Anyone can see this, no MFA needed. Trick is, you have to look. I might have walked by these pieces because they didn't LEAP out at me near the end of my day. It is a bad habit at art shows. Look at the unassuming pieces or, like the work by Siro, those that are not obvious and loud. It makes it all more rewarding when you look closely and find somethin
This is a piece that caught my ear rather than my eye (at least initially). I overheard a discussion of how Siro's work, Equilibrio, was resin, ink and oil on rubber canvas. I am sure "artistes" find this mundane. It sounded interesting to me. When you look closely at the work you see the difference between this and a "normal" canvas. And the media used add to this.
Anyone can see this, no MFA needed. Trick is, you have to look. I might have walked by these pieces because they didn't LEAP out at me near the end of my day. It is a bad habit at art shows. Look at the unassuming pieces or, like the work by Siro, those that are not obvious and loud. It makes it all more rewarding when you look closely and find somethin
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Even if the artist isn't from my hometown, the gallery showing his work is. Steven Gagnon shows a new, more meaningful take on hope and progress. It somehow feels there should be a third in this series dealing with rehab.
Gagnon says (on his website) that his work tries to capture the underlying sameness in American culture (this is my summary of his words). He says that despite the USA being disparate there is an underlying "attitude." I agree with that. His work recalls some others efforts. When you see cans don't you think Warhol? But like all artists you notice he puts his own spin here. This sounds like faint praise but it truly isn't. Making any sort of art your own, any style, any medium, is really the trick. And boy must he get sick of the Warhol comparison. It is such an obvious observation that I am almost ashamed to have made it (almost) Verve Gallery, by the way, is located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Maxim Bashev's work shown by Art-Kvartal Gallery was some of the last work I stopped to look at on my second day at Art Chicago/Next.
Bashev was born in Moscow and has been exhibiting for 25 years. In other words, he started young. His work is the sort of art that catches the eye of art aficionado and someone looking up basketball scores on their smart phone. It has a sort of dark quality to it that is belied by his use of color. Likewise he uses large areas of solid color against smaller areas of intricate, expressionistic painting (I use the term more in its dictionary definition than art-definition here). His work seems to be in public collections mostly in Europe. Your best bet seeing it is in Europe, gallery shows or art shows. He is a significant artist in m humble and utterly unprofessional opinion. Yang Yang is a sculptor and painer from Nanchang, China. His work was displayed at Art Chicago by Gallery 456 and the Chinese American Arts Council. His work has become quite popular and is in a variety of museum collections (the Minneapolis Instutute of Arts in the USA for one).
His paintings are mostly figures but not conventional ones. I noted the mix of bright and dark, the mélange of the real and abstract. Yang uses a variety of medium including paoer, canvas and sculptures in fiberglass, ceramic and bronze. I found these interesting but I have nothing really to say on them....I had a video but it was terrible. But thought I would post this anyway. Have a look.
I couldn't bring myself to do further research today! Maybe I can clean up the video. Fred Eerdekens is a Belgian-born artist whose sculptures were featured at the Spencer Brownstone Gallery.
When I looked at these metal structures on the wall I thought they were quite beautiful. It took my 13 year old son to point out that the shadows from these images spell out words. Indeed other works by Eerdekens make use of the environment they exist in—and in more ways that is true of all art. Their shadows are parts of the work, as integral as the metal. The works are about incorporation of language. They are intricate and a look into the modern mental landscape. Thomas Sgouros' landscapes positively glow. These are from the artist's Remembered Landscapes series and were displayed at Art Chicago/Next 2011 as part of Cade Tompkins Projects.
The series is from the 1990s. The press description for the artists (this series anyway) says "The Paintings are at once luminist, expressive and modern." Which is a truly apt sentence. Despite the realism they also have an abstract quality. My photos do not, as usual do justice. Sgouros is Professor Emeritis of the Rhode Island School of Design. Among the awards he has received is Clairborne Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2001. Manahatta Licht Feld is a Swiss virtual gallery/gallery, exhibition and nonprofit (partially anyway) that has been around for about ten years. They focus on new artists. Fredy Hadorn is the man behind and creator of Licht Feld. “The mission of lf started in 2001 in Switzerland. I saw an old factory and this reminded me of an old factory I saw during my art school studies, 20 years before.” says Hadorn. This took place during an exhibit with a number of well-known artists (including Dieter Roth, and others). Twenty years later, Hadorn stood in a similar factory to where the exhibition was held and he was reminded of the earlier exhibition. “I was standing in this factory site and there are hundreds of small windows and one of them was not dirty and then the sun came up and let the sun shine into the hall on the other side of the wall, it placed a light field, a licht feld. It was a kind of magic moment and I knew I would do, in there an exhibition.” he says. He began with five artists he knew from Basel and it became a yearly event. These days there will be 40 to 50 artists involved from all over the USA, from Europe and even from China. “And we produce a catalog for the documentation. Since 2007 came out from nonprofit project to a high commercial situation. Licht Feld is now joining art festivals,” he says. “We are walking in an art world that is nonprofit in one part and I can choose one or three or five artists from my own shows in Switzerland take them out to art fairs and see what happens.” Fredy Hadorn Talks About His Own Work, Manahatta. Video art by Marck The first foray into art fairs was at Scope in Miami. He was invited to go but then asked “What does this mean?” Of course it means you have to come up with a portion (at least) of the money. Hadorn says he scraped together the cash and the rest is history. The artists were (and are) not well known. This was especially true the first time at Scope. Collectors and curators came by to look—not to see the names on the art but to see the art itself. “This is a compliment to me.” says Hadorn. The art that was shown at Art Chicago/Next was eclectic. You cannot, necessarily, look at it and say “this collection is of such and such sort of art.” There is sculpture. There is multimedia. There is video. And, to be sure, there are paintings. How does Hadorn choose what is shown at Fairs? “I have to take care of program for sure, I don't show abstract, it has to be very very good .What does that mean? It has to be good for me! I don’t see a lot of good abstract; I think that is maybe why. I choose in a way from my heart and my understanding of art and what it means—I don’t know the word in English, the ‘intellectual relation”…the power, you need to be attracted,” he says. “It has to say something. I like people who produce art that can talks about life. I am interested in humans, why do they act like that and this. I like people to talk about their lives, their pains, their fear. That brings me to this artist, when I get the feeling they are honest and they are staying on the artist, that you can trust them. When I feel this and the artwork attracts me then it comes round.” The extremely gracious Fredy Hadorn had to keep some school kids from touching, and snatching money from the hands of, one of his gallery's sculptures. His two pronged approach, part nonprofit part for profit is a good way to develop artists and fund the development of those same artists. We have some other videos of Licht Feld Artists that will be posted later.
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