Saturday, June 27, 2009

Gerhard Richter's Overpainted Photographs

For over 20 years, Gerhard Richter has been uniting painting and photography with an ongoing series simply titled Overpainted Photographs. I recently had the chance to sit down with the monograph, published by Hatje Cantz in February, and was taken aback by the sheer volume of work contained within. Some of my favorite of Richter's painted photographs are those in which the texture of the paint mimics, or even extracts, the texture in the photograph. As Jeff Ladd of the 5B4 blog points out:

"For many photographers the image has no surface. The illusion of photography in providing a window into which we perceive literal description and dimension by Richter's hand is now disrupted due to the addition of paint. Often a tense relationship, the results run the gamut of the surreal to the beautiful to the disturbed. It is all the more surprising that each in its perceived completeness was in essence accomplished by chance and trial and error."


4. März 92 (Piz Tremoggia) (From "Overpainted Photographs")
© Gerhard Richter



9.1.89 (From "Overpainted Photographs")
© Gerhard Richter



12.4.92 (From "Overpainted Photographs")
© Gerhard Richter



23.2.96 (From "Overpainted Photographs")
© Gerhard Richter



8.2.92 (From "Overpainted Photographs")
© Gerhard Richter

Mike Sinclair's Popular Attractions

I found the work of Mike Sinclair over at Heading East today. He's got a number of nice projects on his website that explore the beauty in mundane Americana.


From "Popular Attractions"
© Mike Sinclair



From "Popular Attractions"
© Mike Sinclair



From "Popular Attractions"
© Mike Sinclair



From "Popular Attractions"
© Mike Sinclair



From "Popular Attractions"
© Mike Sinclair

Monday, June 22, 2009

A Contemporary Reading of Evidence

The new issue of Ahorn Magazine features Daniel Shea's thoughtful and contemporary reading of Larry Sultan & Mike Mandel's seminal work of archival appropriation, Evidence. Below, Shea examines how the significance of Evidence has politically and artistically shifted since its release in 1977:


From "Evidence"
© Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan


"Regarding a more contemporary reading, where paranoia politics are openly discussed, and the distinction between public and private spheres is dissolving, can we look at this body of work in the same way? The access alone Mandel and Sultan received to make this work is confounding to the modern Westerner. You mean they just went in and started searching through archives of apparently classified documents? I wonder if we can rely solely on the fact that this book was produced in 1977 to remove modern political connotations. And to do this, in some way, undermines the respected notion of an artwork’s “timelessness,” where the ideas are relevant enough to allow us to overlook the dated imagery and iconography. In fact, the vernacular informs this work today in a way that it did not in 1977.


From "Evidence"
© Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan


And so Evidence serves two distinct functions as an aging body of work. The first is the conceptual grace in which Mandel and Sultan seemingly produced this work. The practice profoundly influenced every subsequent generation of image-based artists. The process here triumphs, and the ideas are timeless. Secondly, considering the completed, exhibited work set out to be about image-generated narrative, we understand that narrative to be strikingly different, due to various sociological factors. The presented work and the audience’s interpretation of the deadpan simplicity was clearly an important aspect in its conception, and remains to affect the deeper psychological implications of art-viewing today."


From "Evidence"
© Mike Mandel & Larry Sultan


You can read Shea's review in its entirety here. Also make sure you spend some time looking at T.J. Proechel's wonderful series Dream House and reading the Mårten Lange interview.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Elaine Stocki

Elaine Stocki's images "question the role of performance, spectacle and farce as they relate to the history of the depiction of class and race in North America." Her photographs possess a social and psychological complexity that is derived from a kind of photographic pantomime visible in the images. It's interesting that Stocki discusses her work in terms of performance, spectacle and farce, because her photographs do possess a duality that fluctuates back and forth from reality to fantasy, or, perhaps more powerfully, from stability to disorder.

I've found myself returning to these photographs again and again, entranced by the surreal, boisterous and often unsettling world that Stocki has created. She has originated a stylistic approach that feels uniquely honest and refreshing.

You can also see Stocki's thesis show, We Belong Together, Yale MFA Photography 2009, at the following locations:

Capricious Space
Up until June 28
103 Broadway (between Berry and Bedford)
Brooklyn, NY

Gallery 339
June 5-August 29
339 South 21st Street Philadelphia, PA
Opening: June 5, 2009, 6-8pm

Eighth Veil
September 1-12
7174 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
Reception: September 11, 2009, 7-9pm


"William, 2008"
© Elaine Stocki



"Carrie, 2008"
© Elaine Stocki



"Pedro, 2008"
© Elaine Stocki



"Laverne, 2008"
© Elaine Stocki



"Keith, 2008"
© Elaine Stocki



"Nelson, 2009"
© Elaine Stocki

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Michael Bell-Smith's Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously

I highly recommend watching Brooklyn-based artist Michael Bell-Smith's Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaneously - a humorous and often discordant exploration of the cult, pop culture classic.

Bell-Smith also has a wonderful website with a number of other great videos. Top of the World and Some Houses Have Pools are two of my personal favorites.

"Chapters 1-12 of R. Kelly's Trapped in the Closet Synced and Played Simultaniously"
(2005, Video w/ Sound, 4:22, Dimensions Variable)
© Michael Bell-Smith

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Jessica Bruah's No Lake This Summer

Jessica Bruah's MFA thesis project No Lake This Summer explores the intersection of tourism and history. As her project statement asserts:

"The Dells region in Wisconsin became a popular vacation spot in the late 19th century, largely due to H. H. Bennett, whose idyllic photographs of the surrounding natural sandstone formations were sold as stereographs and postcards. Jessica Bruah explores Bennett’s legacy today."

For anyone in the New York area, you can see Bruah's thesis show, as well as those of all her fellow SVA classmates here:

Thesis Exhibition
Up until June 27th
Visual Arts Gallery
601 West 26 Street, Suite 1502
New York, NY



"Shamrock Motel Resort and Suites" (From the series No Lake This Summer)
© Jessica Bruah





"Happy Hour, House of Embers" (From the series No Lake This Summer)
© Jessica Bruah





"Top Secret Inc." (From the series No Lake This Summer)
© Jessica Bruah





"Tourists at Boat Landing, Lake Delton" (From the series No Lake This Summer)
© Jessica Bruah





"H.H. Bennett Museum" (From the series No Lake This Summer)
© Jessica Bruah

Christian Boltanski: Au Revoir Les Enfants

I picked up an old issue of Contemporanea Magazine which has a wonderful exchange between Christian Boltanski and Joachim Petersen entitled Au Revoir Les Enfants. I've always found Boltanski to be one of the more insightful artists working today and this interview is certainly no exception.

In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I transcribed the whole thing.



"Purim Reseve" . 1989 (Photograph of Installation)
© Christian Boltanski



Joachim Petersen: Your latest works deal more with death, particularly with violent death as the result of a crime or an accident. Is this a reaction to a personal experience?

Christian Boltanski
: It is not. Death is one of the great themes in art. I myself have been fascinated for a long time by the transition of a person from a subject to an object. Only yesterday, I could have talked to a person, we could have had dinner in a restaurant, and today there is nothing left of him but a lifeless hunk, a dead body. This subject-object relationship is important in daily life as well, for instance on the sexual level. There was one experience in particular that I remember. Every January, there are striptease tents along the boulevards near Pigalle on Montmarte. I went there quite often, and I will never forget the moment when I discovered that one of the strippers kept a Vittel bottle in the little plastic hut next to her, from which she took a sip from time to time. This "sex object" turned out to be a human being after all, a human being who was thirsty.

Joachim Petersen: The first thing one notices, when looking around in your studio, are the many photographs from obituaries and notices of missing persons, and then one discovers big piles of old clothes. What is the intention behind the idea of combining your Monuments with objects from a collection of old clothes?

Christian Boltanski: Garments are like a second skin. Every shirt, every pair of pants has a history of its own by the time it arrives here - in an enormous, anonymous pile - for an exhibition. Particularly interesting is the moment when a visitor first stalks and eventually walks without any hesitation over the garments spread out on the floor. The feeling is the same as walking over dead bodies. The situation is similar with photographs - a hidden pleasure while looking at photos of cruelty is in all of us, but most of the time I don't even show documents of violent acts.

Joachim Petersen: As a German viewer, I constantly have the feeling of standing before Holocaust victims when I view your installations. This particularly the case with your now famous Les Enfants de Dijon or your latest piece in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.

Christian Boltanski: That is something I am confronted with time and again. But I don't mean the victims of the Nazis in particular; it is anonymous death in general that concerns me. There is, for instance, a paper in Spain, El Caso, that publishes particularly grim photographs of traffic casualties and murder victims. We don't have such pictures here. But I like these photos; they are lying around here everywhere. I even walk over them, and thereby become a perpetrator myself in a way. Conceivably this intermingles most clearly the role of perpetrator and the role of the victim. In fact, the Nazi henchmen murdered their victims thoroughly and efficiently, although they were loving family fathers or friends of animals. They did their job mechanically, following orders.

Joachim Petersen: Time and again, your Jewish heritage is mentioned in connection with your work.

Christian Boltanski: I grew up in a Catholic family. My father was a Jew; my mother a Catholic. I believe that I am both, although art has displaced religion for me. This means that art represents a moral institution in some respects. The artist holds a mirror in front of his face, and everybody who looks in the mirror recognizes him or herself at a little distance. In this sense, the individual work is only a trigger for associations that exist already in the viewer's mind. The popular cliches are important in this connection, especially in modernism, where the exemplary life of the artist is frequently more important than the work. The myth created around Andy Warhol or Joseph Beuys is proof of this phenomenon. In my case, the myth of the Jew is probably part of my "image," of my picture as an artist who creates such works.

Joachim Petersen
: Don't you think that you're artistic intentions went too far, regarding your installation Réserve du musée des enfants? Doesn't the viewer become the victim of a shameless game of irritation?

Christian Boltanski
: Yes indeed. Having installed the work in the basement of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, I didn't feel quite comfortable, because the ghostly ambiance determined to a major degree the effect of my installation. That was not my intention. But despite that, I believe that this work in particular was particularly significant in my oeuvre. Somehow, one has to make people feel insecure, make them feel that they have been touched, make something happen after all, at a time when all heads are filled with pictures from films, from magazines, and from daily life. I like to exhibit in spaces that are not galleries in the traditional sense, because the unexpected creates an intensified sensitivity. Visitors feel insecure - they whisper or are afraid. The same holds true for my exhibition in candlelight, where the dim light and the shadows create an unfamiliar ambiance. Then there is also the haptic effect of the garments, which one tries to touch. That also has something to do with the effect of a sacral object, perhaps of fetish. Like the Charged Objects of Joseph Beuys, these clothes, too, are charged. Each individual garment has its history, its fate, its tragedy.

Joachim Petersen: You have spoken of artists as a moral force, and of art as a replacement for religion.

Christian Boltanski: These statements must be seen in the context of my biography as an artist. In this respect I was undoubtedly molded by the seventies. I believe in the provocative character of art as instrument for pointing out bad conditions or threats to vision, such as the indiscriminate flooding of the world with pictures. But at the same time, I do not proclaim a philosophy of life or a message of salvation. Instead, I believe that we artists present a life that we don't live. We pretend something that does not exist, some sort of theater.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Brian Eno's 14 Video Paintings (1981 & 1984)

Although probably familiar to many, I thought I'd share Brian Eno's 14 Video Paintings (1981 & 1984), a captivating and seminal work of video art.

Enjoy.



14 Video Paintings (1981 & 1984)

© Brian Eno

Zachary Dean Norman

Zachary Dean Norman got in touch yesterday to share some work from his website. Norman writes:

"I've been thinking a lot about microorganisms and the way they interact with humans. This awareness and curiosity has informed the way I've been taking photographs lately."


From the series "Cosmic Uncertainty"
© Zachary Dean Norman




From the series "æstuarium"
© Zachary Dean Norman




From the series "Cosmic Uncertainty"
© Zachary Dean Norman




From the series "Cosmic Uncertainty"
© Zachary Dean Norman




From the series "Stoned"
© Zachary Dean Norman



Sunday, June 14, 2009

Olaf Breuning

Olaf Breuning is one of contemporary art's most varied and prolific artists. Utilizing a variety of different media, such as photography, installation, drawing, sculpture, film and video, he has constructed an aesthetic vernacular that draws much of its inspiration from mass-produced popular culture. Breuning skillfully recontextualizes everyday objects and infuses them with both irony and absurdism.

Breuning's work revitalizes many of the commentaries put forth by Pop artists of the 1950's and 60's. His work particularly recalls Claes Oldenburg's iconic sculptures. Both artists' work walks the fine line between the playful and grotesque, or, maybe more specifically, between the authentic and hyperbolic.

You can watch a fascinating video in which Breuning discusses his work here.











From Top To Bottom:

Sculpture, Metro Show, 2008

Smoke Bombs, 2008

Coffins, 2004

The Army, 2008

Horsfarm, 2004

All Work © Olaf Breuning

Nicolas Coulomb

Every now and then, I get lost in a vortex of links. I'll travel from one artist's "links" page to the next in search of work that I've never seen before. Frequently, by the time I discover someone's work that intrigues me, I have visited so many websites that I can't even remember where I started.

Anyways, this was how I happened upon the work of Nicolas Coulomb. Take a moment to check out some of the other work on his website.











commission/NewYork/2008

All Images © Nicolas Coulomb

Friday, June 12, 2009

George Awde

Recent Yale graduate George Awde's work lyrically explores issues of family, culture and identity. His statement, albeit brief, communicates some essential ideas about familial life:

"Conceptions of home and family play an important role in my work. The family one is born into – and the family one creates. Notions of home are foundational – but they are also mythic and imaginative."

You can see Awde's thesis show, We Belong Together, Yale MFA Photography 2009, at any of the following locations:

Capricious Space
Up until June 28
103 Broadway (between Berry and Bedford)
Brooklyn, NY

Gallery 339
June 5-August 29
339 South 21st Street Philadelphia, PA
Opening: June 5, 2009, 6-8pm

Eighth Veil
September 1-12
7174 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
Reception: September 11, 2009, 7-9pm











All Images © George Awde

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book Available in July


Hey Everyone,

Well, it's been quite a while since the last update regarding Issue 4 of The Exposure Project Book. We have spent the last couple of months working on the design of the book, raising funds and finalizing all the specifics of the book editions. We are pleased to announce that Issue 4 will be available for purchase in the middle of July. It will be offered in both regular and special editions. You can find the edition details below:

The Exposure Project Book - Issue 4
July 2009

Includes photographs by Chris Bentley, Rona Chang, Daniel Farnum, Elizabeth Fleming, Lee Gainer, Matthew Genitempo, Inka Lindergård & Niclas Holmström, Natascha Libbert, Bradley Peters, Carlo Van de Roer, Daniel Shea, Manuel Vazquez, Jens Windolf, Susan Worsham and Bahar Yurukoglu

With an essay by Brian Ulrich

Regular Edition
70 pages, Softcover
Edition of 100
8 x 10 in.
$45

Special Edition
70 pages, Hardcover
Edition of 25
8 x 10 in.
$100

The special edition will also include two signed and numbered 8.5 x 11 prints. Customers will be have the choice of the following prints:











Download the Abridged PDF of Issue 4

Download Press Release

From Top To Bottom:

Chris Bentley, Drive-in Screen

Bahar Yurukoglu, Martin Van Buren had red hair

Bradley Peters, Untitled (mother and son with shopping cart)

Daniel Shea, "Untitled," from the series Untitled (Baltimore)

Susan Worsham, The Beekeeper's Other Daughter

All Images © The Artists