contemporary art – Page 79

May 22, 2019May 22, 2019, by Etty Yaniv

Formula 1: A Loud, Low Hum at CUE Art Foundation

The group show “Formula 1: A Loud, Low Hum” at CUE Art Foundation raises questions on the meaning of visual formulae in contemporary art without falling into the trap of formulaic. The genesis of this three-person sculpture group show started with an open call in which the curators Mira Dayal and Simon Wu asked savvy art viewers to suggest “formulas,” that is, combinations of materials and tropes used, or perhaps overused in art today. Out of the 67 formulas submitted, the curators selected the ones they both found intriguing and invited Nikita Gale, Amanda Turner Pohan, and Laurie Kang to come up with responses to formulas that invoked the hard and soft, technological and biological, individual and institutional. Gale’s body-like textures, Pohan’s sleek kinetic sculptures, and Kang’s architectural steel structure, all merge industrial off the shelf materials with invisible elements such as sound, vibration, and sensitivity to light. Like the relationship of body and mind, their fragmented materials assume meaning through the hidden forces that seem to operate them.

May 20, 2019May 21, 2019, by Michal Gavish

Long Time Passing – A Campfire Story

Jeannine Bardo at Stand4

In her recent exhibition at the New York Stand4 gallery, Jeannine Bardo displays her art in the wall and on the wall. The Brooklyn artist paints, scratches, plasters, and finds objects from nature that add up to a set of narratives that she titles “Long Time Passing/ A Campfire Story.” The artworks are subtle, with almost no color. The carvings and objects are not clearly visible at first glance. Bardo invites her viewers to take their time, sit by the fire, and listen as she unravels her tales, using shiny spots that glitter along their progression. As the stories unfold, her calm work reveals a sense of menace that continues throughout the narrative path.

Lifelines, 2019; image by Laura Sacks

May 14, 2019November 15, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Erika Ranee – Wired for Bold

Erika Ranee, You’re Your Own You, 2018, ink and crayon on paper, 12”x 12”

The tension between “inside” and “outside” in Erika Ranee’s paintings draw you into an enclosed space with an explosive and rhythmic internal movement. The vibrant colors, organic shapes, and linear marks that link the forms like veins, altogether resonate with living organisms, body, or microscopic landscapes. The artist shares with Art Spiel what brought her to art, her thought and work processes, as well as her current projects.

May 12, 2019May 12, 2019, by Paul D'Agostino

Nota Bene with @postuccio [vi]

M. David & Co. ,Cosmic Veggies, El Sótano, C&M Creative

M. David & Co.

So certainly sonorous that it’s surely a song is the duet of solo shows by Len Bellinger and Denise Sfraga that didn’t just open, but robustly, vividly, gregariously and, in part, also florally burst into being at M. David & Co. a couple of weeks ago. The energy and dynamism of the works in both exhibits is readily infectious, such that the reception itself assumed the same airs. That might’ve even been what catalyzed some of the springtime climes we’ve felt of late. And if so, great. Let’s see more, please.

April 24, 2019November 2, 2022, by Audra Lambert

Marjan Moghaddam: Pioneering Humanity in a Digital Age

Hailed as a “Trailblazer in Digital Art” by the Times Tribune and “The First Lady of Animated Painting” by The Examiner, Marjan Moghaddam is a pioneering and award-winning digital artist and animator who has been exhibiting her computer-generated art works in galleries, museums, and festivals since the 1980s. Most recently, her #arthacks on Instagram were shortlisted for the International Digital Sculpture price, and several of these hacks have gone viral on top art channels on social media with millions of views. Her Augmented Reality art has been exhibited at museums such as the Smithsonian. Audra Lambert talked with Marjan Moghaddam about the artist’s reflections on digital art and social media, her work, and upcoming projects.

April 2, 2019November 2, 2022, by Catherine Kirkpatrick

A Visit with Nancy Baker

Nancy Baker’s art is colorful and bright, with filigree shapes that fuse, multiply and pulse outward in vibrant, sweeping waves. Individually the panels seem molecular and scientific; layered together they suggest vast networks and digital flow, yet clearly are the work of an artist’s hand. The eye zooms in and picks out familiar details–a candy wrapper, a takeout tray–then moves out again to appreciate the larger whole.

Panel in Baker’s Studio (full and detail images)

March 29, 2019March 29, 2019, by Etty Yaniv

Elisa D’Arrigo – From the Inside Out

Elisa D’Arrigo, P.G. On My Mind 2, 2018, Glazed Ceramic, 5 x 7 x 4 inches Courtesy of the Artist and Elizabeth Harris Gallery

Elisa D’Arrigo‘s upcoming exhibition, “In the Moment,” at Elizabeth Harris Gallery will feature her new body of ceramic work. Her vessel forms breathe with inner life, their cylindrical shapes are both tumultuous and vivacious – like a body, organism, or life itself. The artist shares with Art Spiel some of her thought and work processes as well as some insight on her upcoming show.

March 28, 2019March 29, 2019, by Paul D'Agostino

Nota Bene with @postuccio [iv]

Knockdown Center, Orgy Park, CLEARING

Knockdown Center

Wonderfully striking in bright luminosities, diagonal analogousness, situational room-to-room parallels, transporting suggestiveness and subtly warmed circumstantial frigidities are the two installations ‘contained,’ in a way, by “A Continuous Stream of Occurrence,” an exhibition that opened a few weeks ago at Maspeth gem The Knockdown Center .

At top is Luba Drozd‘s room. It both looks and sounds like a veritable spatial knot of brilliantly site-specific polyphonia involving significant degrees of multidisciplinarity, multimateriality and strata within circumstantial strata of shadow-play. It’s a tough but fun knot to look at and into, and listen closely to, to begin to untie just how it works with totality and relative simplicity, though not in ways simplistic in the least.

Rather than necessarily site-specific or sonic, the active state of William Lamsom‘s installation in the adjacent gallery is like that of a shimmering, gradually phase-changing antechamber to Drozd’s comparative cavern; they scan instantly as visually coherent in many satisfying and still individualizable ways. Entering Lamsom’s room alone is like stumbling into an abandoned research lab in a yearless future. Seeing the rooms in tandem is like being dropped in some nicely mysterious nook on Krypton and having no idea why.

Great installations, great show. Curated by a duo going by the ‘name’ XP (@xaviacarin & @parkcmyers).

March 18, 2019March 19, 2019, by Etty Yaniv

Pat Lay: Mapping New Interiors

Pat Lay, installation view in studio, photo courtesy of the artist

Pat Lay‘s Digital work conjures ancient iconography, or maps organized in what appears to be a binary logic. Throughout her abstracted digital and more figurative sculptural work she consistently reflects on the role of technology in our life, merging cultural cues with a seemingly mathematical order. For Art Spiel the artist elaborates on her interest in technology, what brought her to art, and her 42 year experience as an art educator at Montclair State University – both as a teacher and as the founding director of the MFA in Studio Art.

March 15, 2019March 15, 2019, by Sharilyn Neidhardt

Ethereal Anaesthetic

Joanne Ungar at Front Room Gallery

All Photos by Sharilyn Neidhardt

Joanne Ungar at Front Room, partial installation view

Pain produces sharp, bright sensations or sometimes ripping agony. It’s often intensely specific. The substances that bring us relief often do so by blurring the hard angles of our pain, allowing us to focus elsewhere. Some substances can leave us in a disconnected fog, far away from the source of discomfort. Others mute and muffle the pain, giving the relieved a sense of floating in a cushioned world. Calibrating effective pain relief can be a struggle for balance between an alert connection to the present and a silencing of uncomfortable sensation. Continue reading “Ethereal Anaesthetic”