Contemporary Art and Culture
In Dialogue with Melissa Joseph
Intergenerational, 42 x 131 in, needle felted wool and sari silk on inkjet print on Indian duppioni silk, 2020-2021
Née, Melissa Joseph’s first solo show in New York, features 27 wall based works and 5 sculptures, utilizing mostly wool felt and textiles assembled through a highly intuitive process. The show runs at REGULAR•NORMAL through May 2, 2021.
Continue reading “Melissa Joseph: Née at REGULAR•NORMAL“Art Spiel Photo Story
In early February, the bleakness of winter got to the New York City based artist Leslie Kerby. She decided to reach out to friends near and far, as she had done during lockdown, this time asking them to send photos of the places around their house where they were able to find some solitude. She contacted everyone individually which opened up possibilities for longed for exchange. To her delight she received many beautiful photos. It took her a couple of days to figure out how she would paint from them. Ultimately, she decided on watercolor, acrylic, and mixed media collage on vellum, which enabled painting on both sides, while letting the light in. “It was a gift to visit with everyone in their home. A testament to the value of human connection,” she says.
NEW LINK to whole project
Continue reading “Leslie Kerby: Happy Place Project“
Brandon Graving aims to transfer and translate a sense of wonder in her artworks. She describes her process of making as exploring the connectedness of all things with ongoing “delight, immediacy and a sense of virginal untamed discovery with a nod towards Humbolt.” Some of her sculptural works are kinetic and turn, revealing elaborate intricacy and shadow play, while other works, including monoprints with handmade inks and semiprecious stones, alter dramatically in different light. She does not intend to depict nature but rather hone ideas and objects into simplified essential forms, some with elaborate treatment. Through her extensive attention to detail, she reflects on how the micro and macro within the work suggest a system that is both diverse and similar, how these dualities interrelate or even duplicate in nature.
Continue reading “Brandon Graving: Honing Viscosity and Air Currents“In Dialogue with Kat Chamberlin
Kat Chamberlin: TRANSACTIONS for BEVERLY’S: Under Construction Sessions includes works in drawing, glass and aluminum created in response to a year in quarantine and loss of work. In exchange for the year’s shifted labor conditions and loss of independence, the artist uses her 5-year-old daughter’s ideas as payback. The show runs through April 20th, 2021.
Continue reading “Kat Chamberlin: TRANSACTIONS“In Dialogue with Katya Grokhovsky
Katya Grokhovsky ‘s site-specific installation FANTASYLAND at Smack Mellon explores the rise and fall of a fantastical empire and its uncertain future. Giant plush toys, inflatable beach balls, deconstructed and re-assembled mannequins, an unfinished carousel structure, recycled parachute canopies, wallpaper, a glowing neon sign, and performance videos, altogether underscore American society’s surplus of objects, and unbridled desire for material possessions, ironically, the capitalist symbol of freedom. The artist scrutinizes the American Dream through an immigrant lens, exposing a desirable yet unattainable mirage. Katya Grokhovsky’s work is currently on view in the solo exhibition FANTASYLAND at Smack Mellon, through May 2nd, 2021.
In Dialogue with Gianluca Bianchino
An Attempt to Communicate with Reality, Gianluca Bianchino’s vibrant multi-media installation at Gallery Bergen in Paramus New Jersey, is a hybrid virual/in situ installation accompanied by the gallery navigable models of the installation as it has been created on site.
Continue reading “Gianluca Bianchino: An Attempt to Communicate with Reality at Bergen Gallery“
In her latest solo exhibition at New York’s Trotter&Sholer gallery, Iranian artist Farideh Sakhaeifar invites the viewer to reflect on the human experiences that connect us all. You are in the war zone confronts conflict, war, and social injustice head-on. Presented in partnership with the non-profit arts organization KODA, and curated by Klaudia Ofwona-Draber, the exhibition covers Sakhaeifar’s rich artistic practice, from her performance pieces to her sculptures to her hand and digitally manipulated photographs made over a seven year period. The works in the show underscore the artist’s strong critique of US foreign policy and Western portrayal of war in the Middle East and North Africa, as well as her impactful representations of shared experiences, the subjectivity of the media, and the inevitable distortion of memories and information over time.
Continue reading “Farideh Sakhaeifar: You Are in the War Zone“
Sue McNally lives and works in Rhode Island and when life permits, as she puts it, in rural southeast Utah. Her landscape paintings and her self portraits encompass everything in between — the views of nature she has encountered, and her shifting states of being. Sue McNally reflects on her art making and shares ideas on her new body of work.
Continue reading “Sue McNally: Learning how to Find“
Jessica Lagunas is Interested in working with unconventional materials—makeup, hair, perfume, organic materials—through video-performance, installation, drawing, prints, artist books, embroidery, and recently, weaving. She is a New York City-based Latinx artist, whose group exhibitions include El Museo del Barrio’s The (S) Files Biennial, The Bronx Museum of the Arts’ Artist in the Marketplace, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA at Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara and Laxart, among others.
Continue reading “Jessica Lagunas: With Every Fiber at Pelham Art Center“
In his stop-motion animation and mixed media installations the Brooklyn based artist Brian Zegeer creates fantastic landscapes which draw on his domestic family life, dissecting what is the meaning of identity – body as an organism, cultural heritage of childhood in Appalachia with Lebanese roots –altogether fuse into a mysterious and complex system where the viewer is prompted to get immersed.
Continue reading “Brian Zegeer: Porous Identities“