Going back to 2015 for this mural by Wildlife and S.C. Mero, who still create work in the area. Also check out Mero’s other page, where she highlights neighborhood (DTLA) events, people and art- including work by Wildlife.
Jul 282022
Jul 222022
Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999, part of The ARIA Fine Art collection in Las Vegas
Artist Claes Oldenburg passed away this week at the age of 93. He was most famous for his large scale sculptures of everyday objects, many of which were produced with his wife Coosje van Bruggen, who passed away in 2009.
While primarily working in sculpture, early in his career in the 1960s he also created “happenings”- theatrical art related performances and collaborations with other artists in his circle. In 1985 he returned to performance and along with van Bruggen, architect Frank Gehry, and writer Germano Celant presented Il Corso del Coltello (The Course of the Knife) in Venice, Italy. In 2021, Pace Gallery in NYC, as part of the two gallery exhibition Claus & Coosje, showed work from this performance, pictured below.
From Pace’s website about the performance-
This ambitious event involved the creation and embarkation of a sea-worthy sculpture in the shape of a giant Swiss army knife. With oars protruding from its red-enameled hull as if from a Viking longship, the image of Oldenburg and van Bruggen’s Knife Ship sailing the Grand Canal has become iconic, while the massive kinetic sculpture was later shown in the rotunda of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and finally at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.
With so much of Oldenburg’s work, the examination of the ordinary object engages the viewer with what they might previously taken for granted and gives them a chance to look again with new eyes. There is also something lighthearted and fun, as well as investigative, about his body of work.
(image via Whitney Museum’s website)
The Whitney Museum has a video showing the process of assembling his soft sculpture Giant BLT (Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Sandwich) 1963, which involves putting the sandwich together piece by piece.
For more on Oldenburg, MoMA has a tribute that includes the words of people who knew him as well as his own. His 1961 artist statement is wonderful and worth reading in its entirety, here is the opening section-
I AM FOR
I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something other than sit on its ass in a museum.
I am for an art that grows up not knowing it is art at all, an art given the chance of having a starting point of zero.
I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.
I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary.
I am for all art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself.
I am for an artist who vanishes, turning up in a white cap painting signs or hallways.
The Guardian’s obituary is also worth a read for more information on the artist’s history.
Jul 042022
Jasper Johns’ Three Flags, 1958, is currently on view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.
Information about the work from the Whitney’s website-
In 1954, Jasper Johns began painting what would become one of his signature emblems: the American flag. As an iconic image–comparable to the targets, maps, and letters that he also has depicted–Johns realized that the flag was “seen and not looked at, not examined.” The execution and composition of Three Flags elicit close inspection by the viewer. The painting draws attention to the process of its making through Johns’s use of encaustic, a mixture of pigment suspended in warm wax that congeals as each stroke is applied; the resulting accumulation of discrete marks creates a sensuous, almost sculptural surface. The work’s structural arrangement adds to its complexity. The trio of flags—each successively diminished in scale by about twenty-five percent—projects outward, contradicting classical perspective, in which objects appear to recede from the viewer’s vantage point. By shifting the visual emphasis from the flag’s emblematic meaning to the geometric patterns and variegated texture of the picture surface and the canvas structure, Johns explores the boundary between abstraction and representation. As he remarked, this painting allowed him to “go beyond the limits of the flag, and to have different canvas space.”
Jul 012022
Magenta Swimming in Yellow, 2015-7, by Rona Pondick from her solo exhibition at Zevitas Marcus. The sculpture was created using pigmented resin and acrylic.
From the Zevitas Marcus press release–
In 2013, Pondick began an intensive period of experimentation with materials that were new to her practice: resins and acrylics. Over a period of five years, she developed complex methods of working with these materials and came to understand their sculptural potential. This exhibition is the first time this body of work has been seen on the West Coast.
Since her career began in 1984, Rona’s work has consistently referenced the body, in both a metaphorical and literal sense. Her sculptural practice has been no less defined by her ceaseless exploration of new materials and methods. Stainless-steel was Rona’s primary medium for the better part of a decade beginning in 1998. Her newest works are made from resins, acrylics and modeling compound.While thematically related to Rona’s earlier work, these new sculptures are notable for their extraordinary use of color and the way in which the artist’s hand is ever present, elements which heighten the sense of fragility and humanity that have always been achingly present in her work.
Also worth checking out- this ODDA magazine interview with the Pondrick from this year (2022) and her Instagram.
Jun 282022
Crystal and Counter Light, 1994 at The Ringling
The Mississippi “Shake Rag”, 2020 at Pace
The Mississippi “Shake Rag”, 2020 (detail)
Abstract artist Sam Gilliam passed away last weekend at the age of 88. The innovative artist had an extensive body of work that encapsulated numerous styles and techniques. I was lucky enough to see his work at Pace gallery in NYC in 2020 and at The Ringling in Sarasota, Florida, in 2021.
The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. is currently showing his final solo exhibition, Sam Gilliam: Full Circle, until 9/21/22.
ARTNews has a good profile on Gilliam, as does The Washington Post, and under this Smithsonian tribute are numerous examples of his work from their collection.
Jun 252022
This work is currently on view at The Broad in Los Angeles.
Information from the museum’s website about this artwork-
Barbara Kruger addresses media and politics in their native tongue: tabloid, sensational, authoritative, and direct. Kruger’s words and images merge the commercial and art worlds; their critical resonance eviscerates cultural hierarchies — everyone and everything is for sale. The year 1989 was marked by numerous demonstrations protesting a new wave of antiabortion laws chipping away at the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision. Untitled (Your body is a battleground) was produced by Kruger for the Women’s March on Washington in support of reproductive freedom. The woman’s face, disembodied, split in positive and negative exposures, and obscured by text, marks a stark divide. This image is simultaneously art and protest. Though its origin is tied to a specific moment, the power of the work lies in the timelessness of its declaration.
Jun 202022
Florida Roadside- Gatorland, 2020
Dusk Pines, 2020 (left) and Pinelands, 2020
Artists Sam McCoy (works above) and Sheherazade Thenard (work below) were both part of the recent exhibition Fresh Squeezed 6: Emerging Artists in Florida at Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Information on Sam McCoy from her website–
Sam McCoy was born and raised in Orlando, Florida in the 90s. She is a contemporary painter who focuses on the boundaries between natural and hyperreal landscapes of Florida. She pulls her inspirations from a place where spectacles and roadside attractions dominate America’s tourism capital. Between eco-tourism destinations and constructed gardens, McCoy explores the contradictions of her experiences in these places. By pulling back the metaphorical curtain on a carefully crafted image of Florida, McCoy’s ideas of disenchantment and re-enchantment are enacted in each painting. The viewer can still find meaning in the shadier discordant corners of the State.
Magnolia, 2020
From Sheherazade Thenard’s information page–
For me, a landscape painting is not merely a visual representation of the world. It is a metaphor for the human condition. I paint to try to make sense of the fragility of our world, the passing of time, and our shared experiences of light, color, and space. The incorporation of figures within my paintings are often swallowed or hidden by their constructed lush surroundings. Painting the land and its inhabitants continues to be a way of engaging with the strangeness of being here.
The undercurrent themes of mysticism, escapism and fantasy are reoccurring within my pieces. Through these works, I aim to create psychological spaces paired with hidden symbolism integral to the understanding of each painting.
Check out both of their websites to see more of their excellent work.
May 122022
Marcos Ramirez ERRE’s Is All That it Proves, 2015, was created for Murals of La Jolla, in San Diego. Murals of La Jolla is a project started in 2010 by The Athenaeum and the La Jolla Community Foundation. It commissions artists to create work to be displayed on buildings around La Jolla. Information on his current mural for the project can be found here and a map of all the murals can be found here.
From the Murals of La Jolla website about the work-
Marcos Ramirez ERRE’s mural, All That it Proves, is a strongly stated, critical stance on what we perceive as the truth. He employs Thomas Paine’s famous quote as both a linguistic and visual exploration of the human condition and a challenge against long standing rhetoric. Paine’s quote is about understanding that our opinion is only that, our opinion. And our opinion is not necessarily the “truth”, while at the same time it may be. The piece deviates from its most obvious reference towards eyesight and becomes about another kind of vision, the kind of vision you perceive through common sense. True to his form as humanitarian artist, Is All That It Proves, exemplifies the notion that now, more than ever, we need to embrace tolerance and learn to respect individuals who chose to think in a way different than we do.
Marcos Ramirez ERRE has come to be defined by his clever visual arguments and masterfully crafted work that maintains a poetic sensibility, even when leveling biting political commentary. He was born in 1961 in Tijuana, Mexico. ERRE received his Law Degree from La Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. In 1983, he immigrated to the United States where he worked for seventeen years in the construction industry. His multi-disciplinary background has shaped his practice. He came to prominence in the 1990s with large public installations that dealt with migrants, immigration, and border control, specifically focusing on the Mexican-American border crossing. Much of ERRE’s work grapples with these issues.
Apr 152022
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2018 painting, The Ever Exacting, from her 2019 exhibition, In Lieu of a Louder Love at Jack Shainman Gallery in NYC.
This poem, written by the artist, was included with the press release for the show-
In Lieu Of A Louder Love
In the Shade of Hooded Cove,
In Debt to the Dead Oak.
In Range of a Twelve Gauge,
On Embers over Smoke.
At Pains to Hold the Wanton,
At Home to all who Knock.
At Prayer on Prickly Hearth Rug,
An Eye upon the Clock.
In the Parlance of the Pilgrim,
In Hallelujah Coat and Tie.
In Soul so Black Beguiling,
That the Ravens do Carp and Cry.
In Memory of A Cipher,
At Peace beside resting Dove.
In Light of Care and Kindness,
In Lieu of A Louder Love.
The information below is from the gallery’s artist biography, and gives some added insight on her paintings.
Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings focus on fictional figures that exist outside of specific times and places. In an interview with Nadine Rubin Nathan in the New York Times Magazine, Yiadom-Boakye described her compositions as “suggestions of people…They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.” This lack of a fixed narrative leaves her work open to the projected imagination of the viewer.
Her paintings are rooted in traditional formal considerations such as line, color, and scale, and can be self-reflexive about the medium itself, but the subjects and the way in which the paint is handled is decidedly contemporary. Her predominantly black cast of characters often attracts attention. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Kaleidoscope, she explained “People are tempted to politicize the fact that I paint black figures, and the complexity of this is an essential part of the work. But my starting point is always the language of painting itself and how that relates to the subject matter.”
The New Yorker published a wonderful portrait of Yiadom-Boakye by Zadie Smith in 2017, that is well worth a read as well.
Mar 152022
Artist Sophie Calle’s Here Lie The Secrets of the Visitors of the Green-Wood Cemetery, a 25 year long public artwork. The project debuted on April 29th and 30th, 2017.
From Creative Time’s website-
To inaugurate the project, the public was invited to Green-Wood Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark, in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, to privately unburden and inter their most intimate confessions.
During the two-day opening, in a setting nestled among the mausoleums and monuments of Green-Wood’s verdant rolling hills, visitors transcribed their secrets onto paper, and deposited them into the earth below, through a slot on a marble obelisk of Calle’s design. The artist was on hand during the two-day event to receive some visitors’ secrets.
The two-day performance was free and open to the public. Guests were invited to spend the day exploring the sculptures and monuments throughout Green-Wood, a tradition that dates back to the early 1800s. Free maps of the cemetery, specially designed to accompany Calle’s installation, were be available. Guided walking tours emphasizing the cemetery’s symbols and iconography were offered at no cost.
Visitors to the Cemetery can now see Calle’s installation during regular cemetery hours and independently deposit secrets into the marble obelisk. Calle has also pledged to return periodically over the next 25 years, each time the grave is filled, to exhume and cremate them in a ceremonial bonfire service and moment of remembrance.
Everyone has a secret to tell, now there’s a place to put one of yours.