Fair White Frogman

New Paintings

2012-02-08T19:25:00.002-06:00

Edward Bieberman

2012-02-06T14:06:00.003-06:00

Conspiracy, 1955.

From the LACMA website:

Edward Biberman was born in Philadelphia in 1904; both he and his older brother Herbert, expected to join the family garment business, wound up pursuing careers in the arts (Herbert as a writer for stage and screen). Edward began his career in Paris in the late 1920s, and subsequently settled in New York where he was included in on of the first exhibitions at the newly opened Museum of Modern Art. In 1936 he moved to Los Angeles, where he increasingly incorporated social concerns into his paintings. He also began making mural paintings and taught at the Art Center School. His social and political consciousness was heightened by the Spanish Civil War and the international rise of fascism. Even his portrait subjects, including Lena Horne and Paul Robeson, reflected his political leanings.

Biberman’s career was put on hold for five months in the early 1950s when his brother Herbert, one of the Hollywood Ten, was imprisoned for his refusal to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee. The experience of living in Los Angeles during this politically charged period profoundly influenced Biberman, whose work of these years – including Conspiracy – clearly reflects the political realities of the day. Although he resigned from the Art Center School (in anticipation of dismissal for his political beliefs), he continued to teach throughout southern California. Biberman lived and worked in Los Angeles, known locally but largely ignored on the national art scene, until his death in 1986.

White Fire Escape, 1956.

The New Neurotic Realism

2012-01-24T17:11:00.011-06:00

I checked out a book from the library today titled The New Neurotic Realism. It is a collection of images from a show in 1998 at the Saatchi Gallery in London. A lot of the work still holds up:

These pieces by Brian Cyril Griffiths are made out of cardboard boxes, office bins, bottle caps, and household objects like egg cups and tea strainers.

This chair by Andreas Schlaegel is made from kitchen sponges. Seems sort of related to the Brian Griffiths piece, but also like a modern day Fur Tea Cup:

Object in Fur, Meret Oppenheim 1936.

People are still making work like this painting by Dan Hays- paintings influenced by warped new and old digital images.

Dissolve, 1998.

These Michael Raedecker drawing-painting hybrids are a mix of painting and sewing. From 1998, but still super contemporary and exciting!

Room 2 and Room 5, 1997.

Perspective, 1997.

Frisson, 1997.

Beautiful paintings by Lois Dodd

2012-01-19T23:04:00.004-06:00

An installation view of Lois Dodd's "New Panel Paintings"

An eighty-four-year-old woman paints a view of falling snow from a window. That’s Lois Dodd.

Dodd has her ninth solo exhibition, titled New Panel Paintings, at the Alexandre Gallery in midtown Manhattan. The 24 new were were done plein air. Each painting is completed in one sitting.

Dodd paints what she sees: a green scrap of grass leading to a cottage, a yellow field bathed in sunshine, a red flower in bloom. To view a Dodd painting is to contemplate a singular moment in time. There is not fuss, but delight. Pure and simple.

Source:

http://hyperallergic.com

I just discovered this clever Byron Kim painting today

2012-01-18T20:17:00.003-06:00

Byron Kim
After Sun in an Empty Room, 2008
Oil and alkyd on canvas
31 x 132 inches

Which is referring to this Hopper painting:

Edward Hopper

Sun In an Empty Room, 1963

28 3/4 x 39 1/2 inches

oil on canvas

Who Owns the Color Red?

2012-01-09T12:22:00.001-06:00

I will make my students read this!

From hyperallergic.com :

Who Owns the Color Red?:

Louboutin shoes (via christianlouboutinsau.com)

Can a person own a color? Yves Klein may say yes, but Yves Saint Laurent begs to differ. Over the course of the past year the luxury goods company has been tied up in legal proceedings against the shoe designer Christian Louboutin, who believes his signature red-soled shoes are being ripped off by YSL. In my mind, this fashionable fighting has sparked speculation over the constant accusation of plagiarism that plagues creative fields.

In August a New York district court denied the preliminary injunction Louboutin requested against YSL’s ruby-bottomed pumps under the opinion of Judge Victor Marrero that a designer cannot have a monopoly on a color, nor did he believe consumers would be somehow tricked into thinking that the YSL shoes were Louboutins. Even though court will reconvene on January 24 because Louboutin just can’t give it up, I have to say the entire argument sounds petty and, to be blunt, a little selfish.

Now, even though I’ve been attempting for years to trademark the lovely shade of aubergine the circles under my sleep-deprived eyes are with little victory, this is not a personal vendetta against ownership of certain design elements. Tiffany, for example, has their turquoise (Pantone number and all) copyrighted, and the late Yves Klein patented his particular shade of blue. However, Klein’s patent on International Klein Blue had more to do with his chemical invention of the color, and Tiffany’s trademark applies only to competing brands because of the jewelry company’s long association with the specific color. Those are valid reasons to request protection, legally speaking, because they’re more or less aspects of brand identity that influence consumers. But most companies, as well as artists, seem to rapidly expect ownership and credit to any and all aspects of their creations, when in actual fact the color of a sole is no more grounds to sue than, say, a particular style of painting or sculpture.

Picasso's Les Desmoiselles D'Avignon (1907) (via moma.org) and an image of an African Fang Mask (via Wikipedia.org) (click to enlarge)

This constant quibbling over who owns what reminds me, inevitably, of the criticism (and lawsuits) constantly hurled at artist Shephard Fairey. Designer of the “Obama Hope” posters (which I’m hoping pop up again after the New Hampshire debates), Fairey’s signature style is one of appropriation and repurposing of images, much like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. He may have a hard time admitting he actually appropriates images, but in my eyes the works he pulls from are altered in some way, though that isn’t enough for some people who continue to cite him as a plagiarist.

But aren’t we jumping the gun a bit to criticize an artist because he or she repurposes imagery and motifs? Japanese artists didn’t sue Matisse or van Gogh for copying their aesthetics, just as African artists didn’t sue Picasso. And yes, I’m aware the circumstances were a tad different, but my point remains that artists have utilized techniques and aesthetics from other sources forever, and today that historical practice is mostly lauded by art historians while reviled when turned to contemporary artists.

Besides, were talking about fashion here, people. You’d be hard-pressed to find one designer in history who has not in some way appropriated elements from his or her contemporaries or predecessors. Not a season goes by where someone magically reinvents the dress. They’re artists working under extremely limited and restrictive conditions and yet I have still not witnessed one major designer who completely copies someone else’s creation. Canal Street maybe, but never the runways of Paris.

This might come off as some armchair litigation, but I do believe that all artists should calm down a little bit before crying out “Plagiarism!” at every turn. Consumers associate red soles with Christian Louboutin just as museumgoers associate silkscreens with Andy Warhol, and they’ll realize that any similarities that appear in proceeding works owe a debt to their predecessors. But unless it’s a complete rip-off, I think artists should remember that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery before they call their lawyers.

Hüzün- shared melancholia

2012-01-09T00:32:00.004-06:00

An interesting review of Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul: Memories and the City :

http://5cense.com/11/istanbul.htm

"It's a rather philosophical & personal (perhaps overly so) account of Istanbul, with an emphasis on the hüzün—«We might call this confused, hazy state melancholy, or perhaps we should call it by its Turkish name, hüzün, which denotes a melancholy that is communal, rather than private.

Pamuk keeps coming back to hüzün as the prevailing mood that binds Istanbullus, melancholia as a spiritual state, a glue, for Istanbullus living now in the seat of a ruined crossroads, struggling to be modern, yet to still retain the dignity of their past."

A fun read

2012-01-08T15:59:00.001-06:00

http://hyperallergic.com/43796/the-best-north-brooklyn-street-art-of-2011/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+hyperallergic+%28Hyperallergic%29

Merlin Carpenter paintings of the Tate Cafe

2011-12-28T15:56:00.005-06:00

These are quite lovely, and a bit cheeky:

Painters I like: Lynette Yiadom Boakye

2011-12-12T22:02:00.003-06:00

Beautiful:

http://painttube.wordpress.com/2011/11/24/lynette-yiadom-boakye/

"So why do you paint window frames and wastebaskets?"

2011-12-12T17:45:00.002-06:00

To answer that question, please read:

Tender is the Night, by F. Scott Fitzgerald
XXV

When he had tottered out, Dick and Rosemary embraced fleetingly There was
a dust of Paris over both of them through which the scented each other:
the rubber guard on Dick’s fountain pen, the faintes odor of warmth from
Rosemary’s neck and shoulders. For another half-minute Dick clung to the
situation; Rosemary was first to return t reality
“I must go, youngster,” she said.
They blinked at each other across a widening space, and Rosemary made an
exit that she had learned young, and on which no director had ever tried
to improve.

She opened the door of her room and went directly to her desk where she
had suddenly remembered leaving her wristwatch. It was there; slipping it
on she glanced down at the daily letter to her mother, finishing the last
sentence in her mind. Then, rather gradually, she realized without turning
about that she was not alone in the room.

In an inhabited room there are refracting objects only half noticed:
varnished wood, more or less polished brass, silver and ivory, and beyond
these a thousand conveyers of light and shadow so mild that one scarcely
thinks of them as that, the tops of picture- frames, the edges of pencils
or ash-trays, of crystal or china ornaments; the totality of this
refraction — appealing to equally subtle reflexes of the vision as well as
to those associational fragments in the subconscious that we seem to hang
on to, as a glass-fitter keeps the irregularly shaped pieces that may do
some time — this fact might account for what Rosemary afterward mystically
described as “realizing” that there was some one in the room, before she
could determine it. But when she did realize it she turned swift in a sort
of ballet step and saw that a dead Negro was stretched upon her bed. As
she cried “aaouu!” and her still unfastened wristwatch banged against the
desk she had the preposterous idea that it was Abe North. Then she dashed
for the door and across the hall.

Dick was straightening up; he had examined the gloves worn that day and
thrown them into a pile of soiled gloves in a corner of a trunk. He had
hung up coat and vest and spread his shirt on another hanger — a trick of
his own. “You’ll wear a shirt that’s a little dirty where you won’t wear a
mussed shirt.” Nicole had come in and was dumping one of Abe’s
extraordinary ash-trays into the waste-basket when Rosemary tore into the
room.
“DICK! DICK! Come and see!”

UIC MFA Fall 2011 Final Critiques Open to the Public

2011-12-03T22:16:00.001-06:00

UIC MFA Fall 2011 Final Critiques Open to the Public

The UIC MFA Fall 2011 Final Critiques take place from December 5th-9th 2011 and are free and open to the public. All students and faculty will be present to showcase and discuss work from the current semester. Come watch things get REAL!

All locations in Art & Design Hall, 400 S. Peoria St., are abbreviated as follows:
GS Great Space, room 530
SG South Gallery, room 560 (within Great Space)
NG North Gallery, room 570 (within Great Space)
GBU Student Gallery, room 510
SR Screening Room, room 3226

Monday Dec. 5
Guest Critic: Nicolas Collins

9:00 Courtney Prokopas (SG)
9:45 Lauren Anderson (GS)
break
10:45 Tina Tahir (GBU and 3104 ADH)
11:30 Mark Kent (GS)
Lunch 12:15 - 1:15
1:15 Paul Cowan (SG)
2:00 Kera MacKenzie (GBU)
break
3:00 Ben Keddy (CVRA A&A 845 W. Harrison Rm. 3304)

Tuesday Dec. 6th
Guest Critic: Kelly Kaczynski

9:00 Daniel Bennett (SG)
9:45 Ben Murray (GS)
break
10:45 Anthony Koerner (NG)
11:30 Cameron Gibson (SR)
Lunch 12:15 - 1:15
1:15 Nina Barnett (SG)
2:00 Brendan Meara (GBU)
break
3:00 Tiffany Funk (NG)
3:45 Mark Aguhar (SG)

Wednesday Dec. 7th
Guest Critic: Natasha Egan

9:00 Daniel Shea (SG)
9:45 Jeremy Bolen (NG)
break
10:45 Josh Albers (GBU)
11:30 Mary-Helena Clark (SR)
Lunch 12:15 - 1:15
1:15 Lauren Edwards (SG)
2:00 Alex Rauch (4^th floor crit space)
break
3:00 Ian Curry (SR)

Thursday Dec. 8th
Guest Critic: Jonathan Rosenbaum

9:00 Jesus Duran (SG)
9:45 Macon Reed (SR)
break
10:45 Daniel Tucker (SR)
11:30 Drew Mausert-Mooney (SR)
Lunch 12:15 - 1:15
1:15 Marianna Milhorat (SR)
2:00 Nick Rummler (NG)
break
3:00 Sebastian Aguirre (GBU)

Friday Dec. 9th
Guest Critic: Naomi Beckwith

9:00 Chaz Evans (SG)
9:45 Jon Chambers (GBU)
break
10:45 Neal Vandenbergh (NG-GS)
11:30 Andrew Reinke (GBU)
Lunch 12:15 - 1:15
1:15 Gwen Zabicki (GS)
2:00 Lilianna Angulo (GS)
break
3:00 Kasia Houlihan (NG-SG)

New paintings

2011-12-03T15:55:00.005-06:00

These are just quick photos I took with my phone, but you get the idea.

Making paintings about light, covered things.

2011-11-21T00:14:00.003-06:00

Adriaen van der Spelt (Dutch, 1630-1673)
Frans van Mieris (Dutch, 1635-1681)

Trompe-l'Oeil Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain, 1658

I'm working on a painting of a covered window right now. The painting on the right has been on my mind for a while. I had wished there had been more curtain, so that the still life was harder to see. It is from the Art Institute of Chicago's collection.

I'm always telling my students about Uncanny Valley

2011-11-16T14:56:00.001-06:00

http://boingboing.net/2011/11/16/tom-the-dancing-bug-billy-da.html

A Poem by Jerzy Ficowski

2011-11-07T15:37:00.003-06:00

A Poem by Polish author, Jerzy Ficowski about his relationship with the Holocaust, written in the 1980's.

I did not manage to save

a single life

I did not know how to stop

a single bullet

and I wander round cemeteries

which are not there

I look for words

which are not there

I run

to help where no one called

to rescue after the event

I want to be on time

even if I am too late

Painters I like: Hanneline Rogeberg

2011-11-06T18:16:00.002-06:00

Some of her paintings are great. I don't like the figure ones as much, but the obscured/covered thing she is doing is exactly what I'm interested in.

Artists I like: Michael Borremans

2011-10-31T19:25:00.003-05:00

Artists I like: Regine Ramseie

2011-10-25T13:32:00.002-05:00

Regine Ramseier's "Windstille" installation involved hundreds (thousands?) of fluffy dandelions, sprayed with fixative and hung from the ceiling of a tall, narrow white room. The result is both exuberant and calming, a kind of preserved fragile moment poised on the line between stillness and motion.

http://www.regineramseier.ch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73&Itemid=79

Painters I like: Jenny Saville

2011-10-25T11:20:00.000-05:00

JENNY SAVILLE
Red Stare Head IV, 2006-2011
Oil on canvas
99 3/16 x 73 13/16 inches (252 x 187.5 cm)

Painters I like: Neil Jenny

2011-10-19T15:40:00.001-05:00

Saw and Sawed
1969

BEST FRENEMIES: MODERNISM AND POSTMODERNISM

2011-10-10T12:46:00.001-05:00

Hmm....

more thesis paper fodder:

http://hereisafantasy.com/2011/10/04/best-frenemies-modernism-and-postmodernism/

A new movie about Gerhard Richter!

2011-10-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

I want to see this!

http://www.gerhard-richter-painting.de/

Johnny Guitar- "Lie to Me" scene

2011-10-08T13:48:00.002-05:00

God I love Joan Crawford. Her strange and wonderful western, Johnny Guitar, is one of my favorite movies. This is how I imagined grown-ups would fight when I was a kid.

Artists I like: Kaye Donachie

2011-10-08T13:41:00.001-05:00

Thoughts on holes and Louis C.K. from Lauren Berlant's blog-

2011-09-27T15:48:00.000-05:00

The Whole Ethic of Sleepless Evidence:

#2 in the series.

I spent most of the summer reading the kind of fierce poetry that moves fearlessly into barely inhabitable breathing space three beats beyond the object that was supposed to anchor attention. A poetics of associology whose noise world sits me down in disbelief at the rare freedom of other people’s minds. Not because attention gets things right (any more than attachment guarantees love), and not because there’s always in operation productive energy that can never be tamed but because—in these poems, and for me–revolt requires curiosity, a tipping over on a verge.

I can’t remember how I heard of C. D. Wright; this book written from within incarcerated space seems to have migrated onto my desk from a lateral impulse I must have had once. People who liked this also liked. It’s been in a pile of revealed intention that I’ve been reading up and down.

Le ciel est, par-dessus le toit is one version of the commons: C.D. Wright includes it as a kind of acid irony. After all, the next line, si bleu, si calme, isn’t available as realism to the incarcerated–or the manumitted for now who swerve around aggressively while looking down at their feet, or anyone with a stomach overfull of the indigestible. I read this book and my brain clicked around over it all summer: glory hole, dream hole, peephole.

My decoupled brain collected holes. An episode of Louie begins with him in a bathroom looking at a hole in the wall captioned HEAVEN in black magic marker whose magic is not apparent to him. An older conservatively dressed white man comes in, washes his hands, and turns to insert his penis in the hole. Louis asks him, “Why would you do that?” The man says, “HEAVEN, it says right there!” Louie, after a beat: How do you know something terrible’s not going to happen to you, why would you take that risk?” The stranger: “I don’t know, you have to have faith.” The rest of the show explains why he doesn’t have faith. Not having faith is here propped on not being sucked off or sucking off, not reaching with your dick toward heaven, a rough-edged hole on the other side of which, who knows? The atmosphere of this whole series involves its fearless projectile extension of situations into the place where something might happen to interrupt the familiar’s sour reappearance. Oh it says HEAVEN, so put your dick there, because not risking is so much worse than wrapping it all up so tight in the blanket of one’s own homestyle timidity. The show goes where Louie can’t.

It’s even more intricate than this: the HEAVEN episode is followed by an episode where Louie is fellated. He has gone to a gentle dentist’s office, an office for people who fear oral penetration and care. So of course under sedation Louie dreams of convincing Osama bin Laden that he is an asshole, at the same time as his gentle dentist outside the dream is sticking his dick in Louie’s mouth, aka HEAVEN, the hole out of which all of his beautiful intelligence comes. Accepting another man’s dick in his mouth is a fantasy that moves throughout this series, in the absence of which many other things are put there, like ice cream (formless) and donuts (defined by the hole). There’s a bit where he says it’s too late in life for him to do two things: to learn to ski and to put a man’s cock in his mouth. Louie can’t admit his own swerve toward wanting to be fellating with men but he can’t not go there either, and the frankness is of a quality I can’t stop admiring. As my father used to say in Yiddish about women, he is a hole that can never be filled–in the absence of which he fills up the hole of the world. Foucault writes, “My way of being no longer the same is, by definition, the most singular part of what I am”: Louie is in between not being the same and being something else.

In this show, what would usually induce fatalism always gets another beat, another scene or two, to interrupt the hard end one more time. But as one of his friends says, he’s afraid of life. Yet the verge Louie shimmies on is the failure of the failure to thrive. He is astonished at how massively awkward he is at living. But he is desperate to not stop trying to have a style of becoming different.

Desire punches a hole in the wall. Yes it does.

In Wright’s prison poem the dream hole must mean something beautiful (attuned) about the way being revolts against being controlled: the dream hole is what you’re willing to destroy your body for if it might light up a new something to follow through to, and the question of “ultimate consequences” gets left on the side of the road. The incarcerated people Wright listens to experience the proliferation and richness of desires, in the absence of access to which they keep punching holes in the world. They get caught for the holes they punch and put up for life. The privileged usually get protected and bailed out, you know, after they punch holes in the world. And sex remains one of the main places where the aggression and desire to have a simple and chaotic pleasure, to be and to punch the hole, gets replayed as a tableau always violently underdescribed by the unambivalence of any adjective.

Frederic Back

2011-09-26T15:39:00.005-05:00

I'm also enjoying the work of Frederic Back right now. He was an illustrator and animator who worked on a Canadian Sunday evening quiz show called Le Nez de Cléopâtre.

The show consisted of a set of riddles to be solved with the help of a verbal clue and a drawing done live on air by Frédéric Back. It presented a dozen riddles which four "experts" had to solve by asking questions. Each week, one of the riddles was selected from suggestions sent in by TV viewers. Quebecers loved the intellectual gymnastics, and the program owed much of its success to Back's clever drawings and subtle humour.

For more take a gander at his website:

http://www.fredericback.com/illustrateur/television/index.en.shtml

Clarence Gagnon

2011-09-26T15:28:00.002-05:00

Clarence Gagnon (8 November 1881 - 5 January 1942) was a Québécois painter. His work is really quite sweet, kind of like children's book illustrations.

An interesting article

2011-09-19T11:18:00.001-05:00

With work by my pal, Jon Rafman:

http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/down-the-line/

Paintings I am thinking about right now

2011-09-18T14:49:00.004-05:00

This Edward Hopper painting, Sun in an Empty Room, 1963

And this lovely painting by Gerard Dou, Night School, 1623.

bodybraingame

2011-09-06T12:04:00.001-05:00

bodybraingame:Opening at Rhona Hoffman.

Curated by Hudson.

“I like a lot, and in this exhibition that may be understood in at least two ways.

Remember in the mid ‘80s when painting died – amusing, right? For me the significance was more about the focus moving to theory, photography, and information and the resulting effects of how we moved toward a more public understanding or perception of art. After about ten or so years of that, the perception and appreciation of art was more a mental assessment of a thing than an experience of a thing, and while that mode of understanding has continued for another twelve years or so, the shortcomings of operating long term from that sensibility have long remained quite obvious.

Feature Inc. has always offered a strong presence for painting and over the years. I’ve increasingly realized that the impact of the art on the body is just as forceful if not more so, than its impact on the brain. Letting feelings and mutable physical and emotional sensations guide an understanding of something doesn’t necessarily provide for an articulate line of reasoning, but it does offer an interior richness which is personally very satisfying. I especially like how that form of experience leads one to think and talk around something rather than to think or talk something through. Around is more inclusive and open to development than the conclusiveness of through.”

- Hudson, Feature Inc.

This Chagall ceiling kinda blew my mind

2011-09-04T19:21:00.000-05:00

Another Thing to Pin on David Foster Wallace

2011-08-25T12:18:00.000-05:00

I smell thesis topic!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/another-thing-to-sort-of-pin-on-david-foster-wallace.html

Looking into the Past

2011-08-24T08:39:00.001-05:00

‘Looking Into the Past: Doing the Charleston at the Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC’
courtesy of ‘jasonepowell’

Hey, it’s an old photo, and a new photo, in one…and it’s of people doing the Charleston on the doorstep of Capitol Hill! What more could you want in a photo?

Jason is quite the innovator with this style of photo (Jason calls it “Looking Into the Past”; whatever you want to call it, we can all call the results awesome). He takes historic photos from publically available collections (mainly the Library of Congress), gets enlargements made, and then tries to line up the old picture with the present scene. It can make for quite the sight: some you see how much has changed, others how little, and then you see the downright weird. If you want to read more, Jason’s work has been highlighted by some high profile outlets recently.

Cy Twombly and Poussin exhibition

2011-08-22T10:34:00.002-05:00

I would love to see this show up right now at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London:
http://www.dulwichpicturegallery.org.uk/exhibitions/now_on_show/twombly_and_poussin.aspx

Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters

29 June - 25 September 2011

“Twombly has spent his life transforming and reinvigorating that rich American modern art. His paintings belong in Dulwich because he is one of the greats.” Four stars, The Guardian

“I would’ve liked to have been Poussin, if I’d had a choice, in another time.” Cy Twombly

A unique exploration of contemporary artist Cy Twombly (April 25 1928 - 5 July 2011) and 17^th century classical painter Nicolas Poussin (1594 -1665). This exhibition will look at these two figures side by side for the first time.

Separated by three centuries the two artists nonetheless share remarkable similarities. The connections are highlighted through the key themes of Arcadia and the pastoral, Venus and Eros, anxiety and theatricality and mythological figures that are central to both artists' work.

The exhibition will be accompanied by the British premiere of Tacita Dean's new 16mm film portrait of Cy Twombly, Edwin Parker (2011).

As part of the exhibition, the Gallery is also extremely fortunate to have the opportunity to display Poussin’s Seven Sacraments painted between 1637 and 1642 for his Roman friend and patron Cassiano dal Pozzo. As a set, Poussin’s Sacraments represent a high point in Western European art.

Beautiful Krakow

2011-08-21T17:38:00.003-05:00

I was in Krakow this summer working on the Synagogue Replication Project with Handshouse Studio. Poland was once full of beautiful wooden synagogues, but they were all destroyed by the Nazis during WWII. One of these synagogues, The Gwozdziec Synagogue, was well documented. Handshouse Studio has been working now for eight years to recreate this synagogue using traditional building and painting techniques.

When the project is completed, it will be installed as a permanent exhibition in the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

http://handshouse.org/gwozdziec.html

The painting in progress.

This is the space where we worked, the beautiful Temple Synagogue, in Kazimierz, the historic Jewish quarter of Krakow.

I'm going to make my students read this!

2011-08-20T11:57:00.001-05:00

Postmodernism is dead

Edward Doc

A new exhibition signals the end of postmodernism. But what was it? And what comes next?

Link to the article here

Artlog write-up

2011-07-18T21:21:00.002-05:00

I just got a very lovely write-up on Artlog.com

http://www.artlog.com/posts/147-the-exceptional-and-the-ordinary

The Exceptional and the

Ordinary

A-J Aronstein

Gwendolyn Zabicki, Billboards. Courtesy of Robert Bills Contemporary.

Robert Bills Contemporary’s subterranean location offers much needed relief from humid July afternoons in Chicago. Located ten steps below street level in the city’s West Loop district, the gallery has had a busy spring, winning attention at NEXT 2011 and scoring hometown praise from art critic Lauren Viera at the Tribune. In her review of Exploding Faces [Confining Spaces] – an exhibition of work from Second City-based artists Nathan Vernau, Tiphanie Spencer, and Steven Frost – Viera said that RBC had “redefined” the concept of the group show. Vernau will open the fall season with a solo show in September. But as the gallery looks to build on its recent successes and put a punctuation mark on the summer, it has turned to two native Chicagoans with sharply different perspectives on what constitutes the “ordinary.”

The Exceptional Ordinary, which opened last Friday, features paintings from Gwendolyn Zabicki and Sioban Lombardi. As with Exploding Faces [Confining Spaces], the virtue of this show rests in its ability to foster an unexpected conversation between the works, exposing a shared line of inquiry that would otherwise remain obscured by stark formal and thematic differences. Both Zabicki and Lombardi probe how we conceive of ordinariness, but they do so from different perspectives. Zabicki’s work recontextualizes the apparently banal or mundane space of everyday routine, while Lombardi is more interested in traumatic experience and its influence on memory. These different approaches enliven a conversation about how perception and memory influence what we think of as the relationship between the exceptional and the ordinary.

Gwendolyn Zabicki, Double Billboards. Courtesy of Robert Bills Contemporary.

"Zabicki’s canvases cultivate what might at first seem like a straightforwardly Midwestern sensibility. Her pleasantly structured scenes rely on a quick painterly style reminiscent of the Ashcans, enlivening prairie landscapes, urban scenes, and still-lifes of familiar household objects. Yet her striking cityscapes do not just portray mundane everyday scenes. Rather, they highlight the fact that rich and complex (though often unseen) spaces and objects always underlie the visual fabric of ordinary movement through the city. Billboards and Double Billboards expose the intricate iron latticework and architectural geometries on the reverse of two large signs. Zabicki literally reverses our typical engagement with the billboards by painting their skeletons. Instead of advertising messages or flashy sales pitches, we now notice an image that escapes our ordinary attention in the urban environment. We see the city that hides beneath our everyday surface engagement with it: an intricate set of ironwork structures, infrastructures, and utilities.

In other words, the exceptional for Zabicki is that which, thanks to the ability of routine and repetition to dull our visual attention, lies outside our ordinary experience. In her domestic scenes, she explores this idea on a smaller scale, painting leftovers, empty rooms, and waste bins. These close-ups allow viewers to focus on the plastic folds in a garbage bag, the way light strikes appliances in an empty room, and the melancholy sagging of a cherry pie under glass. The paintings don’t elevate or anthropomorphize objects. They simply ask us to notice what is always already in front of us, but is pushed to the background of our conscious attention."

Mudflap lady updated

2011-07-15T10:57:00.002-05:00

My menstrual pads now feature a silhouette of an empowered-business-action-lady. She's sort of like an update of the old trucker mudflap lady silhouette, but on her way to a very important meeting!

New painting

2011-07-08T11:54:00.000-05:00

My new studio

2011-07-08T11:51:00.002-05:00

Artist Statement

2011-06-25T16:30:00.001-05:00

The Exceptional Ordinary

2011-06-24T14:45:00.002-05:00

The Exceptional Ordinary

I am in a two person show at Robert Bills Contemporary, July 8th through August 5th.

sign painting blog

2011-06-18T15:51:00.002-05:00

Over at Campsite, there is a great series of posts on signage.

Check it out:

http://campsite-studio.com/category/signage/

Olafur Eliasson's new giant walk-in rainbow

2011-06-06T19:48:00.001-05:00

This is Olafur Eliasson's new giant walk-in/ walk-through rainbow in Denmark.

More pictures here: http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/14812/olafur-eliasson-your-rainbow-panorama-now-complete.html

Painters I like: Kim Cogan

2011-05-19T20:04:00.001-05:00

http://www.kimcogan.com/

Painters I like: Megan Euker

2011-05-18T20:36:00.003-05:00

I saw her work at Linda Warren Gallery. Beautiful colors, beautiful handling of paint. Her paintings are really about pleasure.

www.meganeuker.com/

Painters I Like: Sarah Sohn

2011-05-18T20:23:00.002-05:00

I've been seeing her work at the SAIC open studios for a while now and I'm always impressed

You can see more at:

http://www.sarahsohn.com/

Things I like:

2011-05-18T20:21:00.001-05:00

I really enjoyed this wonderful article about the disappearing face of New York:

http://www.howtobearetronaut.com/2011/05/the-disappearing-face-of-new-york/

Washington Mutual

2011-05-11T15:51:00.000-05:00

I just finished my double billboard painting and my Washington Mutual painting in time for final critiques. I also discovered that the real Washington Mutual sign on Division and Ashland was just taken down. You can still see it on google maps though:

<http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&q=ashland+and+division+maps&fb=1&gl=us&hq=ashland+and+division&hnear=Chicago,+IL&cid=0,0,573944076369036218&ll=41.903507,-87.66871&spn=0.009614,0.02032&z=16&layer=c&cbll=41.90337,-87.667402&panoid=TByA7Y19coGjNtb2C0UxGw&cbp=12,149.13,,0,0>

Painters I like: Devin Leonardi

2011-05-04T21:17:00.004-05:00

This guy is a year older than me, but he's making work that looks timeless.

The stores, they are a'changin'

2011-04-19T16:20:00.000-05:00

The stores, they are a'changin': "

Great series of photos of a Harlem store front, taken every 2-5 years from 1977 to 2004. (via ★vuokko)

Update: These photos were taken by Camilo Jose Vergara; there are many more like them at his web site. (thx, andrew)

Tags: NYC photography"

an interesting piece in ArtFagCity

2011-04-17T14:39:00.001-05:00

http://www.artfagcity.com/2011/04/08/forget-in-ten-parts-part-9-an-old-fashioned-post-on-painting-and-advancement-in-art-with-pictures/

Finalist

2011-04-05T16:03:00.001-05:00

I'm a finalist for the 2011 Union League Civic & Arts Foundation Visual Arts Competition.

Painting Progress: Washington Mutual Sign

2011-04-04T20:59:00.004-05:00

I need to finish these by May.

Painters I like: George Nick

2011-04-04T20:53:00.005-05:00

I ran into the paintings of George Nick and I remembered that I had wanted to paint more snow and winter light. Oh well, next winter.

I really like the books in this painting. I had a dream about painting books like this.

What are you working on right now?

2011-03-27T20:51:00.006-05:00

I've finished stretching, sanding, and gesso-ing my newest paintings.

Yesterday I sketched out what I plan to paint. Total, the three paintings are 24 feet in length (life size).

They are paintings of the covered up Washington Mutual sign on Ashland and Division.

Artists I like: Dan McCleary

2011-03-21T18:04:00.004-05:00

I'm really enjoying the epic-mundane paintings of Dan McCleary right now.
(Security, 2011 and Panel Discussion, 2011 above)

Tasty Spoonful Interview

2011-03-07T15:43:00.002-06:00

Look at me! I was interviewed by AJ Aronstein for Tasty Spoonful:

http://tastyspoonful.wordpress.com/2011/03/07/covert-urban-chicago-artist-gwendolyn-zabicki/

New Work- midterms

2011-03-01T11:53:00.004-06:00

This is the work I'll be showing for mid-terms. I'm also showing a drawing for the paintings I'll be doing in the spring. I had to write an artist statement too. I tired hard not to make mine too pretentious, but here it is:

My work examines ubiquitous objects that fill the urban environment and attempts to subvert the expectation that the ordinary should be synonymous with the mundane. Through experiments with size, editing, and technique, I aim to enliven the everyday and expose tensions and contradictions embedded in scenes of city life.

I am influenced by the themes and style of the Ashcan School (1908-1920), especially the painters John Sloan and George Luks. As precursors to Warhol, Lichtenstein and others, these artists were fascinated by advertising signage and the way it competes for our attention. Their work is marked by a subtle politics and an economy of mark-making.

Like the Ashcan painters, I am interested in the contradictions that images help us see. My most recent work of the backs of billboards and covered signs explores (un)spoken, (un)intentional, and (un)available meanings in the urban environment. The focal point of my work is in the dark places and areas of absence where there is a duality between covering and revealing.

Painters I like: Monica Tap

2011-01-31T20:02:00.002-06:00

Monica's paintings are based on images from Quicktime videos taken during car rides.

Check out more of her beautiful work on her website: http://www.monicatap.com/

Painters I like: Ian Whitmore

2011-01-31T19:57:00.003-06:00

Efficiency Study (after Gilbreth) by Ian Whitmore.

Two things I love..

2011-01-20T19:39:00.003-06:00

...miniatures and thrift stores:

http://hyperallergic.com/17104/ledrays-thrift-store/

New Painting: A Mailbox

2010-12-03T17:57:00.002-06:00

Look how pretty: Vija Celmins

2010-12-03T17:52:00.004-06:00

There's a show of hers up right now in Houston,TX titled, Vija Celmins: Television and Disaster, 1964-1966. I wish I could go!

http://www.menil.org/index.php

Look how pretty: Elad Lassry

2010-11-23T12:11:00.002-06:00

New Painting

2010-11-20T00:18:00.002-06:00

More artists I like: Vija Celmins

2010-11-15T01:02:00.002-06:00

Conrad Bakker

2010-11-15T00:38:00.004-06:00

So basically Conrad Bakker has already done everything I've done in my studio this semester. Depression glass? Yes. Wastebaskets? Yes. Here is some of his lovely work:

new painting

2010-11-08T17:29:00.000-06:00

New paintings

2010-09-20T22:47:00.002-05:00

Painters I like: Alex Katz

2010-09-20T22:39:00.001-05:00

I only knew about his portraits, which are ok, but it's his landscapes that are beautiful. I want to make paintings like this:

This guy is good: Ryan Johnson

2010-09-13T22:21:00.002-05:00

http://www.guildgreyshkul.com/artist.php?id=91&show=works

New paintings- painted this week.

2010-08-31T23:28:00.000-05:00

Tired Old Queen At the Movies

2010-08-31T23:23:00.001-05:00

You should look at this:

New painting of Latkes and Pierogies (in progress)

2010-07-12T22:21:00.003-05:00

Work by my new advisor

2010-07-08T13:13:00.001-05:00

This artist, Tony Tasset, is going to be my advisor at UIC in the fall! Should be fun!

Video: Chicago's new eyeball: "
The Chicago Tribune looks into the making of downtown Chicago's newest sculpture, a 30-foot orb modeled after sculptor Tony Tasset's eyeball. Props to the motherland: The fiberglass ball was fabricated in Sparta, Wis., -- not so far from where I grew up -- by F.A.S.T. Corp., which made the world's largest fiberglass sculpture, the 145-foot-long muskellunge that makes up Hayward, Wisconsin's Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame.

Via C-Monster.

New Painting in progress

2010-06-28T20:06:00.004-05:00

Painters I like: Sara MacCulloch

2010-06-09T22:34:00.002-05:00

New work at work

2010-05-06T12:46:00.003-05:00

A new Flower/Welcome display on the wall. Thanks Dad for giving me four of the old windows from your house.

Look who was in Time Out Chicago

2010-05-03T10:21:00.001-05:00

My Hagia Sophia was a Critics' Pick in the April 15- 21 issue of Time Out Chicago.

Fancy Times

2010-05-01T19:16:00.005-05:00

This morning I went to the home of a fancy art collector downtown. I met him a few years ago at work. I think I sold him a box of crackers. I said something like, "I'm really putting this art degree to work," and his ears perked up. He's always on the lookout for new painters. He and his wife have art covering every inch of wall inside their home, art which is probably worth more than the home itself.

That's a real Elizabeth Peyton watercolor in the background!

Girls at the Harlem stop

2010-04-25T16:55:00.000-05:00

Look how fancy I am!

2010-04-16T21:07:00.005-05:00

Lots of mentions of my show this weekend. Thanks Spoke Gallery!

http://onthemake.org/2010/04/17/gwendolyn-zabicki-hagia-sophia/

http://www.artslant.com/chi/events/show/100805-hagia-sophia-gwendolyn-zabicki

http://chicagoartreview.com/2010/04/15/weekend-preview-but-is-it-net-art/gwendolyn-zabicki-hagia-sophia/

http://chicagoartmagazine.com/2010/04/cam-weekend-listings-6/

http://chicago.timeout.com/events/events/333697/4416223/hagia-sophia

http://badatsports.com/tags/gwendolyn-zabicki/

My Pa at Spoke Gallery

2010-04-11T19:22:00.003-05:00

Today my Pa helped me install my Hagia Sophia project at Spoke Gallery. It looks swell. Thanks, Pa.

Hagia Sophia at Spoke Gallery

2010-03-23T22:31:00.002-05:00

My Hagia Sophia piece is going to be at Spoke Gallery!

Open by appointment: April 11th to April 17th

Closing Reception: Saturday, April 17th, 6 to 9pm (free drinks!)
Hours: By appointment contact us at gwensmail@gmail.com or
spokechicago@gmail.com

The Hagia Sophia basilica, in Istanbul, Turkey, is famous for its history, beautiful dome, and the mystical quality of light that reflects inside of it. Built in 330AD, it withstood no fewer than 17 sieges between the time it was founded and 1204 when it finally fell to the Christians of the west (the Normans). In its long history, the Hagia Sophia has been home to Pagans, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and is currently a museum.

Saturday, April 17th from 6 to 9pm, Spoke will be home to a miniature version of the Hagia Sophia. Complete with gold dome, marble floors, and 168 windows, this recreation is just big enough to seat one adult inside. Hear about its colorful history, and enjoy the warm golden light of seasonal affective disorder therapeutic lamps housed inside its walls.

This project is supported by a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the
City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Illinois Arts
Council, a state agency.

at SPOKE
119 N Peoria #3D
Chicago, IL 60607

New Work

2010-02-27T20:54:00.001-06:00

Some Cute Work from Work

2010-02-22T18:55:00.001-06:00

A drawing I made of a Jewish Pony.

2010-02-22T18:51:00.000-06:00

Did you know most ponies are Protestant? It's true.

Painters I like: Rudy Burckhardt

2010-02-22T18:32:00.003-06:00

Known mainly for her photography, Rudy Burckhardt made some pretty excellent paintings as well...

34th Street, New York, 1978 (photo)

Los Angenes Rooftop, 1962, oil on masonite

Parking Lot, 1970, oil on linen

Today

2010-02-22T18:30:00.001-06:00

I would like to be in this painting by William Trost Richards today.

Painters I like: Shane Neufeld

2010-01-29T18:38:00.002-06:00

shaneneufeld.com

Chloe's Surprise Party

2010-01-06T20:34:00.002-06:00

We scared her good!

Holiday cake and pie!

2010-01-06T20:28:00.003-06:00

Birthday Hats

2009-12-17T22:59:00.003-06:00

Thank you to Marta who made all of the lovely paper hats at my birthday party.

New Painting

2009-12-17T22:57:00.001-06:00

Franklin and Randolph

2009

oil on panel

22"x 28"

This is a colorful wall that was once inside a building and is now exposed. Only after the building at Franklin and Randolph was knocked down and ceased to exist, could one see what it really was like as a whole.

New Work at Work

2009-12-17T22:52:00.001-06:00

Things I like

2009-12-17T22:38:00.003-06:00

Painters I like- Frank Bauer

2009-11-29T17:39:00.002-06:00

Frank Bauer did a lovely series of paintings at airports. They are on display here:
http://www.frank-bauer.net/artwork/?cat=3&catName=landscape

New Painting

2009-11-09T20:10:00.002-06:00