Mr. Joel

Jules de Balincourt was born in Paris (b.1972). He did his BFA at California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco and his MFA at Hunter College NYC. He now shows with Zach Feuer Gallery in New York. Balincourt gained notoriety while he was still at Hunter, when he built an indoor treehouse of scrounged materials that he used to spy on his instructor while they debated whether or not pass him. His works tends toward the political, both obliquely and head on. Balincourt is often described as having an outsider style, a claim that does not stick well in my eyes, and often uses spray paint and tape in his paintings along with the more ‘fine art’ material.

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Roxy Paine is an artist who investigates the relationship between the natural and the created. He is also a dude. I mention this because all the Roxies I know in real life are female and after seeing his work on the roof of the Met I thought that he was a girl for about two weeks. I do not want you to be confused. He was educated at the College of Santa Fe as well as Pratt and started showing in Brooklyn in the early 1990s. His early work is mainly detailed sculptural reproductions of hallucinogenic flora displayed naturally in a gallery setting. He is also known for his art making machines the Paint Dipper, PMU (Painting Manufacturing Unit), and SCUMAK (Auto Sculpture Maker). These machines are designed to produce art autonomously, mostly through repeated action.

I saw one of these paintings at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University (which, thankfully, does not look like it will be dying after all) that was made by a machine that sprayed white latex paint over the same area of the painting. Eventually the painting began to look like a cross between topographic map and stalactites. Paine produces an organic effect through an assembly line process that identifies the disconnect between the creative process, the creation of work, and the end result. As well as producing something visually nifty, a new twist on automatic drawing. I like these paintings.

More recently Roxy Paine has been producing large sculptures that look like giant metal trees and are called dendroids. He takes this form and makes them out of shiny silver colored pipe. And he makes them huge. His most recent dendroid is Maelstrom, on display on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art until November 29, 2009.

Maelstrom is very impressive, but mostly because it is big and shiny and it is a marvel that they got the thing up there. If you are going to make a giant metal sculpture that looks like arteries the Met roof is the place to show it. However, as a study of the relationship between the natural and artificial world Paine’s dendroids just don’t do it for me. The notion of humans creating something that looks like the natural world that is both cheerily inviting and ominously threatening to strangle everyone is such a well trodden scifi theme. It’s even a well trodden Goosebumps theme. It’s, dare I say it, just not that original.

Now, I am fully aware that nothing is original original but this is an idea that I, and many other scifi geeks, hit upon in high school (seriously, I did a bad painting of a metal tree. That’s all I’ll say.). I want something more than a cross between Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors and the swarm of metal beetles from The X Files. The notion that nature, what we can learn from it, and what we can create from it are both bigger than us and very cool is a great thought that we should think about more. And this sculpture is very big and shiny. And Maelstrom is fun to be around; it glints in the sun and casts fantastic shadows that crawl all over everything and everyone on that roof. But it does not show me anything that I did not already know and, more importantly, it does not make me wonder.

And an added mark against them: They do not have the benefit of being made by robots:

Taryn Simon is a contemporary photographer. She received her degree from Brown University and is also a Guggenheim fellow. She has had her work featured in major news outlets (The New York Times Magazine, CNN, and The BBC News) as well as collected by major museums (The Pompidou Center, The V&A, and the Whitney); she currently shows with the art world megalith: Gagosian Galleries.

Simon carries on the exploration of the relationships between photography and fantasy. The themes and aims laid out by artists talks and gallery biographies seem cliché, revelations of worlds unseen, recording the ‘American experience’, and the deconstruction of truth. But unlike so many others plodding on this well worn path, her work is not boring. It is mesmerizing. At the moment her two bodies of artistic work are The Innocents, a series of photographs of wrongfully convicted individuals who served significant jail time, and An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar, a collection of images of places that are restricted from the general public. It is this latter index that I find so especially amazing. Simon has been granted access to some of the most interesting sites that I never knew existed in the US. When she went looking for the American strange, she did not skimp. The photographs range from cryogenic storage facilities to hibernating black bears to custom’s confiscated goods room at JFK. These seemingly fantastical objects and locations are made real by her detailed large format photos and yet even in their candidness fail to settle into something that I can except as existing. I have not really seen it, and I don’t fully believe it. But I can’t stop thinking about it.

That last part is true. I first saw the book of An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar while I was visiting the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin in 2007 and I would have bought it on the spot if the exchange rate hadn’t kicked the price up to $95. Since then every so often I recall Kenny the retarded white tiger and the Braille edition of playboy and marvel that such things really do exist. (If you are wondering I still do not own a copy of this book and would like it very much for Christmas/my birthday. Just saying.) I find it fascinating, and gratifying, that Taryn Simon works as a fine arts photographer as well as a documentary photographer for the main stream news media. I’m glad that a career that exists between the two can really be pulled off. Or maybe it can’t and she’s just exploring the relationship between news and the arts and it’ll all come out in her next book. That would be nice too.

See some of the photos and text from An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar here.

She did a TED talk if you are interested:

Also, I really want to know what she studied at Brown. Wouldn’t it be great if it were advanced mathematics?

http://www.tarynsimon.com/#

http://www.gagosian.com/artists/taryn-simon/

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/