richard avedon . . .

The New Yorker magazine as frame . . .

 John Bayley and Iris Murdoch in London, December 1, 1995. For a Life and Letters piece by Ian Hamilton.

Salman Rushdie in London, September 26, 1994.

 Saul Bellow in 2003. For a Life and Letters piece by Joan Acocella.

Toni Morrison in 2003. For a Profile by Hilton Als
.

The New Yorker has been around since 1925, but didn’t publish a single photograph for its first forty-six years. That changed in 1971, when a tiny photo of a bonnet-clad piglet made an appearance on page 64 of the issue of January 30th. Twenty-one more years passed until the magazine took on its first staff photographer: Richard Avedon.

“When Tina Brown brought him to The New Yorker, in 1992,” Adam Gopnik wrote in his 2004 Postscript on Avedon, “she was rupturing a long-standing taboo against photography, and even those who loved his work must have had their doubts. But his photographs, in their epigrammatic compression of a whole subject into a single black-and-white image, were New Yorker profiles in miniature, and within weeks it was as if he had always graced these pages.”

Two years ago, The New Yorker’s embrace of photography expanded to include Photo Booth—the blog you’re looking at now—and today we’re introducing a new design for Photo Booth, including a new fullscreen slide-show function. (Just click on the red arrows  in the upper right corner.) In celebration of our renovation, here’s a look back at Avedon’s portraits of writers commissioned by The New Yorker, including the portrait of Salman Rushdie that appears in our current issue, alongside Rushdie’s account of his life after the fatwa. “A portrait is not a likeness.” Avedon wrote in his book “In the American West.” “There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/photobooth#ixzz26ZI4xyfn

catherine opie . . .

yayoi kusama . . .

No photographs here, but very visually compelling presentation of dots! maybe think photographs??

LUDWIGSHAFEN.- Visitors adhere circular stickers in a room installation at the exhibition “Dot.Systems - from Pointillism to Pixel” by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama at the Wilhelm-Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Tthe exhibition which will run until Sept. 30, the room was absolutely white. The installation was created by all the visitors who attached the colorful stickers. AP Photo/dapd, Torsten Silz.

bruce rich . . .

Bruce Rich’s insatiable quest for knowledge

Published by Mark Niemann-Ross, content manager | Developer | Friday, August 24th, 2012

Bruce Rich has watched 25,341 videos from the lynda.com video library. Thought of in a different way, he has consumed 52 full days worth of knowledge. It’s like watching eight hours of educational TV every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for a complete year. It’s like watching the complete Star Wars saga ninety-five times.

Bruce Rich has completed 508 courses, and has the certificates to prove it.

The amount of time Rich spends watching educational videos may seem outlandish. But if you’ve read Outliers, you are familiar with Malcolm Gladwell’s rule that 10,000 hours of practice leads to mastery of a topic—a competency. Most of us have worked on something for 10,000 hours, so Rich is unique only in that he’s mastered two and one-half competencies. Think of it like a master’s degree.

“I very seldom watch TV,” says Rich. “I get up early and do training instead. My son says I’m off in my own little world.”

During the daylight hours, Rich is the president of Hot Off The Press, Inc., a commercial printer located in Des Plaines, Illinois. He’s worked in the printing industry for 40 years, starting with letterpress, moving to offset, and now supplying brochures, catalogs, and banners. His next goal is supplying web sites and mobile app development for his customers.

“I have a customer with 100,000 products on his web site,” says Rich. “I made some suggestions, and now he wants me to take it over. I need to learn more before I take that on, but lynda.com shows you everything you need.”

Rich uses a couple of tricks to speed up his learning. Because he’s paying close attention while watching, he speeds the playback to double-speed, then slows it down when he needs to practice an example. He uses the exercise files and transcripts to preview and review the material.

“Deke moves fast,” says Rich. “Pausing the playback is crucial. When you’re doing the exercises, your hand is getting trained.”

Bruce Rich enjoys learning, and his customers benefit from his newfound knowledge. Rich used information from Deke McClelland and Chris Orwig to improve a product shot for Stewarts Coffee in Chicago. The company was thrilled with the results: a coffee can without hotspots.

“Customers see the certificates on the wall, and when they realize I’ve taken a course in something, they ask me for help,” says Rich. “I use the videos on lynda.com to preview software before I buy it, and use it to research customer recommendations.”

What’s next? Rich swears he’ll be taking a break after he finishes the series onAdobe Creative Suite 6. But then…

“A friend wants to write iPhone apps,” he says. “I’ll need to learn some Cocoa andObjective-C.”

Perhaps Rich should start clearing another room for the next 500 certificates.

lu zhengyuan . . .

Eli Klein Fine Art is pleased to present half-truth, a solo exhibition of new work by Lu Zhengyuan. 

Lu Zhengyuan’s collection of works entitled half-truth uses different media to explore the deceptive nature of viewer perception. Working in sculpture, painting, photography, and installation, the artist analyzes the dichotomy of “real” and “fake,” and the manner in which such an assessment shapes the viewer’s appreciation of an object. With pieces such as the light installation “Red Green,” where words conflict with the colors in which they appear, Lu Zhengyuan also examines the relationship between sensory perception of an object and cognitive understanding of its meaning.

Lu Zhengyuan, Artificial Flower Series - One is Broken, 2012  

Oil on canvas in resin frame, 27 x 34 3/4 inches (68.5 x 88 cm)

Lu Zhengyuan, The Artist's Left Eye, 2012  

Oil on canvas in resin frame, 15 1/8 x 15 1/8 inches (38 x 38 cm)

Lu Zhengyuan, Life Trilogy, 2012  

Oil on canvas in resin frame, 27 x 34 7/8 inches (68.5 x 88.5 cm)

Lu Zhengyuan, Lie, 2007  

Photography installation, 67 x 59 inches (170 x 150 cm) each

Using playful techniques to create optical illusions within his pieces, Lu Zhengyuan presents a clever twist on the concepts of real and fake, one that may require viewers to take a second look at the work before them. In “Lie,” the artist renders arrangements of fake flowers with meticulous detail. Through his visible effort to recreate exact copies of these bouquets, Lu Zhengyuan turns an otherwise ordinary object into an extraordinary one, giving it increased value simply through his manner of representation.

Despite his mischievous manipulation of viewer perception, the message of Lu Zhengyuan’s work is optimistic; the artist demonstrates for the viewer new methods to understand and appreciate an object. Here, “fake” is not viewed in a pejorative light, as the skill and ingenuity required to render a “fake” object bestow it with a significance all its own. “Moon in the Room,” encapsulates the value inherent within Lu Zhengyuan’s fake objects. In order to view the moon in a city where smog prevents the real moon from being visible, the artist developed a means to capture the various qualities of a moonlit sky, thereby recreating the moon’s effect.

Lu Zhengyuan was born in Dalian, China in 1982, and received his Master of Fine Arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, where he is currently a professor. Recent solo exhibitions include “Refle-Ction: Lu Zhengyuan,” White Box Museum of Art, Beijing, China (2012) and “84 Days, 84 Works of Art,” Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2010). 

half-truth will be on view at Eli Klein Fine Art from September 5^th through October 21^st, 2012. The artist will be present for the opening reception on Wednesday, September 5^thfrom 6 – 8 PM. For further information, please contact the gallery at info@ekfineart.comor at +1 (212) 255-4388. 

rafael lozano-hemmer . . .

Rafael Lozano- Hemmer

Voice Array
Sep 6 – Oct 13, 2012 bitforms gallery nyc

"Bifurcation" (2012) by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer from bitforms gallery on Vimeo.

bitforms gallery is pleased to announce its fourth solo exhibition with Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano- Hemmer. The exhibition features the United States premiere of two projects: Voice Array, a participatory environment that debuted last Fall in Sydney, Australia, at the Museum of Contemporary Art; and Last Breath, which was part of the 11th Bienal de la Habana. Concurrent with the New York exhibition, on September 20, Lozano-Hemmer will also unveil Open Air, a new commission by the Association for Public Art in Philadelphia.

Since his emergence in the 1990s, Lozano-Hemmer has mixed the disparate fields of digital media, robotics, medical science, performance art, and lived experience into interactive artworks. Probably best known for his large-scale “Antimonuments”, which challenge traditional notions of site-specificity, he focuses on the idea of creating relationship-specific work through connective interfaces. Often employing vanguard technologies, many of his projects utilize robotics, custom software, projections, internet links, cell phones, sensors, LEDs, cameras, and tracking systems.
The communal spaces that Lozano-Hemmer creates are an experiment in public authorship. Technology in his work activates seamless “encounters of art, self and the kinetic force of collective memory,” writes Claudia Arozqueta (Artforum.com, Jan 2012). As a conductor of this experience, he seduces the audience into participation, using tactile sensation, repetition and the simulated presence of an individual.
At the gallery entrance, Last Breath is a robotic installation that stores and circulates the breath of a person forever, between a bellows and a brown paper bag. The apparatus is automatically activated 10,000 times per day, the typical respiratory frequency for an adult at rest. With each breath the piece generates quiet sounds from the bellows, the motor and the crackling of the paper bag. The piece also sighs 158 times a day. For the exhibition in New York, the piece is a biometric portrait of Cuban singer Omara Portuondo. A short video of her recording her breath into the device is shown on a small screen mounted to the wall.
Filling the gallery’s far wall, Voice Array is a construction for vocal improvisation that uses blinking LEDs and a customized intercom system of audio playback and recording. Capturing hundreds of voices and translating each one into a series of light flashes, the piece stores a unique pattern as a loop in the first light of the array, until the next participant speaks into the intercom. Each new recording is pushed along its long horizontal band of LEDs, as sounds of the voices gradually accumulate. When the first voice reaches the other side of the piece, the participant’s phrase is once again released as sound, punctuated by the staggering pulsation of all the lights in tandem. The ever-changing voices stored by the piece play back through a directional speaker, during moments of less activity. 

Click here to read and see more.

andy warhol . . .

Andy Warhol's '15 minutes' of fame are not up yet

By Katherine Dorsett Bennett, CNN

updated 3:20 PM EDT, Wed September 5, 2012

(CNN) -- Iconic Pop artist Andy Warhol is often quoted for his statement, "In the future, everybody will be world-famous for 15 minutes." Twenty-five years after his death, his influence on contemporary art has well surpassed the 15-minute mark.

Campbell Soup Company is the latest entity to honor his legacy.

This week, 1.2 million limited-edition cans of condensed tomato soup with labels inspired by his Pop art go on sale. The specially designed Campbell's soup cans pay tribute to his lively color palette, using orange, blue, pink and teal to spruce up the familiar design. The labels commemorate the 50th anniversary of Warhol's famed art piece "32 Campbell's Soup Cans."

Some of Warhol's famous quotes are printed on the Campbell's cans, too, including "Pop art is for everyone." This quote is significant as his wide-ranging body of work helped "blur the boundaries between high and low culture," said Michael Hermann, director of licensing at The Andy Warhol Foundation. Warhol appealed to a massive audience from all walks of life, he said.

Warhol's humble roots stem from a working-class neighborhood in Pittsburgh, where he was born in 1928. As an adult, he moved to New York City, where he set up a studio and built his fame and fortune. His enormous body of work included multiple mediums and featured subjects ranging from celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe to simple, everyday items such as a banana.

"I believe Warhol's popularity is certainly due in part to his uncanny ability to present the familiar from unexpected perspectives through visually and conceptually impactful works of art. However, it seems his influence today comes as much from his biography as someone who embodied the American dream and celebrated creativity and individuality," said Hermann.

When once asked why he painted the soup cans, Warhol noted, "I used to have the same (Campbell's soup) lunch every day for 20 years."

He was also known to say, "I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and that was it." His unique style of artistic expression and world view is credited for launching his career and the Pop art movement.

Art collectors have paid millions of dollars for some of Warhol's pieces, but shoppers at Target, where the limited-edition soup cans are on sale, will have to shell out only 75 cents for a 10.75-ounce can.

"What continues to amaze me is that 25 years after his death, Warhol continues to have a profound influence on our culture," said Hermann. "For me, this is a true testament to his genius, and I can only imagine that Andy would have loved shopping at Target for this soup."

Campbell Soup Company never commissioned Warhol to paint the original soup cans. Former president and CEO of the company, William Beverly Murphy, initially had reservations about Warhol's work 50 years ago, and Campbell took a "wait and see approach" before fully supporting him. Now, the company takes great pride in its association with the iconic artist.

"Thanks to Andy Warhol's inspired paintings, Campbell's soup will always be linked to the Pop art movement," Ed Carolan, vice president and general manager, of Campbell North America stated in a news release to CNN.

"It is only fitting that 50 years later, we celebrate the enduring legacy of these two American icons by coming full circle and bringing his art back to the Campbell's soup cans that provided him with inspiration," noted Hermann.

The Campbell's soup labels were produced under license from The Andy Warhol Foundation, a not-for-profit corporation that promotes the visual arts. Some revenue generated from the project will fund the foundation's endowment, from which it distributes grants that support the "creation, presentation and documentation of contemporary visual art," according to Hermann.

In addition to the soup cans, Campbell has partnered with The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as a sponsor of the educational programs associated with an exhibit paying tribute to Warhol. The show, "Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years,"opens September 18. Warhol's piece "Big Campbell's Soup Can, 19¢" is included in the exhibition, along with some of his other famous works.

cyrus mahboubian . . .

London exhibition recalls "the good old days of analogue photography"

Cyrus Mahboubian poses with his works of art.

LONDON.- Cyrus Mahboubian announced his second one-man show in London, to be held at the iconic venue The Troubadour on 5th and 6th September. 

In the artist's own words, PHOTOWORKS is "a celebration of the magic of analogue photography" with every work in the exhibition made on classic photographic film. 

The title PHOTOWORKS is a reference to the artist's belief that analogue photographs are true works of art, requiring technical know-how in order to balance light correctly and an eye for composition that doesn't rely on digital post-production. 

A key component of the exhibition is Polaroid. What LIFE magazine described in 1972 as a "magic camera" was developed and improved constantly in the decades that followed and at the peak of its popularity in the 1990s an estimated 120 million packs of film were being produced annually. 

Mahboubian calls Polaroid film, which was discontinued in 2008, "the antidote to the digital age of photography", claiming that the singularity of the pictures make them inherently special. 

PHOTOWORKS will also include key examples of one-off Polaroid enlargements that Mahboubian makes using digital technology. According to the artist, embracing digital techniques was a way to continue working with his beloved images after the film disappeared from shelves. 

Born in 1986 in London, Cyrus Mahboubian has been focused on photography since 2006 when he began experimenting with 35mm film and a vintage Nikon as a student at the University of Bristol. 

Cyrus’s creativity is driven by a constant awareness of how quickly time passes. Always on the lookout for beauty, in daily journeys and chance encounters, his photography has evolved to become a diaristic record of his life—a way to preserve memories of fleeting moments.

jimmy robert . . .

Jimmy Robert Vis-à-vis

Aug 25–Nov 25, 2012

Jimmy Robert Vis-à-vis is the first major solo museum exhibition in the United States of work by Brussels-based artist Jimmy Robert. Born in Guadeloupe, an overseas region of France, Robert was raised and educated in Europe in the 1980s and 1990s—an era in which questions of citizenship and representation were hotly contested. Rather than creating conspicuously political artworks, Robert takes his cues from cultural figures of the recent past—avant-garde writers, filmmakers, visual artists—who were not only pioneers in their respective art forms but also deft at subtly registering the traumas and effects of their social conditions. Robert’s concern for the body—both personal and political—in addition to his interest in the poetic potential of ephemeral materials unites much of his work, which ranges in media from photography, film, and video to sculpture and collaborative performance.

Robert typically uses photographic portraiture as a starting point for his works on paper, gently breaking down divisions between two and three dimensions, image and object. In some cases Robert uses found photographs that he tears, collages, tapes, and crumples before digitally scanning them and pinning them to the wall. In other cases, Robert takes new photographs in his studio and crams them into wooden boxes or arranges them on the gallery floor. Extending into the space of the gallery, these works create a relationship to the viewer’s body while underscoring a sense of impermanence. Likewise, Robert’s sculptures are either made from wood-based materials or give the illusion of paper forms and often play with notions of value and durability.

Robert’s films and videos convey a sense of the ordinary in their scale, subject, and material. Broadly inspired by the French New Wave, the artist is also deeply influenced by feminist filmmakers such as Marguerite Duras and Chantal Akerman. Of a similarly intimate register, Robert’s dance and performance works value gesture and chance over elaborate choreography, referring to Fluxus and the Judson Dance Theater.

To create one of the works in this exhibition, Robert performs with performer, choreographer Maria Hassabi live in the galleries.

The exhibition is organized by Naomi Beckwith, Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.

To hear from the curator and the artist about the work in the exhibition, access the audio tour on the MCA’s channel.

wolfgang tillmans . . .

September 2, 2012 Written by admin

Brave Neue Welt

Wolfgang Tillmans’s career is one of innovation and creativity. Combining tender and intimate portraits, abstract compositions and stark still lifes, Tillmans creates a world to get quietly lost in. Tillmans’s newest series, Neue Welt (“New World”) will be on view at Kunsthalle Zurich from 1 September–4 November 2012. Today from the DS Archives we look back on Catherine Wagley’s review of Tillman’s 2011 exhibition at Regen Projects.

The following article was originally published on March 18, 2011 by Catherine Wagley:

Wolfgang Tillmans, Installation view, March 12 - April 9, 2011. Photography by Brian Forrest. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

There’s a video—one of many—that’s been circulating the web since last Friday. It’s called “Tsunami Hitting City of Kamaishi” and it lasts for a grueling four minutes and thirty-eight seconds. The first thirty seconds show a view of the Pacific coast that’s relatively calm, though overcast. Ships float by distantly and you can hear the inquisitive voice of a child in the background. No one sounds too disturbed. Then, by second thirty-nine, you see sudsy water foam up and pull boats from where they’ve been docked into the city. The becomes violent but slowly—it takes a few more drawn out seconds to register that something really, really bad is happening. By minute number two, the water’s roof high. By minute four, the city’s barely there, and that kid who sounded inquisitive and chipper a few minutes ago has started whimpering. Devastation, literally. Yet the weirdest part is that the video feels rhythmic, as if what’s happening makes intuitive sense.

The same friend who sent me the Kamaishi video also told me about how Japan had moved 13 feet closer to the U.S. since last Friday. He brought this up just after we left the March 12^th opening ofWolfgang Tillmans’ new exhibition at Regen Projects in West Hollywood, which is why I now see Tillmans’Iguazu whenever I think “Tsunami.”

It feels too obvious—an image of gushing brownish water, falling downward in a gorgeous triangle, standing in for a disaster that manifested in a tidal wave. I’d rather have one of Tillmans’ t-shirt or jean photos, with wearable, human swells and rifts lodged in my mind. But I wouldn’t want it to be the work of any other artist  (what if one of Tomory Dodge’s post-apocalyptic eruptions, or Doug Aitken’s smooth-as-molasses, foreboding-as-hell videos had become synonymous with Tsunami?).

Wolfgang Tillmans, Iguazu, 2010, Ink jet print on paper, 54 1/2 x 81 5/8 inches, Edition 1/1, 1 AP. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

When you push aside the fixations on “slacker” images, the fashion-art collide, and rave culture that has trailed Tillmans through his career (a career that, somehow, has gotten quite long), what you’re left with is an artist who understands time and speed far better than most—probably because he refuses to conform to the constructs of either, while at the same time refusing (or just showing little interest in) non-conformity.

Tillmans’ current exhibition at Regen Projects, his sixth with the gallery and the only one since 1995 to feature camera-based work exclusively, at first glance appears atypically linear. The images, all large, with the itinerant feel of travel photographs, hang on a single level. They’re not  staggered and stacked like previous Tillmans installations have been. Yet, seen as a body, they’re just as intermittent and tangential as anything in the artist’s oeuvre. You walk from to Times Square to a hotel room to an airport terminal to a fountain to a photocopier, then past egg cartons to an Argentinian vista. These scenes look like they’ve been caught and honed by someone, a globetrotter, with a sophisticated sense of space who happens to stop for a minute while moving through the other life he leads. (Lecturing atLACMA two weeks ago, Tillmans said that, in the 90s, he’d been hailed as photographing his generation, while really, he was just  photographing his life, but not his life–not exactly.)

Wolfgang Tillmans, Installation view, March 12 - April 9, 2011. Photography by Brian Forrest. Courtesy Regen Projects, Los Angeles.

Tillmans began making work with the help of a company photocopier just before the Berlin Wall fell. He started publishing images in magazines like i.D. soon after and then exhibiting in galleries. He continued through a decade of relative warlessness, at least in Western Europe and the U.S. (one of his books,Soldiers: The Nineties, chronicled the amorphous roles of men in uniform during this time), but endless technological revolutions (when he started, Tillmans used to promise collectors reprints of his digitally processed images should they fade, and they inevitably did; now, they rarely do), and through a subsequent decade of drawn-out international tensions (soldiers have definite jobs again). Through it all, he’s been remarkably good at staying themeless, never working serially. Working in “series is serious,” Tillmans joked during his recent “feature length” (his wording) lecture at LACMA.

Japanese novelist Kazumi Saeki, who experienced the March 11th earthquake from near Sakunami,likes series and published an op-ed in the New York Times this week in which he tries to make sense of disaster. Near the end, he remembers the ten years he spent as an electrician.  “My main job was to travel around Tokyo, repairing lights, including street lamps and the hallway and stairway lights in apartment buildings,” he writes. “For this reason, the sight of the well-ordered, unbroken expanse of the city’s lights always brought me a great sense of relief. Will I ever again experience such peace?”

If series is serious it’s also safe—and calming, like a line of city lights. Tillmans’ work has never been like that. At Regen Projects, each photograph is, on it’s own, a well-ordered thing. Iguazu, for instance, is stunningly composed, but, in a room of images, it has no real partner. The pictures don’t give the satisfaction of continuity or cohesion. They’re not safe in that way. And, unlike the Tokyo lights, they can’t be repaired because they’ve already been perfected.

jack goldstein . . .

Jack Goldstein x 10,000” consists of thirty-plus years of work. The early films that put Goldstein on the map as a member of the Pictures group are there (including “The Jump,” 1978, and “MGM,” 1975), as are several immersive sculptures, text works, and records—not to mention the enormous, black-and-white paintings of the ‘80s and the paintings that followed.

magnum contact sheets . . .

Magnum Contact Sheets reveals how Magnum photographers have captured and edited their best shots from the 1930s to the present. The contact sheet, a direct print of a roll or sequence of negatives, is the photographer's first look at what he or she has captured on film, and provides a uniquely intimate glimpse into their working process. It records each step on the route to arriving at an image—providing a rare behind-the-scenes sense of walking alongside the photographer and seeing through their eyes. Including both celebrated icons of photography and lesser-known surprises, the exhibition functions as an "epitaph" to the contact sheet, now rendered obsolete by digital photography. Through these fascinating and usually private images, the exhibition celebrates what and how photographers saw for nearly a century. Coinciding with the publication of Magnum Contact Sheets (Thames & Hudson), edited by ICP Curator Kristen Lubben, the exhibition includes a selection of some of the 139 contact sheets in the book.

This exhibition was made possible with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council. It is organized in association with Magnum Photos.

michelle given . . .

Moving On is an installation that is contingent upon audience participation. The piece is comprised of a 16mm projector and a paper shredder plugged into a timer set to thirty seconds. A viewer must start the timer to see the old family movies, thereby committing themselves not only to thirty seconds of footage, but also to the permanent destruction of thirty precious seconds of the same film, someone else’s memories, which glitter in the light as they are spat out of the shredder. The nostalgia traditionally associated with viewing old family films is undermined by the shredder’s jarring sound. I am intrigued by causality and responsibility; those that choose to fully experience the piece are also complicit in the destruction of its key component. The title can refer to the act of forgetting or destroying the past and/or memories, as well as the unromantic advancement of audio-visual technology.


To see more work by Michelle Given click here.

zoe strauss . . .

Strauss’ I-95 project is a ten year long endeavor for which Strauss displayed her photographs by affixing them to the pilasters supporting the overpass of Interstate-95 in South Philadelphia. For a single day each May (from 2001-2010), Strauss revitalized and transformed a derelict and unused public space into a site for art, facilitating community and social interaction through her installation. At the end of the exhibit, the laminated installation photographs were free for the taking. As an artist, Strauss prioritizes accessibility and she enthusiastically promotes discourse regarding her work and artistic process via her well-known and widely followed blog. She describes her work as an effort to create an “epic narrative that reflects the beauty and struggle of everyday life.” While her chosen subjects and scenes of the American urban landscape can seem unflattering, troubling or blighted, they reflect the artist’s interest in confronting and depicting life in America—not in a manner of pure social journalism, but as a method of exploring her interests in visual abstraction as well as the self-reflexive nature of the medium.

Click here to read more.

angelica dass . . .

Humanae  is a chromatic inventory, a project that reflects on the colors beyond the borders of our codes by referencing the PANTONE® color scheme.(PANTONE® Guides are one of the main classification systems of colors, which are represented by an alphanumeric code, allowing to accurately recreate any of them in any media. It is a technical industrial standard often called Real Color)The project development is based on a series of portraits whose background is dyed with the exact Pantone® tone extracted from a sample of 11x11 pixels of the portrayed’s face. The project’s objective is to record and catalog all possible human skin tones.
Click here to read more about this project.