Athena La Tocha at Greenwood Cemetery Brooklyn

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 122023
 

 

Above are two of the works from Athena LaTocha’s The Remains of Winter (Battle Hill, East), 2022, currently at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn.

From the cemetery’s website about the work-

Athena LaTocha creates large-scale works inspired by her close observations of the natural world, from the deserts and mountains of the Southwest to the Great Plains. She often incorporates elements of these environments, including soil, sand, bark, and rocks. Recently, she has been particularly drawn to trees, considering them as record keepers that bear the markings of time.

Inspired by Green-Wood’s centuries-old trees and its legacy as a place of remembrance, LaTocha has created The Remains of Winter. She cloaked the remains of two massive European beeches on Battle Hill in thin sheets of lead, a material that has been used for centuries in coffins to slow the decomposition of the body. By hand-forming this malleable metal onto the trees, LaTocha captures the unique details of their shapes and forms, even as they slowly degrade beneath the lead.

All around these sculptures, the Cemetery is in a continuous cycle of transformation. Felled trees are turned into mulch for new plantings, earth is removed then replaced for each new burial, and even the stone monuments themselves slowly erode. Through The Remains of Winter, LaTocha memorializes these shifts and changes while also raising profound questions about what we choose to commemorate and mourn—whether it is what we can witness before us or that which, like the movement of continents and land masses, unfolds over lifetimes.

The sculptures will remain on view through September 2023.

Brooklyn Public Art- Ken Rush’s “Poolevator” at Industry City

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Public Art
Sep 042023
 

Brooklyn artist Ken Rush’s Poolevator is one of several works located in Industry City– organized by The Collision Project.

From The Collision Project about the work-

This installation represents both the reality and fantasy. The reality is depicted in the inspiring monumental architecture, while the fantasy emerges in the joyful addition of a swimming club with a celebration of swimming, sunbathing, recreation and play. For Rush, the work is a homage to Impressionist painters like Monet and Suerat, and the way that they depicted urban and rural pleasures. This is a group project between Rush and three of his students from High School Visual Arts at Packer Collegiate Institute in Brooklyn Heights.

Florida Art Shows- “Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection” at Tampa Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Collage, Conceptual Art, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Politics, Sculptors / Sculpture, Tampa
Aug 222023
 

Barthélémy Toguo (Cameroonian, b. 1967), “Road to Exile”, 2018. Wooden boat, cloth bundles, glass bottles, and plastic containers

Currently on view at Tampa Museum of Art is Time for Change: Art and Social Unrest in the Jorge M. Pérez Collection. The exhibition highlights art from around the world that focuses on social issues.

From the museum-

“It is enough for the poet to be the bad conscience of his age”, stated Saint-John Perse in his 1960 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Something similar could be said when artists address the transformations of society. We should not ask for measurable political action when their role is to point out, to render evident, to shake us from indifference. Art may not provide answers, but most of the time it interrogates and proposes uncomfortable issues, almost like rubbing salt in a wound. Artists are seldom celebratory, nor do they usually provide solutions-art’s potency lays in the symbolic efficacy of the actions it proposes more than in the practical effects they entail. Paraphrasing Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar, “art exists because life is not enough.”

Time for Change is structured around six themes or nuclei: Entangled Histories, Extraction and Flows, Artivism, State Terror, Spatial Politics, and Emancipatory Calls. The sections are organically linked and establish dialogue and correlations among artworks that do not necessarily illustrate an argument nor are they contained by one. Entangled Histories proposes essential questions: how do we remember as a society? Who is forgotten by History, and for what reasons? Extraction and Flows examines displacement of peoples (usually forced), as well as the unequal logic on the territory. Artivism: Art in the Social Sphere focuses on political unrest and public protest on the streets. State Terror signals how protest is countered with repression and violence. The fifth section, Spatial Politics, reflects on modern architecture and its role in creating segregated communities. Lastly, Emancipatory Calls summons to reclaim difference, in the understanding that a more just society can only be built on respect for one’s right to be different.

A comprehensive look at the Jorge M. Pérez Collection reveals a tendency towards art with an interest in social change- art that examines the conflicts and contradictions of contemporary society, art that critically analyzes historical events and reframes them in the present. Many of the 60 works on view, due to their size or complexity have rarely been exhibited and are shown together for the first time in Time for Change.

About the main work pictured above, Barthélémy Toguo’s Road to Exile, from the museum–

In 2018, the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, New York hosted Barthélémy Toguo’s first solo exhibition in the United States. While on site at the Parrish he made Road to Exile, a large-scale installation highlighting the plight of refugees, in particular African migrants in search of a better and safer quality of life. The installation features a life-sized wooden boat that rests on glass bottles. A metaphor of the dangerous voyage across the sea, the bottles represent the fragile line between life and death. The boat nearly overflows with bundles wrapped in brightly colored African textiles and serve as stand-ins for the body. In Road to Exile Toguo employs imagery of the boat as a means of escape rather than a vessel for exploration or adventure.

Below are images from the exhibition as well as some information on a few of the works.

Rashid Johnson, “A Place for Black Moses, (2010), bottom right sculpture, and Christopher Myers “How to Name a Famine, a Fire, a Flood”, 2019, left wall piece

Christopher Myers “How to Name a Famine, a Fire, a Flood”, 2019, Applique fabric

From the museum about the above work-

Storytelling anchors Christopher Myers’ artistic practice. Working in a range of media, he mines history and creates art that links the past to the present. Myers’ tapestries, such as How to Name a Famine, a Fire, a Flood draws on the rich tradition of quilt making as a quiet yet radical form of resistance and protest. The stories depicted center on the effects of globalization on individuals and more specifically, communities of color. In How to Name a Famine, a Fire, a Flood, Myers portrays three different natural disasters linked to climate change. With vivid color and patterned fabric, he illustrates the impact and devastation of these catastrophic events in neighborhoods with minority populations.

 

Carlos Garaicoa “La habitacion de mi negatividad (The Room of My Negativity)”, 2003, 39 ink and pencil drawings on rice paper and toy train installation

Carlos Garaicoa “La habitacion de mi negatividad (The Room of My Negativity)”, 2003 (detail)

Carlos Garaicoa “La habitacion de mi negatividad (The Room of My Negativity)”, 2003 (detail)

About the above work from the museum-

Carlos Garaicoa works in a variety of media, ranging from installation, photography, and video to performance and public interventions. His early work in the 1990s focused on the urban decay of Havana as result of its political climate and economic strife. La habitacion de mi negatividad (The Room of My Negativity), turns Garaicoa’s lens inward. In this installation, comprised of toy trains and drawings of medical instruments, the artist explores his psyche and subconscious. The train’s engine pulls words that represent Garaicoa’s negative thoughts. Each train is connected to thin red thread that acts as a vein or conduit for the negative thoughts to travel. Arrange in a curved form, the train shapes mimic brain waves or the slink of a snake. Garacoia’s drawings of medical tools serve as mechanisms in which the negatively could be excavated from one’s mind.

Esterio Segura, “La historia se muerde la cola (History Bites its Tail)”, 2015, (statue bottom left); Anamaría Devis, “Infinito (Infinite)”, 2018(upper right)

Anamaría Devis, “Infinito (Infinite)”, 2018, Ink on paper

Anamaría Devis, “Infinito (Infinite)”, 2018, Ink on paper (detail)

About this work from the museum-

Anamaría Devis’ large-scale installation Infinito (Infinite) represents the artist’s study of African history in San Basilio de Palenque, Colombia. Escaped slaves founded Palenque and it was the first free town in the Americas during colonial times. While researching this history, Devis discovered that in this region of Colombia, braided hairstyles worn by Africans served as escape maps. Braid patterns reflected safe points in the area’s topography. This silent form of resistance inspired her to look at other bodily topographies like the characteristics of fingerprints, which also had names associated with cartography such as crossing, island, and fork. Devis then began to create drawings that incorporated footprints, braid patterns, and elements of nature. From the drawings she made stamps and each panel of paper that comprises Infinito (Infinite) is rendered from Devis’ various imprints. The result is an abstract representation of the body and landscape visualized through mapping and codes.

Jonathas de Andrade, “A batalha de todo dia de Dona Luzia, de Tejucupapo (The daily battle of Dona Luzia, from Tejucupapo)”, 2022 Images printed on raw falconboard

About this work from the museum-

Jonathas de Andrade collaborated with the Brazilian theater company Teatro Heroínas de Tejucupapo to create a visual reenactment of the historic 1646 Battle of Tejucupapo. For nearly 25 years, between 1630 and 1654, the Dutch occupied the northeast of Brazil including Tejucupapo, a small community in the city of Goiana. During the Battle of Tejucupapo, a brigade of black and indigenous women forced Dutch soldiers to retreat by arming themselves with household and farm objects. The Teatro Heroínas de Teiucupapo commemorates this female-led rebellion each April by restaging the battle with local actors.

Artist Jonathas de Andrade celebrates the power and courage of Tejucupapo’s women with his large-scale photographic installation A batalha do todo dia de Tejucupapo (The Battle of Tejucupapo). The work on this wall, A batalha de todo dia de Dona Luzia, de Tejucupapo (The daily battle of Dona Luzia, from Tejucupapo), presents everyday objects from the home of one of the women participating in Teatro Heroínas de Tejucupapo. This inventory explores the daily struggles, as well as strength, of Brazil’s black and indigenous women that have spanned centuries.

This exhibition will close on Sunday, 8/27/23.

 

Florida Art Shows- Florida Prize in Contemporary Art at Orlando Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Digital Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Orlando, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Aug 122023
 

Work by Elliot and Erick Jiménez (photographs, left) and Reginald O’Neal (paintings, right)

Sculptures by Akiko Kotani, Paintings by MJ Torrecampo

Work by Denise Treizman

Work by Amy Schissel

Photography by Peggy Levison Nolan

Work by Magnus Sodamin

Work by Yosnier Miranda

Work by Cara Despain

There is some really impressive work currently on view for the 2023 Florida Prize in Contemporary Art at Orlando Museum of Art.

From the museum site about the exhibition-

The Florida Prize in Contemporary Art is organized by the Orlando Museum of Art to bring new recognition to the most progressive artists in the State. Each year OMA’s curatorial team surveys artists working throughout the State before inviting ten to participate. One artist will receive a $20,000 award made possible with the generous support of local philanthropists Gail and Michael Winn.  Artists range from emerging to mid-career, often with distinguished records of exhibitions and awards that reflect recognition at national and international levels. In all cases, they are artists who are engaged in exploring significant ideas of art and culture in original and visually exciting ways.

This year’s artists are-

Denise Treizman (@denisetreizman )

MJ Torrecampo (@mjtorrecampo )

Akiko Kotani

Peggy Levison Nolan (@peggylevisonnolan )

Amy Schissel (@amyschissel )

Reginald O’Neal (@_reginaldoneal_ )

Elliot & Erick Jimenez – (@elliotanderick )

Cara Despain (@caradespain )

Yosnier Miranda (@occurrences)

Magnus Sodamin (@magnificentmagnus )

On the following pages below are more works by the above artists and detailed information on their work in the exhibition.

Florida Art Shows- Kat Howard at Dunedin Fine Art Center

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Dunedin, Fiber Arts, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Pinellas County, Sculptors / Sculpture
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.

St. Pete Art Shows- “Fresh Squeezed 7” at the Morean Arts Center

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, Florida Art Shows, Installation Art, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Pinellas County, Printmaking, Sculptors / Sculpture, St. Pete
Jun 212023
 

Center work by Laura De Valencia

Morean Arts Center in St. Pete, Florida, is currently showing Fresh Squeezed 7, their annual exhibition of emerging artists in Florida. It’s a great opportunity to see some of the best artwork being done by local artists. The exhibition closes 6/22/23.

From the the Morean Arts Center’s press release-

As always, our selection panel culled over 120 applications from across the state, narrowing the exhibition down to the six artists featured here. It’s always a joyful and heartbreaking process, seeing so much inspiring good work and only having a limited amount of space in which to show it all.We were looking for diversity in medium, in ideas, and in geographical location, all of which somehow comes together to form a delightful, cohesive whole.

While we don’t necessarily plan it that way, themes and commonalities do emerge among the artists selected for the exhibition. We’re happy to announce this is the first year that we have an ALL FEMALE line up. And due to the inclusive interpretation we use to define an emerging artist (no previous solo shows in Florida), you’ll find artists here who are still pursuing their MFAs (KJ Skidmore and Leeann Rae) AND artists who are returning to their first love of art after finding fulfillment in decades of other related careers (Latonya Hicks and Deborah W. Perlman).

Other themes you may notice as you peruse the galleries are the inventive (and exuberant!) use of materials. Denise Treizman and Latonya Hicks both incorporate cast off, recycled and vintage materials in their dimensional wall work. While Denise’s process is more spontaneous and Latonya’s is deliberate and measured, they both create joyful works of art that invite contemplation and perhaps a spark of recognition from the viewer.

KJ Skidmore and Laura De Valencia both deal with contemporary issues and pop culture in their work, though to wildly different effect. KJ’s humorous mixed media paintings address the notion of the male gaze, and the women who must endure it. Laura’s installations use fashion culture as a jumping off point to raise questions about international stereotypes and the borders (both visible and not) that immigrants have to experience on a daily basis.

Both Leeann Rae and Deborah W. Perlman create work that challenge the viewer to look longer, and to think deeper. With their disparate materials (Leeann with soft pastel and Deborah with cut paper), they raise notions of space, whether physical or mental, real or imagined, in the present or a memory from the past.

KJ Skidmore “Squeeze ‘n’ Block”, Acrylic and coffee

KJ Skidmore

KJ Skidmore “Angel’s Bar”, Acrylic, fabric, trim, paste and wood paper

The work above is by Tampa based artist KJ Skidmore.

Morean Arts Center’s information about the artist-

KJ’s current work is based in painting/drawing that extends into3-D space through multimedia installation. Her immersive spaces are chaotic and aggressive, but at the same time alluring. She works within her own bizarre and disjointed narratives and themes containing warped textual elements, strange cartoon characters, and color palettes that are both grimy and fluorescent. Her material use is variable and may include masses of hair clumped together with canned beets, pink stained carpet, fabrics, wood, plaster, teeth, rain jackets, and Smurf-themed objects.

KJ’s painted series Burger Time caricatures leering male clientele as flat, monster-like cartoons that interact with a staring waitress to explore gendered tropes and forms of voyeurism. This series reconstructs reality in relation to being female by presenting experiences like getting stared at or groped within a hokey themed attraction called “Burger Time” restaurant. Her series is meant to revolt the viewer through acknowledging the male gaze, while also celebrating its trashiness and the culture surrounding it. She uses humor to poke fun at this harmful and uneven power dynamic. The series presents this sickening concept through more palatable presentation such as expressive cartoon figures and bright colors.

KJ is from Gainesville, FL, but was living on the West Coast until recently. She is back in Florida pursuing an MFA at USF in Tampa.

For more of the artists in the show, continue to the next page.

NYC Art Shows- Brooklyn Museum- “A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration”

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Brooklyn, Collage, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Fiber Arts, History, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Sculptors / Sculpture, Video and Film
Jun 192023
 

Robert Pruitt, “A Song for Travelers”

Brooklyn Museum’s exhibition, A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration, is an opportunity to learn about an important period of American history, and see it interpreted through the eyes of twelve contemporary artists.

From the museum’s website-

Between 1915 and 1970, in the wake of racial terror during the post-Reconstruction period, millions of Black Americans fled from their homes to other areas within the South and to other parts of the country. This remarkable movement of people, known as the Great Migration, caused a radical shift in the demographic, economic, and sociopolitical makeup of the United States. A Movement in Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration brings together twelve contemporary artists to consider the complex impact of this period on their lives, as well as on social and cultural life, with newly commissioned works ranging from large-scale installation, immersive film, and tapestry to photography, painting, and mixed media. Featured artists are Akea Brionne, Mark Bradford, Zoë Charlton, Larry W. Cook, Torkwase Dyson, Theaster Gates Jr., Allison Janae Hamilton, Leslie Hewitt, Steffani Jemison, Robert Pruitt, Jamea Richmond-Edwards, and Carrie Mae Weems.

A Movement in Every Direction presents a departure from traditional accounts of the Great Migration, which are often understood through a lens of trauma, and reconceptualizes them through stories of self-possession, self-determination, and self-examination. While the South did lose generations of courageous, creative, and productive Black Americans due to racial and social inequities, the exhibition expands the narrative by introducing people who stayed in, or returned to, the region during this time. Additionally, the Brooklyn Museum’s presentation centers Brooklyn as another important site in the Great Migration, highlighting historical and contemporary census data about the borough’s migration patterns. Visitors are encouraged to share their own personal and familial stories of migration through an oral history “pod” available in the exhibition galleries.

About Robert Pruitt’s work, pictured above, from the museum’s wall information plaque-

“A Song for Travelers” celebrates the individual and Black collective experiences that have shaped the histories of rural East Texas and Houston’s Third, Fourth, and Fifth Wards. In this drawing-based on an early 1970’s photograph of a reunion of the artist’s family in Dobbin, Texas -sixteen people gather around a seated central figure about to embark on a journey. During the creation of this work, the masked traveler became a stand-in for Pruitt, who had recently left his hometown of Houston.

Pruitt often draws inspiration from his and others’ family photographs while examining historical events that have impacted Houston’s Black communities. Wearing costumes and adorned with items that reference various aspects of Black culture found in schools, social clubs, and religious spaces, the figures in the work reflect the numerous networks that remained and flourished in the South. Merging the Great Migration period with the present, Pruitt centers the Black neighborhoods across the southern region that served as safe havens and rich sites of cultural expression for migrants during the twentieth century. This link extends to today as many Black Americans leave the northern and western cities that once attracted their elders and return to the South.

Allison Janae Hamilton’s A House Called Florida, below, takes the viewer on a journey through part of northern Florida’s natural beauty.

From the museum’s information plaque about the video installation-

Allison Janae Hamilton produced the three-channel film installation A House Called Florida in her hometown region of northern Florida. The breathtaking landscapes of Apalachicola Bay and the swampy Blackwater Lakes of Florida’s Big Bend frame musicians, dancers, motorists, a Victorian house, and a slow resounding rhythm.

The artist references French Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar’s 1946 short story “Casa Tomada.” (“House Taken Over”) about ghosts that slowly take over a home and eventually push out its owners, room by room. Hamilton echoes the story’s theme of displacement with two regally dressed, spirit-like protagonists who move about the house engaging in mark-making and ritual performances. Hamilton’s film pays tribute to the Black Floridians who remained in the Red Hills and the Forgotten Coast regions, despite the racial violence and environmental precariousness they faced throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Carrie Mae Weems‘ personal and moving contribution is in two parts- a series of photographs and a unique digital video installation.

The museum’s description of the work-

Carrie Mae Weems explores a painful family story: the disappearance of her grandfather Frank Weems, a tenant farmer and union activist who was attacked by a white mob in Earle Arkansas, in 1936. Presumed dead, he narrowly escaped and made his way to Chicago on foot, never again reuniting with his family. Frank Weems may have followed the North Star to Chicago. Weems’s series of seven prints, The North Star, makes an apt metaphor for Frank’s life. In Leave! Leave Now! Weems conjures the figure of her grandfather with a Pepper’s Ghost, a late nineteenth-century form of illusion first used in theater. By weaving historical events with fragmented family stories, photographs, poetry, music, and interviews, the artist reveals the tragedy of her grandfather’s disappearance and the aftermath.

This exhibition will close on Sunday, June 25th, 2023.

NYC Art Shows- ektor garcia at James Fuentes

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Ceramic Art, Conceptual Art, Fiber Arts, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 222023
 

cabeza güera, 2019 Glazed ceramic and crochet cotton

“encuero”, 2022-2023, Crochet leather and copper; “gotitas”, 2023 Agate, glazed ceramic, plasma cut metal, steel, onyx, palm, and seed podand; “telaraña de cobre”, 2020 (web in upper corner)

“trastes ceramica”, 2023 Glazed ceramic, gourds, crochet copper wire, and limpet shell

There’s only two days left to see ektor garcia: esfuerzo at James Fuentes. The enchanting sculptures inspire curiosity and encourage the viewer to imagine the story behind the work while also admiring their construction.

From Art Daily about the exhibition-

Each of ektor garcia’s exhibitions are more like a marker of a moment of pause in his work, rather than a presentation of something complete or discrete. In this way his works are evidence of a continual natural progression, as things build on top of each other, evolving. In relation to the specific time and place of this newest exhibition; it marks a cyclical continuation of the garcia’s presentations at the New Museum in 2017 and Sculpture Center in 2019—both of which moments in the artist’s life when he was traveling a lot, largely moving between Mexico, being on the road, and New York, specifically. This is the case once again, today:

For this show garcia traveled from his studio in Mexico City, suitcases filled with materials, to occupy the basement space below the gallery at 55 Delancey St in the lead up to the exhibition’s opening to the public. He has also retrieved objects previously exhibited or in storage—for example a 15-ft copper link piece recently exhibited at the Henry Art Museum has been broken into smaller pieces, added to and reconfigured into a new work(s). The exhibition title, esfuerzo translates to effort; as in a big push, like a birth, which feels apt for what the artist does. Pieces come together little by little over a long period of time; and the work comprises many small parts that each reflect his esfuerzo in making them. Another translation for esfuerzo could be output; and, shortened, fuerza means strength. Via his artistic practice, garcia is the conduit or vessel through which that life-force runs, resulting in an output that is this body of work. garcia is constantly making, hands always moving; this is simply part of how he lives his life. The work therefore isn’t made toward constructing a larger conceptual conceit; instead, its making is its meaning, the working is the work. Its presence in the space is evidence of all this; making room for it to be approached and even interceded, we inherently take part in the work’s life cycle, even potentially changing its course by entering this domain.

This sense of force, therefore, isn’t tied to garcia’s hand only, but relates externally as well. One piece in the show, cochinilla (2022), is woven from wool dyed red from the shell of the cochineal insect. Last year it was installed on the exterior of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey, Mexico, and upon taking it down garcia’s realized it had become sun bleached unexpectedly. With other pieces he more deliberately pushes, forcing change, for example by using a blowtorch against copper to catalyze an oil-spill patina. Over time, crochet has been one constant; a crocheted piece needs time, and then it meets time. In his words: “The materials are vibrating back and forth, taking turns. That is how they evolve.” And so although the works reference the past they do not prioritize it; likewise the future. Rather, in the style of the ouroboros, they are cyclical, perpetual, and most generous about the present.

Artist Cy Gavin wrote this piece to accompany the exhibition, which is worth a read as well.

 

NYC Art Shows- Kennedy Yanko at Jeffrey Deitch

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Sculptors / Sculpture, Sound Art
Apr 202023
 

“Pink and green music”, 2023

“What we re-quire is…silence”, 2023

“Within the Lattice”, 2023

“An Ode to Hugs”, 2023

It’s the last week to see Kennedy Yanko’s exhibition, Humming on Life at Jeffrey Deitch gallery’s Wooster Street location.

Tonight, 4/20/23, she will be at the gallery discussing her work with Alteronce Gumby.

From the press release-

By employing paint skin and metal in ways that both transmute a bodily essence and reposition the weight of gravity, Kennedy Yanko wields materiality and abstraction with the possibility of intervening in the viewers’ perceptions. In Humming on Life, Yanko‘s first exhibition at Jeffrey Deitch, the artist continues this exploration.

Although the tactile quality and lyrical processuality of Yanko’s works emphasize their sculptural quality, the artist considers herself foremost a painter. In her new body of work, Yanko takes an approach to sculpture that reconnects it, and her, with painting. In recent years, the weathered paint and bruised patinas found on salvaged metal relics informed her palette for the paint skins. Now, the artist is introducing colors to the metal she finds. By painting the metal directly, underpainting, fire-cutting forms and compositions, and then crushing those new shapes, Yanko is expanding the definition of painting through her process. She remarks:

Working this way has been labor-intensive and has exposed me to sounds, like water thrashing inside a metal tank while cleaning it. Feeling that thrashing—hearing a power that felt like infinity incarnate—encouraged me to probe water as a medium and examine my intuitive method more closely, which seemingly only comes from physical exchange: input and output, expansion and contraction. In pulling water apart and becoming more curious about its behavior and participation, I’ve enjoyed revisiting the ways in which it’s a web of activation, a source, and information. It’s a cue and a salve and carries with it tinges of what it’s gone through.

What water did for me in that moment was to point back to the livingness of my medium — of the metal and paint skin I rely on — and wash away the binary between life and matter. Erasing this divide expands the possibility of experience; it gives materiality an abstract power that we yield to. It’s that vitality, found in color, form, attention and consciousness, that I hope this work can be a language for.

The “Illuminating Sound” presented apart of the exhibition, composed by Samuel Kareem, is derived from audio Yanko recorded while working in the yard. Kareem expanded one striation of sound within the clip—one small element he excavated from the layers of water, metal, paint and movement—and created 10 ten unique soundscapes. Each of the scapes corresponds with a sculpture within the show, and illuminates it. Listen to “Illuminating Sound” here.

NYC Art Shows- Rachel Whiteread at Luhring Augustine

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Installation Art, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Apr 182023
 

“Untitled (Thicket)”, 2022, Steel, wood and paint

“Untitled”, 2020-22, Bronze and paint (two parts)

“Untitled (Fence I)”, 2020, Papier mache

Rachel Whiteread’s sculptures at Luhring Augustine’s Tribeca location draw the eye in with their textures, colors, and in some the unique combinations of items. They are even more intriguing when you discover they are often not what they first appear to be.

From the press release-

As is typical in Whiteread’s work, the sculptures in this exhibition communicate a high-low dialogue: discarded, seemingly inconsequential items are rendered in often precious, high-art materials, which transforms and elevates them from their original context and reading. The eye is tricked, and careful observation is required of the viewer. What appears to be spray-painted cardboard is in reality patinated bronze or silver, or shimmering metallic papier-mache, and assemblages of found materials are in reality amalgams of both found objects and hand-crafted simulacra. Cartons, boxes, branches, crates, cardboard, packing materials, and pipes overlap and interchange, creating an installation that becomes a pleasing visual puzzle. Whiteread created the works for this exhibition specifically with the light-filled, high-ceilinged Tribeca gallery in mind, so a beautiful optical play with colors and materials punctuates the space and draws the viewer into close examination of these human-scaled pieces. Silver and bronze casts of empty, anonymous boxes have a weighty presence, in contrast to the disposable nature of their form. The floor pieces are ghostly white assemblages of both found and cast objects, mostly debris; sitting wraithlike on the floor, each beckons the viewer to circle them and decode their elements.

This exhibition closes 4/22/23.

 

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