July 11, 2012

(above,Yasuaki Onishi at Rice University)

Janell Olah


Janell is an installation artist from Philly, and a close friend (she had a baby boy same time as I had Gus).  Her works seamlessly marry humor, profundity and personal narrative.  She has made several projects that exist in photo documentation- I have linked the one for her son (cause it is relevant to this quarterly and most recent). But she has most invested her work in making seen the unseen, fastening big plastic tubes to ventilation systems and the blow up, move, sigh, etc.


http://janellolah.com/projects/i-packed-a-cloud-machine-to-help-you-sleep-2/




Berndnaut Smilde

I discovered this guy recently, most certainly one of those "OMG"
Facebook posts that makes the rounds- but this work is amazing.  It it
a work that is documented in photography, but exist only for a few
minutes as an ephemeral little cloud made in a gallery.  I hope this
is true, as it is what I think the best art is, work that challenges
the market and speaks to hope, no matter how small.

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/19555/floating-cloud-installation-by-berndnaut-smilde.html


Andy Goldsworthy-installation work


A "Big Time" british artist, and has such delicate and ephemeral work.   The movie about his work "Rivers and Tides" is great, worth watching if you guys are killing time on the road.


http://www.sculpture.org.uk/AndyGoldsworthy/






Yasuaki Onishi


I just saw this work through some internet art blog.  I love how his work transcends the medium with which it is made (plastic sheeting and hot glue).  At least, the images seem so, though I really would have to see the work in person.  Watching the video makes the artist/gallery/Brooklyn art somebodies seem super gimmicky, but the way the work hangs in the gallery from the ceiling and becomes this web of...soemthing...i like.  I love it when I don't know what to think about a work of art, you know?


http://www.ricegallery.org/new/exhibition/yasu.html

January 17, 2012

This quarter's issue will highlight some major, super famous and super great artists, still living, and men. These people are those who have solo shows at MoMA, Whitney, all over Europe, China--kinda untouchable in terms of fame.  But these are the ones whose work I love.

Tim Hawkinson
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/tim-hawkinson
Art 21 (the link above) is a great place to see contemporary artists--and a great place to read short bits on their work (not too heady or theoretical, yet smart).  
I love TH's work, in that it is playful yet ambitious.  Felix and I got to see his "uberorgan" at MassMOCA years back:http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=63
-- we walked through this huge mass of palstic tubes while our movements tripped sounds for the organ.  His work has a lot to do with systems and the body.  He is a Christian- not talked about a lot in the art world (there are not many of us, it seems) but you can see some themes running through his Pentecost piece.


Gerhard Richter
http://www.gerhard-richter.com/
and a super cool video of him making a painting: 
http://www.nowness.com/day/2011/10/7/1668/gerhard-richter-painting

Painter, ambivalent, he is known for his use of photographic imaging in art--like to paint the "blur" that happens when a camera takes in image in motion.  Super smart, wrestling with the demons of Germany and the ambivalence and guilt of his generation.  Defected from East Germany into Berlin.  VERY influential in my airplanes work, and I am seeing his hand in my newest works in my show for next month too.


Luc Tuymans
http://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/luc-tuymans/
His work is vivid realism without being chained to any photographic reference. 
I SO want to go to Belgium with Bieke and Micah this summer to see his studio and work.  He's got shows here, but it'd be so nice to see where he makes.  He makes paitnings that seem ambivalent, like Richter, yet they are so "now" and comtemporary.  He supposedly makes work really quickly, like a painting a day or a week.  MoMA has a portrait he did of Condoleeza Rice that stopped me in my tracks:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNtV-upIBiA

Robert Ryman
http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/robert-ryman
Yes, of THAT Ryman in Nashville.
This guy is a major "East Coast Minimalist", and his works have made my cry.  So simple, and just enough. His white works have spurred a whole slew of backlashes of "black" and "grey" works.
http://www.moma.org/collection/artist.php?artist_id=5098
His work is akin to the woman artist, one of my favorites, Agnes Martin (but perhaps hers have more feeling, I dunno).

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jodi hays		Jan 7
Drew and Ellie- Saw Drew tonight and remembered that I did not send this for ...

April 13, 2012

For this issue I will be ripping off the Oxford American's Visual Art
Issue (76).  I'll highlight five of the 100 artists they mention, most
of whose work I know anyway.

Jessica Ingram- (have i written about her?)

Jess is a native Nashvillian, via NYC then Oakland.  She's a
photographer whose roots are in "documenting" sites that have been
forgotten related to the Civil Rights Movement.  I brought her work to
TSU, and we have remained friends.

http://jessingram.com/home.html

Fahamu Pecou

This guy from Atlanta is super popular.  Not sure if I like his work
anymore, but it certainly comments on (or uses) celebrity and hip hop
cultures, perveyed into fine art.

http://www.fahamupecouart.com/

Amy Pleasant

Love Amy's  (Birmingham) work.  She shows at a gallery in NY (Jeff
Bailey) that I'd love to be a part of...someday.  Her work vasicalltes
between representation and mostly abstraction. Full, lush, daring,
relevant, southern.

http://amypleasant.com/

Patrick DeQuira

He is a friend from Nashville, super smart- was in the Brooks Museum
show with me a few years back.  Mostly conceptual painting, takes a
lot of critical theory to make sense of his work but yet his
motivations are also really personal.

http://www.patrick-deguira.com/

October 20, 2011

These are people with whom I wish I lived (at least close enough to do studio visits).  So the first of the visual quarterlies...


First Installment: Landscape


http://www.clairesherman.com
I am in love with her paintings.  She teeters so effectively between abstract and representation. 

http://www.ellenmillergallery.com/portfolio/stephen-mishol/#http://www.ellenmillergallery.com/wp-content/uploads/galleria/ed309fdb28f5cfd48fbecb898760626c.jpg

I was an adjunct professor at UMass Lowell with Stephen Mishol.  Let's just say his bleak Boston highways are a grim reminder of the end of season Red Sox collapse.  I love them.

http://www.jeredsprecher.com/
I knew of Jered's work in Boston through his gallery- but he now lives in Knoxville and teaches at UTK.  His painting language is rare in these parts, way too rare.  SHould have bought his drawing three years ago when I showed with him, now they are out-pricing my budget.  Dammit.


http://victoriaburge.com/
I was at Vermont (The first time, Dec 2006) Studio Center with Victoria.  She is a printmaker, in grad school now.  One of her pieces is in our bathroom. I LOVE her graphic map pieces--bird's eye perspective on landscape.  So perfect.