Tag Archives: collage

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: I Shop Therefore I Am By Barbara Kruger

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I Shop Therefore I Am By Barbara Kruger
Photographed By Gail at the Mary Boone Gallery on 24th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District

Commentary Below is Excerpted from Smithsonian Magazine‘s Barbara Kruger’s Artwork Speaks Truth to Power:

Even if you don’t know the name Barbara Kruger, you’ve probably seen her work in art galleries, on magazine covers or in giant installations that cover walls, billboards, buildings, buses, trains and tram lines all over the world. Kruger takes images from the mass media and pastes words over them, big, bold extracts of text — aphorisms, questions, slogans. Short machine-gun bursts of words that when isolated, and framed by Kruger’s gaze, linger in your mind, forcing you to think twice, thrice about clichés and catchphrases, introducing ironies into cultural idioms and the conventional wisdom they embed in our brains.

I Shop Therefore I Am, (1987), one of Kruger’s most famous works, makes a pointed critique of our consumer culture. Read more about the life and work of Barbara Kruger at the link above.

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Jasper Johns, Flag

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Jaser Johns Flag
Flag By Jasper Johns, 1954, Encaustic, Oil, and Collage on Fabric mounted on Plywood, Three Panels (Photo By Gail)

From Moma Dot Org:

“One night I dreamed that I painted a large American flag,” Johns has said of this work, “and the next morning I got up and I went out and bought the materials to begin it.” Those materials included three canvases that he mounted on plywood, strips of newspaper, and encaustic paint—a mixture of pigment and molten wax that has formed a surface of lumps and smears.

The newspaper scraps visible beneath the stripes and forty-eight stars lend this icon historical specificity. The American flag is something “the mind already knows,” Johns has said, but its execution complicates the representation and invites close inspection. A critic of the time encapsulated this painting’s ambivalence, asking, “Is this a flag or a painting?”

Jasper Johns was born May 15th, 1930 and currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut. Flag is part of the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

Arts and Culture

Match Box Art By Mohamed Larbi Rahhali

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Mohamed Rahali Match Box Art
All Photos By Gail

These tiny collages, drawings and mixed-media works all represented on Match Boxes are part of the series called Omri (My Life) by Moroccan artist Mohamed Larbi Rahhali.

Mohamed Rahali Match Box Art

Omri is included in Here and Elsewhere, the comprehensive group exhibit currently inhabiting The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

Mohamed Rahali Match Box Art

Here and Elsewhere is a major exhibition of contemporary art from and about the Arab world, and brings together more than forty-five artists from over fifteen countries.

Mohamed Rahali Match Box Art

These photos capture just a fraction of the hundreds of Match Boxes in Mohamed Larbi Rahhali‘s piece, and the work is still ongoing.

Watch for more posts featuring art from Here and Elsewhere on The Gig in the upcoming week.

Here and Elsewhere is on Exhibit Through September 28th, 2014, at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, located at 235 Bowery (at Prince street) in Soho, NYC.

Mohamed Rahali Match Box Art

Arts and Culture

Mickalene Thomas, Tete de Femme at Lehmann Maupin

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Tete de Femme
All Photos By Gail

Lehmann Maupin is delighted to debut Tête de Femme, a new body of work by artist Mickalene Thomas. In her fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, Thomas explores the intricacies of female beauty through painting and collage, focusing on how artifice serves both to mask and reveal the individual essence of her subjects. Continue reading Mickalene Thomas, Tete de Femme at Lehmann Maupin →

Arts and Culture

James Cohan Gallery Presents Fred Tomaselli’s Current Events

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Firey Swirl
After Oct. 16, 2010, 2014, By Fred Tomaselli. Photo-collage, Leaves, Acrylic, and Resin on Wood Panel (All Photos By Gail)

My first exposure to painter/collagist Fred Tomaselli’s work was his exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum back in 2011, so I was very excited about attending the opening reception for his latest collection of paintings and collages entitled Current Events, which opened at the James Cohan Gallery on May 1st.

Firey Swirl Product Detail
Detail from After Oct. 16, 2010

In his fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, Tomaselli presents eights new collage paintings and over 30 works from his ongoing New York Times collage series. The gallery space is huge and there is a ton of cool stuff to look at.

Black Star By Fred Tomaselli
Black Star

Detail from Black Star
Detail from Black Star

Tomaselli’s art is very visually psychedelic, but there is also so much going on as far as the actual form of the work and the story each tells that you could spend hours studying and enjoying each piece.

Gyre By Fred Tomaselli
Gyre

Fish Spew Detail
Detail from Gyre

As the exhibit’s press release explains, “over the course of a career that spans three decades, Tomaselli has transformed his daily life and many obsessions — gardening, birding, fly-fishing, recreational drugs – into mind-bending, consciousness-expanding paintings.

Bird and Serpent
Penetrators

Serpent Detail
Serpent’s Body Detail from Pentrators

Since March 16th, 2005 Tomaselli has been working on The New York Times paintings. According the the Press Release, “He became absorbed by the photo on the front page in which he describes, “Bernie Ebbers, the just convicted WorldCom chairman, was clutching the hand of his wife as he was being expelled from ‘the Eden of Finance’ by the camera-wielding angels of the paparazzi.” Drawing and collaging directly on the photo, Tomaselli created his first “collaboration” with the lead page of The New York Times. The series now consists of 80+ works.”

Here are a few from the exhibit:

NYT Queens Catholic Church
Nov. 25, 2010

NYT Putin\
Nov. 9, 2011

NYT Oval Office
Aug. 19, 2009

NYT Gingrich
Jan. 21, 2012

So, you know what you like to look at and what stimulates your mind. Surely I do not need to say anymore to talk you into going to see this exhibit: just do yourself a favor and go.

Fred Tomaselli’s Current Events will be on Exhibit Through June 14th, 2014 at James Cohan Gallery, Located at 533 West 26th Street in the Chelsea Gallery District. Hours are Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 AM – 6:00 PM.