consciousness – Art Spiel

September 18, 2024October 6, 2024, by Melissa Stern

Martin Wilner -The Case Histories: When We Cease to Understand the World (Extraterrestrials on The Couch)

A collage of drawings of people

Description automatically generated — June 2015- Seth Shostak. Pen and ink on Bristol board 161/2 x 171/8

Martin Wilner’s compelling new show at BravinLee Projects is both conceptually and visually complex, the work of an intellect working on several intersecting planes. Wilner is a practicing Freudian psychoanalyst, a scholar, and mentor to analysts in training. He is a self-taught artist whose work reflects his involvement with the human psyche, popular culture, and comic strip art. His artistic practice is intertwined deeply with his psychoanalytic work and comes with an interesting twist; Wilner the therapist invites the public to engage deeply with the world of Wilner the artist via social media.

May 10, 2023October 6, 2024, by Maggie Pavao

Ahavani Mullen: Across Centuries and the Earth

Artist Profile

Installation view, Ahavani Mullen: Across Centuries and the Earth, 2023. Dennos Museum Center, Traverse City, MI. Photo by the artist

In Ahavani Mullen’s studio, humble materials of pigment, metal, limestone, and resin transform into spiritual relics. She enters into the act of creation in silence from which paintings, sculptures, and installations evolve and become artifacts of human consciousness. In connecting the seen to the unseen, her objects hold memories of time, space, and sound, referencing the very turning of the earth with its movements and vibrations.

September 18, 2021November 2, 2022, by Art Spiel

Fred Gutzeit Retrospective at Catherine Fosnot Art Gallery

Previewing – with gallery founder and curator Catherine Fosnot

A picture containing text

Description automatically generated — Fred Gutzeit (2021) Future Life Puzzle, Acrylic on paper on canvas, 72” x 72”

The Opening Fall Season at the Fosnot Art Gallery will showcase Fred Gutzeit’s body of works from 1966-2021. Although he began as a painter of found objects and landscapes, Fred Gutzeit has never been satisfied with capturing the realism we “see“ in nature. He has continually sought a realism through abstraction that would capture the hidden complexity of nature juxtaposed with a human search for structure. Musings about complexity and chaos theories, string theory, mathematics modeling, and current scientific speculation about “multiverses” are employed as he explores consciousness, interaction, identity, and searches for structure. His bold use of color and dimensionality are wonderous and aesthetically pleasing allowing us to travel into the cosmos of his world.

May 21, 2020April 8, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Bonny Leibowitz

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

The Cloud As An Object, 2020, foam, acrylic, branches, faux fur

Bonny Leibowitz explores in her work the inner workings of consciousness, the transitory nature of thought and questions the construct of certainty. She utilizes a variety of materials including Tyvek, Plaster, Vinyl, Fosshape, Dura-lar, foam, wax, pigments, ink, found objects and more. Her solo exhibitions include Cohn Drennan Contemporary – Dallas, TX, The Museum of Art – Wichita Falls, TX, Art Cube Gallery – Laguna Beach, CA, Liliana Bloch Gallery – Dallas, TX, No.4 Studio – Brooklyn, NY and The Neon Heater – Findlay, OH. Originally from Philadelphia, Leibowitz lives in Dallas, TX. where she maintains her studio practice.

August 6, 2019August 7, 2019, by Etty Yaniv

Brian Wood Drawings: Visions of Hyperawareness

Brian Wood, Plank, 2017, Graphite on paper, 11 x 14 in., photo courtesy of the artist

Brian Wood’s drawings are literally visionary. They derive from what the artist describes as a “trance-like” state, where the ego is consumed by the image, as the inner mind and hand become vital conduits for arising images. This inner process results in drawings that invoke nuanced mental states, fragmented memories, and perhaps most important, a glimpse at the unknown. Holland Cotter wrote in his NY Times review of Brian Wood’s 2014 solo show Enceinte that the artist creates “a kind of Symbolist world in which emerging into life and being devoured by it are part of the same inexorable process.” In a cynical age with ubiquitously ironic art, this unabashed approach to the spiritual elements in the process of art making is quite refreshing.