Maja Ruznic’s paintings often combine difficult subject matter with seductive color and a sense of spirituality. The artist, who spent time in an Austrian refugee camp after fleeing the war Bosnia, has said that The Past Awaiting the Present / Arrival of the Drummers(2023) “looks at how multiple things can be true at the same time: birth, violence, pain, suffering, joy, and music.” Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: Maja Ruznic, The Past Awaiting the Present/ Arrival of the Drummers→
Cy Gavin’s recent paintings, such as Untitled (Snag) from 2022, conjure landscapes and the natural world. His imagery frequently starts from his observations of his immediate surroundings, but his selections also carry metaphorical weight. Recent paintings have depicted cosmic phenomena, a failing human-made dam patched by beavers, native and invasive flora, and a forest’s regrowth in the wake of earth disturbances such as construction activities.
To make the figure in this sculpture, a sleeping bag was draped to suggest the contours of a human body and then cast in clay. The thousands of empty bullet casings that surround the ceramic form become a protective barrier. “In some way,” artist Rebecca Belmore (b. 1960) has said, “the work carries an emptiness. But at the same time, because it’s a standing figure, I am hoping that the work contains some positive aspects of this idea that we need to try to deal with violence.” Continue reading Modern Art Monday Presents: ishkode (fire) By Rebecca Belmore→
Artist Aria Dean (b. 1993) began Little Island (2022) by putting a digital model of a monolith through a collision simulation and then rendering the impact as a physical sculptural form.
