Aurelia Butler

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    Colorful Strips of Metal Coil into Minimal Animal Sculptures by Artist Lee Sangsoo

    
    Art

    #animals
    #metal
    #sculptures

    October 12, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images © Lee Sangsoo, shared with permission
    Considering his practice a form of “drawing in the air,” artist Lee Sangsoo forges colorful, spiraled flamingos, dogs, parrots, and other creatures with long strips of metal. He sculpts the minimal works with resin or stainless steel depending on the size—he uses the latter for any piece that spans more than one meter—and coats each angled side with subtle gradients or a complementary palette. Although three-dimensional and sometimes so large that they tower over the landscape, the creatures are inspired by Picasso’s small, abstract animal drawings, which the artist explains:
    Lines, planes, and colors are important elements that work in my work. The lines drawn in the two-dimensional sketchbook determine the large flow and form of the work, and it becomes three-dimensional in the three-dimensional space. The square lines are shown in various shapes and colors according to the flow and twist, and you can feel the dynamism in the still work. Also, depending on the flow, the thickness of the lines may be rhythmically thickened or thinned.
    Some of Lee’s works are on view as part of KIAF Seoul, and you can find more of the twisted menagerie on his Instagram. (via Lustik)

    #animals
    #metal
    #sculptures

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    Tufts of Printed Fabric Form Colorful Mixed-Media Portraits by Marcellina Oseghale Akpojotor

    
    Art

    #acrylic
    #mixed media
    #painting
    #portraits
    #textiles

    October 12, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Eyes on the Gold IV” (2018), 5 x 4 feet. All images courtesy of Rele Gallery, shared with permission
    Using scraps of vibrant Ankara fabric, Lagos-based artist Marcellina Oseghale Akpojotor fashions intimate portraits that consider the fragmented and varied inner lives of her subjects. The intricately composed depictions rely on a cacophony of patterns arranged in loose ripples and tufts, creating a patchwork of color and texture. Although the textiles are Dutch in origin—they’re colloquially known as “African print fabrics”—they have a strong cultural significance, and by piecing together the assorted motifs, Akpojotor establishes a shared visual memory.
    Set against uncluttered, domestic backdrops rendered in acrylic, the fiber-based figures are often disrupted with small spots of paint as a way to “speak to the influence our environment has in shaping us as individuals,” Akpojotor shares. “They represent the connections we have with our background and immediate society and how these often ignored elements form a part of our being.” Navigating the links between subjects and their surroundings is an ongoing concern for the artist, whose work delves into the effects of the current moment, in addition to the ways personal histories and the actions of previous generations have lasting impacts.
    Akpojotor is represented by Rele Gallery, where her work will be on view later this month, and she’s currently working on pieces that explore how education affects women’s empowerment, which you can follow on Instagram. (via Women’s Art)

    “Set to Flourish I” (2021), fabric and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
    “Bright bright light II” (2020), mixed media, 2 x 2 feet
    “Papa’s Girl (Kesiena’s Diary)” (2021), fabric, paper, and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 inches
    Detail of “Bright bright light II” (2020), mixed media, 2 x 2 feet
    “Eyes on the Gold VI” (2018), 5 x 4 feet
    “Ovoke (Kesiena’s diary)” (2019-2020), fabric and acrylic on canvas, 5 x 4 feet

    “Dear Brother II” (2020), mixed media, 2 x 2 feet

    #acrylic
    #mixed media
    #painting
    #portraits
    #textiles

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    Between Wounds and Folds: Suspended Cow Carcasses and Tree Stumps Reveal Layers of Discarded Fabric by Tamara Kostianovsky

    
    Art

    #animals
    #death
    #installation
    #sculpture
    #textiles
    #trees

    October 11, 2021
    Christopher Jobson

    Photo © Etienne Frossard. All images courtesy the artist, shared with permission.
    Working with the tattered remnants of consumer culture, artist Tamara Kostianovsky (previously) asks us to question the origins, process, and disastrous results of our seemingly unquenchable desire to buy and waste. Four distinct bodies of the artist’s work spanning fifteen years have been gathered at Smack Mellon in DUMBO, Brooklyn to form Between Wounds and Folds. The textile ecosystem of cow carcasses harboring new life, vibrantly hued cross-sections of trees, and colorful birds of prey, are constructed from repurposed fabrics and discarded textiles. In this final state, the soft pieces function as an echo of their concealed beginnings. Smack Mellon shares in a statement:

    Through alternating softness and aggression, her installations identify the nuances of violence that exist between a personal encounter and its normalization on a social and ecological level. Kostianovsky’s work asks for a re-imagination of human rights and environmental redemption models in order to consider the resultant violence as part of a larger, inseparable system.

    Between Wounds and Folds is on view until October 31, and you can explore more of the Brooklyn-based artist’s work on Instagram.

    Photo © J.C. Cancedda
    Photo © Roni Mocan
    Photo © Etienne Frossard
    Photo © J.C. Cancedda
    Photo © Etienne Frossard
    Photo © J.C. Cancedda
    Photo © J.C. Cancedda
    Photo © J.C. Cancedda
    The artist in her studio © J.C. Cancedda

    #animals
    #death
    #installation
    #sculpture
    #textiles
    #trees

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    Artificial Neon Lights Illuminate the Idyllic Environments Painted by Artist Gigi Chen

    
    Art

    #acrylic
    #birds
    #nature
    #neon
    #painting

    October 8, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “A Good Foundation” (2021), acrylic on wood, 20 x 20 inches. All images © Gigi Chen, shared with permission
    In her vibrant, neon-lit paintings, artist Gigi Chen intertwines ornate jewelry, graffiti, and glowing signs emblematic of urban life with foliage, feathers, and wide expanses of sky. Her acrylic pieces center on birds and other small animals in their natural environments with surreal, manufactured additions: a heron cradles a bright pink house on its back, two rabbits peer over a bush at an illuminated parking sign, and an owl carries an old payphone across a glacial landscape.
    A lifelong New Yorker, Chen tells Colossal that once her family immigrated to the U.S. from Guangdong, China, when she was eight months old, they didn’t often venture beyond the city’s confines. “The fear of not being able to communicate clearly with strangers was very prevalent growing up, and it really restrained us from doing too much traveling during my early childhood even though my parents could drive,” she says, noting that it wasn’t until an artist residency in Vermont when she was 18 that she found herself interacting with nature. “I realized how small the Big City really is. I was terrified of the pitch blackness, the dense forest, and the dirt and the bugs. But I was totally in love and overwhelmed by how sublime and random nature is.”
    These early experiences continue to impact Chen’s work as she confronts lush, forest ecosystems and cloudy sunsets through the lens of city life. “The dichotomy of the neon onto natural subjects like leaves and birds and trees makes for beautiful metaphors about how people relate to the flora and fauna,” she says. “Adding artificial light sources to a natural environment helped me to reimagine and expand the kinds of stories I could tell and broaden how I could convey personal messages.”

    “Home Away From Home Away From Home” (2021), acrylic on wood, 20 x 24 inches
    Many of the animal protagonists embody the artist’s experiences particularly those in her new series Light My Way Home, which is on view through October 24 at Antler Gallery in Portland. The metaphorical works are ruminations on home, family, and the security those two provide, and the pieces often portray the artist and her sisters as red-winged blackbirds with her late mother as the blue heron. “Home Away From Home Away From Home,” which depicts the three smaller birds encircling the other as she flies away, “represents what happened after the death of my mother,” Chen says. “Here, we are seeking the sense of safety and stability that my mother once represented to us and endlessly chasing the Ideal of Home.”
    In addition to Light My Way Home, Chen also has paintings available through Stone Sparrow Gallery and Deep Space Gallery, and you can follow her works on Instagram. (via Supersonic Art)

    “Curiously Illuminated” (2021), acrylic on wood, 16 x 20 inches
    “Finding A Spot” (2020), acrylic on wood, 11 x 14 inches
    “Three Voices & A Song” (2021), acrylic on wood, 20 x 24 inches
    “The Open Pigeon” (2020), acrylic on wood, 5 x 7 inches
    “Call Me” (2021), acrylic on wood, 20 x 24 inches
    “Lighting The Way” (2021), acrylic on wood, 16 x 20 inches

    #acrylic
    #birds
    #nature
    #neon
    #painting

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    Unearthly Anatomical Works Sculpted in Crystal and Glass by Debra Baxter Explore Grief and Loss

    
    Art

    #anatomy
    #crystals
    #glass
    #metal
    #sculpture

    October 8, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Catch your Breath” (2021), alabaster, bronze, and druzy snow chalcedony, 10 x 10 x 5 inches. All images courtesy of form & concept, shared with permission
    Artist and jewelry designer Debra Baxter (previously) explores the endurance of grief, mortality, and human bonds in Love Tears. Comprised of anatomical and figurative sculptures, the multifaceted series blend alabaster, quartz, and wood with delicate glass or metal to create forms that contrast the fragility of the body and natural world with the rugged topographies of crystals and rock.
    Simultaneously corporeal and unearthly, the spliced works evoke the Victorian tradition of mourning jewelry, which used various motifs and deep colors as memorials. In “Catch Your Breath,” for example, branch-like veins in bronze sprawl throughout crystalline lungs, while “Love Hard” bisects a smooth, glass heart with spiky quartz. “There’s inevitable pain in every form of love,” Baxter says about the series. “I’m fascinated by the ways in which we decorate this grief and mourning, and I wanted to see how far I could push myself with balancing the immediate, often ornate, demonstration of loss, and my use of permanent materials. This is about loss and legacy.”
    Love Tears will be on view at Santa Fe’s form & concept gallery from October 29, 2021, to January 15, 2022, and you can find more of Baxter’s bodily works on Instagram.

    “Crystal Brass Knuckles (forever)” (2021), sterling silver and quartz, 5 x 4.5 x 2 inches
    Left: “Soften the Blow” (2021), walnut and glass, 9.25 x 10 x 7.5 inches. Right: “” (2021), alabaster and glass, 9 x 6 x 6 inches
    “Love Hard” (2020), glass and quartz, 8 x 3 x 3.5 inches
    Left: Detail of “Ear to the Ground” (2020), alabaster and glass, 10 x 4 x 3 inches. Right: “” (2020), alabaster and green onyx, 12 x 7 x 4 inches
    “Holding It Together” (2021), bronze and amethyst, 9 x 16 x 5 inches

    #anatomy
    #crystals
    #glass
    #metal
    #sculpture

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    Marred with Dark Hole Punches, Monochromatic Drawings and Paintings Evoke Depression-Era Negatives

    
    Art

    #charcoal
    #drawing
    #graphite
    #oil painting
    #painting
    #portraits

    October 8, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    All images courtesy of Hashimoto Contemporary, shared with permission
    Nearly a century since it began, the Great Depression is still largely associated with the iconic imagery that’s come to define the era. Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” and Walker Evans’s portrait of the distinctly tight-lipped Allie Mae Burroughs are two foundational shots that establish the period’s visual record, and they accompany the approximately 175,000 photographs also commissioned by the U.S. Farm Security Administration during those years.
    While vast in number, this collection is understood today as being limited in scope, particularly in relation to its failure to reflect racial diversity, because the head of the FSA from 1935 to 1941, Roy Stryker, effaced images he felt didn’t align with the agency’s goals. When he wanted to reject a photo and prevent its dissemination, he would mark it with a hole punch, an erasure that Tulsa-based artist Joel Daniel Phillips evokes in his striking series Killing the Negative Pt. 2.
    The ongoing project reimagines intimate portraits and wider shots from that period as meticulous graphite and charcoal drawings and oil paintings in shades of red. Monochromatic and ranging from small portraits to life-sized renderings, Phillips’s works complicate the narratives expunged from the historical record by focusing on a wider and more diverse swath of the population. “When the black voids of Roy Stryker’s hole punch are placed front and center, the reality of just how much power that a single, White man had to shape the narrative re-frames and re-defines the entire discussion,” the artist said in an interview about the first part of the project.
    Included in Killing the Negative Pt. 2, which runs from October 9 to 20 at Hashimoto Contemporary’s new Los Angeles gallery, are glimpses into both rural and urban life with large-scale paintings of an older farmer, young girl outfitted in a frilly dress, and a panoramic shot of a migrant family and their makeshift living quarters. One smaller work (shown below) recreates a selfie that FSA photographer John Vachon snapped “in a hotel room mirror while on assignment. He took several of these, and apparently, Roy Styker (the head of the FSA) particularly hated this one, since he punched it twice,” the artist writes.
    To see more of Killing the Negative, head to Phillips’s site and peek into his process on Instagram.

    #charcoal
    #drawing
    #graphite
    #oil painting
    #painting
    #portraits

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    Aerial Net Sculptures Loom Over Public Squares in Janet Echelman’s ‘Earthtime’ Installations

    
    Art

    #earthquakes
    #fiber art
    #installation
    #sculpture
    #site-specific
    #time

    October 7, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    “Earthtime 1.78” (2021), Vienna. All images © Janet Echelman, shared with permission
    Suspended in public squares and parks, the knotted sculptures that comprise Janet Echelman’s Earthtime series respond to the destructive, overpowering, and uncontrollable forces that impact life on the planet. The Boston-based artist (previously) braids nylon and polyurethane fibers into striped weavings that loom over passersby and glow with embedded lights after nightfall. With a single gust of air, the amorphous masses billow and contort into new forms. “Each time a single knot moves in the wind, the location of every other knot in the sculpture’s surface is changed in an ever-unfolding dance,” a statement about the series says.
    The outdoor installations are modeled after geological events that have extensive effects beyond their original locations and the power to increase the planet’s daily rotational speed. All of the titles allude to the number of seconds lost during a specific occurrence, with “Earthtime 1.78” referring to Japan’s 2011 earthquake and tsunami and “Earthtime 1.26” speaking to a 2010 tremor in Chile.
    Containing innumerable knots and weighing hundreds of pounds, the monumental nets are the product of countless hours and a team of architects, designers, and engineers who interpret scientific data to imagine the original form. Each mesh piece begins in the studio with techniques done by hand and on the loom, and the threads are custom-designed to be fifteen times stronger than steel once intertwined. This allows them to withstand and remain flexible as they’re exposed to the elements, a material component that serves as a metaphorical guide for human existence.
    Echelman will exhibit an iteration of “Earthtime 1.26” in Jeddah from December 2021 to April 2022, with another slated to be on view in Amsterdam this winter. You can see more of the prolific artist’s works on her site and Instagram.

    “Earthtime 1.26” (2021), Munich
    Detail of “Earthtime 1.26” (2021), Munich
    “Earthtime 1.78” (2021), Vienna
    “Earthtime 1.78” (2021), Helsinki
    “Earthtime 1.78” (2021), Vienna
    “Earthtime 1.78” (2021), Borås, Sweden

    #earthquakes
    #fiber art
    #installation
    #sculpture
    #site-specific
    #time

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    ‘Medicinal Flowers of Lebanon’ by Faith XLVII Sprout from the Damaged Streets of Beirut

    
    Art

    #flowers
    #Lebanon
    #medicine
    #murals
    #public art
    #street art

    October 7, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    Rosa Canina. All images © Faith XLVII, shared with permission
    Rosehips, horned poppies, and an African carline thistle grow from the debris and ruined buildings in Beirut following a mural series by Faith XLVII. The South African artist (previously) traveled to the Lebanese city this September as part of Underline—the ongoing project is helmed by the art collective Persona in collaboration with the Hamra-based NGO Art of Change, which is focused on using public works for protest and to spark change—to paint a collection of curative flowers that appear to sprout from the rubble.
    Contrasting their dainty forms to the rugged landscape, the metaphorical works in Medicinal Flowers of Lebanon lead “us along the brittle sites of Beirut, tracing past and present scars etched into the city,” the artist says. “Each flower urges us in a sense, towards healing as they grow out of the concrete.” The chosen botanics are remedies for common ailments, like using chicory to treat gallstones or slathering clematis paste on skin infections, and they rely on the strength of their natural properties to cure wounds that are both visible and not.

    Carlina Involucrata
    Faith’s visit to Beirut came amidst a period of crisis following the devastating port explosion on August 4, 2020, that left the country without a fully operative government for 13 months and accelerated its economic collapse. “The people of Lebanon have had many dire challenges over the decades, and the expectation for them to be resilient is exhausting,” the artist says, explaining further:
    Even in a time with four hours of electricity a day and waiting for hours for petrol that might run out before you make it to the front of the line, where your life savings are suddenly worth nothing, even in this time, there are still some rays of hope. There are many people and organizations working to improve the conditions of others. So when we are abused abandoned by the custodians of justice and governance, it is the people themselves who pick up the debris and assist each other in healing. That is what the series Medicinal Flowers of Lebanon speaks to.
    Persona and Art of Change are bringing several artists to Beirut for Underline, and you can follow those projects, along with Faith’s outdoor works, on Instagram.

    Cichorium intybus
    Clematis flammula
    Glaucium flavum
    Asphodelus microcarpus

    Clematis flammula
    The artist working on Clematis flammula

    #flowers
    #Lebanon
    #medicine
    #murals
    #public art
    #street art

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