Beautiful/Decay

Once again we’ve teamed up with premiere website building platform Made With Color to bring you exclusive artist features. Each week we join forces to bring you some of the most exciting artists and designers who use Made With Color to create their beautifully designed and user friendly websites. Made With Color doesn’t just help artists create gorgeous websites but allows them to do so in a few minutes without having to touch a line of code. This week we are excited to bring you the work of midwest painter Scott Anderson whose work balances on the fine line between representation and abstraction.

The source material for Scott Anderson’s paintings are preexisting images – found photographs, his own snap shots, drawings or collages – that fall within broad archetypal categories such as portraiture, landscape, iconography, and still life.  The common denominator of these source images is distance, either due to authorship, such as in the found photographs, or time, as in the source imagery of Anderson’s own making.  The act of making new paintings from these images allows Anderson to understand them in new ways and to develop a idiosyncratic visual vocabulary.  In this sense, Scott Anderson is a translator.  What is foregrounded in his work is the way he perceives, organizes, scrambles, and prioritizes the images he makes the paintings from.  The delivery of the message IS the message.  Scott Anderson’s paintings establish an alternate reality in which they are safe to exist as ordinary illuminations of their surroundings.

Although relatively abstract, Anderson’s paintings have their origins in representational imagery.  This dependence on the objective along with his overall motivations put him in dialogue with early Modern art movements, particularly Dada, Surrealism, and Cubism.  Scott Anderson is interested in the continuation of this art historical conversation as a means to change the rules of the game as it were.  Where Modernists of all stripes were largely interested in winning the game by ending it (to paraphrase the critic, Jan Verwoert), Anderson sees this mode of objective / non-objective hybridity as one way among many in which to view the world.

from http://bit.ly/17VY5m1

The work of Yinka Shonibare, MBE is filled with the complexity and ambiguity that make art endlessly exciting.  Born in London, Shonibare moved to Nigeria when he was three years old and later returned to London to attend college.  In a way, his work reflects this personal dynamic between Europe and Africa.  However, Shonibare’s work makes it clear that his scope is much larger than that.  He skillfully blends traditional textiles, costume, and symbolism from various European and African cultures and times.  Through his distinctive work, Shonibare has a way of exploring issues of colonialism in an increasingly shrinking world without taking away any of its complexity.  Thus, his work doesn’t inspire political reactionism, but rather sincere thought and deep consideration.

 

from http://bit.ly/11lHOmo

“My most recent sculptural installations are constructed with discarded electronic materials: computer, telephone and electric cables, thousands of burnt-out bulbs, meters of videotape, old slot machines, celluloid, DVDs, etc. The installations explore the short life expectancy of the technologies we cast off and their relationship to organic mortality.

These installations also seek to reanimate the lifeless. Light animations projected onto the installations appear to free the energy stored in the electronic waste, awakening in it memories of its past.

Through my work I try to bring dead materials back to life, reveal their secrets, revive the collective memory they contain to construct an accurate portrait of a society and an age.” – Daniel Canogar.

from http://bit.ly/17jHARh

A Kinetic Mind from Elizabeth Rudge on Vimeo.

The sculptures of Anthony Howe intriguing as they are – gleaming in the yard of his rural home.  However, when a breeze picks up and flows through his work, the sculptures take on new life.  These kinetic sculptures unfold in the wind with mesmerizing movement.  He says of his work:

“I attempt, with an economy of means, to construct objects whose visual references range from lo-tech sci-fi paraphernalia to microbiological or astronomical models.  Utilizing primarily stainless steel armatures that are driven either by hammered curvilinear shapes or flat fiberglass covered discs, I hope the pieces assume a spare, linear elegance when conditions are still, mutating to raucous animation when the wind picks up.”  [via]

from http://bit.ly/14gBzyN

Often it seems the most useful objects are the most overlooked.  Much of the work of artist and designer Joost Goudriaan is set upon changing our relationship with such items.    A park bench, an object whose aesthetic is nearly entirely defined by its use, is transformed with traditional craftsmanship.  Goudrian uses leather and walnut wood to turn a typically stark bench into luxuriant public seating.  Also pictured, is a replica of the classic Nike Air Max made from chocolate.  While the original may be prized and collected, Goudriaan compelled anyone who bought his chocolate replica to sign a contract stipulating that they would eat the shoe.

 

from http://bit.ly/19fWjtJ

Alberto Seveso’s high speed photographs of ink mixing with water are hypnotic and fascinating. Each shot depicts pushes of color twisting and bending with an emotive cadence, lulling itself into an ephemeral sculpture, documented with sharp visceral attention.

Although such imagery is not new, per se, this specific collection feels intrinsically magnetic due to the captive nature of submerged color naturally bonding or relating before diluting. It’s more about documenting the ease of abstraction then pushing a forced abstract agenda.

 

 

from http://bit.ly/19NnoXP

Fascinated by the natural world, Joel Rea paints the pulsing elemental forces of our planet interplaying with human relationships formed in our society and consciousness. Driven to explore universal meanings around the human condition, Joel is also interested in depicting the underlying inner forces which drive human behaviour. He presents these narratives visually through the use of vivid surreal landscapes, seascapes, animals and self portraiture. Joel also harvests ideas from his dreams and draws subject matter from his life journey and his own personal struggle to become a professional painter, a life long ambition which was many times nearly derailed by the unpredictable turmoil of his years coming of age as a young man. (via)

from http://bit.ly/13OrE4L

Pawel Bownik meticulously pulls each flower apart: disconnecting the leaf from the stem or the petal from the pistil, taking involved notes all the while, so he can, eventually, reassemble each piece back to its original state. His photography, collected here, documents such reconstructions. From far away, each image blooms and seethes with life. However, with a steadier eye, up close, we see pencil marks, bits of string, tape, and pins holding it all together. Like some strange sort of floral Frankenstein, the dead is regenerated. 

 

from http://bit.ly/19JJMBm

“Candace Couse is a visual artist exploring issues surrounding space, place, and the body. Her work examines the basic human need to acquire territory as a prerequisite to identity, as well as the loss of security and anxiety that comes with disorientation. Functioning on the assumption that orientation is primary to all other human experience, the body plays a central role in her art practice as both a mechanism for experience and as the principal terrain that we all initially acquire. Her work eagerly engages with the idea of personal geographies as intimate approaches to orientation and identity that are profoundly detached from collective knowledge and public geographies. ”

from http://bit.ly/18RXrXH

Graffiti artist Sofles is the subject of a new video from Selina Miles titled Infinite.  The video captures Sofles as he gets to work.  Through time-lapse Sofles is captured wandering through a huge building, perhaps an old school or warehouse.  He puts up pieces, tags, murals – over twenty throughout the video.  Sofles’ impressive work ranges in size from quick tags to huge rolled murals and styles that are similarly varied.  Be sure to check out the video Infinity after the jump.    [via]

from http://bit.ly/10qzMdt

Even through a computer screen Tauba Auerbach‘s work is wonderfully confusing.  To answer the question that you may likely be asking right now: Yes, these are paintings.  Auerbach folds, rolls, crinkles, and otherwise manipulates the canvas prior to stretching it.  She then sprays it with various colors of acrylic paint from different angles.  The resulting paintings are definitely two-dimensional work.  The process, though, produces an extremely realistic three-dimensional effect, as if the painting were indeed folded and wrinkled then lit by colored lights.

from http://bit.ly/11GrCYe

The art of Turkish born artist Mehmet Ali Uysal is at once playful and contemplative.  His work often makes use of common objects or images as its starting line.  Uysal then alters its purpose or use in subtle but profound and often humorous ways.  Not only Uysal’s objects, but the surrounding space can feel transformed in a way.  Whether it’s a giant clothespin pinching the earth or slabs of dry wall peeled off the gallery walls, his work seems to reveal the playful potential in mundane places and things.  Visitors are encouraged to revisit spaces that would otherwise be passed over forgotten.

 

from http://bit.ly/10iAyco

Romulo Sans creates a dramatic aesthetic using political and cultural iconography. Sans’ photographs address issues of dominance, passivity, aggression, capitalism, and sexuality. Also of note are his blends of Western and Eastern imagery, asking viewers to consider the various absurdities within these contexts. Sans’ background in art direction and interest worldwide politics ground his work. These photographs convey Sans’ attempt to understand disparate cultural elements through a visual medium. Originally from Barcelona, Sans spent some formative years in Cuba, where he admittedly watched the Al Jazeera news outlet regularly, as it was one of the only available news outlets.

from http://bit.ly/1abHRV6

Eunoia from Lisa Park on Vimeo.

Artist Lisa Park‘s performance titled Euonia – a Greek word that can be translated as “beautiful thinking”.  The title is apt as Park’s thought’s are central the beauty of her performance.  She makes use of an EEG headset which monitors various brainwaves and eye movement.  The resulting information is translated into sound directed to one of five speakers.  A shallow pan of water sits on each speaker, vibrating and shimmering with each of Park’s various thoughts.  Park associated each of the five speakers with a different emotion and would recall various memories of people important to her in order to manipulate the speakers.  She had hoped to develop the ability, through practice, to end her performance in silence but could not – an outcome perhaps more interesting than she had intended.  It may be the brain is much more difficult to quiet than it seems.  Be sure to check out the video to see Lisa Park’s brain in action.  [via]

from http://bit.ly/11exSLi

With a somewhat brutal realness, artist (and YBA member) Tracey Emin confronts her viewers with work that is provocative, personal—and stakes claim to a sizeable piece of feminist-advised contemporary art landscape. She works in a variety of media, choosing to work in a combination of sculpture, painting and installation.

Her most recent body of work hinges on ideas of self-discovery, reflection and vulnerability. An installation of quiet, pleading text-based sculptures rest on tables surrounded by raw, harshly expressionist gouache drawings. It feels as though the work overall serves as some kind of confession, because it possesses a strange openness, even as the concepts float from neon to paper to projection.

I Followed You To The Sun is on view at Lehmann Maupin through June 30.

from http://bit.ly/11euMH7

Christopher Lavery’s sculptures and installations work as poetic monuments– stretching beyond one particular brand or medium, and focusing, instead, on the art of humanity in relation to our natural state of dreaming.

For instance, Cloudscape (top image above), a collection of representational clouds, stands as tall as 42 feet and hovers alongside Pena Blvd. in Denver, Colorado. Each piece, made of steel, solar panels, polygal, and LED lighting, allows us to reconsider our own relationship with the sky– how a cloud is a talisman or connector: nature’s billboard, ephemerally reminding us to look up and inward.

Big Gold Word Bubble (plan and model, 2nd and 3rd image above), his latest endeavor, after completion, will stand 14’ tall and examine this idea of how, parallel to the clouds, language is both concrete and abstract: a beautifully harmonized collective word bubble and diversely individualized journey of interpretation. To help support its construction and transit to Art in the Park at Elm Park in Worcester, MA, click here. To view more Cloudscape installation shots, scroll down after the jump.

from http://bit.ly/ZP1fCS

Jordan Eagles – Blood Work from Jordan Eagles on Vimeo.

Artist Jordan Eagles works in a gory medium: blood.  Eagle has developed a unique production process that envelops blood he sources from slaughterhouses.  Using Plexiglass and UV resin, Eagle encases the blood in a way that preserves its haunting red hue.  He further manipulates the blood and resin to create various effects and appearances such as adding blood-soaked gauze or running an electrical current through the pieces.  His work calls to mind the rituals surrounding death and the preservation of memory.  Check out the video to get an idea of his singular process.

from http://bit.ly/14AUzdj

The installations of London-based artist Zadok Ben-David‘s miniscule metal flowers are detailed, dense and mesmerizing. His travelling series of the work (called Blackfield) appeared in London, Portugal, Sydney, Singapore, Berlin, Linz, Untergroningen, Seoul, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Derived from illustrations appearing in 19th century Victorian encyclopedias, each iteration contains nearly 20,000 delicate 3-D floral etchings.

Each individual flower is crafted from metal and each side is hand-painted with either a stunning meltdown of color—or a heavy coat of black. Hovering between breathtaking and completely disturbing, the flat, sketch-like sculptures seem ominous as they stand in perfect rows, tucked into a massive bed of white sand.

from http://beautifuldecay.com/2013/06/13/zadok-ben-davids-hand-painted-metal-meadows/

Thomas Robson defaces paintings. The elements he introduces into these paintings deeply contrast with the aesthetic of the initial compositions. Robson uses bright colors and stark images to create new contexts. His work directly addresses ideas of appropriation, inspiration, and originality, as well as reflecting our current media saturated culture. These hybrid creations also resonate with remix culture while reflecting on how we think about media, design, and traditional forms.

 

from http://bit.ly/ZMb8kU

The Painted Desert Project amazingly unique project bringing street art to the Navajo Nation and Native American culture to street artists.  Impossibly interesting artist and doctor, Chip Thomas lives in the Four Corners area and organized the project.  Thomas invites various street artist to the area in order to create original art reflecting different aspects of Navajo culture.  However, Thomas requests the artists research Navajo culture, interact with the community, and even attend sweats with tribal elders prior to conceiving and creating their work.  In this way, the street art illustrates each artists personal interaction with the culture.

 

from http://bit.ly/11KojTZ