All Things Art & Photography
In Art School the saying goes; “If you can’t make it good make it big. If you can’t make it big paint it red”. But with this stellar cast of painters, big paintings are big for a reason. This is a must see all-star show. Every painting is a home run.
January 28 – March 2, 2014
Wilkinson Gallery
New York Academy of Art
111 Franklin Street New York, NY 10013
Exhibition: New York Academy of Art: The Big Picture
I can’t wait to see this show…
Remember if it were up to the dealers the photography world would be stuck in the 19th century forever. (Too much emphasis on selling antiquities and thus antiquated ideas). Try to remember it is not a lens and shutter that defines a photograph. It is now about the “ideas and concepts” behind the image and any artist should be able to embrace every tool of the trade to bring their vision to light.
There will always be those that “take” a photo and then there are those that “make” one. ( The latter is far more interesting in my opinion and where I live and think; See my new Light Projections and Infinities).
Is a scanner a type of camera? You bet it is. If there is a rule that defines what a photograph is today it is simply that there are no rules – only questions. Those that pose the most interesting questions and push the medium will succeed because change must happen. ( The type of work I am talking about can not be made with a Photoshop filter…) Embrace the changes, as this is the most exciting time for Photography I have seen in 25 years.
Matthew Brandt, Grays Lake, ID 7, 2013. © Matthew Brandt, courtesy Yossi Milo Gallery, New York.
JANUARY 31–MAY 4, 2014
Organized by ICP Curator Carol Squiers, What Is a Photograph? will explore the intense creative experimentation in photography that has occurred since the 1970s. Conceptual art introduced photography into contemporary art making, using the medium in ways that challenged it artistically, intellectually, and technically and broadened the notion of what a photograph could be in art. A new generation of artists began an equally rigorous but more aesthetically adventurous analysis, which probed photography itself—from the role of light, color, composition, to materiality and the subject. What Is a Photograph? brings together these artists, who reinvented photography.
Artists
Matthew Brandt
Marco Breuer
Liz Deschenes
Adam Fuss
Owen Kydd
Floris Neusüss
Marlo PascualSigmar Polke
Eileen Quinlan
Jon Rafman
Gerhard Richter
Mariah Robertson
Alison Rossiter
Lucas SamarasTravess Smalley
David Benjamin Sherry
Kate Steciw
Artie Vierkant
James Welling
Christopher Williams
Letha Wilsonvia ICP
Exhibitions New York: What is a Photograph at ICP
Roger Ballen is the William Faulkner of image-makers. His work is in the collections of over 20 museums yet the general public does not know much about him. He still shoots film. He mines the areas between sculpture and photography, darkness and the light. His photos are some of the richest in all of art. He makes his work in places in South Africa where the police will not go near; Hell on earth kind of places. His disturbing work grabs the back of your brain and won’t let go. Right now he is everywhere. Check out why he has blown the doors off the art and photo world. Maybe the most powerful work ever done by any artist. To understand the environments he frequents, and thus his pictures, you have to see the video above first…
“Photography is like going into the mineshaft”
“What I am doing is about visual relationships not stories…”
On his project: Aslyum for the Birds:
Asylum has two main meanings in the English language; the first is a place where insanity prevails and the second describes a place of refuge. In some ways those are very opposing meanings. In ‘Asylum of the Birds’, the asylum is place where animals and people live together away from the outside world. It’s a very claustrophobic, surreal and strange place yet, at the same time, what’s going on in this place is abnormal – it comes from deeper levels of the subconscious, but I don’t equate those deeper levels with insanity.
via January 2014 / Peggy Sue Amison in conversation with Roger Ballen
Excerpt from his talk at the George Eastman House: The Shadow Chamber
The Photographs of Roger Ballen
Nice series of tree portraits by Myoung Ho Lee from 2009. Myoung builds a huge white background behind some pretty big trees. Any photographer who has tried this knows a small puff of wind can tear your shoot to pieces.. This is not easy and the artist needs a big crew (and a crane) to pull it off… but the results are really wonderful.
“Myoung Ho Lee photographs solitary trees framed against white canvas backdrops in the middle of natural landscapes. To install the large canvases, which span approximately 60 by 45 feet, the artist enlists a production crew and heavy cranes. Minor components of the canvas support system, such as ropes or bars, are later removed from the photograph through minimal digital retouching, creating the illusion that the backdrop is floating behind the tree.”
via the Yossi Milo Gallery
The Photographs of Myoung Ho Lee
With echos of some of Vilem Kriz’s images as well as Man Ray & Joseph Cornell, Heidi Kirkpatrick constructs mysterious, surreal boxes that transport you into her beautiful interior world.
“I live with a substantial amount of physical pain and have for many years. In my continual search for an answer, as well as my way of dealing with the unexplained, I dissect my Gray’s Anatomy book. The pages find their way into my work, layered under images of those closest to me. The illustrations bind, clothe and wrap the body. Putting the inside on the outside, I wear my heart on my sleeve”.
The Surrealist Photo Constructions of Heidi Kirkpatrick