Kelley, Dion, Simmons, and Nauman

Mike Kelley’s work is primarily based on the idea of memory and described in Art:21 as being fairly consistently film based. His pieces allude to memories and not only of Kelley, but ones that are also relatable to the viewer. In his piece “Day is Done”, spoken about in the article assigned on Mike Kelley, an obvious allusion to high school pep rallies and pride functions is created. Kelley takes this relationship one step further and places a sense of surreal actions, garments, and acts into what could be everyday activities. In his collaged stuffed animal pieces/sculptures, Kelley creates a very similar sense than that which is observed in “The Day is Done”. Kelley states that these pieces spurred off the audience’s reaction to stuffed animals and their reference to child abuse. This idea then became one that Kelley seemed attached to, and that further grew and evolved. When viewing Kelley’s “More Love Hours Than Can Ever Be Repaid" and "The Wages of Sin”, I felt a strong connection to the work of Marc Chagall due to the idea of referencing memory or heritage and the visual theme of the broken image. In Chagall’s work “The Village”, this idea is displayed in his use of color and fracture and in Kelley’s work it seems to come through in the broken segments of the video and piecing the stuffed animals together.

Bruce Nauman is an artist whose work does not seem to stick to the guidelines of a singular media. It, instead, ranges from large site specific sculptures to video recordings and everything in between. In the article on Nauman, one specific piece is primarily discussed. This is a piece that seemed to happen as an accident and began with the idea of to catch a mouse that was in the artists studio on camera. The idea then evolved into an intimate view into the artist’s studio and its life when the space was supposedly inactive. Another piece that stood out was one based on the idea of the standard step and how it can become a rhythm when walking down a set of stairs. Playing with this idea, Nauman varied the step sizes and their distance apart to control the experience of the person experiencing it. Many of the pieces created by Nauman share this idea of questioning purpose or trying to invert the purpose of an object. This is an idea that shares close strides to the work of artists and followers of the Dada movement. Marcel Duchamp was a big contributor to this movement and the idea of changing an object’s function, whether it be his infamous urinal piece entitle “Fountain” or the idea of changing the definition of art, these two artists seem to share a common thread in their works and thoughts.

The next artist’s work is strongly influenced by the idea of collection and cataloguing. The work of Mark Dion places pressed specimens of plant-life, such as a variety of seaweed, into an artistic content. Each work strives to preserve pieces of natural beauty that look both aesthetically pleasing and intriguing. Dion’s works hold a strong thread relating back to the collection and preservation of different specimens and creates a visual catalogue for the viewer. It is also a body of work that has great appeal to different science-based organizations, which is discussed in the short clip viewed online, as well as the article. With this strong foundation the work of Dion is very close to the work of a taxidermist. The forms take on a different being once Dion’s artistic process is complete, however, and begin to form intriguing drawings. In the visual sense, these images are reminiscent of the line quality created in Jackson Pollock’s paintings. The plants seem to create erratic lines and compositions and although they are structured far more formally than the process of Pollock, their end results are similar in appearance.

Lastly, the work of the artist Laurie Simmons is structured around the idea of photography, but is contextualized in video pieces as well. Simmons describes her works as starting with the idea of creating a larger-than-life camera and then placing it on the person who taught her everything she knows about photography. This idea evolved into so much more as Simmons’s career and work developed. Her idea of placing large objects onto simple white silhouettes of legs turned these sculptural objects into something with much more life behind them. Later, these pieces became inspirations for video segments in which a gun danced on two white legs much like in an audition setting. Simmons creates a sense of surrealism that relates very openly to the idea of collage and piecing unrelated things together to create a singular image. This idea is one that was used largely in the Dada movement and an idea that very commonly comes to the surface in many pieces that are collage based. The pairing of two objects that seem so distinct and different creates an interesting partnership and is an act that can be seen largely in the work of Hannah Hoch, especially her piece entitled “Grotesque” which also uses a pair of white clad legs as a large component in the piece. The idea of creating something new by combining two everyday seemingly ordinary objects is one that can create a great amount of diversity out of the everyday, as well as artwork that can be very interesting.

nauman, kelley, dion, simmons

This weeks selected artists from PBS’ Art in the 21st Century, features work that can collectively be conceptually postmodern. Bruce Nauman subverts the function of the simple structure of stairs and bleachers by deconstructing their form into something familiar but yet uncanny. Mike Kelley sources inspiration from memories of his past whist creating art that focuses on the commodity of culture. Mark Dion applies the evolution of natural history in relation to humans, different environments, and Western viewpoints. Laurie Simmons makes photographs and films drawing from pop culture. All of these contemporary artists share a common thread in their ways of applying culture and skewing the way society views it throughout history.
Bruce Nauman claims that there is no specific way to making art. In his interview with Art 21, he notes that in some ways, the accidents that happen while making art keep the process real and exciting. From my prior knowledge of and exposure to Nauman’s work, I was surprised that the video excerpt didn’t feature more of his radical neon light pieces or his gravitation towards working with words and text. While Nauman’s art is playful and mischievous, it still deals with serious concerns and communicates with the viewer on different levels. His interest in deconstructing language and definition can be closely associated with contemporary American composer, John Cage, and his conceptual approach to reconstructing music into something nontraditional, disorienting, unpredictable, and new.
Inspired by culture while playing with the “purposefulness of ridiculousness”, Mike Kelley’s artwork is full of materialistic objects and black humor. His films pull from his personal memories of the past, which other people can closely identify with, such as “Day Is Done”, shot within a high school gymnasium. His work is reminiscent of Dada assemblages of artist’s like Kurt Schwitters’. This Dada artist’s collages made from found objects and ridiculous fragments that often make witty allusions to current events. Kelley’s absurd video clips also remind me of filmmaker John Waters in that they both share a campy plasticity to their characters and settings.
Mark Dion re-creates the categorization and exhibition practices of museums. This area of concentration within Dion’s work can be compared to fellow contemporary artist’s Fred Wilson’s work, especially, “Mining the Museum”. Both artists obtain artifacts, whether they are organic plant forms or excavated man-made tools, and place new meanings to them according to their different arrangement and placement.
Laurie Simmons stages photographs and films with dolls, puppets, ventriloquist dummies, and costumed dancers as “living objects,” animating a dollhouse world submerged in nostalgia. Simmon’s work can be associated with Kelley’s memory-saturated work because her films and photos are very much colored by an adult’s memories, longings, and regrets. Simmons work also meshes psychological, political and conceptual approaches to art making, photography’s propensity to objectify people, especially women. With this being said, Simmons exploration into the media’s construction of gender roles can link her to feminist artists such as photographers Cindy Sherman and Lorna Simpson who also stage their photographs.
All in all, this week’s artists can be tied to other conceptual artists of the 21st century, or to those of the Fluxus or Dada movements. Bruce Nauman, Mike Kelley, Mark Dion, and Laurie Simmons are artists from different backgrounds and are unique in their own right. Though through this analysis of comparing these artists to other artists, I was able to see that many similar conceptual ideas and processes have been implemented/stolen/imitated/borrowed/ crossbred through and within every art movement.

simmons kelley dion nauman -anna

The four artists could all be considered conceptual in their approach.

Laurie Simmons is a still photographer, who's subjects range from doll house interiors to rubber dolls falling into pools. She cites the figure and interiors (or enclosed spaces) as the real subject she tends to gravitate to. Light and shadow also play an important part in her compostions. Simmons seems to have an intuitive approach to how she creates saying, "I'm not or never have been a techie, so my camera is like a mysteriour portal for the scene I want to shoot. I've never been completely sure how it works."

Mike Kelley used both video and sculpture to convey his musings about high school and issues of repressed memory and authority. By drawing from pop culture, b-movies, and the like, he reveals something about American culture.

Mark Dion's work usually includes collaboration with other artists, students or people in the community. this is in contrast to simmon's still photography, in which she feels, "I've always loved how quiet it it and how the real action is in your brain." To him, it's a comment on how in the western world, individual achievement is held in high esteem. dion's themes show the connections between the individual and the collective. By using science and history in installations and video, he invites the viewer to discover these connections.

Bruce Nauman depends on the collaboration with the viewer's participation. Nauman's main focus in his video's and installations deal with making art and the role of the artist. He seems to ask the question, "What is art?" by filming mundane occurances like trying to locate a mouse in his studio. In Corridor Installation, the viewer walds towards their own image on the surveillance monitor. Here, he goes beyond the theme of making art by making the viewer aware of their own awareness.

Nadia's write up for this week

The four artists to be examined for this week have really got me to thinking about space and how we, as artists, utilize the space we have to work with.
Matthew Richie takes his instillation Games of Chance and Skill and collaborates with architects to integrate his work into the architecture. Arturo Herrera, in his interview talks, is asked why he reworked his piece , Les Noces, so dramatically. Herrera responds that the venue which the work was first exhibited held a six-channel projection and was in a room designed so that the viewer could view the projections as well as other works. The second exhibit only had two projections and editing was handled much differently. Herrera explains, “I wanted slower sequences and many more images so the viewer could find recurring motifs within the exhibition.” Both Jessica Stockholder and Fred Wilson admit to working intuitively after looking at the space in which they exhibit. It is interesting to me that art can change dramatically from one exhibition to another. Factors, such as how many entrances a room has, to lighting, to the country or state that your exhibiting in can have a tremendous impact on the outcome of the work.

Nadia's Revised Artist Statement

The intimate, spiritual, and sublime are what inspire my art. Photography allows me to better understand my existence and my reality. With my camera, I blend reality with the fantastic. With careful use of light and subject I combine the concrete with its ethereal potential. To me my work is not only about recording, but also creating something completely new. I experiment with different personas and layer my compositions playing off of my human subjects. I always have a direction and purpose; however, on execution I work quite intuitively to bring about the mysterious and unnoticed through the portrayal of humans and their relationship to life.

Nadia's Gallery Review on COSM

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (COSM)
Alex and Allyson Grey
542 West 27th St, 4th Floor

I was first introduced to Alex Grey sometime last year from a close friend who had stumbled upon his work. I immediately became intrigued by the paintings. I did some of my own research, and made it my mission to see this fantastic art sanctuary in person. Going to COSM was of course far more amazing than seeing any photograph. I walked in and was surrounded by a series of paintings that examine anatomy of the body and soul. COSM affirms universal spirituality and aims to provoke viewers to see themselves as reflections of the divine. The gallery was set in four main rooms.

The Chapel of Sacred Mirrors

This was the first room I entered. It consisted of 21 framed mirrors which ranged from representations of the human body’s physical anatomy to complex energy systems. Alex Grey focuses his work toward the Chakras or the streams of energy that permeate from the body. His paintings depict a colorful and VERY detailed description of these etheric auras. It is quite compelling to see these images. I feel that they created a type of unity among all race, class, and gender differences.



The Yellow Room

The Yellow Room exhibits human relationships and passages in the cycle of life. The paintings are done in a similar fashion as several of the ones included in the Chapel except that they possess gestural qualities. For example, one entitled ‘Birth’, shows much of the cardiovascular system in vibrant yellow, reds, and blues as well as Tibetan syllables signifying the mother as a birthing Buddha. There is a great sense of eastern religious influences in the work. However, Alex seems to make it quite comprehendible to viewers who might not be familiar with some of his references by including detailed descriptions next to the paintings.



The White Room

The White Room contains paintings that depict the mind coming into consciousness or enlightenment. ‘Theologue’ is perhaps the largest in the room. It’s 180 x 60 inches and it portrays a figure in standard meditative pose. The same etheric aura’s portrayed in the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors are shown are a much larger scale and follow a grid-like pattern across a horizon. Next to the painting reads “During deep meditation, I entered a state in which all energy systems in my body were completely aligned and flowing”.



The Black Room

This was by far my favorite room. As beautiful as the paintings are in the exhibit, there is a shocking reality in The Black Room that brings you back to earth as you re-enter the world as it is. Alex leaves this room in the back of the gallery. It is meant to be viewed last. Three large paintings fill the room, but the one which stood out most to me was the one entitled Gaia. Ridiculous is not the word! Alex claims that the painting is based off of a vision that he had the day his daughter was born in 1988 and was painted in 1989. On the left is world as paradise with beautiful bright colors. The right side shows the destruction of humanity and the web of life. Especially intriguing about the right side of this painting, (which others have pointed out after September 11th is that there are two airplanes flying over the twin towers and figure that very much resembles George Bush in the foreground with a “Dick” embracing a terrorist.





I don’t know, but there’s definitely something going on with this Alex guy.
I STRONGLY recommend this gallery next time you’re in Chelsea.

Cody and Friends- Weekly Write-up

Arturo Herrera is not so much a creator but an arranger. He takes found objects and creates new one with them, or uses them in installations. The viewer can focus on the object and its history, or chose to see it as part of a larger image and how it interacts with surrounding objects. He takes care to choose each piece intuitively and for the betterment of his concerns in the specific site. Herrera takes objects and manipulates them. He utilizes his experience in glass blowing to further his work and give it an extra element to be considered. The fact that he has a multicultural background influences his work greatly. He incorporates this into his black “drips” that he feels represent teardrops and caricatures that mimic what African Americans have been stereotyped as.

Fred Wilson has beautiful and intelligent work based on collaging. It is interesting that he claims his work developed this way due to lack of financial support for his artwork. He takes found material or makes his own and manipulates them through photography, paint or physically with scissors to create a new object that can be placed with others. This mirrors what Arturo Herrera does in his museum installations. Wilson is interesting to me for his use of line and color to create nonrepresentational two-dimensional forms.

This is also the case with Matthew Ritchie. I find his paintings and colorful installations almost hypnotic in their presence. Though the concept is very well thought-out and process very impressive in his large-scale metal work, I am drawn to his color scheme and delicacy of line in the other bodies of works. The story behind his work is quite interesting, but I feel it is something personal to him and important to his work in a private fashion.

Jessica Stockholder also uses found objects in her installations. She focuses on color and industrial material, such as plastic, and transforms the object to fit her needs. She said in one interview that she sometimes doesn’t want to use objects that are completely recognizable, but that have a vague recognition about them. She says in her interview that her work arrives in the world like an idea into one’s head. This thought is extremely abstract, much like her sculptures, but makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t necessarily hold a huge comment on things like socialism or whatnot, but it blooms into existence and is experiences by others.

James G: Ritchie, Wilson, Stockholder, Herrera

The artists this week are very diverse, but clearly have some comment themes. Matthew Ritchie is a painter and sculpture who has a complicated mythos that he has constructed about the history of time and the creation of the universe. Using 49 different characters, he has an internally consistent storyline that describes and explores our understanding of time. He has massive computer drawings that manifest themselves in paintings, wall installations, and large metal sculptures. Abstract but still with a concrete story, Matthew Ritchie is a postmodern artist with grand ambitions and a keen intellect.

Fred Wilson is famous for rearranging artwork in museums to change the meaning of the work and question the historical context of the collection. His most famous work “Mining the Museum” in 1992 rearranged the pieces of a Maryland museum’s collection. When he was done, questions about Maryland’s relationship to Native Americans and slaves were apparent, and many of the pieces interacted to create a sort of narrative. Like Matthew Ritchie he is using narrative to comment on something hidden beneath the surface, in this case the work of the museum. His critique of the museum establishment is a postmodern idea.

Jessica Stockholder is a sculptor who uses lots of junk to make what she often describes as some sort of sculptural paintings. Plastic, chairs, lawnmowers, and all sorts of things are all thrown together in a way that compliments the space she is working in. Sometimes she uses large scale installations, other times smaller collage on canvas, and everything in between. Also exploring ideas of postmodernism, her sculptures are abstract in an opposite way than Matthew Ritchie. Her sculptures are abstract in a way that works purely about form and content, rather than some underlying narrative.

Arturo Herrera works like Jessica Stockholder in the way that he is taking found objects and changing their context to make them abstract. Disney characters and magazine clippings are all pasted together to create an abstract piece that is only minimally recognizable. Arturo Herrera’s collages are abstract but eerily familiar.

Lauren’s 2nd Gallery Review: Stas Orlovski

Stas Orlovski; “Nocturnes”
Mixed Greens gallery in New York


I saw this exhibit when visiting galleries in New York with my Advanced Drawing class. We saw over a dozen shows that day, but this was the only one that stood out to me as particularly strong, both aesthetically and technically. Stas Orlovski’s “Nocturnes” was a whimsically somber exhibition dominated by large-scale 2D works with subdued colors and bold use of contrast. The subject matter revolved around several themes: full moons, birds, flora, and water. He used a wide range of techniques and mediums to create his works. The moons were often printed paper, The flora hand painted with ink and embellished with daubs of white paint, the birds sometimes collaged, sometimes hand-drawn. His execution of each work, however, often made it difficult to immediately tell which parts of the images were what. I did not realize the moons were printed until I got up close to study the linework.

His palette was fairly limited, using black, white, and a few neutral tones of blues and browns; the base of his drawings were on yellowed or off-white paper that gave the work a very antiqued look. What was particularly striking to me was the level of detail and texture in each of the works. His work was at once graphic, organic, and delicate, and his use of composition and negative space was very effective. When I researched his work more in depth on the Mixed Greens website, I found out that the inspiration behind this exhibit including Russian children books, Asian ink paintings, and Victorian-era illustrations. These three things describe exactly the look and feel of the exhibit: the subject matter was poetic and child-like, the inkwork has a clear reference to Japanese calligraphy, and the aged and antiqued look, as well as the use of printing, definitely recalled Victorianism. What I liked most about the exhibit, though, was that despite the repetitive themes and colors in each of the individual works, the show itself was not stagnant. Each image was very strong on its own and contributed to the cohesive feel of the exhibit.

Codys Exhibition Review 2

The ICA is a beautiful space with three main rooms used for the installation and viewing of art. There were photo collections, video/sculpture installations and two-dimensional characters, one in each room. The exhibit that struck me the most was one hidden in a handicap ramp connecting the photo room with the space with drawings on an upper floor.
Odili Donald Odital’s exhibit, Ramp Project, is strikingly vibrant and a refreshing use of color in an unusual space.
The exhibit is striking at first, and one is unsure whether it is an art or simply décor. The paintings are slanting lines, each at a slightly different or inverse angle so they feed into each other in an overlapping effect. The lines are crisp and clean and they are differentiated by use of color.
The lines bring awareness to the ramp, as they are along the walls, transforming the space from a handicap entrance into a charged environment made of color and line. The differentiating angles mimic the inclines of the ramp itself, incorporating the slope into the piece. The negative space is important and acts as a grounding point for the viewer. It balances the forms so they are not overpowering or disorienting.
The use of color is very interesting. It looks like it could be random, but each section of lines has a certain color scheme. Each section utilizes color in a way that it produces a unique sense or recognition. For example, I feel that one section uses “watermelon colors,” reds pinks and greens. Another, comprised of blues and greens, mimics the small wakes in a pond.
This piece is considered a modernist work due to the use of abstracting fragmentations and hard edges. The artist uses paint, a classical medium to explore the African culture in his own terms. The lines and color reflect the use of these two elements in African textile and artwork. He uses his own experience and cultural background with African tradition and modern day society as inspiration for these fractured horizontal planes.
This exhibit struck me immediately, before I had even stepped fully into the space. The usage of color and line is exactly what I have been focusing on for the past few months in my own artwork. Odital’s work held my attention because of the color usage and way it stirs up memories and recollections that the mind has attached to certain color schemes. He has taken line, color and shape, three basic elements of visual art, to create a form that holds immense value. This inspires me to keep pushing in the direction I am going, and that I can start incorporating my own expression into the examination I am performing currently.