Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Christmas Art 2013

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. I am taking time off for the holidays, but I will be back in 2014. In the meantime, enjoy this Christmas art from the Renaissance to the present. Thank you for reading my blog and your continued support.

Hugo Van der Goes "Nativity"

Caravaggio "Nativity with Five Saints"
Giovanni Tiepolo "Nativity"

Arthur Hughes "Nativity"

Arthur Boyd Houghton, "Uncle John with the Young Folk All Prizes and No Blanks"

Edward Burne Jones "Nativity"


David Jones, "Exiit Edictum"

David Hume "Snowman Back"

Elmgreen and Dragset "Culture Vulture"

Idris Khan "Trees of Yuletides Past"

Gavin Turk "A Star on High"

Kiki Smith "Starry Starry Night"

Laure Prouvost "Help Find Grandad"

Martin Kippenberger, "Well-lit Pre-Christmas Exhibition in Leopoldstrasse 1991-92"

MartinBoyce_"Weeping Willow Lanterns"

Yutaka Sone

Chris Verene's Untitled (from the Galesburg series "Christmas Lights Contest Winner"), 1998


Friday, December 20, 2013

"Vessel" by Mark Whalen at The Standard Hotel, Hollywood, California



Artist Statement
The idea to start exploring ceramics as a medium rather than simply a subject in my paintings came about through my interest in the history of vessels. A vessel can be so many things – a receptacle, a nautical craft, a tubular conductive structure, container or hollow utensil. They have many functions, from the rudimentary to the sacred. They are, at once, incredibly decorative, collectable and purposeful items and for this reason I have incorporated them into the narrative of my paintings as just that, collectable items and items that have a significant purpose to the characters using them.
I found that as the vessel forms were evolving within the paintings, so too was my thought process behind how my work can be presented. As with the video works I have collaborated on in the past, I have long felt that the subjects within my paintings allow me a freedom to explore broader art making forms without jeopardizing the integrity of the conceptual foundation.
Consequently, with the ceramics it is as much about the making of the vessels as it is the story that is being told on, or by them. The surface, the glaze, the finish mimics the resin on the paintings. There is a clear correlation that, I think, binds the works together as a much grander representation of what it is I am trying to achieve.
“Vessel”, Mark Whalen’s installation for The Box and Lobby at The Standard, Hollywood, will be on display through mid-January. 

Monday, December 16, 2013

LIFE: ON THE MOON at Various Small Fires, Venice, California

CHRISTOPHER BADGER / TREVOR PAGLEN / KATIE PATERSON /
ROBERT SMITHSON / TAVARES STRACHAN / 
MICHELLE STUART  

November 2nd – December 7th

The surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles.” — Neil Armstrong, 1969

I described the moon shot once as a very expensive non-site…To an extent I thought that after they got to the moon there was a strange demoralization that set in that they didn’t discover little green men, or something.” — Robert Smithson, 1972

Various Small Fires presents LIFE: ON THE MOON, a group exhibition tracing the immediate influence and lasting significance of the epochal July 20, 1969 moon landing on the early development of Land Art, represented by Robert Smithson and Michelle Stuart, in dialogue with recent works by Christopher Badger, Trevor Paglen, Katie Paterson, and Tavares Strachan.

In August 1969, LIFE Magazine published dozens of full-page stills from films of the moon’s surface shot by Neil Armstrong in an issue titled “LIFE: On The Moon.” The colonization and documentation of the moon’s previously mysterious lunar landscape revealed it to be a desolate “non-site”, while also forever shifting perception of fundamental landscape concepts such as scale, distance, accessibility, and jurisdiction.

Concurrently with the military-industrial “space race” leading up to the moon landing, American artists began to experiment outside of traditional studio practice, intervening at a terrestrial scale to initiate the Land Art movement. Michelle Stuart, an early member of this movement, produced a series of haunting mixed media meditations on paper in 1969 including Magnetic Forces, exhibited here for the first time, that subtly critique the techno-scientific mandate to strip the moon of its mystery. Fellow Land Art progenitor Robert Smithson’s rarely noted lunar influence is illustrated by his 1972 Lake Edge Crescent proposal to transform a depleted Midwestern strip mine “non-site” into a crescent-marked earthwork resembling the moon’s barren surface.

A selection of recent works further engages the moon’s paradoxical post-landing status as a familiar yet inaccessible site/non-site. Christopher Badger’s Lunar Mirrors are polished reliefs of high-resolution NASA lunar topographical data rendered as glamorous abstractions. Badger also presents a towering 30-foot model of a lunar spire, which was commonly hypothesized to populate the moon’s surface by 19th century European astronomers misled by crater shadows. Katie Paterson’s Second Moon playfully addresses the moon’s out-of-reach familiarity by sending an actual crated moon rock into “orbit” around the Earth via UPS, which will make occasional stops during the exhibition to an otherwise empty pedestal at Various Small Fires, tracked via a networked touchscreen console.

Trevor Paglen uses espionage techniques to portray the military-surveillance complex’s landscape and skyscape interventions hidden in plain site, as in Dead Military Navigation Satellite (Cosmos 985) Near the Disk of the Moon, in which a defunct top secret satellite floats for eternity as an artificial second moon. In Standing Alone, which debuted at his 2013 Venice Biennale Bahamas Pavilion, Tavares Strachan plants a flag on the North Pole in proxy of a lunar landing, as a poignant post-colonial gesture.

Various Small Fires
http://www.vsf.la/


Trevor Paglen, Dead Military Navigation Satellite (Cosmos 985) Near the Disk of the Moon, 2012, C-print, 44 x 36 inches

Tavares Strachan; Standing Alone; 2013; 2 panel light box; 96 x 14.5 inches, 48 x 14.5 inches; (detail)

Tavares Strachan; Standing Alone; 2013; 2 panel light box; 96 x 14.5 inches, 48 x 14.5 inches;


Installation View

Katie Paterson

Christopher Badger, The Reflective Topography of Necho Crater, 2013, Cast aluminum, 38.5 x 38.5 inches




Michelle Stuart; #7; 1969; 
Graphite, colored pencil, gelatin-silver prints on paper; 23 1/2 x 27 7/8 inches; (Detail)

Michelle Stuart; #7; 1969; 
Graphite, colored pencil, gelatin-silver prints on paper; 23 1/2 x 27 7/8 inches; (Detail)

Michelle Stuart; #7; 1969; 
Graphite, colored pencil, gelatin-silver prints on paper; 23 1/2 x 27 7/8 inches; 

Katie Paterson; Second Moon; 2013; Lunar meteorite, 

Trevor Paglen, Dead Military Navigation Satellite (Cosmos 985) Near the Disk of the Moon, 2012, 
C-print, 44 x 36 inches

Robert Smithson; Lake Edge Crescents, Egypt Valley, Ohio; 1972;
Pencil and paint overlay on aerial photograph; 19.5 x 23 3/4 inches

Trevor Paglen, UFO-F6 in Geosynchronous Orbit (Ultra High Frequency Follow-On Communications Spacecraft; USA 114), 2013,
C-print, 48 x 72 inches

Friday, December 13, 2013

PĂ©rez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) Preview - Vernissage Video


This video provides you with a walkthrough of the new PĂ©rez Art Museum Miami on the occasion of the press preview. The museum that opens this week during Art Basel Miami Beach week has been designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron. The Pritzker Prize-winning architects Herzog & de Meuron have created a rather transparent museum that offers 200,000 square feet of programmable space for exhibitions, educational and other social activities. It also features vertical gardens by hanging garden designer Patrick Blanc. As opening exhibitions, the Jorge M. PĂ©rez Art Museum of Miami-Dade County presents Ai Weiwei, Amelia Peláez, Bouchra Khalili, Yael Bartana, Monika Sosnowska, and Hew Locke, and the group show Americana.
PĂ©rez Art Museum Miami. Press preview, December 3, 2013.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Hostile Hospitality - A Group Show Curated by Christy Roberts, Upland, California

Hospitality and hostility both originate from the same latin root word, hostis, meaning stranger or enemy. Hostile Hospitality, Highland House’s third event, curated by Christy Roberts, will explore the relationship between host and stranger/enemy and host and stranger/guest. 

Artists include: Matthew Carter, Steven Frost, Girl Puke, Michelle Carla Handel, Kyla Hansen, Michele Jaquis, Zach Kleyn, Alexander Kroll, Liz Nurenberg, Dominic Quagliozzi, Chris Reynolds, Tessie Whitmore, and Peter Wu.

Highland House is a private residence and artist studio in Upland, California, approximately 40 miles east of Los Angeles that seeks to provide Culture Workers with a space for alternative presentation and local community members with exposure to new modes of culture production. Highland House Collective is made up of working artists, whose practices are based in Los Angeles, but who reside in the Inland Empire. Members include: Kristen Bradford, Christy Roberts, Gary Michael Spisak, Andrew K. Thompson, and Erich Wise.


https://www.facebook.com/events/561581340584195/?ref_dashboard_filter=calendar



Dominic Quagliozzi

Michelle Carla Handel

Tessie Whitmore

Peter Wu

Alexander Kroll

Michele Jaquis

Matthew Carter

Matthew Carter

Steven Frost

Installation View

Chris Reynolds

Chris Reynolds

Chris Reynolds

Dominic Quagliozzi

Dominic Quagliozzi

Michelle Carla Handel

Alexander Kroll

Zach Kleyn

Girl Puke

Liz Nurenberg


Kyla Hansen


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