Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Article: Interview with Collector Bret Kreuk

Article: Other People & Their Ideas
Interview by Mark Rappolt
Art Review, Issue 69, Summer 2013
For full text: http://artreview.com/features/bert_kreuk_other_people_and_their_ideas_no._7/

I found this Art Review interview with collector Bret Kreuk interesting. Mark Rappolt asked "What would you like people to take away from it [your collection]?"

Bret Kreuk replied, "You know, what I’d like them to take away is that art is not only about a nice two-dimensional picture. Art is also very much about learning, and about an educational process. People should look at an artwork, not because they think it’s ugly, or it’s beautiful, because ugly is a very subjective word. Something beautiful might be very superficial – somebody came up with an idea, made it commercial so that people buy it. That’s easy. It’s always easy to buy an artist who is clever enough to present something which is attractive, but staying truthful to the concept of their own ability and their own ideas, that’s something else. Ugly is maybe even nicer. It’s about the educational process, and helping people on their way to think differently about art. That’s what I’d like people to take away from it, that they have to think for themselves."

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Recent Work: Lost & Found

These are experiments working with previous images from last semester. I'm using the latitude and longitude coordinates of where I took the image to specify their exact location via Google Maps. Paired with my somewhat ambiguous landscapes, I find the Google Maps satellite images of the same place intriguing. I'm wondering what new dialogue is sparked when paired with my rendition of the location... information accessibility online, perception of place, ways in which photography can simultaneously share information and deceive the viewer. 

Still works in progress... 

21° 16' 53.20" N, 157° 42' 47.72" W

21° 15' 48.96" N, 157° 49' 18.71" W

35° 18' 17.02" N, 139° 33' 3.85" W

Saturday, July 27, 2013

Video: Aperture Panel Abstraction in Photography, Hammer Museum

Aperture Panel: Abstraction in Photography, Hammer Museum

I found this video available on Youtube very interesting. Going to keep my eyes open for the Rexer's book due out in September 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDYBJV4ylzw

Blurb: From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. Artists Susan Rankaitis and James Welling and UCLA Associate Professor of Art History George Baker debate a host of approaches to the abstract photographic experience in this panel discussion moderated by Lyle Rexer, the author of The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography.



Tuesday, July 2, 2013

New York: Gugghenheim, The Met, MOMA, and ICP

Oh New York, New York. Even when it is rainy, hot, and humid like the days I visited, I still love this city. As I made my way back from June's residency in Boston, I had the opportunity to soak up a few excellent exhibitions in the Big Apple. Here are some highlights:

1. Guggenheim: James Turrel's site specific installation

I was excited to experience Turrell's installation live since I’ve only read about his works. As expected, it does take time to slow down and immerse yourself in the environment. As I watched the glowing, ethereal color gradients change, I found it just as fascinating to note how other observers experienced the space. Some visitors sat quietly with their eyes closed, others laid back on the recliner benches with eyes wide open as if in awe. On my left, a couple felt inclined to kiss and directly in front of me, children shouted “Woooow!” On the upper floors, there were older works of Turrell's on view that gave context for his projects and career trajectory. Another highlight was seeing his Afrum (White) or aka White Cube in person.

"My work is about space and light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space and plumb it. It is about your seeing." - James Turrell

Click here for an 8 min video link on Turrell & the project:  http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/exhibitions/on-view/james-turrell

2. The Met

Everyday Epiphanies: Photographs and Daily Life Since 1969
At War with the Obvious: Photographs by William Eggleston

Punk: Chaos to Couture
Frank Lloyd Wright Room
Impressionist Wing

3. Museum of Modern Art
Painting and Sculpture floors
XL: 19 New Acquisitions in Photography
Artist highlights: Liz Deschenes, Allan Sekula, Stephen Shore, Taryn Simon, Robert Frank, Běla Kolářová, Dora Maurer, Paul Graham, Óscar Muñoz, Mariah Robertson

4. International Center of Photography:  A Different Kind of Order: The ICP Triennial
(One of my favorite museums in Manhattan, the triennial did not disappoint!)

Artist & work highlights: Trevor Paglen Untitled (Predator Drone), Wangechi Mutu, Elliot Hundley Pentheus, Mishka Henner Dutch Landscapes, Thomas Hirschhorn Touching Reality, Gideon Mendel Drowning World, Sam Falls, Sohei Nishino Diorama Maps,  Mikhael Subotzky & Patrick Waterhouse

Excerpt from press release:

"The exhibition sketches the contours of the new visual and social territory in which photography finds itself today. A number of key themes serve as guidelines that link the works in the exhibition:
Artist as aggregator identifies one of the main aesthetic offshoots of the digital image environment: the present-day descendants of the “image scavengers” of the 1980s who are now busy plundering and reorganizing found, online photographs into highly personal, web-based archives.
• The resurgence of collage is evident in works that combine photographic fragments, digital images, paint, three-dimensional objects, and audio and video material to blast open and reconfigure the space of the photograph in unprecedented ways.
• At a time when all manner of power structures are being called into question, mapping has become a renewed subject of artistic inquiry—part of a wider fascination with the power of ordering systems that has emerged in response to the dematerialized disorder of the Internet’s environment.
• The Internet’s dissolution of geographic distance has spurred the development of new forms of community, allowing artists to explore new forms of connection, collaboration, and multiple authorship that do not depend on physical proximity.
• In cooperation with ICP Associate Librarian Matthew Carson, the exhibition will also include an installation of approximately 100 recent photo books, which testifies to the extraordinary boom in self-published and small-press photo books now occurring around the world."


Small video I made as the train approached Manhattan