Ori Gersht

Ori Gersht's still lifes explode in slow motion, his landscapes are sometimes blurry and overexposed. Yet, perhaps due to the instability of these images they seem to breathe and are full of life. The photographic moments depicted are not cooly observed from the distance but are rather felt deeply from within. The still life genre has traditionally served to remind us of mortality and the finitude of all earthly things. Gersht takes that idea a step further and literally puts us face to face with the stretching to infinity moment of the end.

Haim Sokol

Haim Sokol is a conceptual artist dividing his time between Moscow and Jerusalem. It seems as if many contemporary artists choose to work between places- see Mark Manders below. Sokol who grew up in the Soviet Union and immigrated to Israel at the age of seventeen returned to Russia after seventeen more years to become a staple of the burgeoning Moscow art scene. Sokol's subject matter oscillates between personal memory and collective history. Specifically I feel his work has to do as much with the Russian history as with the artist's own and the interwoven state of these histories. His approach to the work is more poetic than scientific. For example, among the materials of his work he lists time. Sokol's work includes a performance of planting (as in a tree) old railway sleepers, creating a public monument in the shape of painfully out-of-reach post office box and various other more gallery space-oriented pieces.

Goodbye Lucien Freud.

Mark Manders

What's up with the Dutch and the Belgians? These guys are just great - Zeno X Gallery proves it. Recent discovery for me is Mark Manders - who works between Netherlands and Belgium. We saw his show at the Walker (which is such a great contemporary museum!) in Minneapolis on a recent visit. Manders creates rooms filled with strange (of course) objects and environments. His use of materials is very subtle - old wooden planks, modern furniture, metal, various objects meticulously recreated to 88% of their original size, plaster. There is a somewhat surreal aura that his art emanates, but the work moves beyond your standard surrealist trickery and does not seem dated. In an interview at the Aspen Museum of Art he talks about the logic of his work. However, it's a very peculiar logic. His decision-making in the work can't be retraced, but it makes sense nonetheless. My experience looking at his work was akin peeking behind a curtain of the everyday where banal becomes mysterious. Many artists strive for that but very few have achieved it.

So I have to tell you people about Kickstarter. Kickstarter enables fundraising for "creative projects" in categories like art, film, music, photography, writing, etc in a fun online venue. The funds are all-or-nothing. You set a goal for your project, and if you meet the goal, you get the cash. If you do not meet the goal, you get nothing.

You describe your project, hopefully upload a video or at least some photos to help give voice to what you're trying to raise funds for, and set "rewards" in money increments for your donors. Kickstarter really encourages creative rewards - so it usually relates back to the project in some way, or are more personal kinds of things - limited editions, one of a kind handmade stuff, and experiences like private parties and the like.

We've launched a kickstarter for PLUG and its been a great tool for getting the word out on what we're doing while trying to create a programming budget for the year. We've also had a lot of fun just kind of "cruising" kickstarter for fun projects going on in kansas city and around the world. I'm going to links to ours and some others here. In general I would say this is just a super resource and is so empowering at a time when funding for the arts is really in trouble at a government level. What's great about this is the real people- friends and even total strangers, displaying faith in the things you're trying to make happen.

Youth and Art by Jerry Saltz and 51 comments of readers all worth reading

Jerry Saltz from New York Mag

I really want to pass this along to all people. I found its ideological soil to be ripe and fertile. The perfect place to incubate ideas and grow conclusions. So please read it and make up your own mind whether you agree or disagree. I know for sure that for me to make art I needed my "real" life. The art I produced during an unfinished graduate program and early in my BFA was okay but not true. My professors always told me to graduate and then get the hell away from school. I didn't know what they meant. I do now.

From New York Mag and Jerry Saltz:

Generation Blank. The beautiful, cerebral, ultimately content-free creations of art's well-schooled young lions.

Without meaning, but understood.

Anthony Dobovsky's paintings are small in scale - mere inches. However, the moments, lived experience, thoughts and poetry that the works embody and evoke seem to be massive. The paintings are fragile in way that is rarely found in today's art. It's worth reading any of the artist's blogs - for the writing is lucid and uncluttered, just like the paintings.

Here's a little quote from one of his entries: "To describe a painting, to return to that moment—where the off-gray will coalesce into a kind of mist—an atmosphere—without meaning, but understood…"

Wayne White

Pee-Wee's playhouse was very influential television programming for young man in the 80's. Saturday morning found me avoiding cutting the grass in half hour increments as I moved seamlessly through the Ed Grimly Show, Pee-Wee's Playhouse and Saved by the Bell. So it is no surprise that I find Wayne White plays the banjo of my heart with great skill.

But beyond just mere nostalgia, White's rustic Americana influence is deeper, grittier and more heavy than what it seems. Although PWPH always did have a touch of darkness and whiff of subversion to it. No matter, the new show of White's (now closing next week if you happen to be in LA) at Western Projects is filled with appropriated rubbish. Discarded materials strung together to form strangely familiar puppets/sculptures that describe a history both unique to Wayne and universal to our country. A skewed type of folk story telling that exaggerates and pokes fun at maybe where we are as a country or where the artist is in life. The paintings remind me Guston or early Pollack. Perhaps they serve as backdrops for his characters. Either way, the artist's work is one of history and failed dreams. Of irony and he-haw. Of love and country.

Find more of Wayne here.

Katie Bell

Katie's Bell's work work is an abstraction of environment, getting down to snippets of material and color that define and are constructed of what this midwestern american observer might call a "home". By mixing media and discipline, Katie's work feels both painterly and sculptural. There is a brokenness to the work sometimes...the deconstruction of the elements and their imperfect nature feels a little like a home in distress, and at other times feels like a celebration of the material itself...a playful exploration of texture and color. In any case, this work is amazing, and feels stop-you-in-your-tracks new.

Katie's a candidate for graduation this year from RISD's MFA program... I suspect there's much more awesome to come from her in the future.

PLUG whaaaa? Oh, and Warja Lavater!

You know me. Or maybe you've forgotten in my tra-la-la absence. Always out of the loop and out of touch...Am I still allowed to be oh-so-excited about PLUG? I hope this doesn't mean I'm getting fired...

For now though, I have to plug Warja Lavater at Printer Matter.

Printed Matter is pleased to announce the opening of Warja Lavater: Bookworks 1951-1991 from the Estate of Tony Zwicker, an exhibition of work by the Swiss artist and illustrator. The show brings together over 50 items on loan from the collection of Tony Zwicker—a longtime patron, collector and friend of Lavater—and represents an appreciable portion of the artist’s output over the course of a prolific career. The broad selection of material includes rare and small-run artists’ books, as well as original drawings, posters, prototypes and related ephemera. The exhibition runs Saturday, April 23rd, through May 28, 2011, at the Printed Matter storefront.

Well known for her leporellos—extravagant accordion-fold books—Lavater created a wonderfully imaginative body of work that moves fluently through materials and mediums. Done in ink, watercolor, dry point, lithography, linoleum-block printing and with blind embossing, many of her book-sculptures are double-sided and uniquely shaped, sometimes featuring unconventional material like burlap and plastic baubles. Several of the works have been created on paper hand-made and hand-dyed by the artist.

Exploring the fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen, Lavater produced a series of books that abstract and distill the original story into movements of color and form. Characters and objects are translated into dynamic symbols (a legend on the first page of each book lays out the equivalencies—Little Red Riding Hood is, for instance, a little red dot) and the familiar story emerges through her arrangement and repetition of these shapes. The result is a playful Structuralist reading into representation and the nature of storytelling— a Borgesian map as rich and strange as the world it describes.

Status Update...

Hi friends of Artnicks!

As you can tell by the significant lack of posting the last few months... team Artnicks has been both busy and distracted lately. We're not completely ready to launch our new masterplan just yet, but I'm a sucker for spoilers. So with that in mind, here's a little preview of what's to come (opening this fall in Kansas City, MO)....click on this LINK.

Amy Pleasant

Amy Pleasant's work is a study of the "in between" moments in life. Narrative in nature, her figures serve as stand ins for the viewer in life's smaller dramas. Intimacy is evoked, even in her large scale wallwork, calling out quiet, focused moments of intensity and poignance.

Amy makes paintings, drawings, videos, and large scale wall paintings. She works out of Birmingham, AL and is represented by The Jeff Bailey Gallery in Chelsea, NY.

Mural Documentary

Some friends of ours, Nick Ward and Amber Hansen, are making a documentary about their experience doing community murals (sponsored by the Mid America Arts Alliance) in the middle of small rural towns in the midwest. Its pretty beautiful.. check out their trailer. (So far, filmed in Tonkawa, OK and Newton, KS...).

John Douglas Powers

I saw the work of John Douglas Powers in a recently opened group show at La Esquina space here in Kansas City. The piece in the show titled "Field of Reeds" is an automated mechanical sculpture that resembles wind moving over a field of grass. The experience of the piece is strange - it manages to mesmerize with its sounds and graceful movement but the next moment you're back to the realization that it's just a machine. Check out John's other work on his web site: such as wooden "hands" typing out endless zen poetry and other poignant pieces. Everything moves, beautiful words are being written, things seem to be full of meaning. Until the plug is pulled.

Elysium from john douglas powers on Vimeo.

Call For Entries Roundup

Here's a smattering of some interesting opportunities with upcoming deadlines.

DEADLINE: JANUARY 31, 2011. 22ND
NATIONAL DRAWING AND PRINT COMPETITIVE EXHIBITION.
Awards: A minimum of $1,500 available in purchase prize money. Juror: Jose Dominguez, Executive Director, Pyramid Atlantic Art Center. Drawings and prints (not photography) in any medium are eligible with no limitations as to color, surface or materials. All drawings and prints must be original works of art. Submit up to 3 works for $30 entry fee. No mailed or e-mailed entries will be accepted (online entries only). Accepted drawings and prints received by March 14 will be juried for purchase prize awards at the value set by the artist. Works selected for purchase prize awards will become the property of College of Notre Dame. See website for prospectus and entry information.

DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 1, 2011
CALL FOR EXHIBITION PROPOSALS, TEXAS A&M
Texas A&M International University is accepting exhibition proposals for the Center of Fine and Performing Arts Gallery. The CFPA Gallery invites emerging and established artists of all different media to apply for either a solo show, or for a max. 3 person group show that will take place during the 2012-2013 exhibition season. Exhibitions typically run between 4 to 6 weeks. All exhibition proposals must include artist resume, artist statement, installation and technical requirements, 15 to 20 images of art work created in the last three years (300 dpi, approx. 5-7 inches, JPEG format). The JPEGS must be numbered to match accompanying image list (image list should include title, year, media, dimensions, and price if for sale). SASE. Submissions must be postmarked by February 1, 2011. Please mail proposals to: Nicole Foran, Assistant Professor of Art, CFPA 233C 5201 University Boulevard, Laredo, TX 78041; 956-326-2591.

DEADLINE: JANURARY 15, 2011

CALL FOR EXHIBITION PROPOSALS, CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER IN LAS VEGAS
The Contemporary Arts Center in Las Vegas is accepting submissions for solo shows or group installations from artists and curators for consideration for our 2011-2012 exhibition season. All mediums and disciplines will be considered. Any work presented at the Contemporary Arts Center must be a body of new or recent work executed within the past 2 years. Emerging or mid-career artists, members or non-members, may submit proposals. The CAC is a non-profit 501(c)3 art organization dedicated to presenting new, high quality, visual, and performing art, while striving to build, educate, and sustain audiences for contemporary art. Proposals must be received by January 15th, 2011. For more information on the CAC and to download submission guidelines and floor plans, please go to: www.lasvegascac.org. Questions? Contact the Contemporary Arts Center, Las Vegas, info@lasvegascac.org with "exhibition question" in the subject line, or call 702-382-3886.

David Ryle Photography

Typically I find landscape photography to be a complete snore. But this work by David Ryle has a certain atmosphere, color, and diffused light that seems like a quiet kind of magic is going on. David is primarily a commercial photographer, whose work has been featured in the Creative Review Photography annual and the AOP awards, with lots of major campaigns for car companies and the like. That said, I think this work offers up something a bit else than the selling of product. It takes one somewhere.

(check out this post on Modish, where we first learned about David.)

WAFA Collective

WAFA is a collective of 13 artists from around the globe(with representatives from the UK, Spain, Canada, New Zealand, and various locations in the US) that focus on collaborative projects. All of the works on their site are the product of more than one artist working together, instituting a sense of family and community, and a long distance dialogue. Projects include installations, zines, journals, books,shows and happenings.

Given the context of a time where so much social interaction and collaboration happens online, its refreshing that WAFA's work happens mostly offline- in postcards, books, and work sent through the "old fashioned" post office. For work that hints at visions for the future that demonstrates such a contemporary aesthetic, the vehicles for it are often very familiar, albeit reinvented in some way. The connectivity of it is more tactile, human, and impactful this way. It suggests the collective soul of all the hands that brought this work to be.

Noah Davis

Noah Davis is a relatively young painter working in LA. His work reminds me a bit of recent German painting a la Daniel Richter. Davis' color is surreal and even psychedelic but his themes seem to be firmly planted in the American experience. I always enjoy seeing intelligent work by young painters who are unapologetic about their medium.