Ryan McGinley

The artist Ryan McGinley pops up every 4 months or so in the past 2 years. I am familiar with his more romantic and pubescent series simply called 'Photographs' in which an entourage of handsome young thangs go romping through fields and waterfalls. Quintessentially roadtrip in nature they incite that liberated feeling only nudity in the great outdoors can bring as well as a definite eroticism.

















His other series, Moonmilk, takes the figures into less liberating and more endangering settings of stalactites and tight craggy crevices. It gives precedence to the surroundings and the tricks of light and reserves to the figure to a unit of measurement.










And now his poetic sense of framing and decontextualization is brought to the Winter Olympics. It is a far less machismo portrayal of the atheltes and really shows the winter games in a much more spiritual light. Some pictures are devoid of a landscape alltogether and simply have the athletes in a state of flight, seemingly out of control and twisting like rag dolls. I really appreciate this different perspective on the heights of athleticism. It reminds me in fact of the work that David LaChappelle did some years ago called 'Awakened' but only technically really.

Synapse

Here is the finished piece called Synapse. While I am working with small sculptural objects lately, it's still very exciting for me to work in Photography because it is so much about the illusion. I really want to explore the gum work more thoroughly and will definitely have to rent some equipment again. I am tired of the flat white background though. I need to push it further.

Kate MccGwire

It can be a bittersweet feeling when you see an idea that is so similar to your own manifested already by some other talented artist years ago. I've been imaging the twisting forms (zeitgeist moment) that Kate MccGwire has already created and I am so impressed at her execution. Much of her work is structured around the use of wishbones and feathers, using them in such high volume that their singularity as part of an animal is lost in the largess of the installation. Often spiraling, swallowing or falling in on itself pieces like Wrest have a kinetic tension in them that sound like the ruffling and flapping of pigeons fighting over scraps in the street. The featureless masses also point to the deformities seen in pigeons in the city as well. Funny, pigeons would come up again , I don't particularly feel that interested in them but maybe the fact that they are so ubiquitous it's hard not to see them referenced. MccGwire lives and works out of London so pigeons must be even more pervasive. I was surprised that she referred to them as, 'little more than pests living off detritus', as it would seem like a very conventional and myopic view of pigeons (or rock doves as they are also known as) rather than a more personal relationship born out of using their materials so often.

While the feathered pieces are definitely my favorite, the wishbone pieces are equally impressive but more for volume than form. Tens of thousands of wishbones each belonging to an individual animal in that volume makes any onlooker wonder about logistics. The piece Brood, which debuted at her MA Royal College Sculpture show must have looked gorgeous with that beautiful shadowless skylight found in the RC's rooms.




Wrest | 2009





Illusion/Delusion | 2006




Vex | 2008




Brood | 2004

Lara Viana

I love these oil paintings by Lara Viana. Even though I'm missing half the detail by viewing it online I can still see how thick the canvas is with impasto. How much of the painting is carved and squirted arounded. It retains a high level of dimension and 'reality' even though its' brushwork is so large and unarticulated. Last night I watched Simon Schama's the Power of Art: Rembrandt and they mentioned Rembrandts deft ability to utilize rough brushwork to actually be more dimensional and closer to perception than any superfine articulation. I believe Viana's work accomplishes this as well.

More work here.

Studio Day | January 7

Here are two images made today. Just experimenting really.

Here are two images made today. Just experimenting really.

Old Hard Drive Pt. 1

I have a habit of fixating on how my hard drives are organized. I treat it like physical space really, often cleaning out or purging files that I know I won't be able to see again and doubly ensuring those files I do like by backing them up in multiple locations. While it can mean easy access to stuff I did 6 years ago, it can also be a stumbling block for sitting down and actually doing new work. Still, fun to see what it is I've always been interested in.

Cocoon | 2005



Web | 2005



Blue & Purple | 2007

Levi van Veluw

Found the artist Levi Von Veluw in a book my friend Kim gave me called Hair'em Scare'em.

The work is beautiful. Always using himself as the subject, Veluw graphs materials to his own bust and photographs them with neutral backgrounds. In the veneered series there is a more complete obscuring of identity and Levi really takes on a sort of sex-less proto-form quality. I'm especially drawn to the hair pieces because, like any one who has had long hair, the feeling of wet hair on the back of shoulders or the front of the face can be an eerie and heavy sensation. It can be kind of suffocating.

The older work is nice as well. That small gesture which can make a photograph take a turn for the horrific but still tinged with a bit of humor reminds me also of Erwin Wurm. It makes the body look really clumsy, vulnerable.

The artist's description is a little heavy handed and the video wouldn't work when I opened it but there is a bunch of lovely photographs oh his website exhibting how this repetition can be quite limitless.