Wood and Pulp is a two person exhibition by Damion Silver and Scotty Albrecht. Wood and Pulp features new bodies of artwork, including collage, assemblages, and works on paper. The artists’ works share an intricate use of found objects and carefully wrought wood and paper.
Silver and Albrecht both have backgrounds rooted in design as well as influences and techniques derived from traditions of crafting by hand. While there are strong commonalities in the artists’ processes, Wood and Pulp demonstrates distinct approaches in their use of material and the resulting forms.
In the process of creating Wood and Pulp, Silver and Albrecht found unexpected insights about the other’s work. Viewers will share this sense of discovery around how the highly considered works communicate and diverge.
A common point of departure for Wood and Pulp is the concept of balance. Meticulously formed materials, whether derived from wood or paper, come together to form a larger composition. Many of the materials, imbued with their own past memory and meaning, take on a personal significance in the resulting work. While there often inherent context in the underlying material or iconic form, each artist distinctly draws upon these, then recomposes and presents their own records that recontextualize and communicate anew. Read the full press release here.
This is a great piece onTalib Kweli‘s Prisoner of Conscious. Christian Mendoza contributed work to this so long ago and it’s powerful to have a look into the resulting packaging. Kweli discusssed both the album concept and how each artists’ work contributes.
Christian Mendoza created an original incised india ink work on clayboard, one of his signature bodies of work for this project with Staple Design.
Beautifully Broken
Inaugural Group Exhibition
May 8 to June 12, 2013
Press Preview:
Wednesday, May 8, 6-7pm
Opening Reception:
Wednesday, May 8, 7–10pm
aNa is pleased to present Beautifully Broken, an inaugural exhibition featuring works in diverse media by artists Andrzej Liguz, Anthony Carlos Molden, Benjamin Kelly, Charles von Herrlich, Erik Foss, gilf!, Hafeez Raji, Ian Kuali’i, Konstance Patton, Micah Gaugh, Pablo Power, Paul Seftel, Richard Tazzara, Shie Moreno…
Beautifully Broken is the first in a trilogy of salon style exhibitions that will explore the concept of taking language and translating words through visceral imagery to express what is invoked in us subconsciously. The term “beautifully broken” is a juxtaposition that empowers us. We surrender…not to our pain, but rather to what it inspires. We are released…and then we are reborn. View full press release here.
Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery is pleased to present The Wrinkles of the City, Havana, Cuba, a recent collaboration between JR and José Parlá.
The Wrinkles of the City was started by JR in Cartagena, Spain and has been reprised in Shanghai, Los Angeles, and most recently, Havana. In 2012, JR and Parlá photographed and interviewed dozens of senior citizens who lived through the Cuban revolution, flyposting colossal black-and-white portraits of their subjects on the walls of city buildings. Parlá, who is of Cuban descent, interlaces the images with palimpsestic, calligraphic writings and color. In a city devoid of commercial imagery, JR and Parlá’s enormous yet intimate portraits offer a stunningly humane contrast to the endless repetition of political icons.
This exhibition will consist of twelve large portraits from the Havana iteration of The Wrinkles of the City project along with a site-specific installation. View full press release here.
Opera Gallery New York is pleased to present two incredible artists with two very different yet powerful techniques: Saber and Rostarr.
This exhibition marks Saber’s second show with Opera Gallery. “The best and most respected artist in his field,” American graffiti writer and painter, Saber, has a unique technique and ability to combine multiple layers of paint in order to create a thick texture of depth in his paintings.
Born in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale, he was raised by creative parents and discovered his passion for art at an early age. At 13, his cousins introduced him to graffiti, and from that moment on he was hooked. In 1997 he completed the largest graffiti piece every made at the Los Angeles River. Saber began exhibiting his fine artwork in 2002. Famous for his American flags and abstract pieces on wood, Saber was also one of the main artists featured in the first major street art show to be exhibited at a museum, the Art in the Streets exhibition curated by Jeffrey Deitch at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles in 2011.
Romon Kimin Yang, also known as Rostarr, was born in Korea but has lived in New York since 1989. A graduate of the School of Visual Arts, Rostarr has been a key figure in the city’s underground art scene and a core member of the artist collective Barnstormers since 1999. His free-formed work was born from an intuitive process that comes across as a universe of abstract and geometrical shapes from which symbolic elements emerge in elegant gestural strokes.
Rostarr is a multi-disciplinary artist, painter, calligrapher and filmmaker living and working in Brooklyn. In 2000, he was named one of I.D. Magazine’s “I.D. 40 Under 30,” and recognized as an honoree at the 2004 A.I.C.P. show held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York for his contribution to a celebrated Nike campaign. In 2008 he participated in the Beautiful Loser exhibition featuring artists and their artwork that emerged from the American subculture, and in 2010, his forty- minute motion painting film titled Kill the Ego was shown at the Pompidou Centre in Paris. View more details and show catalogue here.
MAC PREMO Relatively Nothing to See Here
March 28 to April 27, 2013
Opening Reception:
Thursday, March 28, 6-8pm
Armed with a cherished “Manufrance” catalogue (the cost, 40 euros) and a characteristically sardonic wit, MAC PREMO has created a series of mixed-media constructions that magnify our mundane daily rituals and underscore the humor, ineptitude and frustration of an otherwise futile existence. For Premo, it’s the little things that matter – for instance, in Walk to the Right he vents his frustration with rule breakers and in This is How Fights Start, he illuminates a particularly loathsome glance between 1960s fashion models jockeying for position. Premo readily admits that there is really nothing to see here that will make a dent in the grand spectrum of existence:
“Each one of our short lives is a system designed to end only one way, and we all know what it is. Yet each one of us crafts his existence with intense attention to detail and personal care. That’s a paradox, one that permeates every facet of our being. Yet leading a functional life demands that we ignore it. That’s weird…”
MAC PREMO has been exhibiting widely since 1999, including exhibitions at MoMA P.S.1, the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Philoctetes Center, New York. The Dumpster Project was launched as part of the 2011 Dumbo Arts Festival and has been exhibited at PULSE Miami, Governor’s Island, the Dekalb Market and Invisible Dog Studio. It will be on display on the main quad of Adelphi University in Long Island thru April 2014. Premo is a 2008 NYFA Video Fellow and his films and animations have won numerous awards, including seven Emmy Awards for best commercial, photography, set design and PSA. He and fellow artist Oliver Jeffers were recently commissioned to create the TED Machine and video for the March TED conference. Read the full press release here.
En route to New York from Paris, Enrico stopped by Berlin for a couple days just to visit, but he ended up creating mural pieces in front of Hausprojekt M29, a large collective house in Berlin for writers and activists. Commissioned by Lukas Fuchsgruber who writes for graffiti zine SIGNAL!, Enrico completed murals just in time for his return flight to New York, after working 3 days straight. Enrico’s murals play off of the beautiful contrast with surrounding architectures and nature of the existing walls creating subtle shift between times.
COCO 144, SHIE MORENO, CHRISTIAN MENDOZA Indigenous Technology
March 22, 2013 – April 21, 2013
Opening Reception:
Friday, March 22, 7-9pm
Indigenous Technology is a three-person show featuring New York-based artists COCO 144, Shie Moreno, and Christian Mendoza. Indigenous Technology celebrates a systematic practice among the artists that is continually evolving in the writing and painting of their name. The evolution of this practive has transformed into “Indigenous Technology” a modern language and system of communication with branches of knowledge dealing with life, the environment, spirituality and the sciences.
The Indigenous Technology exhibit presents unique vantage points to examine the relationship these artists have with their communities and ancestral lineages. A shared response to sacred exchanges informs a new movement. As a collective, a ceremony through visual arts is formed, transcribing cultural traditions and everyday practices are its common motifs… Read the full press release here.
Memento Mori, a solo exhibition by Yuri Shimojo starts on March 11th, the second anniversary of Japan’s Tsunami and Earthquake, at the historic Zen temple Honen-In, Kyoto.
Soon after March 11, 2011, as I heard the news that Sakura started to blossom in the midst of debris in Tohoku where the great Earthquake and Tsunami devastated, I was awed by the power of nature. I still could not find the way of output my feelings through art that time but then I was finally able to start painting each petals one by one.
As a Japanese artist, I felt it may be cliché to paint cherry blossoms, but the simple repetitive act to express each petal healed me deeply and recalled monks counting each prayer bead. By the time I stopped counting how many petals I painted, I started to see each petal as each life, each woman’s soul, whose spirit had ascended from their physical being leaving loved ones behind. Prayers and meditation for repose, honor and heal women’s heart. I conversed with each. I became them. It helped me as I was experiencing my personal transition.
“Memento mori” translates from Latin as “remember your mortality.” In Buddhism, a phrase “Shogyo Mujo” can be translated “all things are transient and impermanent.” This universal idea expressing temporal relationship with nature is can be found in daily aesthetics and spirituality in Japan. “May be we all humans are practicing for ‘Live in the moment.’”
For Memento Mori, a series of five 38” x 52” watercolors will exhibit at Honen-in, described by the artist as a “personal requiem and inevitable celebration for honor of life” titled as Sakura implying Nirvana, Vine implying Passage, Algae implying River Sanzu or Styx, Hana implying Birth, and Universal Stain implying Itself or Yourself.
I often think of death. Death of life, death of relationship… Since I was child, I experienced my families’ and loved one’s death a number of occasions. Although when I think of death, this ultimate mystery always comes with the meanings of life. The death has been always the beginning, the life force and cleanse. Circle of life became a fundamental theme of my art.
Fine artist and Colab’s new Director of Content & Engagement, Karen Ingram is one of the creators of CUT/PASTE/GROW, an incredible, experimental project being presented at SXSW this year.
The public is invited to create a crowd-sourced living, glowing mosaic of bacterial paintings with Genspace, Observatory, and the Empiricist League at SXSW Create! Each participant will receive a souvenir postcard on which they’ll draw an image to appear on their mosaic tile. Then using a bacterial paint brush, participants trace over their creation in a petri dish with K-12 bacteria. The DNA of this bacteria has been genetically modified to glow green or red under a black light. All the tiles together will create the shape of the ultimate genetic hybrid, the unicorn.
The final artwork will be photographed under a black light and posted on cutpastegrow.com where participants will be able to view their work in the crowd-sourced bioart. The mosaic will then show at an art exhibit featuring a dozen of today’s most dynamic bioartists in Brooklyn, NY.
SXSW Create “brings together local and international members of the SXSW community to share disruptive creations, showcase innovative tools and unique fabrication methods.” This event is free and open to the public.
SXSW Create
Austin Convention Center
101 Red River Street
Damion Silver and Scotty Albrecht
