“There are times when no light passes through the dark cloud and I am held tightly by a suffocating shroud of sadness that overwhelms my being. The delights of life a distant memory, gone, replaced with a mundane cruelty that burdens my soul. What it would be to sing and dance and love and feel the passionate embrace of life once more, where joy could overwhelm my darkened existence.”

The Spirit That Moves Me

Nevertheless I won’t complain. Even if I had to postpone a lot of outdoors shooting of the documentary. Even if now I am fully equipped to shoot the monsoon. Even if guilt is always around the corner for not going further on with work.

In fact all that rainy, cold and maybe snowy weekend to come brought me back to my early teenage days, when in admiration of the great painting masters, I desperately was looking for another studio than my overcrowded room, in order to be more like them, and to maybe get touched by the grace of the eternal and immediate talent. It is the same like when now you approach the 40s and you first buy all the running equipment hoping it will inspire you to run more often.

So these last days I had to come back to some “studio” work, and having my office at home, I had to concentrate on preparation and production rather than shooting like it has been for the last months. Being stuck indoors and with nothing to edit – I actually could do a bit but editing is planned this end of year, and with a proper editor that would bring a true new perspective to what I recorded , in other words the beauty of making a movie that resides in a collective work – I realized I left something apart for a long time : sketching.

My years of active painting and drawing were fulfilled with sketching moments. A draft can be needed for later, and the more you draw the closer the shapes are from the final goal….

But how does it work in movie making ? Some would say it is about the reading and documenting. Some about cleaning the lenses. Some about the networking.

For me it is about “sketches for a movie”. And I am not talking about a storyboard, but really about drafts. When you study, in the cinema school they repeat all along ” experiment all the time even for minor projects”….but when you enter the reality of the job, money, time, production support and meaning of your work makes that even the smallest free shot you do is under the shadow of profitability and a certain type of effectiveness. And what can we say, this is the society we live in…it influences us as well…and actually we were taught like that….

So I learned again on how to make some non profitable, low efficient, average quality exercises, or drafts, and actually – and it is my case, I don’t pretend we are all the same – it opens my imagination to new ideas I could shoot for the Gruyère’s village documentary, and for a new photographic work.

And the less it has a connection to the big serious piece of work I try to achieve, the better it is !

So just a little sneak preview…

Echo – videoart by Bart Hess

Metal Fur (pins) videoart by Bart Hess

Shaved – videoart by Bart Hess

Info on the artist here

Print Size: 18″ x 12″
Frame Color: Black
Matte Color: Bright White
Frame Style: Flat Frame (30mm wide x 20mm deep)
Price: $142.50

CRACKS © ROBERTO ALBORGHETTI – IMAGE # 5

“Do yourself a favor, find the beauty in your cracks”

Ne-Yo (Shaffer Chimere Smith) 

From his R.E.D. album

***

THE CRACKS WEEK: THE 5^th IMAGE

Cracks is part of my Lacer/actions Project, about  the decomposition of torn publicity posters on outside advertisings (my realistic and not manipulated images are transferred on canvases, lithographic prints or textiles). Since 2009 I’ve been also workin’ on another matter. Not paper but metal and plastic surfaces, or metal and plastic platings which are usually considered as a disturbing element for our eyes.

So, I entered the wonderful and imperfect world of Cracks… We are surrounded by cracks. We live in a planet of cracks. And cracks may be considered as a life’s metaphor. My eyes and cameras discovered, in cracks magnifications, another astonishing textures in what we consider waste materials. Also my Cracks are realistic, natural, random and not enhanced images, as you see in this picture.

Related articles

• They’re Only Ordinary Textures in a Cracks Magnification… (robertoalborghetti.wordpress.com)
• The Cracks Week / Image # 3: Colors and Shapes on a Metal Surface… (robertoalborghetti.wordpress.com)
• Welcome to the World of “Cracks”, Where Matter Is Broken But Not Split… Image # 2 (robertoalborghetti.wordpress.com)
• New: They Are “Cracks”! (and Not Paintings) / Exploring Metal and Plastic Surfaces… (robertoalborghetti.wordpress.com)

http://www.zhoufanart.com/

Zhou Fan was born in 1983 in Shanxi Province in northern China.

Zhou Fan is a rising star in the Chinese art scene – he is a young, yet extremely creative, Chinese contemporary artist. His paintings have attracted attention at exhibitions in New York, Germany and Shanghai. In the Chinese Art Prize 2007, Zhou Fan was selected as one of the top 3 emerging Chinese contemporary artists (out of over 1300 entries into the art prize) by Gerard Goodrow, Director of Art Cologne, Jeff Kelley, Curator of the Asian Art Museum in California and other important judges.

Zhou Fan is a rising star in the Chinese art scene – he is a young, yet extremely creative, Chinese contemporary artist. His paintings have attracted attention at exhibitions in New York, Germany and Shanghai. In the Chinese Art Prize

While Zhou Fan’s paintings may at first look happy and cheerful because they are colourful, many of the artist’s works have a sad undertone to them. Zhou seems to be quite sensitive to the fact that people can be cruel and destructive, and he can see the effect China’s societal changes are having on individuals and the society as a whole. Clearly, the crying fat boy, while he looks humorous, is actually tormented by his teacher and classmates.

somedays you just need a little encouragement. 

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Wheat Wurtzburger, Orlando, Florida

 Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Kerri-Lynn Reeves and Jennier Delos Reyes Winnipeg, Manitoba CANADA

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Wheat Wurtzburger, NY, NY 

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Disneyrollergirl, London, UK

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:B. San Antonio, Texas

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Taylor, Salt Lake City, Utah

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Amber Rene, San Francisco, CA

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Harriet Wynne, Melbourne, Australia

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Talisa, Sydney, Australia

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Gregg Symons, State College, Pennsylvania 

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Rose, Rugene, Oregon

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Anna Lee Kerlin, Orlando, Florida

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Lauren Maul and Jenna Roloff, Chicago, IL

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Isabel Stockholm, Copenhagen, Denmark

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Alicia, Spring, Texas

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Micaela, Durand, New York, New York 

Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher, Learning to Love You More , Assignment # 63:Wheat Wurtzburger, Orlando, Florida

Check out more assignment’s from Miranda July and Harrell Fletcher’s on-line project LearningToLoveYouMore.com, 2002-2009 HERE. 

想像過把旅館改造成藝廊嗎? 聽起來有些不可思議, 但在舊金山……天馬行空的想法成真了。

The Phoenix Hotel 位於舊金山Tenderloin district, 是一家歷史悠久並且帶有濃厚嬉皮風格的旅店。5/17-20, 為期四天的藝術展, 來自舊金山當地及灣區和南加州的藝術家們, 將超過40間客房轉變成一間間的藝廊。

生活中隨手可見的物品, 加上一點巧思, 也能變成藝術。每件藝術品, 走進一看, 你也不禁想著, 不知道這又是誰的故事。引起無限想像的空間……

走進每一間房間, 像走進每一位藝術家的小小天地。各形各色的創作, 個人色彩強烈, 讓人一眼就難忘。

不算大的展示空間, 藝術品看似隨意的擺設着, 看起來卻是如此的協調, 也把原本單調無趣的旅館房間, 打造成充滿生活感的空間。

除了強烈的個人色彩與風格外, 也有藝術家把創作融入生活中, 讓人看了會心一笑！

只能說……藝術充滿無限可能！

Unleashed Sketch 100 | Schizzo scatenato 100, pastel, ball pen and marker on paper, 2013

One more unleashed sketch (the 100th) – just finished.

Ben & Sherman. Botanical Series #3. 2013. Mixed media on paper, 20 x 27.5 in (50 x 70 cm).

Last week I read a post about Post-Modern art. In the post, the writer claims that Post-Modern (and modern art as well) are worth almost nothing because the artist has, according to her, lost the ability to put meaning into their work, waiting instead for a strong-willed soul to do the work of meaning for them. As a result, this writer claims, our very culture has become spineless and chaotic, because a multiplicity of meaning clearly means that our lives are all collectively wrecked. (Romeeamore’s piece, if you wish to read it, can be found here: http://romeeamore.wordpress.com/2013/05/05/why-i-very-much-dislike-contemporary-postmodern-art/) Now, while reading this, I had to resist the urge to comment on her piece, until I could think of a way that illustrates what it means to make a piece of Modernist Art. So, I suppose this is my rebuttal to her own writing. I am going to use Agnes Martin’s piece Leaf, from 1965, as my example.

Agnes Martin. Leaf, 1965, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Dallas. 72 1/16 x 72 1/8 in.

When I see this work, I fall into a bit of a trance. I know it isn’t easy to see, because none of these pieces lend themselves to small reproduction, but this work is composed of two levels: a watercolor wash and a graphite grid. I could stare at her pieces for hours, because they lend themselves to contemplation – a view that I share with every scholar who has written on her – and quiet. However, the serene silence is where the similarities between different scholars’ writings end. I chose this piece as an example of the diversity of Modernist art because I know it and because it illustrates that the ‘death of the author’ (Romeeamore’s parent theory for her claims) is not the only way this piece can be seen. But first, I am going to analyze this piece the way that Romeeamore intended, just to show what it is she intends to claim.

1. Romeeamore’s method: This piece, made up of washes and a graphite grid, is abstract. Agnes Martin let this into the world, and now her own intentions for the piece (if there were any to begin with) are no longer important, because the author has no power over her own work. Thus, as the enlightened and stalwart collector describing this work, I shall say that it has to do with the misery of the world (which is Romeeamore’s personal predilection for meaning in Post-Modern Art), and I shall push this meaning until it is the only one that is remembered.

Ok, now, let’s see what this means – first, there is only a cursory glance at the materiality of the piece. Second, there is a focus on the death of the author, which is fine in and of itself, because Agnes Martin was in actuality a proponent of the inability of the artist to control/dictate the sole meaning of their work following its completion. Third, the critic (not necessarily the most informed person in the world) makes a subjective statement about the piece, a statement not founded in scholarship or the artist’s own conceptions of the world. So, in the end, Romeeamore’s art collector (notice she ignores the role of both Art Historians AND Curators in the decisions of meaning in an art work post-completion…) does not take into account the materiality of the piece, Agnes Martin’s own prodigious writing, or previous scholarship. So, here are roughly three other methods that could be used to elucidate potential meanings (because there are always several) of Leaf. But before I go more in-depth, it’s probably best if I give a bit more detailed description of the work.

Leaf is first and foremost a square canvas, relatively large. On the canvas are multiple washes of watercolor paint. These layers are not uniform in any sense, and sit over each other, lending the painting a strange optical ‘veil’ quality – in other words, the washes seem to be gauzy veils that sit over each other, obscuring something beyond. Over this ‘atmosphere’ of paint is a hand-drawn grid of graphite. Once again, the lines are not uniform, because they betray the artist’s hand and thus have little breaks within them. This grid at first seems to sit on top of the paint, but once looked at for several minutes, the grid seems to float above and then behind, floating through, instead of reining in, the misty paint on the canvas.

So, now I’ll go through several different scholarly takes on her piece in order to show the difference of opinion between the so-called critics of art (all of whom are art historians).

2. Nature: Nature is first because it is less of a method and more of an observation. If you’ll notice when I described the piece, I referred to the paint as an ‘atmosphere’ or as ‘misty’. This is because it is incredibly difficult to write about Martin’s art without falling into allusions to nature or climate. This, coupled with the title, conjure up images of crisp, fall leaves the color of package-paper flowing through a light breeze. As I type, I can almost hear the rustle of leaves as the wind picks them up from the ground, swirling and spiraling them into a dance – but this is just a passing observation, not a method in and of itself.

3. Materiality: The next way that this piece can be ‘read’ is through its facture and materiality. These two outlooks are championed by the scholars Briony Fer and Rosalind Krauss. Fer sees Martin’s grids as an exercise in repetition which looks to the infinite; Rosalind Krauss sees the strange ‘gap’ between the mist and the grid as a sort of cloud, a /cloud/ (a semiotic signifier) which contains a remainder of opticality. Now, both readings rest on the materiality of the grid, though one is fully submerged within the material and the other uses the material to create a semiotic leap. However, neither subscribe to the ‘death of the author’ view (at least in their articles on this artist), in fact their  arguments rally against it, claiming either the handmade quality of the grid’s lines or the titles themselves as evidence of the artist’s intentions.

4. Agnes Martin’s own beliefs: She did actually believe that once a painting was completed, it was freed from the artist’s touch and its content was ‘created’ by the viewer. HOWEVER, Martin set in motion her own meaning for her work, because she herself moved along a path of self-initiated path to perfection. She painted her paintings as windows onto a contemplative moment, one which would open up the viewer to the endless expanse of infinite perfection. What that perfection consisted of, only she and those viewers who actually do see the ‘light’, so to speak, know. However, in the end, even with her own personal belief that the artist lost control of the piece, her personal meanings for her work still ring true.

In any case, I hope this little post does show that modernism is not a single strand, and that every piece, in modernist tradition or otherwise, ALWAYS lies within multiple layers of meaning. In the end, these multiple meanings are what makes art so powerful, and so incredibly important to culture as we have known it, still know it, and will know it in the future.

A portion of Paul Tokarski’s collection of works are showing at our contemporary fine art gallery’s, Artistic Lifestyles Las Vegas & Artistic Lifestyles San Diego. More works are being cataloged and will be available for sale at ArtisticLifestyles.com

Ben & Sherman. Botanical Series #2. 2013. Mixed media on paper, 26 x 40 in (65 x 100 cm).

A portion of Paul Tokarski’s collection of works are showing at our contemporary fine art gallery’s, Artistic Lifestyles Las Vegas & Artistic Lifestyles San Diego. More works are being cataloged and will be available for sale at ArtisticLifestyles.com

]]> http://benandsherman.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/botanical-series-1/ Wed, 22 May 2013 21:45:20 +0000 benandsherman http://benandsherman.wordpress.com/2013/05/22/botanical-series-1/

Ben & Sherman. Botanical Series #1. 2013. Mixed media on paper, 20 x 27.5 in (50 x 70 cm).

They provide visual cues to the viewer that express personality, flavor, perspective, and emotional tone.

Please enjoy. Two videos with very different personalities…

Video One: Galri Montaj Artists | Soundtrack with piano.

A completely different presentation of the same content…

Video Two: Introducing Galri Montaj | Select! genre: techno-jazz

Galri Montaj ARTISTS…

Presenting spectacular works of original art in a range of artistic genres, from Realism and Surrealism, to Plein Air and Abstract Expressionism, spanning the disciplines of painting, digital media, mixed media, photography, printmaking, and textiles.

Whether adding to your collections for the sheer love of art, or as an investment, the works presented on our walls offer a visual montaj that is certain to please the most discerning collector.

Contact us for art and artist information and exhibition opportunities:

Galri Montaj Artists | Galri Montaj Contemporary Art

ALOFT…acrylic on canvas…72X48

ALOFT is a painting I did a while back to hang above my dining room table.  It’s large…6 X 4 feet… and helps to bring the color I wanted into the dining room from the living room.  It has been my inspiration for the past week.

Our dining table is a heavy wood piece that serves a purpose, seating for four or six, with the leaf added.  I decided it was too dark and proceeded to do a painting on the tabletop.  I sanded and gessoed the top, and painted with my acrylics.   Of course, the color inspiration came from this painting, but the design is bold and graphic.

I’ve spent the past week working at it, first without the extension and then with, completing the design across the top.  I’ve finished the painting and today it got it’s first coat of polyurethane and it looks great.  It’s fun, totally different than the painting, but relates well.  I should have done this a long time ago, but I guess there is always a right time for everything.

I haven’t decided what color to paint the base, but when it’s all done (and the room is back together!), I’ll show you how it came out.

…watching paint dry