Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Fantasy : Musée Magazine


Musée Magazine published a few works of mine in their "Fantasy" issue (No. 108), this winter, featuring several emerging artists.  The three pieces were all collage works on paper including Immaculate Perception, Days Like These and A Perfect Friend, the latter two images of books of collages of the same name.  I was asked about the relationship of photography to my work but that text was not published. My response was directed more towards current work but it applies to these works as well as they implicate and recycle photography in different ways.  

On Photography & Collage

I’m not a photographer.  But some years ago I developed some double exposures from a cheap plastic camera – the images I discovered were accidents – the film did not advance as it should have. I’d printed out a contact sheet, and had a half dozen produced large and in color. Prior to that I’d taken a photograph of my niece. She was a baby, sitting on the kitchen floor playing with bowls and spoons. I printed the photo and then cut out her silhouette, which flattened all her features.  Some thought the “baby” was a “thalidomide” baby.  That silhouette formed the basis of a collage series that spanned nearly 10 years – I used the silhouette as a kind of light to illuminate other images and surfaces; it shaped ideas, and gave a supra-impression of  a full range of ideas, extending even to mosaics and sculpture. 

As I’ve expanded my range of collage subjects and techniques, the photograph has become a support in many interesting ways.  For one I’ve come to regard most magazine images I use – as well as photocopies – as photographs. I find myself intrigued with the magazine and vintage book papers these images are printed on. All printed material, particularly pre-1960, offer rich image possibilities due to the printing technology used. I cut and alter these images, sometimes using paint, sometimes sandpaper, sometimes water. I will sometimes turn them to undecipherable bits; other times using fragments in combination with others – scratching their color away. I’m interested in all sorts of photographed and printed images, and can sometimes hunt for bits of red or blue or yellow for a specific work, combining it so the results are often abstract. Usually the pieces, particularly in the more recent Suicide Specials launch a distilled but many-faceted narrative.

Other works, however, are extremely direct and employ only a handful of elements. I seek out photographs of objects or people that have, with their vintage printing and papers, a faraway, often nostalgic feel.  I’ve come to view photography as something – anything actually – that has been reproduced mechanically using optics and printing technology. And I’ve no issues with reprinting images using my own store of vintage papers – some virgin some already printed.  


Prints for the Immaculate Perception (the girl in the lemon tree) work are still available via Keep Calm Gallery in London, UK.  Click here to see them: Immaculate Perception Keep Calm.

Sunday, February 23, 2014

CONVERGE GALLERY : SCOPE NEW YORK 2014


New York, NY (March 6, 2014) - Converge Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the prestigious SCOPE New York Art Show. The gallery has curated an exceptional collection of new work by Chad Andrews, Anthony Cervino, Lawrence Charles Miller, Ekaterina Panikanova, Matthew Rose and Trey Speegle.

About the Artists
Chad Andrews is a contemporary artist whose work is informed by change, transformation and intellectual movement. Andrews routinely works with the processes of printmaking, the techniques of which imply a mental and physical presence that belie his fluid theme of transformation. As a result, a stealth gravitas is implanted in his work. Importantly, this element places Chad Andrews body of work in the twenty first-century dialectic.

Born out of memory, introspection and intuition Anthony Cervino’s sculptures are startling in their emphatic physicality. This contrast of mind and form are further exasperated by the presence and sometimes absence of the maker’s hand and his omnivorous use of materials. In the past he has used wood, steel, found objects, cast bronze, and aluminum. Cervino begins each project open to all possibilities. His work is conceptual, personal, and universal.

Lawrence Charles Miller seems to make pictures that imply their own fiction. So, in a sense, these are pictures within and about pictures. The human figure appears to be the given in equations of signs, symbols and odd bits of nature’s shorthand. There is a strain of humor in Miller’s work that ponders a thicket of chaos.

All contemporary artists skate on the surface of humanity’s impossibly deep history. Ekaterina Panikanova uses civilization’s trajectory as a medium. She incorporates direct evidence of mankind’s gradual awakening and accumulated knowledge into her own poetic vision. Here, information becomes a sort of spiritual, intellectual landscape. Panikanova’s work is informed by civilization’s constant ponderings. Nature stands indifferently in its center. Ekaterina Panikanova was born in Russia and lives and works in Rome.

Matthew Rose is a new breed of artist who, while he is known for his collages, might be better called a multimedia artist. [Right: Matthew Rose's Second Nature, 56 x 56 cm, 2009, collage on wood, will be on view at Scope NY 2014].  His work has a conceptual, international component that has translated seamlessly into the digital era. Educated at Brown University, he studied semiotics, linguistics, art, film and writing. Later, in New York, he wrote about the art scene, principally the East Village, Fluxus, Dada and Mail Art. Rose’s exhibitions read as conceptual events where he fills a space floor to ceiling with work that merges literary elements with painting, photography, sculpture and yes – collage. Matthew Rose currently lives and works in Paris.  MATTHEW'S PDF CATALOG.

Trey Speegle lives and works in New York City, dividing his time between his Meatpacking District studio in Manhattan and a converted barn in the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York. When Michael O’Donoghue, (former head writer at Saturday Night Live) died in 1994 Speegle inherited his friend’s 200-piece collection of vintage paint-by-number paintings. These images eventually began to seep into the word art that Speegle was making at the time. The hybrid of language and the straightforward clarity of the paint-by-numbers resonated mysteriously.

About CONVERGE GALLERY
Founded 2011 Converge Gallery has received recognition in the art world for its ambitious program. While the gallery is based in Williamsport, PA it also mounts exhibitions in New York City and at international art fairs.  Converge Gallery shows the work of notable emerging and mid-career artists. 

Converge Gallery
140 West Fourth St. Williamsport, PA 17701
Scope Event Information
Converge Gallery at Booth B03
SCOPE New York
312 West 33rd Street
New York, 10001
www.scope-art.com

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Q ET TU? See Queen Elizabeth during FIAC PARIS at The BROOKLYN. Exhibition on through FIAC and October 2014





See Queen Elizabeth during FIAC PARIS at The Brooklyn in PARIS. Above Q ET TU? 60 x 60 cm, collage on canvas, 2014.  The Brooklyn: 58 Rue Quincampoix 75004 Paris.  Around the corner from the Pompidou Center.   Contact: Q ET TU?