The Human Adventure by Magdalena Abakanowicz 
at the Akbank Gallery in Istiklal Street, Istanbul, Turkey. 

The streets of Istanbul teem with crowds of people.  Movement is often arrested by the sheer volume of people trying to move about the city.  This makes Istanbul a perfect setting for the artwork of Magdalena Abakanowicz.  Her installation includes groups of standing figures frozen in place.  She states..."I feel overwhelmed by quantity where counting no longer makes sense. By unrepeatability within such quantity. A crowd of people or birds, insect or leaves, is a mysterious assemblage of variants of a certain prototype, a riddle of nature abhorrent to exact repetition or inability to produce it, just as a human hand can not repeat its own gesture.”  Abakanowicz takes on the role of creator to give us a glimpse of this unending variability.  

I am familiar with the development of Abakanowicz’ artwork, so the grouping in the lobby of Akbank fit my expectations.  Her cast bronzes in “Walking Figures” are stiff and awkward representations of the human form.  Even the surface textures created by her own hand did not breathe life into them.  Placed within the context of the entire exhibition, they seem to be the first stage of a transition into an otherworldly realm.  

The other sculptures, in the exhibition, range from figures reminiscent of classical Egyptian Gods to science fiction creations resembling Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars fame.  This visual connection reminds me that the theme of mutability and variability has been explored throughout the ages. Gutron in Cage is a figure standing inside an enclosure of metal and wood beams.  This post-genital species has a head like a hammerhead shark.  Another group of figures have striking beak heads.  The beak heads are part of a unit that includes the head and a shoulder cape. It appears to have been placed over one of her standard human forms. The title, Coexistence, suggests that we may have to find peace with the variations and mutations within ourselves and with others.  

A display of busts makes the most sense to me conceptually, and leave me wondering if they are fully formed variations or deliberate deformations.  They appear to be illustrations of how forms are pushed and pulled into shape by the creator’s hand. 

Originally printed in The Monitor on 9/17/2012.  

By Linda Lewis

Having access to an artist’s oeuvre provides a unique opportunity to gain a broader perspective on the influences that shaped the artist and subsequently, the work.  Artist and Emerita of Art from UTPA, Nancy Moyer, provides us with such an opportunity in her retrospective.  

Artwork included, in this exhibition, ranges from the 1970s to the present.  The 70s was an era of political foment and rebellion against the status quo in the United States.  Fueled by energy from the civil rights and anti-war movements, women began to critically examine their place in the art world.  With the feminist declaration that “the personal is political,” women began exploring the personal in their artwork.  This exhibition shows us just how prickly a woman’s life can be.  

A group of large scale pastel self-portraits create a striking focal point.  Asunder is unique within the group, because it is the only self-portrait that expresses active palpable anger.  Her rage is directed at a male-dominated bureaucratic system symbolized by a drawing of a man on paper--that she savagely rips in half.  

The remaining images seem tragic because there is no outward anger or resistance to the horrific agony of flesh piercing cactus spines and other insults.  However, Making it in Texas evoked a visceral reaction in this viewer.  For her, there is only escape, and in Leaving the Past, we see our headless heroine sprinting off into the unknown, albeit still tethered to her past.  The impetus to escape leads to several outcomes.    

First, she explores the themes of change through death and rebirth in a series of intricately detailed drawings.  In Academia, she photographically documents the pernicious effect employment in academia has had upon her life.  In Angry Rabbit Dialogue, her head “crowns” through a cane bottomed chair.  In this rebirth scene, she arrives armed with a gun.   

As Moyer discovers tools to protect herself, the environment becomes less threatening.  Finding her own voice is symbolized by typewriters hatching out of eggs.  We also begin to see “spineless” cactus, as she develops a spine of her own, and tames her environment.  In a telling series of “ranch” drawings, massive Zebu bulls, virile men, and a horse gaze benignly at the viewer.  

Symbolic language morphs into actual text in more recent work.  In Retrospect explores typographic and photo montage compositions reminiscent of a modernist movement that endures today.  It seems fitting for an examination of her life in words and photos.    

Secondly, continually changing materials and techniques seems to be a conditioned response to personal circumstances that is bolstered by developments in critical theory and new media.  Moyer was schooled in a craft medium, jewelry/metalsmithing, but rejected it for some time for the classical techniques of painting and drawing.   Later, she experimented with hand-made paper, Xerox printing, computer aided design and photography, and in recent years returned to jewelry/metalsmithing.  

Similar themes across media create a cohesive look to the exhibition.  An injection of wry humor often lightens the seriousness of the issues she tackles. 

SYNTHESIZED NATURE

Seeking Resolution by Mars Woodhill

Polished Agate

You will undoubtedly find color combinations that attract you in Mars Woodhill’s paintings on display at Quinta Mazatlan in McAllen, TX.  I was immediately reminded of polished agate stones with their beautiful striations of color.  I was also reminded of carnival spin art.  British artist Damien Hirst transformed the lowly technique of carnival spin art to high art in his spin painting series.  Well, that's debatable I suppose!

Beautiful by Damien Hirst

I wouldn’t classify Woodhill’s work as a spin painting, but the dynamic of motion is required to achieve the effect of fluidity in the work.  The term for this is “fluid painting.”  Woodhill states that they are created by varying the viscosity of the paint.  She won’t divulge specific technical information about her technique, but the technique is not new.  I came across an artist at a show in Phoenix, AZ about 20 years ago, who was utilizing the same kind of technique with the same effect.  He wouldn’t divulge either. 

I have my own idea about how it is done.  Paint pigments are different sizes molecularly, and the water and the pigment act as resists to each other, creating the striations.  The word “resist” is used in art to designate something that acts as a barrier.  Did you know that plain old water acts as a resist?  I watched a youtube video on Turkish marbling that exhibits this tendency a few days ago.  There are fissures in Woodhill’s surfaces, a look that can be achieved using Golden’s crackle paste medium.  Similarly there are thinning mediums that can be added to paint.  

This work isn’t original conceptually or aesthetically, but Woodhill has mastered her medium.  You can see this development if you compare her 2009 paintings to the 2012 work on her website.   The work relies upon the formal elements of color, pattern, line, texture and movement, and all those elements are manipulated effectively to achieve an interesting and pleasing result.   

Quinta Mazatlan, 600 Sunset Dr., McAllen, Texas, 956 681 3370, www.quintamazatlan.com

Enriching Your Artistic Life

Leslie Elsasser, an artist who paints miniatures, traveled to our neck of the woods to talk about her exhibition at STC.  Unfortunately, the exhibit has ended, but if you want to read a review of this wonderful exhibit, check out Nancy Moyer’s review in The Monitor.  I want to talk about something else.  

In the promotional materials for her presentation, she was referred to as a Fulbright Fellow and, she referred to her Fulbright experience in her talk.  Something she said about it made me want to pass on a little more information about Fulbright Scholarships.  She said that a new experience inspired dramatic change in her life.  It is a generally held belief that travel can enrich our lives immeasurably.  Travel writer Rick Steves says:  

“Ideally, travel broadens our perspectives personally, culturally, and politically. Suddenly, the palette with which we paint the story of our lives has more colors.”   

Receiving a Fulbright Scholarship gave Elsasser the opportunity to spend two years studying miniature painting and traveling in India.  Her research lead to the work she completed for her Master of Fine Arts thesis.  For Elsasser, her experiences “provide a rich source of inspiration and reference for her ongoing artwork.”   I had a similar experience.  I received a Fulbright Scholarship, and spent a year (1995-96) conducting research at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen, Denmark.  The research I conducted also lead to the completion of an MFA at Arizona State University.  A profoundly moving experience during other travels lead to an inspired work of art that won the top graduate student prize in the School of Art in 1999.  The award?  Money for more travel!!

So, we are two people who had our lives changed dramatically by taking advantage of a Fulbright grant.  But, how did we know about this grant?  I would never have known about these scholarships if I had not attended a lecture by a professor from the University of Arizona.  Elsasser says that she became aware of the scholarship while she was searching for grants.  I might have bypassed looking at the Fulbright, because I was under the impression that they were only for professors.  However, that is not the case.  Fulbright offers competitive, merit-based grants for students, scholars, teachers, professionals and groups.  They also vary in the length of time you spend in the country.  You can get all the details by going to the following website: 

 http://fulbright.state.gov/about/frequently-asked-questions#faq1

Embroidery Series

Ana (Argentina)

embroidery by Manju Ben

thread, mirrors and screen printing on cotton cloth

16 x 20 inches

Women In Miniature Series

Devi

handmade pigments, gouache and 14k gold on handmade paper

“Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend.” 

--Hypatia

CONFUSING EXHIBITION

Pedro J. Perez at STC Library Art Gallery-Technology Campus

This exhibition is in a library, so I am going to draw a parallel between the organization of an exhibition and a written essay.  This makes sense because the exhibition begins with an artist’s statement that is an essay about the exhibition.  Perez’s statement is completely lacking the most important element of an essay, the introduction.  

The most critical component of an introductory paragraph is the thesis statement, and without it you are lost at the onset.  The result is an unfocused and undeveloped exposition of “ideas.”  Perez starts off with some plagiarized text about Marx’s economic theory of alienation.  He then segues to talking about alienation in a completely different context and with a completely different meaning.  He states that "social" media has caused people to become socially alienated, isolated, and devoid of emotion.  The additional two documents don't explain how these terms are similar or different.  They just add to the confusion.  Perez states that he is not judgmental in one document and then refers to “capitalist bastards” in another.  

The artwork in the exhibition clearly reflects his lack of focus.  The 11 artworks in the exhibition can be separated into four distinct groups, or paragraphs.  The first paragraph contains digital artwork that is interesting.  The artwork “Modern Man” is a composite of four faces. It’s a neat photoshop trick, but if we don’t have the explanation, how do we know it is a composite face?  The clearest visual cues are the sad facial expression and references to social media in the background. Is it about being alienated from the products of our labor, social alienation, lack of emotion or social isolation?  How do these ideas inform the two other digital prints that seem to explore humans being monstrously transformed by technology?  

The remaining paragraphs are so different in style, technique, and aesthetic that it is difficult to understand how they might relate to each other and the mix of ideas presented in the artist’s statement.  I did see some connection thematically, but I left the exhibition wondering if it was really all Perez’s work or if it was a group exhibition.  On view until Dec. 9, 2011.

Making Art RELEVANT

Chris Jordan is a photographer who focused on creating beautiful colorful images for 20 years.  He began to think that his artwork wasn’t relevant or cutting edge.  He wasn’t ready to let go of beauty, but he found a beautiful abstract composition of color in compressed bales of garbage.  He enlarged the image and hung it on the wall in his studio.  A friend and well known photographer suggested to him that he had found relevance in this “macabre portrait of America.”  This exchange changed the direction of Jordan’s artwork.  Jordan’s concept is to show the enormity of the waste that is produced in the world by our consumption of products.  

Initially, he wanted to give a sense of the scale of the waste.  He utilized some design techniques like only showing a sliver of sky or ground and having the objects extend off the picture plane.  Not satisfied with the sense of scale he was creating, he decided to photograph groups of objects and then stitch them together using Photoshop to create large scale patterns.  The objects were photographed at extremely high resolutions, so that even though a patterned image is huge, when you inspect the artwork from a nose’s length you can see accurate detail.  Finally, he evolved to photographing individual objects.  Go to http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#moon.  Click on the image.  There is something fascinating for you to see.    

I learned all of this first hand from the artist at IMAS last Sat.  It was so interesting I wish I could give you all the details.  Jordan highlights an important issue for artists.  It is not enough to focus solely on the elements of design in your artwork.  In order to take it to the next level, and become an internationally recognized artist, you have to make it conceptually relevant.  That, combined with the development of cutting edge technique, makes him a singularly unique artist.  

The ends of box cars make up the pattern

MODERNISM & POSTMODERNISM AT IMAS

Maria Linzoain

The two exhibitions currently at IMAS are an interesting juxtaposition of modern and post-modern currents of thought. Maria Linzoain’s artwork represents the modern, with its abstract expressionist representation of space, its Fauvist color palette and modernist philosophy.  One of the primary ideas that developed in modernism was that rational inquiry could reduce everything to its essential elements. Once established, these principles were thought to be universally applicable. In art, they became the principles and elements of design taught in art schools and artists like Rothco, O’Keefe, the Albers, and Mondrian became ambassadors for these principles.  

In addition to the foregoing, Linzoain combines the existentialist idea that every individual must find their own meaning in life with the Objectivist theories of Ayn Rand that promoted a narcissistic preoccupation with ones own happiness and welfare. Linzoian utilizes saturated color and expansive gesture within an ambiguous background to represent her existential quest for self realization and expression. The central, and usually solitary, figure is the locus of action and movement, while the exterior landscape is reduced to only its essential elements. 

If you are a fan of modernism, then you will find Linzoain’s work very appealing, because she reproduces this style very effectively.  Ron English’s artwork is intentionally anti-modern in that it rejects the essentialist narrative of modernism.  His work represents the failure of modern ideology.  

English employs a majority of the artistic devices of postmodern in his artwork and projects. He has bulldozed his way through much of the iconic imagery of the last two centuries, appropriating it for his own use.  He recontextualizes these images by juxtaposing seemingly unrelated objects. For example, he places Mickey Mouse faces on Marilyn Monroe’s breasts in one of his paintings.  The image makes a blatant and crude reference to our culture of consumption.  American style prudery is unsettled by English’s “cow girls” with their multiple teats waving at them in his larger than life digital prints.  Text initiates a redirection of thinking from viewing the image as an anthropomorphic depiction of a cow to viewing it as a grotesque genetic mutation of a human female caused by the consumption of bovine hormones.  

It is unclear to me what English was trying to accomplish with his “street art” excursion to the Mexican side of the border, because it seems to have been more insulting than politically or artistically informative or meaningful.  Ron English is up til August 14 and Linzoain is up til August 7.  

Ron English

Ron English