Pattern Pulp

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s artists view the world with a little magic, mystery and myth.

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1. In this groundbreaking presentation, Takashi Murakami continues to conflate historical, contemporary, and futuristic Japanese references with myriad styles, methodologies, and forms—a practice that has canonized him as of one of the most celebrated artists of our time at Blum & Poe
2. Young Chun’s ’s elaborate oil paintings feature muses with brilliant, chromatic glasses – magical lenses that highlight beautiful and fascinating elements in the world at C.A.V.E. Gallery
3. Alchemy is an expansive group exhibition curated by prolific multi-media artist Monica Canilao. Using the medieval forerunner of chemistry for inspiration, Canilao asked the group of over 40 artists to create both two and three dimensional works that will transform the gallery into a contemporary reflection of this well worn path through the eyes of the contributing artists at Inner State Gallery
4. Deedee Cheriel’s latest work “mixes ancient legend with modern life, predator with prey, east with west, and man with beast – weaving an appropriately complex tapestry of the societal fusion that defines our contemporary world.” at KP Projects
5. The shapes, colors and sections of the Marta Marcé’s multicolored canvases are often arranged and placed much like pieces on a gameboard or puzzle. Her latest works are inspired by the her recent journey to Guatemala, where she learned about Mayan cosmology (the origin of the cosmos) and its symbols, as well as readings of the philosopher and mystic, Ibn ‘Arabi at Rifle Maker
6. Margaux Ogden’s Chekov’s Gun at ltd los angeles

 

August 11, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Design & Transportation in Mumbai




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Living in New York, it’s easy to understand how the yellow cab (not necessarily the sleek black Uber) is a cultural emblem of the city. We have hollywood and midtown rush hour to thank for that. In Mumbai, it’s similar, but a bit different. To support their tremendous population, there are currently 55K cabs in competition with one another to keep the transportation system running.

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Taxi Fabric is a new initiative hoping to liven up these old cars and bring design to the forefront of conversation. Reupholstering seat covers and ceiling panels with patterns from local young graphic designers, each newly designed car now has the ability to transport their passengers both physically and creatively.

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Currently, a small test group of five cars has been transformed, in an effort to help the population appreciate design as well as the cultural impact it can have. The goal though, is to convert over 1,000 cars – and – up Mumbai’s ante as a forward thinking design capital of India.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sanketavlani/taxi-fabric-a-unique-platform-for-designers-in-mum

Check out Taxi Fabric’s kickstarter campaign to learn more about this cool initiative.

 

August 10, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s gallery picks are colorful, quirky and perfect for summer.

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1. Jack Pierson’s new body of work is comprised of small watercolor and graphite works on paper, paintings and driftwood assemblages, made while in a self-imposed retreat on the island of North Captiva, on Florida’s gulf coast, from December to March, of the past year at Cheim Read
2. In Mauricio Toro Goya’s Milagreros, he reveals the reality behind folklore at Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca
3. Les Biller’s latest work is informed by the vibrant pacific sunlight in Los Angeles & Hawaii, and the intrigues of visiting China & living in Japan at Rosamund Felsen Gallery
4. In 1964, inspired by both the long history of art and by imagery he found on contemporary printed postcards, Roy Lichtenstein began to explore the genre of land and seascapes, using paint, plastic, enamel, drawings, collage, print, and even film to realize his various works at Guild Hall
5. Robert Seydel created a series of works using the alter ego Ruth Greisman, a resident of Queens, New York, who was inspired by his aunt of the same name; his exhibition features a definitive selection from this fictional archive with a selection of Ruth’s “journal pages” and almost one hundred collages at Queens Museum
6. Lindsay Morris’ “You Are You” documents an annual weekend summer camp for gender-nonconforming children and their families at Clamp Art

August 4, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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This week’s gallery picks explore the intertwined nature of environment, memory, and culture.

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1. Observations in Nature is bound thematically by the metaphor of the shark. Influenced by philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s analysis of the film “JAWS” (1975), Abdul Mazid’s conceptualization of the shark refers to society’s tendency to insist upon the “othering” and villification of people, ideas, and practices at Shoshana Wayne Gallery
2. The Chosen Form of Your Destroyer is focused on a new series of mixed media works by Ian Francis depicting the coexistence of beauty and destruction in modern society at Lazarides Rathbone
3. My Dakota captures not just the state of South Dakota’s changing economy and landscape but also a personal catharsis. Rebecca Norris Webb came to understand the series as a means of addressing her grief for her brother—“to try to absorb it, to distill it, and, ultimately, to let it go.” at The Cleveland Museum of Art
4. Robert Minervini’ Invisible Reflections surveys six monuments in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Each of the six paintings depicts one individual monument, but interwoven with this imagery are white line drawings which represent the memorial’s historical framework. Minervini’s work invites the viewer to become more engaged with the rich history of San Francisco, with the hope that it will inspire further inquiry into our surrounding environment at Rena Bransten Gallery
5. Inspired by Argentinian author Adolfo Bioy Casares’ 1940 novel, The Invention of Morel, the exhibition Memory Burn observes mortality and death in relation to recording devices. The title of the exhibition refers simultaneously to unforgettable visions burned in the mind and to digital burning used to archive memories.
at bitforms
6. FAILE, a Brooklyn-based collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, raises questions about our relationship to consumer culture, religious traditions, and the urban environment by blurring the boundaries between fine art, street art, and popular culture at Brooklyn Museum

July 28, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tuesday's Gallery Picks




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The details are in the dialogue in this week’s gallery picks.

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1. T. Kelly Mason has produced work across a range of media, including sound, video, installation, painting, and sculpture, addressing the relationships between reality, perception, representation and interpretation. In his current exhibition, Mason uses these relationships as lenses to examine dichotomies of scale: internal vs. external, human vs. cosmic, actual vs. imagined at Cherry and Martin
2. Focusing on four groups of artists practicing away from the cultural capitals of New York and Los Angeles, What Nerve! presents an alternative history of American art since the 1960s at Matthew Marks
3. The prime subject matter of Bertozzi & Casoni’s sculpture is modern consumption and its resulting detritus. The artists initially consider the process of decay because, as they state, “it is a very intense vision of the world…the true essence of things can be found in decay, in everything that has been rejected, in junk, in rubbish.  It is in decay where you can perceive true life, where you can see a human being’s essence.” at Sperone Westwater
4. CHROMA is the result of a long distance collaboration between Lisa Soloman and Christine Tillman that explores color theory through objects from everyday life, expressed through crowd sourced installation, drawings, and sculpture at Gallery CA
5. In Bart Exposito’s new work, forms suggestive of typographic characters are rendered with sensitive lines over opaque and ambient planes of dusty color. The result is a duality, or contradiction, in the appearance of the paintings: flatness can be experienced as both dense and atmospheric, as foreground and as background, and often these states are indeterminate at Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects
6. Metamodern will explore the idea of a contemporary cultural movement in painting and sculpture that has developed in dialogue with and in response to modernism and postmodernism of the 20th century at Denny Gallery

 

July 21, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Color Fields & Surrealist Portraits




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Meet Jane Lafarge Hamill, a painter, visiting lecturer, and founding director of The Project Rooms. Her paintings investigate portraiture, memory and human interaction. From real to the surreal, mundane to grand,  Hamill’s works highlight subjects ranging from close friends to compelling historical figures. In her most recent works, the subjects are more fugitive, fleeting figures whose aesthetic roots align more with a visual brain scan than a traditional profile.

These works were all made in a fishing village in Northern Iceland during a 2 month artist residency during January and June of 2015. They are currently on display at the Joshua Liner Gallery in Manhattan, check out the show if you’re traveling through!

 

 

July 20, 2015 | By: Shayna Kulik

Tracking Repetitive + Awesome.
On Instagram.