#art – Page 7 – Art Spiel

November 7, 2023November 4, 2023

The Sublimity of Simplicity in Dai Ban’s Sculptures

On view at Carrie Haddad Gallery through November 26

Artist Profile

A person in a striped shirt

Description automatically generated — The Artist in his Studio, Great Barrington, MA. Image Credit: Matt Moment

When Dai Ban first traveled from his native Japan to the United States, he was struck by the nonchalant vibrance of American street art. The year was 1985, and although the golden age of graffiti had come and gone, its ethos had indelibly permeated the fine art world. Imagery that had been considered lowbrow just ten years prior became astronomically salable, so long as it decorated a canvas and not a subway car. Ban was bemused by the transformative power of gallery spaces. “Anything you show at the gallery looks like some kind of art,” he observed.

October 16, 2023September 28, 2023

Emily Culver: The Idea of a Thing

In Dialogue

Virginia-based artist Emily Culver’s background is as multifaceted as her artwork. With a father who is a carpenter and contractor and a mother who transitioned from being a midwife to a nursing professor, she was raised in a world that merged craft and body. This upbringing influenced her own creative direction. Adept at procedural tasks, she nonetheless felt a pull towards a less constrained form of expression. College introduced her to painting, but she soon sought more than just surfaces, finding herself intrigued by the interplay of gravity, physics, and mechanics.

September 28, 2023May 12, 2024

Manet and Degas as Realists

Opinion

Technically, Edouard Manet (1832–1883) and Edgar Degas (1834–1917 are not Impressionists; instead, they are Realists whose works owe a debt to Gericault, Goya, and Daumier and the invention of photography. Unlike Monet, who sought solace and inspiration in nature, which can be seen as a reaction to the urbanization associated with the rise of the bourgeoisie, Manet and Degas instead embraced the industrialization and urbanization driven by bourgeois economic interests. They were unconcerned with the dehumanizing effects of rapid technological advancement. Realism is aimed at depicting scenes and subjects based on the everyday lives of ordinary people.

September 18, 2023August 18, 2023

Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10 – Alejandra Seeber and Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon

Dance

The impetus for this series of conversations between a visual artist and a choreographer comes directly from my recent collaborative work with a choreographer as part of Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10. In this unique project a choreographer is paired with a visual artist to create together over two months a dance performance that integrates the two disciplines into a cohesive vision. Here is the conversation between artist Alejandra Seeber and choreographer Sarah Yasmine Marazzi-Sassoon.

June 26, 2023June 6, 2023

Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10 – JEANNE VERDOUX and JOVONNA PARKS

DANCE

The impetus for this series of conversations between a visual artist and a choreographer comes directly from my recent collaborative work with a choreographer as part of Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10. In this unique project a choreographer is paired with a visual artist to create together over two months a dance performance that integrates the two disciplines into a cohesive vision. Here is the conversation between artist Jeanne Verdoux and choreographer / dancer JoVonna Parks.

June 19, 2023May 24, 2023

Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10 – Tiffany Mangulabnan and Etty Yaniv

DANCE

The impetus for this series of conversations between a visual artist and a choreographer comes directly from my recent collaborative work with a choreographer as part of Norte Maar’s CounterPointe10. In this unique project a choreographer is paired with a visual artist to create together over two months a dance performance that integrates the two disciplines into a cohesive vision. Here is my dialogue with choreographer and dancer Tiffany Mangulabnan about our collaborative process.

June 5, 2023May 29, 2023

Whisperings from the Wormhole with @talluts

The (Real) Dream in Art

A picture containing painting, drawing, illustration, art

Description automatically generated — Cadavre Exquis with Valentine Hugo, André Breton, Tristan Tzara, Greta Knutson *Landscape* c.1933, Museum of Modern Art, Purchase

In an online artists’ talk in January 2022 between artists Chie Fueki, Alexi Worth and Catherine Murphy at DC Moore Gallery (produced by Painters’ Table), Murphy mentioned that her paintings were occasionally based on dreams. She revealed that her most recent show at Peter Freeman Inc. included two dream paintings: Flight (2020) and Begin Again (2019). “Flight” shows a gingham apron splayed at the bottom of four carpeted stairs and “Begin Again” shows five blue hand outlines on yellow-green wallpaper. During the course of the conversation, Worth also noted that Jasper Johns’ Flag painting came from a dream. And it got me wondering: How common is dream inspiration in art?

June 1, 2023June 1, 2023

Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake

A picture containing indoor, art, wall, museum

Description automatically generated — Installation view, Jim Condron: Collected Things at Art Cake, photo courtesy of Etty Yaniv

Collected Things, Jim Condron’s terrific solo exhibition at Art Cake in Brooklyn prompts us to question our relationship with the objects we interact with—objects that we use, discard, and transform through memory and art process. At the heart of this exhibition are Condron’s recent series of sculptures, which brings together everyday objects and ephemeral materials he has collected from artists, writers, and thinkers who participated in the project—these individuals include personal acquaintances like Graham Nickson, Lucy Sante, Rebecca Hoffberger, Carl E. Hazlewood and Cordy Ryman. Among them is the pioneering painter Grace Hartigan, who was Condron’s teacher and for whom he also worked as a graduate assistant in 2004, four years before her death. This body of work highlights how Condron’s process of collecting, editing, and adding other materials, activates the lineage and history of everyday objects, transforming them into playful art objects with renewed vitality and psychological presence.

May 29, 2023May 19, 2023

I Make My Own Weather at the MAC

Featured Artist

Bonny Leibowitz “I Make My Own Weather”, “Raindrop installation”. photo courtesy Bonny Leibowitz

In her installation-based exhibition titled I Make My Own Weather at the MAC in Dallas, Bonny Leibowitz explores the validity of social constructs and the reliability of acquired or assumed perceptions, implying separateness, otherness and disconnection. Leibowitz’s work utilizes and expounds upon the landscape painting traditions of idealized histories, such as the Hudson River School, Romanticism, and Baroque. The installations act as deconstructed paintings, as though walking through fragments of represented landscapes—a tree root painted epoxy green, an Astro turf tarp in the shape of a pond, a peeling away of a blue sky.

March 17, 2023March 3, 2023

Once She Dries: An Ode to Coral

Hot Air

Nancy Cohen, Segment of handmade paper loop that circles the gallery. Wire, thread and handmade paper, 80” x 140” x 46,” 2022. Photo credit: Maddie Orton

In the fall of 2019, Meagan Woods, an interdisciplinary artist working in dance, theatre and costume design, attended an arts/science event at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada where she was an MFA student. She was both alarmed and inspired by what she learned about the critical condition of coral reefs around the world caused by climate change. In response, she assembled a team consisting of four colleagues in the MFA Interdisciplinary Arts program and a New-Jersey based visual artist to create what eventually became an innovative, experimental opera/installation called Once She Dries. Besides Woods, the collaborative includes pianist and composer, Casper Leerink; filmmaker, photographer and installation artist, Xinyue Liu; violinist and composer, Kourosh Ghamsari-Esfahani; musician and actress, Amanda Sum; and sculptor and installation artist, Nancy Cohen.