Monthly Archives: October 2019

Asia Fuller Presents

The Strange Case of Patricia Piccinini:

An Eccentric Genius

Patricia Piccinini is a Sierra Leone-born Australian sculptress who is well known for her hyper-realistic human-creature hybrids. They may come off as unsettling at first glance, but if you stop to look closely, the pieces almost tell a tender story. Piccinini made use of contrast by making something so terrifyingly ghastly into something so sweet and gentle. She’s done works outside of sculptures such as paintings, photography, drawings, videography, and other forms of media. Through all of the mediums that she has used, surrealism was an art style she has hardly ever strayed from.

In 1988, Piccinini attended the Australian National University where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Economic History. She later attended the Victorian College of Arts in order to obtain her Bachelor of Arts for Painting in 1991. She eventually spent her early career studying human anatomy and found different ways to contort it into abnormal shapes and forms. Before she begins any project, she draws out her ideas and has a team help develop a three-dimensional test model. For her final product, the main materials that Piccinini would typically use are silicone, fiberglass, and human hair.

Piccinini, Patricia. The Carrier. 2012, silicone, human and animal hair, clothing. Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne

In the image above, it shows an image of “The Carrier”, a naked bear-like human creature carrying a fully-dressed old woman in its hands. It’s interesting how something so large and powerful would seem to be subservient to someone so seemingly frail and harmless in comparison. There is a sense of an unequal balance where the old lady holds dominance and superiority over the bear man. It could be possible that this may be a mutual relationship between him and her where a task is being fulfilled.

Piccinini, Patricia. The Surrogate (For the Northern Hairy Nosed Wombat). 2005, silicone, fiberglass, leather, plywood, human hair. The Art Gallery of South Australia.

This next piece, “The Surrogate” portrays a creature incubating a wisdom of baby wombats within the wombs down its backside. Each wombat slowly becomes pushed out of the pouch through the creature’s pores as it sits contently. The Surrogate made itself a safe space for the little joeys and would keep them protected from harm.

Patricia Piccinini.The Bond.2016, Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, clothing.Tolarno Galleries, Melbourn Roslyn Oxley Gallery, Sydney and Hosfelt Gallery, San Francisco.

“The Bond” shows a woman cradling an overly fleshy, piglike child fondly as if it were her own. It almost seems as if she is comforting him from as he sits comfortably in her embrace. Upon closer inspection, the creature looks reminiscent of the piece “Teenage Metamorphasis”. From there the creature is independent of the “mother” in this image and lies upon a blanket with a stereo and the book Metamorphasis by Franz Kafka.

Piccinini, Patricia. The Couple. 2018, Silicone, fiberglass, human hair, found objects. Arken Museum of Modern Art, Denmark.

“The Couple” portrays two humanoid creatures lying with one another alone in a trailer. This piece has left me staring at it longer than any of the others. These creatures look the most human compared to any other piece that I’ve seen yet it intrigues me the most. Their body language alone tells an entire story about their relationship. The male may feel a sense of vulnerability and comfort within his lover’s arms while the female would help bear the weight of demons and insecurities.

Piccinini, Patricia.The Welcome Guest. 2011, Silicone, Fiberglass, human hair, clothing, taxidermy peacock, bed. Tolnaro Gallery, Melbourne.

In ” The Welcome Guest”, a little girl is being greeted by a stranger ready to give her a hug on a bed with a peacock standing from the head of the bed. In my eyes, the idea behind a strange creature being friendly to children has always been adorable for me. It’s elongated nails and animalistic figure makes it slightly intimidating albeit its friendly face. Instead of being a child-hungry monster under the bed, the creature is a benign friend who’s willing there to be there with open arms.

https://www.artsy.net/artwork/patricia-piccinini-the-bond
https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/melbournenow/artists/patricia-piccinini.html
https://www.art-almanac.com.au/patricia-piccinini-like-us/
https://theweekendedition.com.au/event-news/patricia-piccinini-curious-affection/ https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/patricia-piccinini https://www.designboom.com/art/the-carrier-an-animal-and-human-hybrid-by-patricia-piccinini/

Tracey Emin- Lauren McCarn

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Tracey Emin is a famous British artist who is well known for her deeply emotional art that explores her traumas, shame, sexuality, love, and her childhood. As her art mostly is comprised of short highly emotional glimpses into her experience of her experience as a woman, many critics describe her works as “autobiographical and confessional”. The reoccurring themes of her work helped her gain the title of the “Enfant Terrible of the Young British Artists movement”. She explores these themes in a variety of different mediums such as sculpture, drawings, paintings, and, sewn appliqués, and neon signs. Many of these different mediums are used to explore different ideas, such as her neon signs often address her thoughts on love, while her paintings and drawings are primarily focused on her vulnerability though sexuality.

In one of Emin’s arguably most well know works, titled “Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995“, she lists from early childhood to the current year in which she had created the piece, everyone she had ever slept with, she included her family, her friends, and her sexual partners. She explained “Some I’d had a shag with in bed or against a wall some I had just slept with, like my grandma. I used to lay in her bed and hold her hand. We used to listen to the radio together and nod off to sleep. You don’t do that with someone you don’t love and don’t care about.” She used sewn appliqué pieces, that to some extent look almost childlike, possibly meaning to show that sleeping with someone used to mean something entirely different and innocent.

*Mum & Dad*
2017
Acrylic and pencil on canvas

*It was all too Much*
2018
Acrylic on canvas

In these selections from her exhibit, A Fortnight of Tears, Emin explores her pain from her traumatic childhood, rape, abortions, and lost love and other tragic themes of the female experience. For Emin, much of this exhibit was about addressing her shame, and conquering it, in an interview she stated “I’ve killed my shame, I’ve hung it on the walls.”

Her variety in mediums help the viewer to understand the different kinds of pain she felt from different experiences. In “Mum & Dad” and “It was all too Much” she uses line and color to show the mental damage of her childhood and sexual past. In both pieces we can see how Emin uses erratic brushstrokes to convey how the mental trauma has manifested in her life and how, but in “Mum & Dad” we also see one straight line in the center, that clearly represents the harsh division in her parents relationship. I believe she chose a similar medium for both of these paintings because she feels a similar type of primal pain, as opposed to the neon used in “longed for you” which seems to be more of a commentary on beautiful pain. In an interview she once said, “For me, aggression, sex and beauty go together. Much of my work has been about memory, for example, but memories of violence and pain. Nowadays if I make a drawing I’m trying to draw love, but love isn’t always gentle. Being an artist isn’t just about making nice things, or people patting you on the back; it’s some kind of communication, a message.”

Works Cited:

https://whitecube.com/artists/artist/tracey_emin

http://www.artnet.com/artists/tracey-emin/3

https://www.artspace.com/artist/tracey_emin

https://www.wallpaper.com/art/tracey-emin-a-fortnight-of-tears-white-cube-bermondsey

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-sad-shower-in-new-york-p11567

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/tracey-emin-art-interview

Thilo Frank- Edith A. Pelham

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Thilo Frank was born in Germany and works out of Berlin. He mainly creates sculpture and installation works. He uses many 3d shapes and then incorporates other senses into the understanding of the pieces. There is also a clear inspiration from modern architecture. The theory behind much of his work is to get the viewer to pay attention to the consequences that their actions have. There is a sound element to many of his works that involves recording the viewers and putting the recording on a loop, so that the viewers become part of the installation piece.

For example, Levitation records the movements of the viewers and then plays them out from speakers that are located inside the sculpture. The sounds are played on an eight minute loop, so that they overlap and create a layered echo effect.

He also focuses on the effect that his environment can have on his artwork, in this work he made sure to think about the different effect and the shadows that the triangles would cast throughout the day. For example, You and I, Wandering on the Snake’s Tail looks drastically different between the day and night (he even adds a light to further emphasize that difference.)

**You and I, wandering on the snake’s tail**

Infinite Rock is an installation work located in the United Arab Emirates. From the outside it looks like a giant geometric rock, but if you look close enough you can find an entrance. When you go inside, there are lots on mirrors that reflect you and there is a swing that you can swing on. It also emphasizes how a person lives within a space, although in a less natural way than many of his other works. This piece seems very futuristic when you go inside and takes the viewer out of their comfort zone to experience. He built a similar work to this one that is in Denmark.

Vertical Skip is an installation work that also incorporates the viewers relation to the object, this time physically rather than through sound. The 10 meter tall installation shifts according to the viewers movements causing it to be ever changing. “Lightwire with transformer, speed control unit, sensors, electric engine”. The size of the installation is meant to be overpowering to the viewer, encompassing the entire rooms and waving and shift as people come and go.

Few Phoenix Get Lost in the Water is an installation work in which Thilo Frank built a swing set to be in the water. It is high enough so that the person does not get very wet, but looks as though their feet probably graze the water as they go by. As part of the installation, there is also a shuttle service that drops the viewers off, so that means that their is most likely a period of time when the viewer is completely alone with the work, allowing them to experience something serene and connect with the world around them.

Few Phoenix Get Lost in the Water

Rackstraw Downes – Ashton

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Rackstraw downes was born on November 8, 1939 in Pembury, United Kingdom. Downes full birth name is actually Rodney Harry Rackstraw Downes. This British-born painter is known for his meticulous attention to detail and works for months at a time on any one single piece he produces, and does so through ‘plein-air’ sessions. Downes lived in the united kingdom, but became an exchange student at Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. He later returned to the United kingdom to attend the University of Cambridge and attended St. John’s College and received a Bachelor of arts in English literature. His final academic endeavor would be at Yale School of Art where he received his Master of Fine Arts in painting in 1964. Downes began his painting though abstraction, but would quickly abandon that theme for a realism one. In his studies Downes would become highly focused on the unusual man-altered environments.

En Plein Air is French for “outdoors”, and is the act of painting outdoors. In contrast to the studio setting of most mainstream artists, painting outdoor creates a “free flow” of the environment before you and is a practice where conventional studio rules do not apply or can be ignored.

*Outdoor Passage Way at 15 Rivington,*2016
Oil on canvas

Rackstraw rejects the idea of being labeled a landscape artist, but rather more of a painter who just paints his surroundings. He is well known for finding unusual or not highly favorable spots like cellphone towers, electrical stations, powerlines, and sewer drains. He also tends to choose landscapes that are strange in shape and contain formations or eve rday objects that are normally hidden away for cosmetic reasons. These setting he refers to as “Man-altered environments.”. Downes likes to stick to the old Dutch tradition of finishing all works on site; without the use of a camera.

Baseball Field in Red Hook Park From Camp Uno, No.4,2002
Oil on canvas

New York State Psychiatric Institute, 2015
Oil on Linen

At the Confluence of Two Ditches Bordering a Field With Four Radio Towers, 1995
Oil on canvas

New Plantings in Millennium Park, New Towers in the Distance, 2002
Oil on Canvas

Below the Hospital Complex at 168th Street, 2012
Oil on Canvas

Downes has a favorite quote by Picasso that says ” Some young people, artists, are older than those who have been dead for centuries”, and reflects back on his own work with how he, and many of us, have to seek out the art of the centuries past and learn from them. He goes on to speak about why it’s important to look back and study works of the old masters. He then refers to his troubles of trying to recreate steam coming from a factory warehouse, and refers back to J.M.W. Turner’s The Burning. Downes doesn’t wish to recreate the works of his favorite studied artists, but rather uses their works as a means to put together the puzzle pieces to create an original work based off of the techniques of those he has studied, but Downes rejects the conventional oil painting techniques, even of those he has studied and has his own way of putting his paint down and removing it. Downes spoke and said “I don’t just let it dry and paint over it again and again. I slap a glob down, and if i don’t like it, I take it off and slap a different one down”.

“I don’t have any sentimentality about those painters. It’s that they seemed useful to me and provocative to me. They were like a challenges to me.

‘Can you do this that well?”

Citations:

“Rackstraw Downes.” Art21, https://art21.org/artist/rackstraw-downes/.
“Rackstraw Downes.” Betty Cuningham Gallery, http://www.bettycuninghamgallery.com/artists/rackstraw-downes.
Adam, Alfred Mac. “Rackstraw Downes: Paintings & Drawings.” The Brooklyn Rail, 10 Sept. 2018, https://brooklynrail.org/2018/09/artseen/Rackstraw-Downes-Paintings-Drawings.

Kiki Smith – Karmen Freeman

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Kiki Smith is an American artist who was born in Germany on January 18, 1954. She was born to a sculptor, Tony Smith, and an opera singer, Jane Lawrence. Though born on German soil, her parents moved to New Jersey soon after Kiki’s birth. Kiki grew up assisting her father with his sculptures and also in the Catholic church; while these two things may appear unrelated, both of these aspects of her childhood have a significant impact in her own art and sculpting career.

Materials and Methods

Kiki has experimented with many different types of artistry, and is therefore well versed in the sculpture, printmaking, and traditional drawing. While she mostly sculpts (though in quite a different way from her father), she has done many traditional works.

She also deals with unique, experimental styles. For example, her 1996 installment, Constellation, is created with dozens of glass animals and stars:

Constellation. 26 glass animal units, 630 bronze scat units, and 67 glass star units. 1996.

Let’s take a closer look:

The glass animals and stars are meant to portray a constellation from a top-down view, with various bronze bits scattered about to make the “scat”.

One of her more popular pieces in the 90’s, My Blue Lake, was created with a printmaking technique called photogravure. This process, to put it simply, includes taking the negative of an image and etching the image into a metal plate.

My Blue Lake, Photogravure and monoprint. 1994.

Inspiration

Kiki draws much of her inspiration from her Catholic upbringing. She theorizes that religion — especially the Catholic church — and art have something in common: the desire to physically manifest something from within the self, whether that be something spiritual or emotional. She also finds that both religion and art are a form of storytelling. Both have tales and convey something that is of significance to the ones who tell the stories. A theme of storytelling often appears in her work, such as these two pieces, Lying with the Wolf and Wearing the Skin.

Lying with the Wolf. Ink and pencil on paper. 2001

Wearing the Skin. Ink and pencil on paper. 2001

In many of her pieces, Kiki deals with the idea of the human body and how it relates to the world around it. Her sculptures often portray women and some form of rebirth; take her 2002 Born, for example:

This sculpture leaves little to the imagination. It portrays a woman being born from a gentle doe, its horizontal orientation giving a calming feeling despite being in the presence of the realistically impossible.

, The Women on the Pyres

The Women on the Pyres are a set of sculptures, each depicting a woman kneeling atop a pile of wood. At the time, she was partaking in an outdoor sculpting competition. She felt no inspiration in her work. She had, however, recently been interested in the numerous witch trials in Europe. Hundreds of women were beaten and burned during this dark time, and for any little reason. Even worse, the towns involved still rarely speak of it. This in mind, she set out to commemorate these women, who kneel with their arms stretched out as a parallel to Jesus’ crucifixion. One piece became two, and so the set was developed.

Unlike other art pieces that portray these “witches” screaming in agony and tied to posts, the Women on the Pyres have closed mouths and passive expressions. It’s as if, instead of fighting the inevitable, they are waiting in acceptance. This perhaps relates back to her theme of rebirth in her projects.

Kiki Smith’s works have been displayed in galleries all of the United States, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. Now 65 years of age, Kiki resides in New York City.

Works cited

Kiki Smith- Women on Pyres

https://art21.org/read/kiki-smith-learning-by-looking-witches-catholicism-and-buddhist-art/

https://art21.org/read/kiki-smith-family-history-and-the-history-of-objects/

https://art21.org/artist/kiki-smith/

Marcel Dzama – BreAnna Anderson

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Marcel Dzama is an artist that explores human actions and motivations in his own unique way. The setting of his upbringing shaped his inspirations that can be seen in his artwork even now. His style is unique in being somewhat realistic and surrealistic at the same time, toeing the line between real life events and the world of the subconscious. Dzama mentions how he tries not to censor himself, and usually uses art as more of a stream of consciousness process. He draws whatever he’s thinking, however he’s thinking it. He has had an early fascination with fairy tale creatures and folk lore, themes that show very clearly in his work.

Marcel Dzama was born in Winnipeg, Canada, a place he says he felt somewhat isolated from others due to the barrier of the frigid weather. Because of these surroundings of snow and cold, many of his pieces reflect that whiteness and emptiness of his hometown in the rather empty backgrounds.

It’s My Nature, 1999
Eight strong winds, 2005

He uses mainly ink, watercolor, and often even root beer concentrate for those brown shades. Many of his earlier works are similar to this kind of composition and palette.

Almost all of his works have political themes in them. Current events affect the subject matter of his drawings. He said that the news stories bring him down, so he uses his art to “exorcize” that negative media intake into the art, to get it out so he doesn’t have to live with it inside him. I can see a good amount of value to such a practice. His inspirations can come from many places, such as the Dada Era during World War I influencing his surrealist, almost humorous deconstruction of politics and modern issues.

*Let us compare mythologies* installation with Raymond Pettibon at David Zwirner, London

Upon moving to New York in 2004, Dzama’s works became more cluttered and chaotic, once again reflecting the setting he lived in. The hustle and bustle of New York rubbed off on him, and it made his work extremely crowded. He worked on bringing order to that chaos, which is why many of his works now have figures that almost look like they’re dancing in a ballet. That kind of choreography in his work helped bring a little structure and composition, and I personally like the flow of these pieces much better.

The circus is in town, 2015
September 28, 2017 – January 7, 2018
Drawing on a Revolution
The Most Incredible Thing curtain by Marcel Dzama.

All of Marcel Dzama’s works start as paintings on paper. He does many collaborations with other artists to create more multimedia creations, such as sculpture, film and even sound. One such collaboration was with Justin Peck, who worked on the coreography for the New York City Ballet. The dance poses Dzama worked with attracted his attention, and together they worked to create a production of the old fairy tale The Most Incredible Thing (Hans Christian Andersen). Dzama’s works then became costumes to illustrate this story in a truly visually stunning way.

The King, dancers Ask la Cour and Russell Janzen.
Photo by Erin Baiano.
One O’Clock: The Cuckoo Bird, dancer Tiler Peck.
Photo by Erin Baiano.

Overall, Marcel Dzama is a very inventive creator. He does not let the usual censorships and social rules govern his work, and he speaks his mind through his art. I may not agree with all of his views, or particularly enjoy all the subject matter he uses, but I appreciate his head on approach to these things. I also like how his art makes you think, since many of his works contain stories he’s working to tell through a visual medium.

Citations:

https://art21.org/watch/extended-play/marcel-dzama-organizing-chaos-short/

https://www.wmagazine.com/story/marcel-dzama-justin-peck-most-incredible-thing-ballet-costumes

https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/marcel-dzama/biography

Keltie Ferris – Jessyca Mumaw

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Who is Keltie Ferris?

Keltie Ferris is an artist who is known for her large scale canvas paintings mainly done with spray paint. She was born in Lexington or Louisville, Kentucky in 1977, I have found both. She is known for being a very strong female artist and stands out and doesn’t follow many standers, showing what she wants to come across in her art in a very unique way. She now lives in Brooklyn, New York, she is still currently working on art pieces. She got her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in 2004 at the Nova Scotia of Art and Design. This is located in Nova Scotia, Canada. She then went on to get her Masters of Fine Arts in 2006 at the Yale School of Art. This is located in New Haven, Connecticut. Keltie did have some painters in her family’s bloodline.

Her family history and childhood.

Keltie was opened up to art at a young age due to a family friend owning a large amount of very important artworks done in history. She got to go through all these important artworks before she was even old enough to go to school. By seeing all this art at a young age really inspired her to do art herself. Also another one of her inspirations to do art came from that both her mother and father had painters in their bloodlines.

What materials does she work with?

She is known for her very large sized canvas with abstracted paintings on them. She also uses a lot of spray paint on her pieces. She also uses oil on her body to create her body paintings. Also colored pigments and pastel.

Her art style.

Her art style isn’t very typical, she does large scale canvas paintings done to show a lot of emotions, by using her body and spray pigments. She is known to show a lot of emotions in her artwork, but she doesn’t show it by words or faces, she shows it by the energy she creates with the movement of her abstraction. She uses many layers of spray paint to make geometric and atmospheric backgrounds to show the movement and energy.

Her most recent work.

Her most recent artworks have been where she covers her body in oil and pigments and then presses it up against a large canvas. She is trying to show with these series of body paintings the relationship or the way the artist identifies with their pieces of artwork. The process she takes with these pieces is that she will cover her body in an oil, then presses her body up against the canvas. After that she then adds layers of either spray paint or some type of colored pigments. By her adding these layers makes her artwork very abstract. She is dressed in most of these making them both very exposing but concealed at the same time.

Sources

https://art21.org/artist/keltie-ferris/
https://www.miandn.com/artists/keltie-ferris?view=slider#38 https://www.widewalls.ch/artist/keltie-ferris/