Engineer's Daughter

andrea zittel

Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel

Andrea Zittel

This week I've been thinking a lot about the work of Andrea Zittel and her experiments with small-space living and her marvelous designs in general.  A quote from when she won the Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts last year:

Based in Los Angeles and Joshua Tree, California, Zittel takes an expansive approach to art and space making, creating social sculptures that traverse boundaries between art, architecture, design and technology. […] The jury selected her primarily for her experimental and innovative work that has extended the dialogue of contemporary art and ideas. In the spirit of Frederick Kiesler, her work is both intellectual and yet deals with real life situations and occurrences. Zittel's sculptures and spatial installations transform everything necessary for life - such as eating, sleeping, bathing, and socializing - into artful experiments and scenarios for new ways of living.

Yeah, she rules.

See also:

• Andrea Zittel

sohyung choi

Sohyung Choi

Sohyung Choi

Looped Memory I - Sohyung Choi from Sohyung Choi on Vimeo.
 
Sohyung Choi explores ideas around photographic memory in her installations and videos, often incorporating found objects to enhance the feeling of abandonment these items exude.  She writes in her artist's statement:

In much of my work, I reconfigure discarded materials, things that are often viewed with a degree of sadness and poignancy as they have been abandoned and obsolete.  I photograph the objects as if in a sketchbook but also I'm interested in the poetic nature of loss as it relates to our identities.

I first encountered Choi's work at Headlands when she was a Graduate Fellow (she is currently an Affiliate artist there), and she was also notably selected as a participant in last summer's DigitalArt.LA international expo, co-presented by Los Angeles Center for Digital Art and Downtown Film Festival Los Angeles.  Drop in on her studio at Headlands Spring Open House on April 28 for a chance to see what she is working on right now.

See also:

• Sohyung Choi
• DigitalArt.LA
• Headlands Center for the Arts

amalia pica

Amalia Pica

Amalia Pica

Amalia Pica

Though she didn't end up winning it I was very pleased to see Argentinian artist Amalia Pica nominated for the Future Generation Art Prize at the PinchukArtCentre last year.  From Art in America:

Established by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, the $100,000 prize is an award for artists under the age of 35. Out of 4,200 applicants from 134 countries in an open process, a selection committee chose 20 artists representing 16 countries. 

I vividly remember stepping into her studio at Headlands during an Open House to find the wooden floor completely covered in swirling patterns of confetti which she had meticulously taped down piece by piece.  Her work is magic.

See also:

• Amalia Pica
• PinchukArtCentre

panic fear crying fits

Donna Huanca

Donna Huanca

Donna Huanca

All images from Donna Huanca's solo show Panic Fear Crying Fits at Preteen Gallery in Mexico City last year:

Starting with the assembled linguistic unit of the single piece of garment, she proceeds to cut and re-arrange, in a manner analogue to Dadaist chance operations for poetry writing. Every pattern, texture, crease, stitch, and stain in a piece of clothing encodes a language yet to be revealed.

In related news, I really need to visit Mexico City.

See also:

• Donna Huanca

tucker nichols

Tucker Nichols

Tucker Nichols

Tucker Nichols

Last year SFMOMA put on one of its best exhibitions yet, Stage Presence: Theatricality in Art and Media.  The gallery component was fantastic all on its own but even better yet was the program of live art that had me back at the museum weekend after weekend.  And while I waited for each performance to begin I would sit there and trance out on Tucker Nichols's wallpaper. 

From the SFMOMA press release:

The media galleries on the fourth floor will double as a cinematic screening room and a live performance space designed by Bay Area artist Tucker Nichols. Using a decidedly low-tech approach and a movable wall for the entrance, Nichols created two wallpaper designs from blown-up drawings, which are loosely reminiscent of a curtain and theatrical ornaments. Curated by Frank Smigiel, associate curator of public programs, a rich series of live acts—performances by Rashaad Newsome and Margaret Tedesco among them—will take the stage three days a week, alternating with the daily video screening program.

See also:

• Tucker Nichols

joan mitchell foundation 2011 MFA grant recipients

Jonathan Runcio

Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon

Narangkar Glover

Jerome Reyes

I was researching something else when I stumbled across the list of 2011 Joan Mitchell Foundation awardees and was reminded what a strong showing the Bay Area made that year.  From the show the artists had at CUE Art Foundation last year:

The support the Joan Mitchell Foundation gave these artists has enabled them to establish a foothold in their artistic careers. Some used the grant as seed money to acquire or build a studio space; others purchased art materials; still others used the money to travel or relocate. However the money was used, this exhibition highlights the importance of assisting artists in the formative years of their careers. All of these artists exhibit a high level of quality, imagination, and commitment to their work and studio practice. We thank them for participating, and hope that this exhibition will further generate new opportunities for them in the ensuing years.  

See also:

• CUE Art Foundation
• Jonathan Runcio
• Jacqueline Kiyomi Gordon
• Narangkar Glover
• Jerome Reyes

untitled (1948 - 2012)

Sean McFarland

Sean McFarland

Sean McFarland

Fun fact: my godchild once took a photography class from Sean McFarland.  All images are from his solo show at Eli Ridgway last year:

Nature is a mediated experience, seen more in pictures and on screens, from scenic viewpoints off the highway, than in person. Romantic images of mountains, forests and seascapes are so meticulously edited for narrative consumption that what appears on postcards is only merely suggestive of the landscape's veritable form. With this in mind, Sean McFarland presents Untitled (1948-2012), a collection of photographs and drawings presenting nature as literal artifice. Produced from the abstraction of man-made materials and elements from the natural world, the pictures of Untitled (1948-2012) highlight the continual blurring of lines between unbiased documentation and a sentimental mythologizing of terrain. McFarland manually produces compositions that imitate commonly seen tropes of landscape photography, critically examining the contemporary condition that many representations of the earth are more accurately "likenesses" of the earth.

See also:

• Sean McFarland

i'll take you there

Josh Dorman

Hendrikje Kühne / Beat Klein

Maritta Tapanainen

All images from the show I'll Take You There: The Constructed Landscape at Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York last year.  From the press release:

I'll Take You There explores the subject of landscape through the work of fifteen artists who employ aspects of Collage to construct landscapes using materials as diverse as crayons, postcards, puzzles, maps and all manner of printed ephemera. Whether imagining the world in its entirety, or focusing on the night sky, Biblical depictions of Heaven and Hell, pastoral landscapes, tropical paradises or dense forests, the artists invite us to take in the scenery and explore new frontiers.

david maisel

David Maisel

David Maisel

David Maisel

From Maisel's site:

The x-ray serves as a means to explore mythological themes expressed through ancient objects. The shadow-worlds they occupy are informed by the black space surrounding the images, which in some instances becomes a vast nether world, and in others becomes the velvety ground of some kind of brain scan/portrait. The project’s title of History’s Shadow refers both to the literal images that the x-rays create as they are re-photographed, and to the metaphorical content formed by the past from which these objects derive.

See also:

• David Maisel
• The Heart of the Art

jesse schlesinger

Jesse Schlesinger

Jesse Schlesinger

Jesse Schlesinger

From when the New York Times visited Schlesinger's studio at Headlands last year:

Collections of small brightly colored pebbles and leaves, bits of wood and other objects — the yield of those walks — skirted the edge of the studio, all sitting in the order of their discovery. His building tools, a constant companion, sat on top of makeshift tables of wood and old radiators. The space was largely devoid of color except for the shock of electric blue — from tape to drawing pencils to large spools of thread being used in his largest piece for his final show. It’s interesting that as an artist so invested in the idea of home he’s inhabited so many places that are impermanent. “There are so many ways to understand the idea of home,” he said. “I think it really comes down to a sense of place, a sense of where you are. Though there is a liminal quality to the spaces I inhabit now, there may be great potential in that. Within all of this, there is a feeling that I am where I belong.”

See also:

• Jesse Schlesinger