Mr. Joel

I have always found visiting artist’s studios inspiring and enlightening. I love to see how other artists work. And so does Joe Fig. He makes paintings, prints, and photos of painters and their studios. And models. He makes fantastic scale models of artists in their studios.

I first saw his work in the back room of a gallery in Boston. I don’t remember which gallery and how I was let into the back room, it must have been a field trip, but it was absolutely fantastic. I’m fairly sure that it was this one:

Here is the interior:

It was so difficult to get a good look inside the model. You had to crane you neck and stand on tiptoes to get a look in the sky lights and barn door. Now, I have my doubts about the art as art content of this work. I always feel like it could be more, that it could do more, and there is more to care about than art and the creation there of. But as a curious person, I enjoy to see the charting of different modes of working. And as an anal retentive person, I adore the painstaking reproduction. It’s like going to see the displays at the Natural History Museums, but for artists. Fig recreates contemporary and historical studios, though he seems to stay within the era of photographic documentation. There is a
Van Gough, based on the painting of the artist’s room at Arles, and it feels gimmicky. So it’s good that Fig sticks with the photos.

Dana Schutz’s workspace:

Fig has also written a book about artists in their studios entitled Inside the Painter’s Studio. He interviews artists, from Chuck Close to Ryan McGinness, about their process and photographs their studios. Much like the similarly named Inside the Actor’s Studio, this book comes across as a bit dry and self serving to those involved, but is both informative and something of an indulgence to people who love the craft being discussed. I was just thumbing through it at the New Museum, and now I know what I’ll be reading after I finish Smiley’s People (by John le Carre. Inventor of the spy genre. As if you didn’t know)

www.joefig.com

Inside the Painter’s Studio

All images are poached from joefig.com, copyright Joe Fig.

David Ellis is a Brooklyn-based artist. He is very influenced by music and urban culture. His ‘motion paintings’ develop like free form jazz and he often invites musicians to interpret them when they are exhibited. The work thrives on organic development in the same way that graffiti does in its natural environment. Forms and motifs come and go as Ellis paints, paints over, and paints again. Ellis does not limit himself to traditional painting surfaces, instead he paints over cars, trucks, oil drums, and other objects even when exhibiting in a gallery or museum setting. Soon after his move to NYC, he planned on working in the music video industry, he began developing his work as well as helping to create Barnstormers, which is now a group of some of the most well respected graffiti artists and muralists in the US today. His work can be seen on the street and in the MoMA.

Another animation by Blu but this time with the addition of David Ellis:

http://davidellis.org/

http://www.b-stormers.com/

http://vimeo.com/davidellis

Young-Hae Chang is a duo made up of Young-Hae Chang, a Korean woman, and Marc Voge, an US American man. They are based in Seoul. They also work as translators. That is all I can find out about them. I have no idea how old they are, where they were educated or if any of this is true.

Their work is music and text done in flash and set in Monaco. Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries’ work is often about art, sex, and culture. All the important things. The work seems to be influenced by concrete poetry. Or not. See it anytime here: http://www.yhchang.com/

http://rhizome.org/discuss/view/23262

http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/25839

http://www.tate.org.uk/netart/artofsleep/theartofsilence.htm

blublu.org

Blu is a street artist currently based in Bologna, Italy.

Blu’s graffiti animation MUTO is sweeping the internet right now. The video is plastered all over art and design blogs. But, Blu is not a one off internet sensation, his work can be seen on walls all over the world and he was included in the 2008 show Street Art at the Tate Modern. In fact, I recognize his style from the days I used to collect images of graffiti off the internet and store them in unlabeled, cluttered files. I’m glad I finally have a name to go with the faces. Blu’s work, like much street art, is socially aware and critical. His work discusses the human condition and the loss that we all find ourselves at, often considering the unsettling psychological ramifications of contemporary life. Topics include our relationships with time, wealth, war, and isolation. Among the characters that he paints and draws the ones that are not actively being harmed, or harming themselves, have a kind of oblivious claustrophobia. It is as if they are just about to run out of air, but they do not know it yet.

http://www.tate.org.uk/modern/exhibitions/streetart

http://www.soulpancake.com/view_post/210246/just-remember-this-word-muto.html
(a long and reasonably articulate discussion of MUTO by non-artists)
.

http://www.jeffcrouse.info

Jeff Crouse was born in 1980, he received his BA from New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study and earned his MS in Information Design and Technology from. Georgia Institute of Technology, Information Design and Technology

Crouse makes technological parodies including YouThreebe, a YouTube triptych creator, Invisible Threads, a Second Life sweetshop, and James Chimpton, a robotic monkey interviewer. His work is mostly play. His Youthreebe triptychs allow the user to watch and create videos that reveal similarities that may have gone unnoticed without the comparison. Invisible Threads draws reality into the ultimate world of escapism. James Chimpton is a humorous but effective interviewer, which makes me wonder how much humanity is really needed for a career in the art world.

http://visitsteve.com/work/inside-the-artists-studio-with-james-chimpton-absml/

http://www.jeffcrouse.info/projects/inside-the-artists-studio/

http://www.doublehappinessjeans.com/

http://www.you3b.com/

Martin Puryear was born in 1941, he attended Catholic University of America, Washington, DC and Recived B.A. in Art in 1963 and received his MFA in sculpture from Yale in 1971.

Horsefly 1996-2000 wire mesh, tar, glass and wood 97 x 79 x 95 3/4 inches 246.4 x 200.7 x 243.2 cm The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Martin Puryear combines minimalist mentality and traditional craft skills. He learned many of these skills while serving with the Peace Corps in Serra Leone. Many summaries mention this, seeming to suggest that the knowledge gleaned there is closer to the source and adds a lost skill or mystery to the work. Take that as you will. Regardless, Puryear’s work is remarkable in its ability to embody the experience of relating to and interacting with objects. They have a stillness and importance that is not usually carried by the materials that they are made out of. By referring to, but not becoming, many common objects Puryear’s sculptures become comfortably unfamiliar. Puryear avoids reference to contemporary events, allowing his work to be infinitely applicable. While his work is astonishingly appealing I wonder what the work’s social function is. When I see the sculptures I find myself thinking ‘but why?’

http://www.sfmoma.org

http://www.pbs.org/art21

http://www.donaldyoung.com

http://danielrichter.com/

Richter was born in 1962, and attended the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg.

Still 2002, Oil and Ink on Canvas 280 x 380cm

Richter began his art career designing posters for the East German punk movement, going back to art school later in his career. His art is often framed around the discord of modern city life, the crowd versus the individual, and the discordant nature of history. His figurative paintings are built up of thin layers of oil paint to achieve a luminous, classic feeling that draws a thoughtful contrast  to his narrative content. He also paints more abstract paintings that look like layers of graffiti built up on building walls.

http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk

http://www.cfa-berlin.com

http://www.espatzrabinowitz.com/index.htm

Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz attended California College of Arts and Crafts, received her BA from Antioch College in 1965, and her MFA from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University in 1974.

Iraqi Ditch, 2005. Oil on cast, pigmented Hydrocal, 2005. 48 x 67 x 2″.

Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz draws her imagery of death and ruin from New York Times photos taken across the world. Instead of focusing on one specific conflict Spatz-Rabinowitz chooses images that she finds sympathetic, regardless of the reason or location. She creates drawings and paintings that make viewers stop and consider images that they would normally gloss over, documenting the our modern horrors of war and adding them to the history of violence recorded in art. I appreciate that Spatz-Rabinowitz calls us to witness what we do not want to; however, does her aesthetization of destruction really make the viewer more likely to consider the horrors of war or does it neutralize the message? It is possible for art to use beauty to draw the viewer in and experience an event, Turner’s Slave Ship comes to mind, but it is not an easy things to accomplish. I think that the materiality of Spatz-Rabinowitz’s work helps to accomplish this. In a world where images are ephemeral the solid surface of her paintings brings the work into a concrete existence.

http://www.howardyezerskigallery.com/

http://www.okharris.com/

http://www.massculturalcouncil.org/

http://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/

Born in Tokyo, Japan in 1948. Attended Saint Paul’s University, Tokyo and later Art Center College of Design, Los Angeles. Lives and works in New York City.

Sugimoto is known for his photographs of the sea as well as of the dioramas at the New York Natural History Museum and Madame Tussuad’s in addition to his exposures lasting an entire movie. The photos taken at the Natural History Museum and Madame Tussuad’s are particularly striking in the way that they question authenticity. The dioramas that look so fake in real life but in the photograph they appear to be documents of factual events. In the same way, wax figures of the long dead or famous and absent can sit for new portraits. The conflation of fact and fiction produces dreamy images that seem distinctly honest, yet unreal.  I enjoy his photographs of movies the most. They highlight the flickering fiction of film. When you go see a movie you really are sitting in the dark with strangers watching events that are not happening. Yet watching a movie is a fantastic experience made powerful by the viewer’s acceptance of the improbabilities of the situation.

http://www.gallerykoyanagi.com/

http://www.throughthetrees.net/

Born in 1977 Suffern, NY; Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Somogyi works mostly in gouache and watercolor, although she also makes sculptures using found objects, shells, polymer clay. Her more recent work involves silhouettes of people in organic environments, the silhouettes filled in with natural plant-like patterns. I do not find it as compelling. However her work from around 2006 has a much more vibrant palette while retaining the references to the natural world and psychic power.

http://mfoldgallery.com/

Question: What is with this vibrant color palette? Everything seems so young and cheeky. And happy, yet ironic. Smiling shit faced in the middle of the end. Like the colors of the Lindisfarne Gospels.