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Tag: Artinfo
Voyeurs caught spying on moments of grace (August 10 2012) Voyeurs caught spying on moments of grace (August 10 2012)

Rineke Dijkstra the 53 year old Dutch photographer renowned for her single portraits usually in series of work taking in groups such as adolescents, clubbers, soldiers, recent mothers, or bullfighters; has been profiled by Kyle Chayka in an article published on Artinfo. In the article Chayka states “While working as an editorial photographer on assignment, the artist got into a serious accident. Doctors warned her that if she didn’t exercise extensively she might lose the use of her legs, and so she took to swimming. One day after climbing exhausted out of the pool, she noticed that her eyes were rimmed with red, as if she had been crying. Dijkstra decided to turn that moment into a self-portrait, and the resulting image hangs on the Guggenheim’s gallery wall. …Dijkstra is seen standing against a geometric tiled wall, eyes staring straight ahead at the viewer, worn out yet ferociously self-possessed. It was then that the photographer realized the power of shooting her subjects in moments of distress or suspension, times when the wall between the individual and society comes down and the soul is bared. The strategy pays off viscerally in Dijkstra’s series of portraits of new mothers shot just after birth. The women stand in the hallways of their homes (where Dutch women often give birth) cradling their newborns, faces communicating a captivating mix of shock and bemused joy. … We, of course, are the voyeurs caught spying on their moments of grace. Yet Dijkstra’s accomplishment is that she doesn’t sexualize, idealize, or exoticize what she captures.”

 

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Limited only by ability to imagine possibilities (July 23 2012) Limited only by ability to imagine possibilities (July 23 2012)

Kerry James Marshall the 56 year old American artist painter known for his large-scale paintings, sculptures, and objects that take African-American life and history as their subject matter. His work often deals with the effects of the Civil Rights movement on domestic life, in addition to working with elements of popular culture. Marshall developed a signature style during his early years involving the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures. These images represent his perspective of African Americans with separate and distinct inner and outer appearances, while at the same time confronting racial stereotypes within contemporary American society. Marshall has been profiled by Rachel Wolff in an article on Artinfo, where he states “€œIf you look historically at the way painting has moved from representation to abstraction, the implications of that, in some ways, erased what people can identify as political and social content in a work, one of the quickest ways you can erase what they saw as limitations of ethnicity and race was to do abstract work, and by doing so, you would find your way into the mainstream of the art world. I am trying to demonstrate that there is a great deal of potential left in the black aesthetic and within the specificity of the Black Nationalist position as represented by the colors red, black, and green. That you can transcend what is perceived to be the limitation of a race-conscious kind of work. It is a limitation only if you accept someone else’s foreclosure from the outside. If you go into it yourself, you can exercise a good deal. And you are limited only by your own ability to imagine possibilities.”€

 

Inspired by Artinfo ow.ly/cltzw image source Ulrich Musum of Art ow.ly/cltss

Clever merger of street style and postmodern (July 6th 2012) Clever merger of street style and postmodern (July 6th 2012)

Kehinde Wiley the 35 year old American portrait painter, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of contemporary men in heroic poses has been profiled by Ben Davis for ArtInfo as ‘How the Artist Painted Himself Into a Corner With His New Works’. Davis states “Wiley’s much-hyped… series of large oil-on-linen paintings in the same near-photorealist, mock-baroque style that made Wiley famous in the first place, though this time depicting African-American women (instead of men) who have been cast from the streets of the Bronx and Queens, each of them clad in frothy couture made for their sittings by fashion designer Riccardo Tisci, in poses inspired by works from the Louvre. …his big breakthrough during a residency at the Studio Museum in Harlem, where he decided to cast young men off the street and paint them in the heroic terms of royal portraiture. The result was a clever merger between street style and postmodern painting. It’s a good formula. Possibly too good. It suggests intelligence (in the art-historical references) and social conscience (in the focus on the African-American community), but is also neither particularly hard to digest nor particularly confrontational. …On some level, Wiley is aware that he is a prisoner of his own success. He has tried to change things up …[but] did exactly the same thing…”

 

Inspired by Ben Davis ow.ly/bWbwm image source Facebook ow.ly/bWbuj

Emma Hack the Australian visual artist who combines canvas and body painting with studio based photography, renowned for her recent work with Australian musician Gotye on the video “Somebody I Used to Know” which also features New Zealand singer Kimbra, has been interviewed by Nicholas Forrest for Artinfo. In the interview Hack states “Natasha Pincus, the director/producer, wanted to create a blend of the bodies into a background to make them appear as if they are in a relationship whilst blended. Then Kimbra leaves the relationship as the paint disappears from her back. …The process is very difficult and he was a trooper — never complained even though in pain. In all, it took 23 hours to create the work on them both. He loves and understands the process, which makes it easy to work with him.  …It differs greatly from the art I create, which is what I want to do, creating in a calm environment with my regular models. The Gotye project is similar to a commercial gig, where I’m working for the good of the client and their needs — but it is a lot more demanding emotionally on me.

 

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Maurizio Seracini the US diagnostician of Italian art specializing in non destructive analyses of art and architecture is investigating the whereabouts of a lost Leonardo da Vinci fresco, possibly hidden behind another wall painting in Florence. Seracini has adopted medical and military technologies to conduct diagnostics of art with minimal destruction of the artwork itself. Kate Deimling has published an article on ArtInfo, stating “…after receiving permission from Florentine authorities, Seracini and his team drilled six holes in the wall painting that may conceal da Vinci’s “Battle of Anghiari.” …to insert endoscopic probes and search behind it. …locations were chosen that were cracked or previously restored, so that there would be no damage to Vasari’s original work. …analysis of red, beige, and black pigment samples retrieved by the probes suggests that they are traces of paint, and the black material in particular shows “a chemical composition similar to black pigment found in brown glazes on Leonardo’s ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘John the Baptist.’” Diemling in her article discusses the significant opposition Seracini and his backers are confronting from various scholars and researchers in the quest to locate the missing work after 450 years.

 

Inspired by Kate Deimling http://ow.ly/a6XSH image source Wikimedia http://ow.ly/a6XKq

Yayoi Kusama the 82 year old Japanese conceptual artist renowned for her obsessive repetition of dots and patterns has a major solo exhibition titled ‘Look Now, See Forever’ at the Queensland GOMA. One of the pieces titled The obliteration room 2011, is an interactive project where a large furnished room of stark white is in the process of being covered with various size primary coloured polka dots, applied by visitors (mostly children). The result according to Artinfo is “a hypnotizing variety of colors and patterns taking over the room like highly contagious rainbow chicken pox. The bare white walls, couch, tables, and lamps play up the intense hues of the stickers, which come in a variety of shapes and sizes… crowded groups of dots so dense that the wall isn’t even visible beneath.”

 

Inspired by Artinfo http://ow.ly/8lKJt image source yknow http://ow.ly/8lKPq

Carson Chan the 31 year old architecture writer and curator has been featured by Alexander Forbes in an interview for Artinfo Berlin about the fallout from the Arab Spring protests on the Moroccan ‘Marrakech Biennale’, which had been “forced into a state of adaptation, rolling with the ever-changing context of the region … [Challenging and reassessing] post-colonialism, and why it’s important to break the rules.” In the interview Chan states, “The context of North Africa right now is that it’s a tumultuous area of the world. The people there are really voicing their own sovereignty, their own ambitions, and it’s really exciting to be there… More importantly, I think, is how a post-colonial identity has affected people in Morocco. It was a French protectorate from 1912 to 1956, so French as a language was installed, certain codes of how to operate, what to show, what culture is being expressed was dictated by the French for a long time.”

 

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