023); Anawana Haloba (Zambia), When we continue living in stars, a conversation with Hannah Ryggen; So Yo Hen (Taiwan), Hua-shan-qiang (2013/2023); Ann Cathrin Hertling and Marte Huke (Norway), Can I breathe in it? (working title) (2023); Thomas Iversen (Norway), Byens flass [City-dandruff] (2023); Morag Keil, Untitled (2023); Stephanie Lüning (Germany), Island of Foam - Version # XXV / Coloured Barn (2023) and Collectivity Painting # I & II - MOMENTUM Biennale (2023); Alessandro Marchi (Italy), Ingenmannsretten (2023); Germain Ngoma(Zambia), Forest (2023); Andrea Parkins (USA), The Stray II (2021–2023); Margrethe Pettersen(Sápmi) and Line Solberg Dolmen (Norway), Conversations with what runs deep (2023); Fotobook DUMMIES Day (Taiwan), Bread and Butter Bookshop (2023); Kate Rich (UK), Feral Business Training Camp (2023); Jaanus Samma (Estonia), National Utopia (2023); WET (Czech Republic), Wetcation (2023); Nayara Leite (Brazil), In Search of Rainbows (2022); Marek Sobocinski (Poland), SLAVA (2023); Gabo Camnitzer (Sweden / USA), 50 Million Windows(2023); Blikkåpnerne (Norway), Rage room (2023); Luiz Roque (Brazil), S (2017); Dáiddadállu Artist Collective (Sápmi), Untitled (2023); Salangen Biennale/IPIHAN (Norway), Info / Merch(2023); P1 resident artists Jasper Siverts, Ana Marques Engh and Bendik-Bendik Syversætre Johannessen, Things Don’t Run We (2023); Lise Linnert (Norway), Colours for hope and equality - picnic blankets (2018–2023); and many more.

Let's start with The Library which was transformed into what was called a Bread and Butter Bookshop as a way to expand a book space into an exhibition space. The biennale theme does not prioritize individual authorship but rather as a collaboration drawing on objects and processes in the present. Permanent and local artists in Taiwan displayed their publications and stood ready for discussion.

Artist Stephanie Luning, chosen by Arnisa Zeqo, expanded the thoughts on interactive collective concept and the non-objective with her dot paintings and foam sculpture. It's conceptually important that art reaches everyone so Stephanick relied upon a collective effort to make dot paintings with plant-based colors. The audience threw colored ice cubes on the canvas thereby providing a magical interactive and collective experience. Stephanies' foam sculpture oozing from the barn was a hit with the audience's children.

"WET Wetting, Hop out spot, Wetget" edited by Stan D'Haene is an energetic video and colorful installation by a collective of five Czech women whose name has an erotic and permeating appeal. Their transcription and installation of texts, drawings, and photographs of their journey a wandering cross Europe on makeshift transport of freight trains or hitchhiking is hobo-chic. WET mixes water mythology with their version of a catalog or a subculture magazine and asks you to explore boundaries -- give up your normal comforts, ride freight cars across various countries, abandon normal hygienic practices, and dine from the street.

The Mexican artist Enrique Tenthous took the residue of government buildings and related it to the history of pigment grinding his own from the shards of old structures. With his new geology and a traditional woodblock press that the artist had built on site Enrique invited his audience to create their own woodblock prints in the exhibition hall with these natural resources.

The Italian artist Alessandro Marchi Ingenmannsretten (edited by Shahrzad Melekian) addresses the accumulation of wealth and real estate and the domino effect of the law of 2014 in Norwary that abolished taxation for inheritances and gifts passed on to family members. Citing Ivar Tollefsen, the 5th richest man in Norway, it was based on his real estate fortune. The increase in the value of his assets rose by 858% between 2014 and 2022. The increase was given as a gift by Tollefsen to his daughter Ninja of 45 billion Norwegian Kroner just before moving out of the country.

Alessandro's work consists of a large map charting the various Norwegian political and economic connections. Such connections are also echoed by five wooden sculptures placed in the surrounding landscape -- pine wood totems carved -- symbolic elements linked to those places and their connection to land use system.

In exploring local contexts and issues of collectivity and engagement, Tenthaus Art Collective has cultivated a strong relationship with the local community and a nurturing environment for the guest artists.