At her best Cecily Brown breaches a hole in her abstract nature and manages to sneak through it lust and passion. It’s mighty hard to portray powerful lust and passion in abstract painting. Of course, abstract expressionist was always about these feelings and always tried to portray them with the most vigor. However, when the painter is in passion, much is often lost in his mumble. Brown, through suggestive figuratism, has managed to overcome this and the result is a lustful and touching creation.
Links:
Wikipedia article
Art @ Saatchi Gallery
Artnet profile
Some more works
And even more
In a group of 30 paintings, Roger Shimomura’s exhibition, “Minidoka on My Mind,” will explore the artist’s family’s internment during World War II, including some works suggesting his personal memories. The show’s title refers to Camp Minidoka in Hunt, Idaho where he and his family were detained from the spring of 1942 until the summer of 1944. Previous work by Shimomura, has examined the relationship of Japanese Americans to the larger cultural context of the United States. In particular, here, Shimomura explores the racial conflicts of the 1940s war years and the unjust imprisonment of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans, 60% of whom were U.S. citizens. He says that these “images are scraped from the linings of my mind—not necessarily what I remembered specifically, but what I respond with when I think of Camp Minidoka…”
Links:
Roger Shimomura | Stereotypes and Admonitions | Greg Kucera Gallery | Seattle
Roger Shimomura at Greg Kucera Gallery | Seattle
In the dense visual stimulation of classic visual art, one can find an abundance of symbolism. Every object placed there carried an iconographic meaning, all together building a rich visual world deep with meaning. Marc Burckhardt adopts from this world the symbolism and serves it distilled, cold, shaken but not stirred and mainly pure.
Links:
Official website
Marc’s art related blog
The essence of a work of art is hard to capture and almost impossible to reproduce. However, when one is successful at doing so, it can turn out to be a real treat that sheds new light on the original piece. Kattaca tried to capture the essence in Klimt’s work, take it forward in time and reproduce it in another medium - photography. This project of his provide a new refreshing insight into Klimt’s work.
Links:
Gustav Klimt
Kattaca
Project’s page with full credits list
Just filling the space and time with some lovely paintings by Pascal Möhlmann. He takes upon objects and people in a wonderful way. Often it’s hard to tell what is object and what’s a human being in his works, as in life.
Links:
Official website
The new born baby sees nothing but itself. His blurry vision and under developed brain is an excuse to its complete egoism. However, mature humans don’t have the privilege to provide the environment with such reasoning. Still, egoism is a ruling trait which is seen everywhere. A common theory holds human behavior to egoistic motives. This theory is actually quite difficult to dispute. Julie Heffernan displays through her works such egoistic behavior, as it seems she is trying to prove this all-ego theory. However, her ego is everywhere and her self portraits (all of the above are self portraits) more than claiming the world to revolve around the individual, actually emphasize the individual to be part of the world. Through what at first seems like pure egoism, Julie reaches the most anti egoistic frame of mind.
Links:
PPOW gallery artist page
Julie Heffernan @ Artnet
When still life developed as an independent genre at the end of the XVI century, hundreds of skillful Flemish and Dutch painters combined and arranged various objects and items of every day life in their art works. Each of the items encompassed its own symbolic meaning. Hobaugh’s choice of objects is rebellious and traditional at the same time, while her method is neo-traditional. Carefully painted plastic sex toys and latex bondage playthings, Absolute vodka and cigarettes stubs, all are the items of the present, while others are reflection of the past. In her compositions, giving her items her own meaning and indication, Pat touches the vital subjects of sexuality and its perception, comprehension of beauty and sexual aesthetics, and its role in today’s culture. Like the Dutch and Flemish masters, she combines meaning and superb skill with the mundane.
Links:
Official website
The beautiful elements of Jeana Sohn’s paintings form free-flowing compositions. She merges in her work her stylized illustrative tendencies, certain Korean folk aesthetics along with its decorative patterns and above all her own inner sense of harmony and balance of rhythm. These are combined to deal with solitude, togetherness, closeness and the awkwardness of her subjects.
Links:
Official website
Jeana’s blog
Entries Feed