Danny Ferrell’s Thirty in Palm Springs, 2020 from the group exhibition, Sound & Color at Miles McEnery Gallery in 2020.
Aug 042023
Aug 042023
The work above is from Regina Durante Jestrow’s current exhibition Free Form Connections at Dunedin Fine Art Center.
The artist’s statement about the exhibition-
This exhibition includes my organically shaped geometric art quilts from various series from 2020-23. I utilize improvisation, repeat patterns and shifts in scale while incorporating colors, textures, and structures representative of the diversity of the people and the natural surroundings of my current home in South Florida.
I use diversely toned second-hand, gifted, or saved fabrics and dyes from locally sourced plants and rust. Textiles are also manipulated with burning and staining with inks and acrylic paint. Other materials, such as neoprene, sequins, and faux leather, reference Miami’s pop culture.
Along with my constant interest in American Folk-Art Quilts, geometric-abstract artists from the mid to late twentieth century are my influencers, including Gees Bend quilters, Elizabeth Murray, Helen Frankenthaler, Anni Albers, and Gego. These artistic voices have driven me to create quilts of scale with strong personal symbolism and narrative.
This exhibition is on view until 8/13/23.
Aug 042023
The sculptures above are from Kat Howard’s current exhibition Controlled Telling, at Dunedin Fine Art Center.
From the gallery about the work-
Kat Howard’s work interrogates the complicated process of healing from trauma. The sculptures in ‘Controlled Telling’ examines the burden and pressure to conceal the truth.
Existing as various restricted forms of cotton, bound braids, transparent quilts, compressed scraps of muslin, mound of raw material, or hand-twined waxed rope, the writhing abstracted bodily forms overwhelm and invade the viewer’s personal space, emulate the feeling of tension, imploring the viewer to navigate physically and emotionally around them.
Howard creates visual art that uses abstraction, the innate language of texture, and the repulsion/attraction of touch to interrogate her identity as a survivor of abuse and sexual violence. The material and texture of the object is integral to her practice, and its connection to the body. Evidence of the hand and the physical marks of the body are always present in her work. What happens to the body when it is forced to become a vessel for trauma? In what ways do we physically carry pain? How is the self altered afterwards?
Howard’s pieces either have a physicality to them that feels almost human, or they are twisted abstractions from the domestic landscape. Repetition and labor are vital aspects to the work. Through the labor, the anxiety tethered to a desire for freedom is palpable. The viewer can sense the thousands of hours, and the fevered precision which act as an echo of the madness in the mind that comes to claim the body. What does freedom look like? The answer is in taking up space. The answer is in speaking up. The answer is in the attempt.
This exhibition is on view until 8/13/23.
Aug 042023
There are so many wonderful, detailed art works in Hannah O’Hare Bennett’s current exhibition Recede, on view at Dunedin Fine Art Center. They are all worthy of a closer look.
Below is the artist’s statement about the work-
“From the moment we are born until we die, we are almost constantly in contact with cloth as we move through our lives. Without thinking about it, we are familiar with its varied qualities–the simplicity of white cotton, the luxury of silk velvet, the flexibility of knitting, the structure of weaving. We can see the impact of time in a piece of fabric: how it wrinkles, stains, takes repairs, unravels. Handmade paper is a kind of non-woven cloth and is in fact often made of recycled cotton or linen. It can be dyed, stitched, wrinkled, torn, and repaired much in the same way as fabric.
My work explores the expressive possibilities of these materials, which I use to deal with my fascination with time altered urban and rural landscapes. A piece of land in the Oregon outback, the brick wall of buildings in Madison, a leafy Minneapolis neighborhood, etc. are all impacted by the passing of time, actions of human beings, weather. These occurrences can be incremental or sudden, and the change they bring almost imperceptible or very radical, each change layering on top of what came before. I use that observation to inspire my work. Fabric surfaces are worked over with layers and layers of pigments, embellished with embroidery, dunked into dye, cut and torn. Paper pulp is poured, dipped, mixed with sawdust, painted, crumpled and smoothed out again. In this small human way, I am channeling the world into the objects I create.”
The exhibition closes 8/13/23.
Aug 012023
Sun and Moon, created by Jia Sung, is one of the artists chosen by The Collision Project, whose work can be seen in Industry City, Brooklyn.
About the mural-
The mural depicts two goddesses from Chinese mythology, flanking the courtyard door. The lunar deity Chang’E floats on the left with her companion rabbit, while solar goddess Xihe sits on the right with her ten sun-crow children. The paired murals reimagine protective door guardian imagery through the lens of the divine feminine.
Jul 292023
The above painting is Leslie Lerner’s My Life in France: The Oceanside (The Green Day), 2002, currently on view at Tampa Museum of Art.
From the museum’s wall plaque about the work-
Paintings and sculpture comprise Leslie Lerner’s series My Life in France, a fictional travelogue of the artist’s globetrotting alter ego. Inspired by Rococo painter Antoine Watteau (French, 1684-1721), Lerner’s work nods to the idyllic and lush canvases of 18th-century landscape paintings. The Oceanside (The Green Day) depicts a man standing on a grassy cliff and facing the ocean. His size pales in comparison to the vastness of the ocean he faces. Calming shades of aquamarine blue and moss green emphasize the serene beauty of the shoreline.
Born in Chicago, Illinois, Lerner developed his artistic practice in San Francisco and initially created installation art. He taught art in various colleges and universities in California for several years before relocating to Sarasota, Florida. For 15 years, Lerner served on the faculty at the Ringling College of Art and Design.
Jul 272023
“A Cut Below”, 2000, Acrylic on canvas
Theo Wujcik’s painting, A Cut Below, is part of Tampa Museum of Art‘s All in Favor: New Works in the Permanent Collection, on view until 7/30/23.
Jul 252023
Currently at the University of Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum is Rico Gatson: Visible Time. The exhibition includes a collection of the artist’s paintings and works on paper, video works from 2001-present, and a life size mural of author Zora Neale Hurston.
From the museum’s website about the exhibition-
For more than two decades, Brooklyn-based artist Rico Gatson has been celebrated for his vibrant, colorful, and layered artworks. Inspired by significant moments in African American history, identity politics and spirituality, his oeuvre includes images of protests and longstanding injustices—touching on subjects like the murder of Emmett Till, the Watts Riots, and the formation of the Black Panthers—as well as dynamic abstract geometries that celebrate Pan-Africanist aesthetics and Black cultural and political figures.
About the mural, Zora III, commissioned by the museum (pictured above)-
Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo (a set of spiritual practices, traditions, and beliefs created by enslaved Africans in the Southern U.S.). The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, Hurston grew up near Orlando, in Eatonville, Florida, incorporated in 1887 as one of the first self-governing all-black municipalities in the country. Despite her landmark achievements, Hurston died penniless and in obscurity in 1960-her novels and other writings largely unknown, until they were single-handedly rescued by novelist Alice Walker in 1975. Through his wall painting Rico Gatson extends the monumental impact of Hurston’s legacy-and Walker’s- into a visual arena reminiscent of the Mexican Muralists and hand-painted cinema signs.
“Untitled (Seven Panels)”, 2022 acrylic paint on wood, in seven parts
From the museum’s wall plaque about the above paintings-
According to catalog contributor Mark Fredricks, Rico Gatson’s “panel paintings” resemble “a musical framework.” Arranged together along a single wall, the “rhythm” animating their colorful compositions and their “uniformity of structure” suggest, anthropomorphically speaking, musicians in a jazz combo. One of the many ways in which Gatson draws on music as a lasting influence in his art, his seven panels approximate what legendary jazz player Albert Ayler described as “the healing force of the universe,” but in three dimensions.
“Don” 2022, Color pencil and photo-collage on paper
“Sidney” 2022, Color pencil and photo-collage on paper
“Miles #2″ 2022, Color pencil and photo-collage on paper
Below are images are from Four Stations, one of the five moving image works in the exhibition. For this work, Gatson traveled to Money, Mississippi and took handheld footage along the trail of places and events that led to the lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till.
“Four Stations” 2017
On one of the smaller screens is Gun Play, 2001, a film collage that mixes sequences from Foxy Brown and The Good, the Band and the Ugly, combining them together with kaleidoscopic effects.
“Gun Play”, 2001, single-channel video, color, sound
This Thursday 7/27/23, the museum will be showing Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, the last of the three films chosen by Gatson to accompany the exhibition.
The exhibition will close on Saturday, 7/29.
Jul 212023
“Precarious recline”, 2015, Found lawn chairs, strap, bottle
This sculpture, Precarious recline, is from Bjorn Copeland’s 2015 exhibition Over Easy at Various Small Fires Los Angeles. It was created using discarded furniture found around East Los Angeles.
The exhibition also included a sound sculpture, Scrambled Eggs, Mexican Radio Edit (2015). It was made in collaboration with the artist’s Black Dice band mates Eric Copeland and Aaron Warren, and combined signals from multiple car radios in an unpredictable and erratic disharmony. The resulting composition was synthesized in real-time and constantly changing.
The video below is for White Sugar, from Black Dice’s 2021 album Mod Prog Sic.
Jul 212023
“You’re Fired”, 2015, Concrete, grill, shredded office documents, charcoal
This sculpture by Josh Kline was located in the Various Small Fires Los Angeles courtyard in 2015.
From the press release-
In the warm breeze of Southern California’s endless summer, the 20th Century dream of life in the early evening after work: a large backyard covered in concrete and grass, a hammock or a lawn chair, cold beer, and a blazing grill. Ground meat sizzling above a glowing bed of charcoal soaked in lighter fluid. Underneath the avocado tree. Or the oak tree. Or the whatever tree. Putting the last 8-10 hours of your day out of your mind and enjoying your “free” time. A nuclear family fantasy repeated across hundreds of millions of suburban and semi-suburban homes and half a century of North American lives.
Pattern recognition is the primordial ooze from out of which living consciousness and intelligence crawled into the minds of animals. The ability to recognize repetitive relationships and recurring phenomena. The habits of food, the faces of your loved ones, and the sounds of human language. From automobile factory assembly line and the discount drug store cash register today to the taxi cab’s driver seat and patent lawyer’s office tomorrow: unconscious software is slowly and not-so- slowly aping the abilities of the living mind.
Reading without eyes. Recognizing without consciousness. The outsourcing of understanding. You’re Fired!
The first U.S. museum survey of his work, Josh Kline: Project for a New American Century, is currently on view at the Whitney Museum in NYC.