| Artists page 4 |
| FOLLY |
| Kathleen Kucka (April 2009 issue) Benjamin Genocchio in his March 2, 2008 New York Times review* described Kathleen Kucka's paintings as being near-abstractions." He singles out her paintings as capable of reminding us that "serious, concept-based art can also be pleasurable to view." (Images courtesy of Marsha Mateyka Gallery & Kathleen Kucka) |
| Duan Zhengqu (June 2009 issue) |
| Hans Op de Beeck (July 2009 issue) Hans Op de Beeck sometimes calls his works “proposals”; they are irrefutably fictional, constructed and staged, leaving it up to the viewer whether to take the work seriously, as a sort of parallel reality, or immediately to put it into perspective, as no more than a visual construct. His work is nourished by a keen interest in social and cultural reflection. The artist also questions the difficult relationship between reality and representation, between what we see and what we want to believe, between what is and what we create for ourselves in order to make it easier to deal with our own insignificance and lack of identity. The visual output of that investigation often produces slumbering, insidious, melancholy and astonishing images. (Image courtesy of Galleria Continua, San Gimignano) YouTube Video Link |
| Alexandra Grant (September 2009 issue) Fifth Portal (body) -- by Michael Joyce You didn’t think so? It’s become almost commonplace, the whole sack of skin itself thought to be a lung containing, recursively among other organs, those inferior bellows given that name, but also gills, heart and intestine, spleen and liver, and atavistic appendix with the shape and smooth skin of a cashew pod. What of womb and testes, breast and bicep, thin wand and ocean depths? What comes and goes is permeation and wherever its opposite, the corporeal, is present, the sutra says, defilement and mixing follow. To let it all go freely is an urge we recognize though cannot claim we know. She for instance lay for hours by the turquoise pool, her body laved with sunscreen and yet afterward still like ivory. Here is another famous test. Think of garlic or the homeopath’s solvents– or rain she adds, the lingering ozone scent that follows a fine misty rain on a humid August afternoon. Now say where is the tide. Muscles battered, the sleeper seeks to escape dreams as incandescent bones throb as if parallel lines inked repeatedly with a steel rule. O to fly! (Image courtesy of Alexandra Grant) YouTube Link |
| Aleksandra Mir (October 2009 issue) "VENEZIA" (all places contain all others) The project entails the design, printing and free distribution of one million postcards to the general public during the 2009 Venice Biennale. The 100 motifs depict a variety of waterscapes from around the world, overlaid with a graphic that spells out ‘Venezia’ in a variety of typical postcard styles. The generic photographs are sourced from a commercial online image bank, and a graphic designer collaborated on the typeface. The work also entails the installation of a real Poste Italiane mailbox and the selling of stamps in the exhibition area, to provide an immediate tool for the physical diffusion of the work by the public to their relations around the world. Thus the canals of Venice extend out into the world’s oceans, rivers, lakes, ponds. Venice in every molecule of the rain. The idea of waterways as a supranational entity mirrors patterns of globalization: travel as a matter of course rather than exception, the erosion of the nation-state, and, conversely, its re-emergence as a brand to be marketed. Cultural identity emerges as an effect of global movement rather than static nationality. YouTube Link |
| Isca Greenfield-Sanders (November 2009 issue) "Against the Fall" |
| Karen Green (January 2010 issue) (Image courtesy of Karen Green and John Lucas) |
| Carolanna Parlato (March 2010 issue) "No Hard Edges," "Sink" (Images courtesy of Carolanna Parlato and Elizabeth Harris Gallery) |
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