Art Spiel – Page 89 – Contemporary Art and Culture

June 27, 2020June 4, 2020

Artists on Coping: John Mitchell
by Etty Yaniv

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

:1. JohnMitchell_coping_final.jpeg — *John Mitchell at work on “Twinkle”, oil on linen, 37×80”. Photo by Twinkle Ghangas, Tuesday, January 14, 2020.*

John Mitchell, born 1971 in Southern Illinois, is an American artist. As a draftsman, printmaker, and painter, Mitchell works from direct observation of people, places, and things. He was educated at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Yale University. Mitchell lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

June 26, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Barbara Laube
by Catherine Kirkpatrick

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Macintosh HD:Users:BarbaraLaube:Desktop:studio shot copy.jpg — *Works in progress on the good studio wall*

To Barbara Laube the act of painting is spiritual, shamanistic, healing, and transformative. Truth is found through process and the materiality of paint. Rooted in the history of abstraction, her subject matter may not be obvious and is always left open to interpretation. It emerges from the endless mark making and adjustments to the painting surface. Imagery is often revealed that reflects her relationship to the outside world and her life, and to her deep love of great painting, particularly the early Renaissance. She exploits the play between the open and dense, and the light and dark. In the end the act of painting and paint itself is first and foremost and has always been her way of making sense of her life, loves and beliefs. Ms. Laube lives and works in Riverdale, New York. She has shown extensively in New York, including M. David & Co., Zurcher Gallery, The Painting Center, Carter Burden Gallery, Bowery Gallery, and Sideshow Gallery. She has also shown at Kent State University in Ohio, and in New Mexico, Illinois, Washington, California, New Jersey, and Texas.

June 25, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Susan Mastrangelo
by Catherine Kirkpatrick

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

1-Myself In My Studio In Catskill #1.jpg

Susan Mastrangelo

Susan Mastrangelo was born and raised in New York City and Washington D.C. She studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the New York Studio School, and received her MFA from Boston University under the tutelage of Philip Guston. Based in New York since graduate school, she has shown nationally and internationally, and is a recipient of a Rockwell Grant as well as two grants from the Pollock Krasner Foundation. She has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome, a guest at Civitella Raneri, and a resident at Yaddo, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, The Ragdale Foundation, The Triangle Workshop (as a student of Anthony Caro), and the Tyrone Guthrie Center. For 27 years she taught and chaired the Art Department at the Buckley School in New York City, and now works as a full time multidisciplinary artist at the Can Factory in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

June 24, 2020June 21, 2020

Artists on Coping: JinJin Xu & Jiaoyang Li (Silkworm Pupas)
by Etty Yaniv

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Performance still from “In America, You are Asked Why Leaves are Green,” February, 2020; from left, artists JinJin Xu, Jiaoyang Li. Photo courtesy of artists

Silkworm Pupas is a new media arts collective consisting of NYC based Chinese poets Jiaoyang Li and JinJin Xu. Our projects strive for intimate ways to envision attainable, inclusive, and bleeding-edge futures through innovative storytelling, documentary poetics practice, sound installation and video-performance art.

Jiaoyang Li is a Chinese poet and visual artist. Her literary work has appeared in LA Reviews of Books-China channel, 3:AM, Spittoon Magazine, Voice and Verse poetry magazine, and others. Her interdisciplinary practices have been supported by the New York Foundation of Art, The Immigrants Artist Biennial and others. She co-founded the interdisciplinary poetry journal 叵CLIP.

JinJin Xu is a poet and filmmaker from Shanghai invested in docu-poetics. Her work has been featured in The High Line Public Arts, The Harun Farocki Institute, The Immigrant Artist Biennial, and anthologized in Nasty Women Poets. Honors include The Poetry Society of America’s George Borgin Prize and fellowships from The Thomas J. Watson Foundation and the Flaherty Seminar. She teaches hybrid workshops at NYU where she is a Lillian Vernon Fellow.

June 24, 2020June 3, 2020

Artists on Coping: Simona Prives
by Etty Yaniv

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Working on Governors Island during a residency with 4heads, 2019. Photo by Ed Grant

Simona Prives is a Brooklyn-based visual artist. She creates collages, both still and moving, that focus on the process of decomposition and reconstruction and that examine our complex relationship between the organic and the man-made. Each work combines multiple forms of printmaking, using drawing, monotype, found material and hand-shot video to assemble the composition. Her artwork has been exhibited in New York City, Chicago, Miami, Italy, Greece, Japan and China, including at the Shanghai International Print Biennale.

June 23, 2020June 23, 2020

Artists on Coping: Heather and Raphael Rubinstein
by Etty Yaniv

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Heather and Raphael Rubinstein divide their time between New York City, northeastern Pennsylvania and Houston. Heather’s most recent exhibitions of her paintings were at the beginning of 2020 in New York, pre-covid, with a solo in Houston at McClain Gallery. Raphael had two books come out in early March as New York was shutting down: a monograph on artist Guillermo Kuitca, published by Lund Humphries, London, as part of their Contemporary Painters Series edited by Barry Schwabsky; and Albert Oehlen: Spiegelbilder 1982-1990, published by Holzwarth Publications, Galerie Max Hetzler Berlin and Nahmad Contemporary. Planned for 2020 was a new curatorial project of theirs: an exhibition on the topic of Poet+Painter collaborations—scheduled to open at a downtown non-profit in New York (pre-covid)—and in many ways, an extension of their 2019 “Under-Erasure” exhibition that took place at Pierogi Gallery in New York. In lieu of in-person projects, Heather is working on expanding their “Under-Erasure” digital archive, publishing an Under-Erasure image-book, and a virtual Poet+Painter exhibition. Raphael is currently writing The Miraculous: New York—with episodes appearing monthly in The Brooklyn Rail —a sequel to his book, The Miraculous (Paper Monument, 2014). They are currently working towards publishing The Miraculous: New York as a public art project in New York for 2021-22.

June 23, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Reece Cox
by Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping. This extended interview is part of an Art Spiel and Cultbytes content collaboration.

Reece Cox is a Berlin-based sound artist, DJ, and producer. Cox graduated with a BFA in Interdisciplinary Sculpture from MICA and has a cerebral approach to both club music and sound. His sets and track lists have recently been published by CRACK Magazine and for further at home listening you can find his interview series on 303 Gallery, ISSUE Project Room, and Cashmere Radio.

June 22, 2020December 19, 2020

Jeannine Bardo – Penchant for Storytelling
by Etty Yaniv

Detail: Lifelines, 2019, house paint, silver ink 8’7” x 12’9”. Photo courtesy of John Ros

In her drawings and installations Jeannine Bardo explores a wide array of narratives and information she encounters daily, ranging from stories in the news to patterns in nature. Jeannine Bardo describes for Art Spiel what brought her to art making, her process and projects, her role as co-director of BioBAT Art Space, as well as her role as the founder of Stand4 Gallery and Community Arts Center in Bay Ridge. Since our interview process took place a while before the on going pandemic and the current seismic events in our society, the artist was given the opportunity to share her reflections on these recent events as a prelude to discussing her work.

June 21, 2020June 21, 2020

Artists on Coping: Merritt Johnson
by Melissa Stern

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Merritt Johnson was born in West Baltimore and spent her childhood navigating between trees, tarps and concrete. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. Her work navigates the spaces between bodies and the body politic, land and cultures by making images and objects that connect, reflect and refract vision and experience. The multiplicity of materials and processes Johnson employs embody her multiplicity, exploring layering, allegiance and agency in the face of continued threats to land, water and bodies. Johnson’s works are containers for story, feeling and thought: images of what cannot be seen, exercises for existence, and political bodies. She lives and works with her family on Tlingit land in Sitka Alaska.

June 20, 2020November 2, 2022

Artists on Coping: Sally Boon Matthews
by Catherine Kirkpatrick

During the Coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

art%20spiel/ArtSpielfinished%20images%20for%20interview/artspielimages/1.portraitsally.jpg — *Sally Boon Matthews with Soundscape for March, April, May 2020. Water Colour, Ink, Felt Tip, Pencil, Thread on Mulberry Paper. 12”x 288”, 2020*

Sally Boon Matthews is a British born and educated artist, educator, and yogi living in New York City. Though her background was originally in photography, in the last eight years she has developed a multi-discipline practice that includes video, painting, collage, and drawing. Her work has been exhibited and published in Europe, the United States and Latin America. Publications include Tricycle Magazine, NY Times, Blitz Magazine, British Journal of Photography, Penguin Books, Random House, Warner Books, A&M Records, Om Yoga, Battersea Museum of Art, UK, Galerie Solado, Caracas, Venezuela, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Louisiana Museum of Art, Chateau de Trousse-Barriere, Briare, France, Jamaica Arts Center, NY.