Kara Walker (Nicole's Pick)

My artist of the week is Kara Walker. Greg showed us her work in class and I found it really interesting. Born in California, she moved to Georgia in her early teens. She was apprehensive about the movie to the south due to fears of racial issues. Her work deals primarily with gender and race issues of African American women during “Antebellum South”, creating an almost alternate world and nightmare effect. Her techniques range from painting to drawing. She is more widely known for her signature black paper silhouette installations. I respond to her work because she is dealing with an issue that she originally feared when moving to the south. She confronts her fears through her work and uses it as a type of therapy, much like I am attempting to do with my fear of dolls. Kara Walker relates to Nicholas Di Genova in that they both combine images, whether they be animal or human, to create new and often exaggerated forms.

Wolfgang Tillmans

My artist of the weeks this week is Wolfgang Tillmans. His work appeals to me because of his documentary style and his use of color...He shoots mostly his friends, who he considers not only models but his collaborators. I really enjoy taking pictures of my friends as a way to document my own experience of life and I think Tillmans does a great job of portraying his life through his photographs. I also really enjoy the fact that Tillmans works with color film, I feel that it's pretty obvious in his work that the images aren't digital, and there's a kind of preciousness in the idea of using film, as it seems to be becoming increasingly obsolete. The colors to me are obviously the kind of colors you get from film. The colors are also subjective without being completely over the top...I think Tillmans does a great job of controlling and altering the color of his images, without making them look overdone.

Tillmans work could be compared Justin Sunhueza Campoy's work, as both artists draw inspiration from everyday objects and experiences. A large component of both artist's bodies of work is a subjective use of color, which is mostly realistic, but is still used as a vehicle for expression.

Justin Sanhueza Campoy (Jenn's pick)

How Do You Kill Yourself in an
Electric Oven, Oil on Canvas, 2005 68"x58"

I love this guy. I found him when on some painting contest book/website, and looked him up. I'm glad that he actually had a website because all weekend I've been seeing/meeting people I would like to look up and I can't find anyone.
Anyway, his website was really interesting because he talks about his work, on video. Even though the video is kind of awkward looking, and long, I learned lots of good things.
He says he doesn't bother trying to load his work with meaning, because that back tracks the work, making it less interesting and meaningful. He says that he just does paintings that were originally sketches in his sketchbook. He doesn't try to make them things that they're not. This is interesting to me because I like painting things in in my sketchbook, but have felt a lot of pressure to try to make them link together so that people in class won't ask the horrible question "uh, how does this relate to what you did last week?" He works in kind of Equisite Corpse style- his work relates because he's been drawing it, and thinking it. That's the only way it all relates, yet he has a coherent body of work.
It's good to know that there doesn't really have to be an ultra deep thesis behind everything you're doing. Sometimes you like a picture, so you paint it. After you do this so many times you might find an overall thesis. This also relates to something I learned in my education class- that you write the introduction after you finish the paper, making the paper less limiting. In some of the video, he emphasizes that it's important to make lots of work, and some paintings will be good, and some will be bad, but it's OK as long as you keep going.
Anyway, I like the self portrait "I want to go home, I want sex, I want a new job, I want a pizza" because he really relates to what I'm thinking about 80% of the time. I'm guessing this relates to what other people are thinking a majority of the time too.
Like other artists people have shown, Monica's, and Nicole's picks... there is a lot of humor, but still a "deep" element. "How to Kill Yourself in an Electric Oven" is funny at first glance, but it's just a more literal meaning for "yeah those legs are sexy but they are going to make you miserable or kill you."

I Want to Go Home, I Want a New Job, I Want Sex, I Want a Pizza, 2006, 36"x48"

Nicholas Di Genova

I've been feeling slightly burnt out on art theory recently, so I decided to post about an artist who works in a more illustration-informed mode. I've been thinking about working in non-paint media recently. It's somewhat refreshing to me when I feel that I can enjoy art without needing to set it in a larger art historical context, look for referents, etc, etc. Maybe other people people don't get overwhelmed by a need to find meaning in work this way, but sometimes I do. And what can I say, I've always been a sucker for good line quality. (More hi-res images here)

Nicholas Di Genova, also known as "Medium" is an artist from Toronto. He creates hybrid animals designs, often combining the features of two very different animals to create a strange new creature. The fact that he's coming from a street art background is pretty easy to see in the way his works are primarily character design. In terms of content, I enjoy the way his work references zoology and evolution.

Artists' blogs are always fun to look at: http://skeletonhug.blogspot.com/. There are plenty more images here, including ones from a recent show he had in Toronto.

Jill Greenberg (Nicole's Pick)

Jill Greenberg is commercial photographer who is probably most well known for her “monkey series”. She stirred up controversy in 2006 when she shot portraits of children’s faces “contorted by various emotional distresses”. She would cause the “emotional distress” by offering the child a piece of candy and then suddenly taking it away. The titles of the pieces “reflect Greenberg’s frustration with both the Bush administration and Christian Fundamentalism in the United States”. I like her work because she is able to capture the vulnerability of a child and also a great deal of emotion within a few seconds. Greenberg could relate to Monica’s pick of the week Maurizio Cattelan. Although Greenberg’s images aren’t necessarily meant to be humorous, she is pushing society to its limits, making people laugh and also get angry about her photos all at the same time. I also liked Whitney’s artist of the week Robb Johnson and his focus on the physicality of photography by layer images. As opposed to focusing on just the “image” he is pushing it further.

Thomas Kinkaide (Michael's Pick)

I've been making jokes about using Thomas Kinkaide (The Painter of Light, tm) seriously for a few weeks now. The more I make them, the more I realize that half the time we makes jokes in life, its because we want to gauge other's responses.

So why not consider Thomas Kinkaide seriously? He's the best selling artist of our time. Formally and aesthetically, his artwork is beautiful and pleasant. Ask any grandmother. Can beauty be its own reward, or is that a bygone of the era of art as image?

My interest in Thomas Kinkaide comes mainly from the fact that he makes no bones about marketing his artwork in ridiculous ways. Go to Barnes and Noble, for example. You can get the Thomas Kinkaide 2008 Engagement Calendar, Thank You cards, and he even has a series of novels that he "co-wrote" in the Religious Fiction section. While we may consider the pandering of his aesthetic to a targeted niche (the tasteless), he really is playing the market in a rather saavy way. Has he compromised his ideals? Does he share OUR ideals as artists? Does he derive joy from his painting, from making marks on the printed canvases he sells at his mall "gallerys"? Don't artists historically panderer to the rich and clueless?

Living in this post mechanical reproduction, post image world, an artist like Kinkaide (whether knowingly or not) is demonstrating a lot of very important issues in the art world and asking a lot about the role of the artist and the modes of representation. Obviously though, his lack of importance in the art world comes from the fact that he contributes nothing to our culture. Its all more of the same, and it looks tacky on my walls, even though the print was cheap at the Christmas Tree Shop.

But I cant help but be a little envious. He is doing something he loves, has reconciled the fact that he's pandering to bad sensibilities (check out his website. He's doing paintings for Disney of Cinderella's Castle!!!), and is making a mint off it. I can fault him all I want, but he's still rich as hell. Artistic integrity or Grandma's Money?

You decide.

Andrew Emond (Cade's Post)

Andrew Emond is a photographer from Canada who maintains a blog detailing his photographic finds while exploring urban and industrial desolation. He has everything from the interiors of the offices of abandoned mines to empty sewer channels deep under the ground. It seems that his wanderings are endless and varied, and he is mainly interested in the lack of human presence but also the human footprint, which is something that draws me to urban night photography as well. His photographs are interesting to think about in the context of modern society, for many of them deal with things like asbestos mines. He explores so thoroughly that in many of his photographs he provides some of the history he has discovered about a place. For instance, sometimes there will be photos of binders on empty desks, and they will only say "1995" on them. I find his work very interesting because his photos speak to his awareness of his own presence in a location (he occasionally puts himself in the shot also), and also his interest in the fact that in some of these places, the people just got up and left one day and never came back.

dion archibald (jenn's pick)

t: traffic d: 2002 m: oil on board s: 60x90cm $: private collection

Dion Archibald is a young painter from Australia. His main focus is experimenting with materials and technique in order to portray his subject matter. He works in both figurative painting and Urban landscapes. This relates to my work because one of my favorite things to paint is urban landscapes. I like the way he uses thin layers of paint and overlaps them. I also like the way he has no outlines for some of his layers, like the mountains, and then has thick black lines going across the canvas in order to create depth in the picture. His color palette is also similar to mine for both the urban landscape, and the portrait. I appreciate shades of gray, and sometimes using a bold color in order to create contrast.
His expressionist way of painting, and creating his figures with a certain mood is similar to Peter's pick, Connor Harrington. Although Archibald's is more painterly, they both use layers in order to portray the form.

Robb Johnson (Whitney's Post)

My artist of the week is Robb Johnson. I chose him because his work is somewhat related to mine in that his images expose the physicality of photography by making the grain very apparent, but he isn't currently working in digital, so I don't know to what extent the images are manipulated. He also works with shadows and other ways of creating layers in his images, something I've been working towards myself.

Robb Johnson's photos compliment Marcus Harvey's paintings nicely. Both artists' images expose the materiality of their chosen medium and both work with abstracted, layered images.

Connor Harrington (peter's pick)

'According to Conor himself, central to his oil canvasses is "the male figure, referring to the masculinity of urban culture". The men in Conor's paintings allude to the not necessarily heroic, but stoic and pensive male of the modernist painters; however the pieces are plastered with post-modern graffito flourishes in a pertinent clash of styles - "I'm interested in the dynamics between opposing elements" says the artist. Both the male figures and abstract elements of the work are unarguably contemporary, the emotions they transmit are timeless, if currently under-rated - dignity, courage and a quiet sense of duty to oneself and those around us.'
I see harrington's work as very similar to mine, in the sense of dealing with the human figure while maintaining a sense of an abstract element.

I really like Stephen Gill's photos (Whitney's pick). I think they have a painterly quality to them, with the colors especially. I think the top photo also contains some abstract elements in it.

Marina Bychkova (Nicole's Pick)

Marina Bychkova is a Russian born artist now living and working in Canada. She focuses primarily on doll making but also dabbles in painting and intaglio prints. She began creating her dolls when she was six years old and is intrigued by the idea of escapism that they create. She creates narratives of fairy tales and states that, “What intrigues me about a fairy tale is the implicit and often explicit violence that lies just beneath the surface of the magic”.

I am drawn to her work because she is able to portray a great deal of narrative through her dolls and the images of her dolls. She is also interested in the idea of what goes on beneath just the surface and pushing her work to convey those ideas.

I suppose Bychkova could be compared to Yann Arthus-Bertrand in that the both use the idea of delicacy and softness when creating art. They are both concerned with letting the images speak for themselves as opposed to trying to send a literal message.

I really like the Marc Abrahms post. After looking through some of his images, I have found that I like his "People" series. They show and immense amount of character and expression.

Marcus Harvey (Mike Seidman's pick)

My pick this week is Marcus Harvey who Greg introduced me to a few days ago via the email tubes. In this series he’s doing, he layers an abstract ground with very hard-edged graphic/illustrative images (mostly pornographic). He uses a the full spectrum of colors and a combination of random and clearly premeditated directionality in the brushwork, which is at points related to, but not perfectly aligned with the content that is outlined on top. They eye darts around the square compositions and tries to relate it to the outlined subject. I find myself allowing the coloration to act as shading and depth and form, yet it is dynamic and upon close inspection, this effect breaks down. The viewer is free to jump in and out of seeing a complete and incomplete image. I really like this series and it inspires me to continue struggling with my project/s, and to find an uncontrived elegant way of dealing with all this in one decisive… thing. It also inspires me to broaden my scope to a wealth of diverse techniques and colors and styles that can all create the same effect. I need to use more color and go back to oil. Also, obscene is always a plus. Yes always.

Now for the artificial business of connecting some aspect of this work to some aspect of another posted work. You could really choose any two at random and draw some connection. I suppose it’s a good exercise in building an eagerness to make connections in the art world. I will connect Marcus Harvey to Morton Bartlett (Nicole’s pick). Both artists straddle the impression of realism and familiarity. Bartlett deals with family and tries to concoct realistic family photos with dolls, while Harvey evokes this tremendous institution of pornography and so they both deal with a whole genre of something that we have expectations for. Yet they both tweak the presentation in a way that it becomes something new. Something familiar and unfamiliar by the same token.

I like Andy Goldsworthy (Michael’s pick). A lot. I love the act of creating something that appears artificial from that which is exclusively “natural.” I love the act of creating something that looks natural that, upon closer inspection, cannot possibly be naturally occurring. I like the transience of his sculptures and the fact that they rapidly deteriorate. Yet he photographs them, so we know that he is not simply at peace with allowing his works to dissapear. He documents them and stores them and guards them. Goldsworthy’s less-than-Zen personality is a remarkable compliment to his reeking-of-Zen productions. That makes his whole career even more interesting.