My earliest recollections are of an elaborate grate that covered an air shaft in the house where I was raised in Brooklyn. The pattern of swirls-the positive and negative space-the completeness of the Victorian design captivated me. The vent went out into a back yard and because the brass plate so fascinated me, I created elaborate visual images in my mind that incorporated the polished plate, shadowy shaft and the leafy garden beyond. I sketched the grate and used black Crayola crayons to block out the negative space. One day, I discovered a way of looking at the plate and my sketches through the viewfinder of my Dad’s Kodak Brownie. It was magic! So began my passion for architectural elements that define and augment visual space and my desire to create own art from these masterworks of stone, metal, glass and wood.

As an adolescent, I began to discover and appreciate architectural details that adorn buildings in New York City. The early photographs that I took were purely to capture the visual. Each time I saw a flower carved in stone, an interlocking and intricate geometric design created by ironwork, an enchanting or fierce marble face over a doorway, I had to capture it on film. I would wait anxiously for the photographs to come back (this before my education of the darkroom and the infinite possibilities that chamber held) from the camera store. Opening those envelopes was an experience filled with all the wonder of childhood: the images of art poured forth. I cropped the artful architectural details to create my own art and frequently drew or painted elaborate illustrations from those photographs. Some of the drawings and paintings were taken from one architectural image; others combined several ornaments into one composition. While my contemporaries in art classes were studiously copying the works of the masters, I was replicating and interpreting in my own way the often unsung artists who had sculpted masterpieces that ornamented buildings right in my own neighborhood. I did not need to look in art books to find statues and paintings that were housed in European museums to find my inspiration: all I had to do was look around my Brooklyn street or take a subway to my personal Oz: Manhattan. The artworks were all around me on the buildings I passed every day.

As a photographer of details of architecture, I am still enthralled by the magnificent art and meticulous craft that went in to the creation of ornamentation of architecture in the past. When I plan a day of photographing architecture, likely as not, I will be amazed by the details that I discover-even now. Throughout my travels, I have photographed vine covered lampposts, grim faced gargoyles, beatific angels, elaborate serpentine designs and elegant art deco relief I first photograph some of the area in which the detail exists. For example, on a recent shoot, I found inspirational subjects in Grand Central Station. Before taking photographs of the details to which I was drawn, I took pictures of the entire building from numerous angles. I then isolated the details of architecture that I wished to photograph. I always work with natural light to emphasize the characteristics of the detail of architecture and the way in which it was initially created. After I am satisfied that I had enough photographs of the architectural detail, I shoot the surfaces of the detail and the surrounding area up close so that I can understand the original medium: sandstone, marble, brass, oak, et al. Later, I look at the images for hours before selecting the very best way in which I can preserve and enhance the art of the architectural detail. The images of Grand Central Station’s magnificent architectural details gave me weeks of creative energy and a passion to return there often to seek out new details and further refine the previous photographs I took there.

My quest in seeking out architectural details from which to create my own art has given me a profound appreciation of the beauty and history of New York. The art of creating art from art can be a humbling, yet empowering experience. I have, on the one hand, the great artists who created these marvels of ornamentation to live up to as I incorporate their art into my own. On the other hand, I am mentored by some of the best possible teachers. It was and continues to be a wonderful way to express myself through art.

Created by Ellen Fisch On 03/31/09 At 09:05 AM

I found out about the “radiology art” of Satre Stuelke from a NY Times article called “The Inner Beauty of a McNugget” but I would have called it something like “Scary, Toxic Looking Chicken McNuggets.”

Stuelke has also done a few McDonalds burgers for his Radiology Art project and they look just as scarily toxic as the McNuggets. Sure, they’re beautiful to look at but they’re probably not something that should be put into your mouth.

The New York City artist’s statement for the project says it is “Dedicated to the deeper visualization of various objects that hold unique cultural importance in modern society, this project intends to plant a seed of scientific creativity in the minds of all those inclined to participate”

He has photographed/scanned toys, food and electronics. My favorites are the toys, especially the wild looking barbie doll and the toy elephant. See them on his Website here.

I found out about the “radiology art” of Satre Stuelke from a NY Times article called “The Inner Beauty of a McNugget” but I would have called it something like “Scary, Toxic Looking Chicken McNuggets.”

Stuelke has also done a few McDonalds burgers for his Radiology Art project and they look just as scarily toxic as the McNuggets. Sure, they’re beautiful to look at but they’re probably not something that should be put into your mouth.

The New York City artist’s statement for the project says it is “Dedicated to the deeper visualization of various objects that hold unique cultural importance in modern society, this project intends to plant a seed of scientific creativity in the minds of all those inclined to participate”

He has photographed/scanned toys, food and electronics. My favorites are the toys, especially the wild looking barbie doll and the toy elephant. See them on his Website here.

The United Arab Emirates’ enthusiastic embrace of all things cultural in recent years has resulted in a lot of attention being paid to Dubai and Abu Dhabi – both now host commercial art fairs and both have cultural mega-projects on the way. Less attention has been paid to the smaller Emirate of Sharjah which is doing neither of these things but remains quietly confident about its status as the real cultural capital of the UAE.
There is justification in this claim. Sharjah is the founder and home of the Emirates Fine Arts Society, was the UNESCO capital of Arab culture in 1998 and is currently home to more museums than Abu Dhabi and Dubai combined. However, perhaps the greatest evidence of Sharjah’s pioneering role in cultural development is the fact that since 1993 it has hosted its own biennale, the 9th edition of which opened on March 19th and will run until May 19th.

The main exhibition component of this Biennale called Provisions for the Future loosely explores how fictionalized notions of utopia can provide motivation for movement from one place to another. It also reflects on how action in the present either does or doesn’t provide security in the future. With a strong focus on experimentation and process, site-specific installation work was very much encouraged and this experimental ethos extended to the Biennale catalogue. This is a 2-part collaborative project between the Biennale, Bidoun Magazine, the Khatt Foundation and the 58 artists themselves. Part I focuses on creative process rather than finished product so each artist provided materials showing how the work emerged, from conceptual thought and preliminary visualization, to actual local layout planning and logistics. Part II of the catalogue will be published to coincide with Art Dubai in 2010 and will complete the process by documenting what actually happened in the Biennale. However, it is fascinating to be able to make these comparisons yourself as you see each work.

Diana Al–Hadid’s partially collapsed structural installation was inspired by the Tower of Babel story and the patterns in a fingerprint. Despite the materials used and the size of the work it sat very delicately in a plaza in front of the Sharjah Art Museum which was covered with text by Lawrence Weiner. Nearby Maidar Lopez had intervened by drawing football field gridlines and installing a water fountain. This transformed the space especially in the evening when it was packed with kids playing football. Laurent Grasso’s large blue neon in Arabic reading ‘The wider the vision, the narrower the statement’ also worked well with the distinct Sharjah space and was perfectly placed in a long arched corridor. Prize for the most striking installation, however, has to go to Lara Faveretto. Her row of brightly coloured carwash brushes spinning purposefully in a large open courtyard was truly awesome.

Two installations consisted of dark mazes incorporating video and sound pieces. Around each corner of Agnes Janich’s maze, Man to Man, were video projections of snarling and barking dogs or bloody bones and the noisy and claustrophobic space is constructed to make wrong dark dead ends very likely. On entering Lamia Joreige’s maze, Three Triptychs, music is triggered along with a camera which projects your progress onto a facing screen. In the next section you are abruptly removed from the image. Some of the video imagery is taken from the Tarkovsky film Solaris and projected onto the floor as well as onto screens while other imagery relates to the war in Lebanon. Some of the atmospheric audio input was arranged by musician, artist and techno whizz, Tarek Atoui. Interestingly Janich’s maze as presented in the catalogue was tangible enough to predict but Joreige’s impossible even to imagine. Similarly, the catalogue could not prepare you for the treat of Hala Elkoussy’s archive which was a small separate room crammed with photos, paintings, video screens and many other strange and wonderful items. It was an absolute dream space for hoarders, collectors, and thrift shop junkies.

Another installation highlight was N.S. Harsha’s Nations consisting of hundreds of sewing machines loosely connected by tangled cotton and each draped with the flag of a different nation. The sheer scale of it made it look like an Asian sweatshop. Meanwhile, Firoz Mahmud’s Halycon Tarp was another epic cross-media installation using the Bengal tiger as a motif to reveal aspects of Bangladeshi history, society and politics as well as drawing attention to the perils facing the tigers themselves.

Decoder by Alberto Duman was supposed to be a tall outdoor tower of shopping trolleys. However, what transpired was a mini stack of trolleys on sand surrounded by photographs of trolleys in the desert and the plans for the original work. This was a great example of how an ambitious and experimental work could be successfully modified owing to difficulties with on-site logistics and how this process in itself could alter the meaning of the work.

Some work, however, didn’t live up to its catalogue expectations at all. Juan Araujo’s oil paintings on wood ended up being completely different to what was proposed and much less engaging. In the case of Doug Henders it was hard to relate the actual work to his carefully presented concepts which was very frustrating. This had the unfortunate result of making the catalogue pages seem more interesting that the work itself!

There was a lot of innovative video work in the Biennale but those that stood out most for me were by Sharif Waked and Nikolaj Larsen. Waked uses the now familiar media image of a suicide bomber’s last broadcast but his protagonist reads excerpts from One Thousand and One Nights instead thus avoiding the horrific denouement. This mirrors the origin of the tales themselves in which Scheherazade narrates one gripping tale after another to King Shahrayar in order to save herself and her tribe from execution. Nikolaj Larsen’s work consists of two videos projected onto facing screens. On one screen Indian migrant workers based in Sharjah stand staring into the camera. On the opposite screen their families back in India do the same. Sitting in that space between the screens the viewer has to make the connections resulting in a very intimate and moving experience.

There was also a performance, theatre and film programme which provided a rare opportunity to see theatrical performances like Richard III, An Arab Tragedy, Sulayman Al Bassam’s dramatic adaptation of the Shakespeare play relocated to the contemporary Gulf. Placing the historical play in this modern context obviously reveals the relevance of Shakespearean themes across time and cultures but also gives a fascinating insight into how cultural activity can delicately reframe regional political discourse. By contrast, Elena Kovylina’s performance ‘Un cri dans le silence’ provided a moment of complete dislocation from cultural context. The performance was a scene re-enactment from Brigitte Bardot’s 1964 film And God Created Woman. It involved chicks, rabbits and a sexy dance in high heels and almost transparent dress. It was completely bizarre and I’m still not convinced I didn’t dream it!

Obviously there is a lot more to cover in something of this size and scale and this review really does not do it justice. Fortunately it goes on until May 19th so I am anticipating a lot more time down in the cultural capital of the UAE…

Links
Sharjah Biennale http://www.sharjahbiennial.org/en/default.html
Bidoun http://www.bidoun.com/
Khatt Foundation http://www.khtt.net/

Created by Valerie Grove On 03/26/09 At 11:38 AM

There once was a man who wanted to discover the meaning of everything.
He wandered across the world, searching for someone wise enough to explain to him what all this was about, what was the meaning of everything.
After many years, in a distant land, he was told there is one Sage who knows the secret, the meaning of everything.
So he traveled to the huge house where the old Sage lived. He knocked at the door, but there was no answer. He tried opening the large wooden door. It was not locked. The traveler entered the house, to find himself in an enormous hall with walls covered in shelves with books. He walked further in and entered a large room also filled with books. He moved to the adjacent room – and discovered that there, too, shelves were everywhere, and on them – only books. He approached one of the shelves and picked up a random volume. He opened it, and inside it, he saw the letter N, filling the pages. The pages of the book were all but rows of NNNNNN…
He picked up another book, opened it – the book was filled with TTTTTTT…. He tried another one, and another, and each of them was filled with but one letter.
Flabbergasted, the traveler wanted to sit down, when the Sage came in. He was an old, grey-bearded man, just as the fairy-tales have it.
“Sir, said the traveler, I don’t understand, there is… I don’t understand!”
The Sage smiled, and replied, “Now all you need to do is connect the letters.”

Although text is at the heart of her work, Jenny Holzer is not really a writer. She is rather a reader. Her work is not so much about text, as it is about giving body to text. But, as the authorship becomes blundered (Holzer signs the work, but none of the texts that compose it), writing is always re-writing, and thus, it is fundamentally about the embodyment reading.

Somewhat following the path suggested by the likes of Barthes, Baudrillard or Foucault, Holzer is a semiotic DJ, reconfiguring and re-shaping the meaning that seems to have been there long ago. If her own words appear in the works, they seem to remain transparent, undistinguishable from external sources. (Remember the famous line, “Protect Me From What I Want“? Can you say if it was Holzer’s own sentence, or an appropriation of someone else’s?).

In one of her recent projects included in the Protect Protect exhibition (read an insightful review here), Holzer takes on Iraq and the question of torture. In a work showcased at the TimeOut NY site, she reproduces original, recently declassified documents of the US Army. What is the artist’s role? How different is it from strictly political work?

Yes, this is Warholesque. And yes, it is somewhat controversial to have an artist of Holzer’s renown decide that this was the right approach and means for this specific subject.
One excellent and cruel review puts it bluntly: if it is about raising our awareness, Warhol’s works were good proof that in terms of political awareness this can hardly be a success.
But we can see it from another angle: contrary to Warhol, Holzer gained her reputation on working on questions of morality, and contrary to what she herself claims, values have always been a crucial issue in her work. Thus, as her work can already be seen from this engaged perspective, can’t we interpret the careful selection of documents as a sort of curatorial answer precisely to warholian esthetic relativism?

Yet the question remains: do we really need this reader? Do we not see the same documents elsewhere? Our performativity-sensitive eyes are accustomed to seeing the terrific game of language that, say, the map of the Iraq invasion represents. What does purple paint and canvas change in this reading, for us, today?
(image on top from here)

I never know what to expect when I browse through the keywords that people use to find Art News Blog. They range from the funny, to the disgusting, to just stupid.

• Tit hanging – To be hung by your tits? Sounds painful.
• Do art galleries make money – Probably not at the moment.
• Designer vagina – That rhymes.
• Spam Funny – It can be.
• Shit art – That’s a matter of opinion.
• Propaganda advertising – It is.
• Jussst Porn – Wrong blog.
• Bare bums – Cold bare bums in this case.
• Sexy free – Many good things are free.
• Sleep artists – Masters of sleeping?
• Penis artists – I think there’s just one of them.
• Strange artists – Aren’t we all?
• Rich artists – They’re a rare breed but they do exist.
• Art collegia delenda est – That’s your term Donald.

Here’s some earlier search terms from 2006, 2007 and some stupid Banksy searches.

Simple, everyday things amuse me. For example, a piece of paper blowing in the wind..

It was made by Sydney based artist Gary Deirmendjian.

ingredients:
1. a wondering through city fringe laneways;
2. a scrap of paper torn from a nearby skip;
3. a breeze; and
4. a pocket camera aimed with the hope of catching something interesting.

Gary says “It was all inspired and spurred on by the moment, as in there was no preconceived idea or intent to begin with – it took form as I began the filming. The breathing was added in editing.”

It made me think of the plastic bag in the wind scene from the American Beauty movie (I love that scene).
“Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world I feel like I can’t take it, like my heart’s going to cave in.”

It seems as though my best results are achieved through the continually mediated presence of an awareness and appreciation of an existence in which all the possible artifice of narration has lost its significance.

I represent apparently everyday situations, but which are actually suffused by a mysterious atmosphere, penetrating and refuting any semblance of normality.
Consequently, a man smoking or a woman lying on a bed are no longer representations of ordinary gestures or habits, but become enigmatic representations, tending towards other possibilities. So the background may no longer be a bar, a bedroom, or a road, but time, space, or death.
Even painting, in its way, tries to measure itself against aspects that continually evade us.

The painting on my canvas seems to be of highly realistic. However, if you look carefully at it, you will see that the figures in it are completely isolated from each other. The composition does not represent a scene, but rather, it shows various situations. It is both all true and all false. I cannot illustrate: I pretend to tell a story, and this fictional work contains my idea of the world in which we live and of how to fix things. I don’t paint anything that is actually occurring, but always think of something different from what seems to be the subject of the painting. (…) The painting is the artist’s “journey” while it is in the studio, on the artist’s easel. Then it will acquire new energy, travelling through the eyes of those who are looking at it, adding and subtracting from it, finding references in it that the artist had not even imagined. At that moment the “journey” is no longer the artist’s, but that of the observer.

Our identity derives from a comparison with others, or even a rivalry, and is constructed through a formative process offering us cultural references, in the sense of knowledge of the world around us.
Who we are, where we come from, and where we are going … are all eternal questions that our intellectual curiosity continues to reflect upon, searching for answers.

Sometimes, when we are young, we think we have found “the missing link”. As time passes, everything mellows: what once seemed to be simple and essential needs to be regarded with other eyes. But everything that we have been, or that we have thought we were, that we have loved or refused, stays with us.

However, I have always thought that painting is a kind of laboratory to gain an understanding of the artist, even going beyond what an artist actually thinks he believes. But it could also be said that art is able to unify what seems to have been divided.

Alberto Sughi, Rome 2009
(translated by Joelle Crowle)
Title of the painting: At the end of the day, Oil of canvas, 140×160cm, 2009
For more info on Alberto Sughi see. www.albertosughi.com

Created by Alberto Sughi On 03/23/09 At 11:22 AM

I have been on the road for the past week exploring a few places that I thought I might like to move to (see earlier post), which has slowed posting down. Friends were renting a massive holiday apartment on the Gold Coast so I invited myself around to stay. It was on the 70th floor of a building which claims to be the tallest residential building in the world. It was like living on a plane without all the turbulence and flight attendants offering coffee and bad food.

Here’s some storm clouds rolling in..

Here’s a painting that I couldn’t stand looking at in the apartment, so I turned it around as it would have ruined my week. Friends thought I was crazy but I didn’t want it to influence me in any way.

People looked like ants on the beach.

I have a few more places to explore, but I’m starting to think I will just travel around Europe and America for the next year or two.

I have been on the road for the past week exploring a few places that I thought I might like to move to (see earlier post), which has slowed posting down. Friends were renting a massive holiday apartment on the Gold Coast so I invited myself around to stay. It was on the 70th floor of a building which claims to be the tallest residential building in the world. It was like living on a plane without all the turbulence and flight attendants offering coffee and bad food.

Here’s some storm clouds rolling in..

Here’s a painting that I couldn’t stand looking at in the apartment, so I turned it around as it would have ruined my week. Friends thought I was crazy but I didn’t want it to influence me in any way.

People looked like ants on the beach.

I have a few more places to explore, but I’m starting to think I will just travel around Europe and America for the next year or two.