These days it’s hard not to think sometimes about the end of the world. But have you started putting together a plan? Thought about who would be good in a crisis? Put together a pros and cons list of your friends, family and acquaintances? Wondered if things would actually be better?
Finn Schult’s current exhibition Everything You’ve Ever Wanted at Gallery 114 at Hillsborough Community College’s Ybor City location, presents an interesting take on the current state of things for those with the end on their minds. It includes paintings, animal traps, an ipod and walkie talkie, as well as a book containing photos, prepper information, journal entries, drawings, and some pros and cons for the people in his life, including his mom. The paintings are titled “L’appel Du Vide” a French phrase meaning “the call of the void” or the urge to jump when you are standing in a high place.
From the gallery’s website-
Everything You’ve Ever Wanted is a solo exhibition of new work by Finn Schult (b. 1993, Naples, FL) reflecting on the inevitability of the end of the world and the fantasy of apocalypse as catalyst for utopia. Schult’s multimedia series exists as fragments, sketches and interludes distilled from an otherwise deranged web of theories. At times, the artworks presented in Gallery114@HCC feel terroristic, violent and unbearably bleak–at other times, they remind us of the beauty inherent in loss, longing and love. Schult’s work yearns for a world that doesn’t yet exist and mourns for a world that isn’t yet gone, answering the cry, “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” with “The only way out is through.”
There is also a video in the exhibition, Where r u rn? which mixes a variety of imagery with a bit of author and mystic Terence McKenna’s 1999 final interview where he discusses “the fire in the madhouse at the end of time”- the possibility of the craziness in the world being a sign of the dying of our species.
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.
Fashioned after both the artist’s workspace and print editions he created during his Arts Council of Princeton’s Anne Reeves Artist-in-Residency, Somatic Pause invites Princeton to contemplate the transformational power of rest, and how time changes each of us.
Somatic Pause – a wheat-pasted, painted, and collaged installation – is an ephemeral one. Meant to change over time, the mural will be exposed to harsh winter weather, early spring rains, and glaring sun, each doing its own work to fade, soften, tear, and mar its surface.
Change is the constant.
And about the artist-
Dave DiMarchi is a queer, multi-disciplinary artist working in printmaking, papermaking and sculptural book forms. He engages in a relentless material practice, nurturing ideas into singular and editioned works. As a multi-disciplinary artist, he has exhibited works on paper, installations and books in the US and internationally. He maintains a small collaborative studio and art space in New Hope, Pennsylvania and teaches printmaking, papermaking and book forms extensively throughout the New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania area. In Fall of 2022, he was announced as the ACP Artist-in-Residence which will allow him to continue to explore collage-based multi-media and print works.
Since 2012, he has created his own work, curated exhibitions, provided print exchange opportunities, and published fine art prints as 9INHANDPRESS, a fine art printmaking and education studio located in New Hope, Pennsylvania.
Marc Straus gallery on the Lower East Side has two great sculpture shows closing this weekend (12/11/16). Todd Murphy’s mixed media sculptures are gorgeous creations which glow on the walls of the upstairs space.
On the first floor of the gallery, are Chris Jones’ intricate pieces created with images from discarded magazines and books. The details within these worlds become more and more apparent the longer one looks at them, including plants growing into other spaces and laundry tumbling out into other frames.
This is the final weekend of two excellent exhibitions on the Lower East Side in New York. The first is Aidas Bareikis’Barrel of Fortune at Canada gallery.
From the press release-
In Barrel of Fortune, his first solo exhibition at CANADA, Bareikis distills his enduring vision into bundled masses. He stacks and wraps cultural objects in fabric and string, building altar-like assemblages shrouded by paint and recognizable trash. The sculptures are propped up by found furniture, wood or aluminum, and exposed to forces like time, gravity, or the elements. Rendered in deep reds, acidic oranges and vintage blues, each work operates like a junkyard relic: a curious portal into another era slowly merging with the local flora. It’s here where Bareikis navigates, somewhere between scientific method and pure psychic automatism, covering his tracks in a role equal parts wandering scientist and mad poet.
And at McKenzie Fine Art, Reed Danziger’s new paintings are dense with small details and geometric patterns which combine to form a beautiful and energetic organized chaos.
Detail from A Rearrangement, 2016 (image via 1st Dibs)
The mixed media assemblage paintings in Aaron Fowler‘s current solo exhibition, Blessings on Blessings, at Diane Rosenstein gallery, are large, highly detailed, and dense with imagery.
From the press release-
Aaron Fowler, who was born in St. Louis and currently lives and works in Harlem, creates mixed-media assemblage-paintings that depict his experiences and the lives of his family and friends in both a personal narrative and an epic journey through contemporary America. The title of this exhibition, which includes twelve portraits, tableaux, and medallions created in the past year, refers to lyrics from “Blessings”, a 2015 song by American rapper Big Sean.
In these sculptural tableaux, Fowler depicts himself as a “mirror character” called The Pilgrim. He employs oils, acrylics and collage – often pixilated ‘photo print-outs’ based on 18th C. American historical painting – alongside objects like Adidas sneakers, CDs, T-shirts, and plastic bags. The dynamic, large-scale compositions are enacted on discarded domestic materials including shutters, mirrored doors, windows, and card tables.
Los Angeles based artist Dana Weiser’s exhibition at Walter Maciel Gallery, Without you, I couldn’t be me…, focuses on her experiences as a member of an interracial family. Weiser was adopted from Korea as an infant by a Jewish-American family and raised in the Midwest . She has a sister who was also adopted from Korea.
From the press release-
…Weiser’s work explores lost identity, multiple identities, and racial identity with her emphasis of being an outsider in a predominantly white community where she never felt a strong affiliation to any group or faith. The inevitable questions like “Have you met your real parents?” and “Is she your real sister?” are often the opening liners upon introduction and these phrases become the subject matter as literal text interpretations spelling out the racist remarks. In one series using large sheets of vintage lace as the surface, pearl beads are stitched into the fabric to spell comments like “I’m not racist or anything but…” or “I don’t mean to sound racist but…” The delicate and intimate technique of traditional beading challenges Weiser’s skills much in the same way as her ability to pacify her true emotions and refrain from bleak replies.
In addition to the beaded work, she also addresses some of her relationship with Korean culture in three self portraits- Enacting my Koreanness, (self-portrait performance). There are also two neon sculptures- one that reads “adopt” with an “a” over the “o” to create “adapt” and the other the title of the show in a circle. The different mediums make the exhibition feel a bit chaotic but perhaps that also keeps with the theme of having an identity that is hard to pin down.
In the other gallery are Greg Mocilnikar’s colorful abstract paintings and works on paper have a lively energy.
The works in this show are multi-dimensional, with some artists using heavy impasto, collage, or flirting with the intersection of painting and sculpture. Connecting the varied practices in The New New is an explicit use of text – song lyrics, art theory, slogans, and commercial branding – in a formally exciting interplay between word, image and painting.
The New New brings together emerging artists with distinct approaches – but all with a shared engagement with the aggregate of received imagery and personal narrative.
Noah Purifoy’s current retrospective at LACMA offers a comprehensive look at the influential assemblage artist.
A little background on the artist from LACMA’s website–
Noah Purifoy (1917-2004) lived and worked most of his life in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California. A founding director of the Watts Towers Art Center, his earliest body of sculpture, constructed out of charred debris from the 1965 Watts Rebellion, was the basis for 66 Signs of Neon, a landmark group exhibition about the riots that traveled to nine venues between 1966 and 1969. In line with the postwar period’s general fascination with the street and its objects, Purifoy’s 66 Signs of Neon constituted a Duchampian approach to the fire-molded alleys of Watts, a strategy that profoundly impacted artists such as David Hammons, John Outterbridge and Senga Nengudi.
In the late 1980’s, after eleven years of public policy work for the California Arts Council, where Purifoy initiated programs such as Artists in Social Institutions, bringing art into the state prison system, Purifoy moved his practice to the Mojave desert. He lived there for the last fifteen years of his life, creating ten acres of large-scale sculpture constructed entirely from junked materials.
For more information on Purifoy and his Joshua Tree Outdoor Museum (where some of the pieces in the exhibition are from), KCET has an interesting article.
Detail from A Rearrangement, 2016 (image via 
