Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Deterration

This diploma thesis on Deleuzian optics and science studies goes some way towards explaining my influences, and is transformatively informative, too.
(yes, I switched to just a link, because it was too long for a cut, and figuring out cuts was more trouble than I thought it would be. You can't judge me.)

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Panni Malek

website, mostly with work from Otis and illustration.

Panni is an Iranian painter raised in Los Angeles. Her paintings examine female sexuality, celebrating a lush, sensual, elaborate and fussy femininity. She perverts the masculine conceits of high art by embracing not just figurative representation, in warm colors and Sargent-like softness, but of kitsch subjects: kitties, titties,intricate interiors. There is a subversive element in every painting: sex toys, delicate profanity, a certain over-passivity.


oil on canvas, ~20"x30", 2008


(Self portrait in French abandoned house. oil on canvas, ~36"x48", 2008


oil on canvas, ~36"x24", 2008

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Chris Marshall

I'm sorry for the hiatus! Things have been busy.

Marshall paints cool, atmospheric scenes that have the vague quality of childhood memories. Faces and gestures may drift into a blur with backgrounds. Careful elision accentuates an intense nostalgic affect, a sensation of significance without articulable meaning. He uses thin, evidential layers of an earthy, primarily opaque, palette influenced by Odd Nerdrum, with whom he has studied. He recently spent a summer in Leipzig and had an exhibition in Ireland.

All oils on linen, 2008, dimensions not precisely known but around 30"x30":





Saturday, March 07, 2009

Armory Show highlights

Doug & Mike Starn's Amaterasu, a spinning, whirring dynamo, was the brightest feature of the Modern wing on Pier 92. Video selections from their installation last year, Big Bambu, also appeared.

Wei Dong's Chinese appropriations of Western painting:


What I saw of Alexi Worth was a large image of a man handling a woman, but I think I like the couples series even more.
His work carries on the semantic effect of Magritte's surreal clarity with greater stillness and less solipsism.

Pop Surrealist Kenny Scharf was the contemporary star of the show, with a mural outside and a friend carting around in a silver suit, just for the goofy mood of it all.

Also, they were giving out doughnuts. WIN.

Lutz & Guggisberg
For my own good, Ryan McGinness:


Mahomi Kunikata, "I Wish We Had Never Met, Cock Festival Edition"


The showings were really good from Mizuma from Tokyo.

Sashie Masakatsu:


Ikeda Manabu makes exhaustive pen drawings of landscape-objects. Reminds me of games probably actually derived from him, like Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Colossus.

"Territory", 2004 pen, acrylic ink on paper, mounted on board 42x59.5cm

Iva Gueorguieva:

Dread Dimple Dawn

Beth Campbell's "My Potential Future Based On Present Circumstances" hit close to home.

It's a decision tree for a starving artist.

Overheard comment on pornographic shower curtains: "it would be really good for someone's funeral."