Art Spiel – Page 77 – Contemporary Art and Culture

May 26, 2021May 16, 2021

Sammy Lee: Remind Me Tomorrow at the Emmanuel Art Gallery
by Etty Yaniv

In Dialogue with Sammy Lee

BTS (Beating Tadumi Station), 2014, video projection, immersive installation at BMoCA, photo by Tricia Rubio

Denver-based, Korean American artist Sammy Lee’s solo exhibition at the Emmanuel Art Gallery explores motherhood, domesticity, immigration, and prejudice through installation, artist books, performance art, and sculptures. The artist is using a multitude of textures and mediums that re-contextualizes familiar objects, ritual, and scenes into art. Remind Me Tomorrow opens May 25, during Asian American and Pacific Heritage (AAPI) month to celebrate Asian culture and speak out against the alarming bigotry manifested against Asian people. The exhibition runs through July 15th, 2021.

May 24, 2021December 6, 2024

Clive Knights: Fragmentary Intimations of Shared Meaning
by Etty Yaniv

Clive Knights in his studio, Portland, Oregon, 2021, photo courtesy of the artist

Clive Knights practices architecture and art, in particular mixed media and monotype printmaking. He holds professional architectural design undergraduate and graduate degrees from Portsmouth Polytechnic, UK, and a Master of Philosophy in Architectural History and Theory from Cambridge University. Clive has taught architecture since 1984 and was a full-time lecturer at Sheffield University for six years before moving to Portland State University in 1995 where he currently resides as a professor and director of the PSU School of Architecture. His primary areas of interest include the cultural meanings of architectural representation understood through the phenomenology of the human body, with particular reference to the writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty; the revelatory capacity of metaphor in poetic work; and speculations in architectural design studio pedagogy. Publications include many journal articles and book chapters on the theory, history and pedagogy of architecture.

May 19, 2021May 12, 2021

Natalie Westbrook: Surface Tension at Freight + Volume
by Etty Yaniv

In Dialogue with Natalie Westbrook

Natalie Westbrook in her studio, 2021.Image courtesy the artist. Photography Johannes DeYoung.

The Pittsburgh based painter Natalie Westbrook’s solo show at Freight + Volume in Tribeca features her recent body of bold and highly energetic paintings ranging from monochromes to vivid colors. Jeffrey Grunthaner writes in his essay for the show that Westbrook’s works “confront the limits of what painting makes possible.” The show runs from May 21^st to June 26^th, 2021.

May 17, 2021July 22, 2021

Scherezade Garcia: Navigating Histories
by Etty Yaniv

Las Meninas and War, from the series Tales of Freedom,1997,Acrylic, charcoal, and ink on camouflage fabric, 58 x 39 inches.

For New York based artist Scherezade Garcia drawing gives rise to visual codes, which lead her to spontaneous compositions and meanings at the same time. Scherezade Garcia loves stories. The books she grew up with still provoke her imagination, words inspire a continuous production of images – “from The Arabian Nights to Greek Mythology, to Hans Christian Andersen to Crusade tragedies, to El Cid, Don Quijote, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Balzac, to Alejo Carpentier, Allan Poe, Garcia Marquez to so many others, I cannot imagine life without it,” she says. Through a variety of media, Scherezade Garcia evokes in her artworks the physicality of art making while alluding to layered narratives of history.

May 13, 2021May 13, 2021

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles
by Etty Yaniv

In Dialogue with Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang

Rachelle Dang and Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow in front of Dang’s work at the opening of their exhibition *Daughters of Lam* at Five Myles.

Daughters of Lam at FiveMyles features work by two artists of Chinese descent – one from Jamaica and one from Hawai`i – paying tribute to Wifredo Lam, an artist who drew on an Afro-Cuban and Chinese heritage to create works evoking spirituality and the power of nature. Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow and Rachelle Dang reflect in their installation work on notions of landscape, history, and myth.

May 10, 2021July 22, 2021

Tomo Mori: Fibrous Points of Origin
by Etty Yaniv

Filling the gap, 2020. 24″x30″. Acrylic, painted canvas fabric on masonite board.

Tomo Mori is a Japanese-born and New York City-based fiber artist who has been focusing on two main bodies of work: wall based collage series and sculptural
installations . In both she is working with used materials like old clothes and linens, fabrics she keeps reusing and transforming into new forms. During this 2021 Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, Tomo Mori shares what brought her to art making, what role her cultural background plays in her work, and what are some of her recurrent themes and processes.

May 7, 2021December 6, 2024

Jennifer Macdonald: We Met in Kaarthijenkia at Sala Projects
by Etty Yaniv

In Dialogue with Jennifer Macdonald

Jennifer Macdonald, We Met in Kaarthijenkia installation at Sala Projects, 2021, photo courtesy of Tania Cross

Jennifer Macdonald’s solo inaugural exhibition at Sala Projects features a group of unique cast bronze sculptures, made by using prototypes that are built from textured wax and wax-coated materials such as card stock, pasta, balsa wood.

May 3, 2021May 3, 2021

Nandini Bagla Chirimar: Becoming Who We Are
by Etty Yaniv

Nandini Bagla Chirimar’s richly layered drawings, prints, paintings and installations draw on her daily life as a mother, daughter, homemaker and artist living in New York. She grew up in Jaipur, India and came to the USA to complete her undergraduate art education at Cornell University. Here, she found herself working with many of the elements she had encountered in her daily life growing up in India — homes she lived in, her relationships, events, color, block prints, miniature and folk paintings.

April 29, 2021November 2, 2022

Ararat: Artists Coming Together in a Time of Crisis
by Art Spiel

*Ararat Collective zoom session screen capture*; Clockwise from left: Tusia Dabrowska, Orly Noa Rabiniyan, Jon Adam Ross, Diana Wyenn, Noa Charuvi, Randy Ginsburg, Agustin Jais and Robyn Awend

A new art collective was born out of the need to find purpose and connection during the shut down period caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Now the collective members launch a webzine that invites everyone to peer into their minds, get inspired and think of the various ways creativity has a potential to help cope with a global disaster.

April 26, 2021July 22, 2021

Loren Eiferman: Drawing in Wood
by Etty Yaniv

:Loren in the studio:Loren studio sitting.jpg — The aritst

Loren Eiferman sees her work as the “ultimate recycling”. She collects sticks and branches that have fallen to the ground and typically forms her sculptures by joining together hundreds of small pieces of wood into a cohesive whole through a unique technique she has developed for over 25 years.