OPEN LAB ARTISTS

jcacciolagallery: Watch the new video about Trevor Young right...

openlabmagazine — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 16:19:56 -0400

Watch the new video about Trevor Young right now, featuring paintings that are currently on view at J. Cacciola Gallery. Video shot by the talented Damian Fitzsimmons

Gala Bent has some lovely new prints for sale! You can check...

openlabmagazine — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 12:08:54 -0400

Gala Bent has some lovely new prints for sale!

You can check them out here.

Happy Birthday Albrecht Dürer! b. May 21 1471 d. April...

openlabmagazine — Tue, 21 May 2013 11:53:00 -0400

Happy Birthday Albrecht Dürer!

b. May 21 1471 d. April 1528.

Thank you for your contributions towards helping future generations further their understandings of their optical realities and the spaces around them.

Dada m’dada. Dada mhm dada da. It’s a question of...

openlabmagazine — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:55:58 -0400

Dada m’dada. Dada mhm dada da. It’s a question of connections, and of loosening them up a bit to start with. I don’t want words that other people have invented. All the words are other people’s inventions. I want my own stuff, my own rhythm, and vowels and consonants too, matching the rhythm and all my own. If this pulsation is seven yards long, I want words for it that are seven yards long. Mr Schulz’s words are only two and a half centimetres long.

… I want the word where it ends and begins. Dada is the heart of words.
Each thing has its word, but the word has become a thing by itself. Why shouldn’t I find it? Why can’t a tree be called Pluplusch, and Pluplubasch when it has been raining? The word, the word, the word outside your domain, your stuffiness, this laughable impotence, your stupendous smugness, outside all the parrotry of your self-evident limitedness. The word, gentlemen, is a public concern of the first importance.

Hugo Ball, ‘Dada Manifesto’ (read at the first public Dada soiree, Zurich, July 14th 1916)

The ABC’s of DADA Pt. II

openlabmagazine — Fri, 17 May 2013 11:53:42 -0400

The ABC’s of DADA Pt. II

“A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time...

openlabmagazine — Wed, 15 May 2013 09:55:00 -0400

“A reviewer from the American Art News stated at the time that “The Dada philosophy is the sickest, most paralyzing and most destructive thing that has ever originated from the brain of man.” Art historians have described Dada as being, in large part, “in reaction to what many of these artists saw as nothing more than an insane spectacle of collective homicide.”

Pts 2 & 3 coming soon

...

openlabmagazine — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 12:35:00 -0400

Strata II 2012 oil and vinyl paint with colored pencil on paper 22 x 10"

Strata V 2012 oil and vinyl paint with colored pencil on paper 22 x 10"

Strata IV 2012 oil and vinyl paint with colored pencil on paper 22 x 10"

Study 6 oil on panel 5 3/4 x 5 3/4

Rocks at Night, Cartoon Series, vinyl paint on 5 3/4" square panels

Overlook and Storm, Cartoon Series, vinyl paint on 5 3/4" square panels

Slot Canyon Stream, Cartoon Series, vinyl paint on 5 3/4" square panels

Crate with Painting 2013 wood, paint, tape, board and polyurethane Miniature art crates with cartoon landscape paintings, built to 1:12 scale. Edition of 10.

Crate with Painting 2013 wood, paint, tape, board and polyurethane Miniature art crates with cartoon landscape paintings, built to 1:12 scale. Edition of 10.

Strata I 2012 oil and vinyl paint with colored pencil on paper 22 x 10"

Ryan Syrell

How did you start on the Cartoon Landscapes?

The cartoon landscapes started a few years ago as little studies on paper. I was cutting panels out of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck comics and painting out the characters and dialogue, leaving just the landscape with its implication of activity and narrative. These landscape images were appearing in paintings of fabricated museum interiors I was making around 2008 to 2010. Carl Gunhouse saw some of them and asked about showing a bunch of the landscape imagery as a grid. That’s when I moved to these 5 ¾” x 5 ¾” panels as substrates. I also started exploring the idea of filtering landscapes from all kinds of sources through the vernacular of early 20th century American cartooning.

What’s the process for these works?

My process has shifted a lot in the last couple of years, getting much looser as I started to move away from making meticulous copies from source material. Right now, I’m making piles of blind drawings of landscapes from memory. They’re pretty minimal things, just sharpie on manila paper, but they’re the way I’m able to get things moving. I lay a bunch of them out, covering the floor, and see if anything buzzes. Then it’s a matter of translating those working parts into painting, and trying not to over-refine them in the process. The color in these starts primarily from memory, and then has to get pushed a bit to fall into the proper register stylistically.

Do you ever do plein air landscape painting?

I very rarely do any plein air painting, but I do make a lot of color notes and pastel color studies outside, mostly drawings with notes. I’m interested in light that’s at least one step removed, if I’m using it to make something. So, more than painting from life, I try to do a lot of looking and a lot of remembering color combinations.

How did you move to the crate and container themes?

I had been making drawings and paintings for years that were of invented museum interiors and framed-out, rough spaces. They would contain imagery like, cartoon landscapes as though they were painted on unprimed sheetrock, or piles of bricks and rope, stuff like that. I was trying out a few different ideas in an attempt to make the things in these paintings feel more concrete. I wanted them to have a more literal presence. So then it was just turning the drawings into sculptures. Lots of little walls, rocks, pedestals and crates.

Do you have experience with curation and art handling?

How did you guess?! I’ve been working as an art handler since 2006, for a few museums around the country (the Neuberger Museum, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, the Baltimore Museum of Art), and then for Bill Hill in DC. I haven’t organized any shows since school, but my wife, Ginevra Shay, does a lot of work as a curator, so it’s definitely on my mind.

What does the container mean to you?

The crates, for me, are first and foremost simple, literal stand-ins for actual crates. That’s what I needed them to be at the outset, a scaled reality. The more I photographed them in those interiors, the more I learned that I don’t look at things like a photographer. The crates all began operating visually as little gestalt units, like really loaded brushstrokes, designed and contained unto themselves, while simultaneously accruing into little molecular groupings. And that’s what they actually do out in the world too, all these nomadic crates shipped all throughout this massive network of museums, galleries, warehouses, shippers, artists and collectors. They accrue and disperse in beautiful ways, and I like their anonymity.

Are they based on real objects around you and in your studio?

The crates (and by extension most of the objects pictured in the photos) aren’t based on any particular or unique objects, but like the cartoon landscapes they’re an attempt at an abstracted visual-vernacular; something that can hopefully hover between a representation and a sign.

You’ve also moved towards photography - taking photographs of your crate and container installations - storage and gallery spaces at miniature scale. What is your mental space doing as you make these meta-moves from painting to container to installation to photography? What comes next? Will there be elements of destruction later?

Like I was saying about buzzing between representations and signs, I’m always trying to toss these objects or images into different contexts and scales. I think it’s about wanting to be surprised by language. My way of doing that is by re-framing, over and over again, a select group of things (landscapes, crates, bricks, rope, etc.) in different mediums and formats. I’ve been making 1:12 scale models of potential sculptures throughout the last couple months, so I think scaling some of those up is the next thing to do. Also, more painting!

How do you know when to move from one medium to the next, is it intuitive?

I basically always work in series, and I’ve found that most series know when to conclude themselves. I usually start giving them a little space. I go back to doing lots of drawing and hopefully thinking too, then I find some door that opened up in the last series, something unresolved. So I can start investigating this new thing, and oftentimes that dictates certain parameters, like medium or scale, and that’s really helpful in keeping things moving. I’ve also discovered that whatever medium I’m working in, I end up thinking of the work in terms of either drawing or painting anyway, so that smooths out a whole lot of the bumpiness inherent in moving between media.

What’s a typical day in the studio involve for you?

Most days start off with some cleaning and note-taking, lots of lists! Then I usually draw for a while before getting to work. Sometimes, especially with the miniatures, there can be a whole mess of hopping between tiny little projects, but more recently I’ve been lucky enough to have some long painting days. I try to do as much really active looking as I can throughout the day.

Looking and thinking are really tied together in what I’m trying to do.

Aidan Koch How did you get into comics? I didn’t really...

openlabmagazine — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 12:30:00 -0400

Excerpt from The Dark, p. 3/8

Excerpt from Little Flashes, p. 1/4

Excerpt from Little Flashes, p. 2/4

Excerpt from Little Flashes, p. 3/4

Excerpt from Little Flashes, p. 4/4

Excerpt from The Dark, p. 4/8

Excerpt from The Return, p. 5/6

Excerpt from The Return, p. 6/6

Charms in Blue

Excerpt from Man from the North, p. 3/5

Aidan Koch

How did you get into comics?

I didn’t really start drawing comics until college. I decided to attend art school and ended up around a lot of people who were involved in the comics scene in Portland, OR. I was an illustration major so it was easy for me to see how comics fit in with how I was thinking about drawing and where my ideas were beginning to expand. I started out making zines with drawings, words, and lists. From there I began integrating those ideas further and building narratives. I’ve never read many comics and I still don’t. It helps me keep a clear perspective on the type of work I want to make, rather than being influenced by what’s already been made.

You have an amazing hand - what is your drawing background? Who have you studied and admired?

Both of my parents were artists so I was drawing and crafting from a very very young age. My sister was always a little better at the hands on projects though so I think it was easier for me to just dedicate myself to drawing. I have countless sketchbooks starting in middle school and used to draw on everything. Naturally, choosing an art school for college solidified it as more than a hobby. Right now I do art full time.

My tastes have changed quite a bit over the years, but I will always be obsessed with classical and impressionistic art. My favorite artist of all time is Odilon Redon. Others to note: Balthus, Matisse, Degas, Titian, Delvaux…

Was it intentional to use variations on the golden ratio/divine cut for almost every page of The Whale? If it was intuitive, then your sense of design could very literally be called divine.

Thank you. I must admit is was very much unintentional. Even looking at it now, that book is quite raw. I came at it with basically no forethought as to how a person ‘makes comics.’ I’ve always worked very intuitively, but I’m much more aware of tools and constructs in comics now.

How did that story emerge? It subtly resonates.

It really started with about the last ten pages. I was living back on the Puget Sound, and there was a news story about a tropical whale getting beached on a nearby island. The character and scenario just grew out of that initial inspiration.

Where did your travels for Field Studies take you? Can you tell us about that project?

That was a really incredible project. I happened to already have a good deal of travel plans for the year and as they continued to expand and grow I became much more compelled to find a way to tie them all together. The first step was simply creating a blog from which I could share small drawings from my various settings. It worked in so many ways. I didn’t have a camera most of the year, but I did have a scanner, so I used it to share with my friends and family where I was and the special little things I was experiencing. It helped me to raise extra funds as I was traveling so that I wouldn’t have to get nervous about being gone so long. On a personal level too, each time I would sit down in a new city or home to draw, it would connect me deeper with the physical reality of my environment, by having to really study it.

I really believe in maintaining a strong life drawing practice to the point that this project felt very indulgent for me. And then getting to publish a book of it all at the end!

Was Asymmetry based on a real experience?

No. I have given quite a number of tattoos in my day, as well as received them, but its all fiction. I think I just wanted to express the intimacy of that experience.

Can you tell us about The Dark?

This was one of my first minis. When I started drawing comics, I was especially interested in more abstract content and visuals. I still am, but the form it takes is much different.

What art materials do you have on you at any given time?

Only a mechanical pencil. I keep a lined notebook with me, but I very rarely draw in it.

Are you still working on the Letter Project with Jaakko Pallasvuo?

Oh, no. We ended it quite some time ago. It was a really interesting endeavor but we did it without any objectives or constraints, so it just naturally tapered out as our lives got busier.

What sorts of projects do you have in the works right now?

I just made a big move to California. I’m hoping to make this my base, so its a bit more serious than the traveling I’ve been up to. This has taken away from my being able to focus much on any personal projects. I’ve got ideas, but mostly I’ve just been doing a little this and that for other people. Once things have settled down here a bit, I’m hoping to start oil painting again. I’m quite excited to see where that might go.

Any upcoming shows or publications we should be looking forward to?

I have a show opening May 3rd at Nationale in Portland, OR and a show in December at Farewell Books in Austin, TX. Those are the bigs ones this year. As far as publications I’m in the upcoming Sonatina anthology edited and published by Scott Longo as well as putting out a little collection of artist related comic strips I did for The Comics Workbook blog with the help of Colour Code printing in Toronto.

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, was discovered today in...

openlabmagazine — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 13:50:24 -0400

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, was discovered today in 1655!

These accompanying alchemical etchings are from the Amphitheatrum Sapientiae Aeternae by Heinrich Khunrath, which was first published in Hamburg, Germany in 1595.

“You should have and recognize all the residue of the whole of nature and the whole Macrocosmos, and the microcosm, and you yourself.”

Interview with Meg Hine. Meg Hine: There are 2 major events...

openlabmagazine — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:18:16 -0400

Interview with Meg Hine.

Meg Hine: There are 2 major events that have effected my most recent work:

First was that my mother passed away from cancer a couple month before I started graduate school.

The second event was a residency at the Burren College of Art in Ireland as part of the grad program at Moore.

Open Lab: When did you initiate the Memorium Series?

M.H. The memorium series came out of work done through-out my time in grad school, particularly the final thesis. It started as a way for me to work through my feelings of grief after losing my mother. But it was during my residency in the Burren that I started putting metaphors together and my healing process started to take shape in the form of artwork.

How did you begin the Waves project? What was your original intent?

I filmed waves crashing along the rocky shores of the Arran Islands (during the Ireland residency) That was a pivotal point in the trip. Standing just a few feet from crashing water made me think about just how powerful a force of nature that water is. I was standing by something far greater than myself, not just in size but in strength and time of existence.

It wasn’t until I returned home to the studio in Philadelphia that I considered making the waves into a video. Initially, I wasn’t sure what the piece would be but as I played around I began to see a connection to my grief and healing process, a cycle… that came in waves. For the MFA Preview Show after Ireland, I originally wanted the video to be projected very large. Unfortunately, We were put in a gallery space that didn’t allow for that so instead it played on a monitor.

I later revisited this idea for my thesis project but instead of just a video I wanted to create a viewing experience that surrounded the viewer. After a few trial and error designs, I landed on the projection onto an old boat tent that belonged to my grandfather. It created a shelter, a haven. The official title of the final piece is “post tot naufragia portum” which is latin for “after so many shipwrecks a haven (or port)”

There’s something unreal and kind of eerie about complete symmetry - what does the concept of symmetry mean to you within this setting?

The symmetry in the waves is like the symmetry of life and death. They coexist. There’s also the symbolism held in a mirror as a window to another side. Symmetry also means balance and a spiritual balance is what I believe makes the world work.

Can you talk about catharsis and creativity?

Tim Jones (the dean at the Burren College of Art) and I talked about catharsis. Cathartic means a psychological relief through open expression of emotions. When we create, we are expressing ourselves. Creating art in relation to my mom was a cathartic way for me to deal with her death. But also just the act of expressing an emotion can be cathartic. In Ireland, did a piece I called “Catharsis” that wasn’t about the end result but the act of creating and making a mark. Basically, it was a big piece of paper on the wall that I scribbled on, but with a variety of gestures based on how I was feeling. I felt really good afterwards.

You do a lot of research and image collecting for a project - how do you decide what will be actively referenced in future work? Are they in the back of your mind as you work? Do you have specific moments of inspiration from your research?

A bigpiece of research and image collecting never made it into the thesis show, such as the photographs I took in a Victorian cemetery in Philadelphia. At the time, I was interested in symbolism of victorian funerary art. I was also looking at the Art Nouveau pieces of Edward Mucha, which combined the female form with symbolism of spirituality and the occult. I saw a relationship between the victorian and art nouveau imagery but struggled to make it into a piece of work. There were a lot of ideas mulling around and when it came down to figuring out what my final thesis show would be about, I had to edit. I tried to pick the symbols that held the most meaning and significance to my story and my connection to my mother.

What does Congeria mean? How did that piece develop?

“Congeria” has several meanings;

heap, pile, mass
collection/accumulation (events/words)
the ruins
chaos

The start of this piece came from a metaphor that I came up with while searching for sea glass on the shore of Galway Bay.What I realized was that experiencing a tragedy is much like a glass shattering. Overtime, the pieces get worn smooth by the ocean waves however they are never really whole again. “Congeria” perfectly captures the essence of this metaphor. “Memoria” means memory. So together they mean a collection of memories, but ones that are broken. Memories of my mother are recalled in small pieces, and very precious like a small piece of glass.

While figuring out a way to display the glass, I recalled the piece by Felix Gonzalez-Torres of the candy pieces to represent his lover and partner who died of AIDS. I wanted to reference that but still distinguish myself from it as it’s own idea. I choose to display them in a slightly arching line; more dense at one end than the other. The line represents time, the arch is a shoreline, the varying density of glass is both waxing and waning of my memories.

What are your favorite rituals and memorial rites from various cultures?

Some of the rituals I was most drawn to had to do with either fire or water and the intent of purification. My mother was cremated per her wishes because she wanted it to be her revenge against the cancer to have it burned up with her body. The burning of dead bodies was used in times of plague but it was also used by Vikings as an honorable send off. But one of my favorite rituals I found while researching was during the Japanese holiday of Obon. It is a time when they honor their ancestors and light floating lanterns, called toro nagashi, that they float down the river to send of the spirits of those passed. The pictures I’ve seen of the lanterns are just beautiful and I hope to experience it in person sometime.

Also, a ritual I did perform myself is the spreading of ashes. It started on the anniversary of her death and continued around places I went in Ireland. I photographed or had other photograph the process as documentation of the act. I plan to continue spreading her ashes in significant places I visit.

Tell us about your red hat.

My red hat was made for me by my mother when I was in undergrad. I wore it so much it became my signature look. The hat holds even more sentimental value now that she’s passed.

What sorts of projects are you working on now?

More recently, my maternal grandmother passed away. This was a different experience of death because we were more prepared to say good-bye. It was her time. The experience is less so like shattering glass and more so like the glass dissolved in sand. I’ve been considering now doing a piece exploring this metaphor as well. I’ve also been working on plaster casts of shells. My grandmother always had seashell collections and many of the shells I casted from were ones I got from her. I’m not sure how the pieces will develop just yet but they have been fun playing around with.

I’d also like to go back to thinking about the victorian meets art nouveau and work out my own symbols of spirituality.

And I have a few other ideas still in the early stages.

Any upcoming shows and events?

I have a couple shows in mind to submit to but so far nothing showing yet.

Happy Birthday, Einstein!

openlabmagazine — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 21:07:18 -0400

Happy Birthday, Einstein!

Anna Showers-Cruser You have a ton of different projects - what...

openlabmagazine — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:59:00 -0400

Flirt, 9" x 11" works from series, "Hers & His & How It Is"

Body Queery / 34 x 50" / 2012

Anna Showers-Cruser

You have a ton of different projects - what are your studio habits like? Do you work on multiple projects at a time?

My hands are constantly working to keep up with my mind. I try not to impose a specific number of projects on myself at one time, but somehow I naturally end up overlapping series and methods of working. I have dealt with anxiety my whole life, so while I’m always striving to achieve a balance, I do feel an urge to keep more than one thing going at once. When I hit a mental block with one work, I can play with something else for a while.

Can you talk about your collage works? Where do you get your collage material?

Collage is something I started seriously exploring only recently. Returning to the medium with a fresh eye is something really special. It allows me to work fast, I grab scissors and cut immediately when something catches my eye, using the cut line as an editing tool and a drawing tool. Actually, I use my sewing machine in the same way, sketching out curious shapes and then pairing them to speak to each other in an interesting way. The visual texture found in discarded magazines is a treasure trove of material. Mostly, I source snippets of images that can fool my eye. I like how the 2-D surface is an inherent great equalizer. Scale is completely disrupted when you isolate samples of an image, so texture becomes the focus. I know artists who work exclusively in collage quite successfully, but I use it more often to create a visual vocabulary that I can later jumble and layer as part of a more complex piece.

These pieces are an homage to figures in the long history of pathologization and medical/social fetishizing of intersex persons. I was inspired to create work in this vein upon reading Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, by Anne Fausto-Sterling. Levi Suydam was a 19th century resident of Connecticut whose body was critiqued and interrogated for political gain. Saint-Hilaire and Bell were researchers who focused on “abnormal” (ambiguous) genitalia. The works are acrylic with ink transfer, ‘drawn’ on using a burnish tool and worked back in with an eraser. I haven’t worked in etching so far but I’m entertaining the idea of incorporating it into more additive processes.

Do you feel like there’s a switch in your mental processes when you are working with separate materials as parts of a whole in comparison to drafting a image directly to paper with a pen or any type of mark?

I can’t say that there is a hard line of distinction between my methods of working. For my practice, I see it all as playing a role in birthing ideas. I don’t know if it speaks to an inability to compartmentalize or simply my refusal to dictate a hierarchy in craft. I dothink at this moment there is great pressure on emerging artists to make a name for ourselves with a singular method of craft, almost as a shtick. We value becoming “that guy who paints birds on buildings” more than considering what it means to push the boundaries of our own work. Living in a time when it seems everything has been done forwards and backwards, putting pen to paper can be a radical act.

What do you think the benefits of working in groups of multiples are?

Working in multiples relaxes the sense of an image’s preciousness, and allows for spontaneity in a way that proves to be more difficult when concentrating on a single piece. Like many artists, I am my harshest critic. Working on more than one piece at a time helps combat overworking an image and loosing the sense of earnestness and accessibility that I appreciate so often in art.

You work with a lot of textiles - how is that process different for you? How do you decide what material will be more appropriate for a project than another?

Trial and error. Arriving at a visual solution is the purely intuitive part of my practice. I choose material based on instinct, but I suppose I think mostly about contrast, color relationships, and tactility. I try different things (gluing, painting over, peeling off, stitching back on…) and eventually, when the work feels like more than the sum of its parts, I step back. Paintings are like relationships, what feels like the right approach with one can prove disastrous in another.

Can you talk about Body Theories?

Body Theories were made to re-imagine my works with ink transfer on muslin from my BFA thesis show, Where We Are Both & Neither. I wanted to keep embroidering with transferred elements on fabric, keep the scale intimate and make them plush, to be easily handled. I was thinking a lot about comfort objects and our tendency to look for ourselves in others. They are like my version of the strange companion dolls marketed to girls that you can customize to look like you, even down to the placement of freckles. I wondered what it would be like if we carried mirror images of how we felt our bodies looked. The Theories are inherently abstract, but you can hold these in your hands.

Can you talk about the Hysteria paintings and their accompanying partners with gender themes from 2010?

Hysteria has origins in the Greek word hystera, meaning womb. The paintings are asking the tongue-in-cheek question of “what would a hysterical uterus look like?” I was interested in the long history of hysterical illness as a medical theory to explain supposed irrational or erratic behavior, and the persisting association between the “feminine” and the emotive. I’m fascinated with the relationship between our anatomical and our emotional selves, but the color palette I developed at the time put me in a more playful direction aesthetically.

Tell us about your paint with fabric pieces - the colors are so rich.

These are what I like to call painterly pastiche works, meaning paintings that rely on relationships between literal bodies of material—surfaces differentiated by color and texture. I’ll often source imagery from my collages or gouache paintings, changing the scale and amplifying the texture and contrast. I let the forms have a conversation.

What are you thinking about and inspired by these days?

I’m inspired by people with stories to tell. Louise Bourgeois comes to mind, but so do the Baltimore City kids I teach art to during the week. I was raised reading, and I love poetry by Eileen Myles, and a lot of non-fiction. I mine the free bookstore for vintage gems like “Gender and Disordered Behavior.” I collect articles on genetics, biology, sexuality, memoirs of gender-variant, trans* and intersex persons, articles from the website autostraddle, and work by peers. I am inspired by handmade oddities and small gestures of kindness.

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a new series marrying embroidery and painting that I started while in residence at Vermont Studio Center. I have a few projects in the works, but whenever something becomes a sure thing, I post it to my blog.

Aiden Morse What is your artistic background? I’m not entirely...

openlabmagazine — Sun, 10 Mar 2013 12:59:51 -0400

Stills

Stills

Aiden Morse

What is your artistic background?

I’m not entirely sure that I have one yet. I’ve just finished year 12 in Tasmania and now I’ve moved to Melbourne to study art. I’ve been taking pictures for about four years now.

Can you talk about the Stills series? Are these imagined shots from imaginary films, tiny narratives, isolated moments in time? The use of color is really dramatic, like a horror art film.

Stills is the first body of work that I’ve worked really hard on and displayed in a way which I was proud of. I made those images for my year 12 art class. I saw them as imaginary still from films, the sort you could pick from the 70’s sci-fi movies I grew up with, E.T., Close Encounters and the like. I like that you picked up on the fact that the pictures are isolated moments though, I was wary of avoiding a narrative throughout the series. I wanted to make sure the only thing that connected each image was its aesthetic.

Out of all of these strange images, the one that really gets me is the interior shot of a kitchen. The one with the bright natural sunlight falling on the stove and on the wall - with every burner burning red, with absolutely no sign of use or habitation. What’s the story behind this image?

That’s one of my favourite pictures, and probably the most successful in terms of creating what I had envisioned. I think before making this picture I’d watched Kubrick’s The Shining, and read a fascinating/absurd analysis of the film. The author of that article assumed that every object visible on screen was carefully placed by Kubrick to further facilitate the interpretation of his film. The idea that Kubrick would go to such effort for the sake of his art inspired me to try to work in the same way.

Anyway, I figured since I didn’t have the ability to build an environment from scratch, I’d have to work is the opposite fashion. Instead of adding, I would subtract elements I found unnecessary until every everything in the frame seemed ‘useful.’ You’ll notice how simplified the whole image is: no appliances litter the bench, none of the cupboards have handles and the layout is entirely symmetrical. I worked in this way for most of Stills, actually.

But as far as a story goes, I don’t think this picture really has one, or needs to have one. The fact that these pictures are isolated moments means that nothing before or after the occurrences of the picture has to be considered, and I like that. The pictures are inspired by film, but they don’t follow its narrative conventions.

Did the Stills influence your newer work? They have the same sort of drama, but much more subtle.

Yeah, they certainly did. While Stills was a lot of fun to make, and good practise too, in hindsight the result just feels too kitschy for me to take seriously. I’m still happy with a lot of the images from that series, but I feel as though I could do better. At the moment, I prefer the more understated aesthetic of my newer images, but they’re not quite at the same technical level yet.

Tell us about the shots of light - light and shadow along the wall. They’re beautifully ghostly and abstract! Especially with the shadowed bars of black.

Those are probably the only pictures in this set that actually utilise natural light. I love natural light, it has a dirty, filtered look that’s very hard to replicate. I think Todd Hido (check out his interiors) is probably the master of doing pictures like these, the use of light in his work is superb.

The color is amazing in the Cabin Fever pictures - can you tell us about the lighting decisions?

I made these pictures during the school holidays, and since there was no school there were no lights to borrow from school either. With Stills, I’d worked with strobes, but without access to those I had to improvise. Since Stills was displayed using rear-projected slides, I had abundance of projectors lying around, which I figured could be used as a cumbersome alternative to hot lights. The saturated light in the Cabin Fever pictures is provided by projectors projecting the slides that I used to display Stills. If you look closely, it’s possible to pick which blurred out light sources in Cabin Fever match up with the original images from Stills.

What’s the process behind the Permanent Error series?

I don’t remember much of it, but it mostly entailed opening TIFF and BMP files in Notepad and having my way with them. Because I have no knowledge of all that technical stuff, it was really just trial and error until I got a result I liked.

Can you talk about the concept behind this series?

I started being interested in these ‘broken’ sorts of digital images when my Adobe Bridge thumbnails became corrupt. After the initial panic that my hard-drive was broken, I noticed how interesting these thumbnails looked. They seemed to be the digital equivalent of derelict homes, misused until their functionality has nullified and they’re left as purely aesthetic objects. However, I think the final pictures lost their beauty due to the fact that I consciously destroyed them, that’s why I never continued doing this sort of thing.

The photographic process is always much more of a mystery to me than painting or drawing - how many photos do you take that don’t make the final cut - what about an image strikes you, and when do you decide to snap? What do you look for in a final grouping of images?

Over the last year or so, I’ve moved away from the ‘snap’ and become more interested in constructing my own pictures. There’s only so much to photograph in a town like the one I lived near, and I’m sure I’ve photographed every slightly notable thing it had to offer. I’m a big believer in the beauty of the banal, but it became stifling. In order to sustain my interest in photography, I had to manipulate and invent my own environments to make pictures that I could still find fulfilling.

As for how many photos make the final cut, I changed my workflow a bit when I began Stills. I now make a study (e.g. this in preparation for this, or this in preparation for this) of what I think I want, then I figure out how I can make it better or more engaging. I’ve noticed this generally involves making the image seem ‘bigger’ and more simplistic.

When I’m working towards a series, I’m very cautious that each picture also functions as an individual work, that it can stand alone without other images as a crutch. Photography is unique in the way that the default presentation for any given work is as a part of a series. I’m not entirely sure how i feel about this, but I think that it makes it easier to get away with substandard work. Of course, that default is changing too, with photographers like Jeff Wall who create pictures that stand alone, and are specifically designed to do so. These sorts of pictures can be read in the same way you’d usually reserve for a painting, and that’s my preferred way to look at things.

When are you entirely pleased with a photo?

I don’t know if I’ve ever made a picture I’ve been entirely pleased with. Anyway, I do notice that some pictures ‘click’, while some just don’t. It’s disheartening, because the ones that don’t work are usually the ones that I spend the most time setting up. Keeping it a simple might be a good thing. I’d say I’m happy with about 50% of my pictures, which is a pretty good average.

How did the Absence series develop?

As ripe for interpretation as they may seem, the pictures in Absence were a purely formal exercise. I got the idea years ago while I was making collages from magazines. After I’d cut out the picture I wanted, it was fascinating to see how the page with a hole interacted with the page behind it. I decided to replicate that effect digitally with my own pictures.

What about Dislocation?

Dislocation was great fun. From what I’ve noticed, a lot of people who live in the suburbs seem to take their environment/locale for granted, which is perfectly reasonable really. Anyway, I wanted to play with that idea, to manipulate that taken-for-granted, already-ingrained-in-memory environment and to see if anybody would actually notice any changes upon first glance, or at least without an extended period of viewing. It turns out most, maybe 3/4 people, don’t notice anything odd at all.

What are your thoughts on the suburban landscape? What’s your favorite kind of landscape to shoot?

I find suburbia more inspiring than anywhere else. Having lived in the country I think my interest stems from a sense of novelty. Photographing the suburbs seems more voyeuristic doing the same in the city (and obviously the country) because people expect more privacy. In the suburbs people they also tend to personalise their surroundings more, which adds a unique quality to them that you rarely see in the city. Glenn Sloggett is a Australian photographer who I think does an excellent job of documenting the type of suburban environments that I enjoy exploring.

What are you inspired by recently?

I’m can’t remember how I found Shawn Bradford, but the stuff he’s been doing lately is excellent. I’m not really sure what you’d call it, I see it as a odd sort of performance photography. He’s very prolific, there’s constantly new and inspiring work on his blog.

If I had any money to spare I’d probably spend it on one of Brad Troemel’s ‘sculptures.’ I find his shrinkwrapped collections of objects morbidly fascinating.

As far as ‘big name’ artists go, I’ve always loved Bill Henson and Jeff Wall. They make the sort of pictures that I’d love to make one day. Coincidentally, they both have works in the NGV at the moment, so I’ve been poring over them whenever I get the chance. I think it’s special to come across photographers who make work that could never be done justice in reproduction.

What are you working on now?

Nothing! Over the last few days I’ve been moving into my new apartment in Melbourne and I’ll be starting uni in a few weeks. It’s an odd sort of period for making pictures. I’m not sure how I’ll cope without my backyard to run around in, but I guess I’ll just have to see.

Yesterday was Piet Mondrian’s birthday! Happy Birthday,...

openlabmagazine — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 11:30:00 -0500

Yesterday was Piet Mondrian’s birthday! Happy Birthday, Piet!

“Mondrian, and indeed all the leading artists of our time, speak of the Modern Movement as a process of liberation, a gradual freeing of the human spirit from ‘the oppression of the subject.’ Impressionism had begun to emphasize the subjective factor in representation, but gradually it was realized that representation itself was the oppressive burden, and that if art could be freed from this burden, then the plastic elements, planes and volumes, could be used as a dynamic mode of expression, as a means to bring itself towards unity, which for Mondrian was the reality to be achieved. The Cubists were the first artists to advance a principle of unity independent of representation, but they did not take the final step. ’Gradually,’ says Mondrian, ‘I became aware that Cubism did not accept the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not developing abstraction towards its ultimate goal, the expression of pure reality. In its essential expression, pure plastics is unconditioned by subjective feeling and expression. It took me a long time to discover that particularity of form and natural colour evoke subjective states of feelings, which obscure pure reality. The appearance of natural form changes, but reality remains constant. To create pure reality plastically, it is necessary to reduce natural forms to the constant elements of form and natural colour to primary colour. Reality, Mondrian concluded, could be expressed only through the equilibrium of dynamic movement of form and colour…”

Herbert Read, The Forms of Things Unknown: Essays towards an Aesthetic Philosophy, 1963

Eleni Giorgos Did A Bower Built in Your Honor come before...

openlabmagazine — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 11:59:00 -0500

Systems of Classification

A Bower Built in Your Honor

Suburban Typologies

Systems of Classification

The Migrant Library

Systems of Classification

Suburban Typologies

Suburban Typologies

Systems of Classification

Systems of Classification

Eleni Giorgos

Did A Bower Built in Your Honor come before Systems of Classification?

Yes, it actually did. Bower birds are really beautiful animals that attract mates by collecting brightly colored natural objects around them, and I was completely inspired by their behavior after I watched it on a nature documentary. That happened to coincide with a pretty complicated relationship I was in at the time, and I would just get so anxious about it that the only thing I could do to calm me down was to organize the things around me. I was feeling a real loss of control at that time, and A Bower… was my way of being able to control something else, however small it was.

Was it an easy and natural transition?

I was working on a relatively small scale with Bower, and really not venturing far to find the objects I was working with. It felt like a very natural transition to make that sort of work with a little more purpose, which is how Systems of Classification was born.

How did Systems of Classification develop? How did you choose your environments?

I was just learning to use a 4x5 camera, and seeking out environments where I could really fiddle around with the camera without being bothered by other people. I started photographing landscapes in a park in Baltimore, Druid Hill Park, and really loved exploring the grounds. I was collecting little pieces of the landscape for fun, but bringing the pieces home felt weird, and I still had a lot of ideas left in my head after Bower. That’s when I decided to start creating my own landscapes by arranging the organic materials I had around me. All of the images were taken in a handful of parks. For a time, I tried branching out into beach landscapes at my parent’s house on Long Island, but they just felt too disjointed from the other work. And I got a lot of sand in my tripod…

You mention that your work deals primarily with three central themes: the permanence of place, the psychology of organization, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Do you have personal experience with OCD? I know several artists who flirt with its symptoms, myself included - we seem to have a thing for multiples. I see them as sets or “grids” that can be nearly infinitely arranged and re-arranged to represent potential organizational structures. Was this the primary theme behind Built in Your Honor and Systems?

I’ve been asked by countless people if I have OCD, and it’s a pretty understandable question. I know I have a lot of tendencies similar to an individual with OCD, but I definitely don’t have the full blown disorder. I feel like it impacts my life in a positive way, whereas people who actually have OCD are completely crippled by their disease. It helps me to be super detail-oriented and organized, but I’m also able to let imperfections go. It was definitely a huge theme behind both those bodies of work. When I started with Systems, my teacher had to tell me to create rules. I was sort of just collecting whatever I wanted at first, arranging it however I wanted. He helped me to further structure my practice and give myself time limits on each piece, that way I wasn’t obsessing over how much more I could have done, or how much better it could have been.

What can you teach us about personality, psychology, and various compulsions for organization?

I feel like I’m still asking too many questions about it to be any sort of teacher on the subject. Hopefully, my work will inspire some questions from the viewer, and they can start to teach themselves about where their opinions lie.

Do you have a highly structured system for the practice of your art making?

Most times, yes. I find it hard to be very involved in the studio without a major plan of action. A lot of the time, I’m not actively making work, and I’m just mulling over ideas in my head, trying to think of a way to execute them. Once I’ve considered all the possibilities and I’m able to start physically working on a piece, I’m very methodical about the process.

What are your favorite subjects and topics of research?

I have always loved puzzles, and I’m starting to see how that’s a huge influence on my work. I think of puzzle as a very broad term- jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, even mystery novels or TV…all of these are things I’ve loved since I was very young, and it makes sense that I’ve worked with pieces or parts of a whole in my work. I am also a huge map lover- a lot of the blank books I bind are covered in vintage atlas maps, and I love the history of cartography and the map collectors. Come to think of it, I love all collectors. I just finished reading Maphead, by Ken Jennings, and that has provided a lot of fuel for future artwork.

How did you become interested in book arts? Are you a book lover?

When I was in school at MICA, I remember seeing a friend bring home the books she was making in class and being incredibly jealous. Even though I saw no practical way it would apply to the work I was making at the time, I signed up for a class. I was absolutely hooked after the first day- it’s a very methodical process that can involve a lot of math and exactitude- and that fit rather well with my personality. I really love reading as well, and even though I love the public library, I feel a real need to have my own personal collection of books, which I have been slowly adding to. I’ve never given into e-readers or even online journals- I still love the weight and feel of a book or magazine in my hands. Taking book arts classes also got me into the process of hand papermaking, so I’ve come to have a real appreciation for the physicality of books & paper.

Tell us about The Migrant Library.

The Migrant Library is a product of a long summer of travel I did in 2011. I interned at a paper mill in Minneapolis, took a paper & book making class in Italy, and was up and down the East Coast visiting friends. By the end of that time, I had a huge collection of these beautiful handmade papers and handbound books in my suitcase, and I decided I really needed to do something to make the experience of learning how to do all these things cohesive. Each book in the Migrant Library is a record of both my traveling and of the knowledge I gained in whatever location I was in at that time.

Can you talk about Suburban Typologies?

Suburban Typologies started out as a very different idea. I wanted to continue my work revolving around the home, so I began by creating scenes with a combination of paper sculpture and other props. But they felt too manufactured, and instead of being easier to relate to, they felt too specific. I decided to go out and photograph real houses, so that they were a bit more relatable. The work is a combination of two different kinds of scenes though. In the typology images, I photographed all of the same objects, like light posts or shaped shrubbery, that I could find on one suburban block, and displayed them together. In the works with multiple objects in them, I chose a single house to photograph, and extracted select pieces of the house, leaving them in the exact spot where they originally sat.

What was the experience of working with so many small and detailed individual parts, but without a Whole?

I think it’s in my nature to love working like that, though I can see how other people would be totally frustrated by it. I try not to shroud my work in really complicated concepts, but I still want the viewer to have to fill the artwork in their own perceptions. I like to work with individual parts so that they can imply the whole, like the physical structure of a house implied in Suburban Typologies.

What, to you, is the definition of Home?

That’s such a difficult question, given that definitions are usually only a sentence long. At this point in my work, I’d say that Home is the feeling of being connected to a physical or emotional state, rather than being connected to the material things that surround you.

What are you working on and thinking about now?

I just finished a really large and time consuming commissioned project to make handmade paper wedding invitations. That has been occupying my hands for the past couple of months, but I’ve been planning for a couple of new projects. I’ve been working with the nagging feelings that seem to overwhelm me at times, and turning them into the very physical labor of handmaking sheets of paper and then pinpricking lots of tiny holes all over them. I’m excited to see where the work will go and what final form the pieces will take.

What upcoming shows and projects do we have to look forward to?

Well, a lot of the shows I was in have just come down- the most recent show was a handmade paper triennial shown at Rutgers and the Corcoran. Unfortunately, the reality of life after art school means my time is mostly consumed by my day jobs. I’m trying to focus on creating a new body or even multiple bodies of work before I start showing again. Soon, though!

Claire Falkenberg Were the Clouds prints your first...

openlabmagazine — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 10:15:00 -0500

Snow, 2011 oil on collaged C-print, 49 x 54"

Winter, 2011 oil on collaged C-print, 56 x 56"

Dusk, 2011 oil on collaged C-print, 49 x 57"

Installation, Pickering Nuclear Generating Station, Canada, 2000

untitled (heart-land, 3), 2000 mixed media on C-print, 30 x 30"

Bloom, 2012 oil on collaged C-print, 81 x 69"

Pine, 2011 oil on collaged C-print, 71 x 73"

Moon, 2010 oil on C-print, 30 x 30"

Conifers, 2011 oil on collaged C-print, 61 x 61"

Claire Falkenberg

Were the Clouds prints your first experimentations with oil and oil stain on digital medium?

No part of my work is digital - I have never actually made a digital print. I use a 35mm point and shoot Yashica T4 and make colour prints in a darkroom. I started experimenting with photography combined with other mediums when I was in art school in the mid-90s. At times it is obvious what has been added, and other times quite subtle, but almost always I touch the photos.

Was there a particular moment where you realized the potential for color manipulation using this sort of technique?

I initially used paint and other mediums as a sort of physical photoshop, painting things out, painting things in, looking to create an altered yet believable super-reality. At some point I let go of the idea of the paint and the photo coming together as one hybrid medium. More recently I have wanted the paint to be its own thing. Both dense and vaporous, the painted forms act as ephemeral bodies within the photographs as well as opaque objects on top, oscillating between the mundane and the metaphysical, real and unreal, familiar and unknown. Within this back and forth, this continual shifting, there is a balance point that I am looking for.

What is the process for the oil on C-print works? Are there multiple layers involved?

I photograph landscapes. I take snapshots of trees, garbage, snow piles etc. Often I don’t look through the viewfinder, mostly just pointing the camera at the thing I am looking at. I get the film processed and 4x6 prints made and from these small photos I decide which ones to make bigger. In the darkroom, I aim for the print to be colour balanced (except for the black and white negatives I print on colour paper) but I don’t labor over making perfect prints, taking this step as another opportunity for something unplanned, unpredictable to happen. In the more recent works, I have been collaging the prints together to make giant, odd shaped images- night, day, winter, summer, right side up, upside down. I work on my studio floor and pour thinned out oil paint onto the photo collages, moving the paint over the surface by lifting the paper rather then using brushes. It can be quite a long process finding the shape, finding the colour. There are many layers of paint. Often I pull the collaged pieces apart, changing the photos, and then go back in with paint until the image makes sense. At the end of all of this, there is a real physical quality to the work; the paint, the seams, the repaired rips, and the inevitable dents and dings to the photo paper.

Can you tell us about Dusk? What is the setting for this piece? It looks galactic and urban at the same time.

The photos in Dusk I took around my neighborhood in Brooklyn- a garbage mound on the bottom half, and on top collaged upside down is a mostly painted over dirty snow pile at the edge of a sidewalk. Over the whole thing floats a giant grey-black blob cloud shape.

And what about Snow?

In Snow there is summer and winter colliding into each other, green leaves on trees upside down and a winter snow pile on the bottom.

Tell us about your new series - Floating.

The new pieces are large and dominant- standing in front of the work is a physical experience. I want the images to break apart, expand, and feel less like a single environment and more like a culmination of experiences, barely held together by a giant, blob-like form.

How did the Pickering nuclear generating station installation come about?

I made the work after I graduated from art school. I had moved back home and was living with my parents in the country outside of Pickering, Ontario. A friend of the family was part of an arts organization that was trying to get local artists into all kinds of alternative spaces and one of them was the Pickering nuclear plant’s visitor center. When I was approached, I initially declined, not wanting to be involved with a nuclear plant, but after a long conversation with my brother about audience and communication, my perspective shifted. I ended up showing a series of large photo-painting landscapes in the visitor center, and then over the next year, with a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, I produced a body of work specifically for installation inside the plant. The photos were all from the area, taken within a close proximity to the plant. The installation was on view for 8 months.

What was the response to the work displayed?

It went over well. The head of public affairs at the time was incredible and the whole thing happened because he was willing to take a risk.

What artists are you inspired by and looking at these days, from antiquity to contemporary?

I really like Vincent Fecteau, Mark Schubert, Mary Schwab’s cast and painted sculptures, Yunmee Kyong’s collaged print work. I am continually inspired by my father Edward Falkenberg. He is my biggest influence and greatest supporter.

Happy Birthday, Oskar Kokoschka!

openlabmagazine — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 10:05:21 -0500

Oskar Kokoschka's The Dreaming Youths, 1908

Dedicated to Gustav Klimt, In Admiration

Sleeping Woman (Schlafende Frau) (title page)

The Sailboat (Das Segelschiff)

The Sailors Are Calling (Die Schiffer rufen)

The Distant Island (Die ferne Insel)

Couples in Conversation (Paare im Gespräch)

The Sleepers (Die Schlafenden)

The Awakening (Die Erwachenden)

The Girl Li and I (Das Mädchen Li und ich)

Happy Birthday, Oskar Kokoschka!

Hans Richter Rhythmus 23 1923

openlabmagazine — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:44:00 -0500

Hans Richter

Rhythmus 23

1923

Anemic Cinema Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp) 1926 soundtrack...

openlabmagazine — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 10:28:00 -0500

Anemic Cinema

Rrose Sélavy (Marcel Duchamp)

1926

soundtrack by Donald Sosin

fortrevoryoung: Trevor Young, Dark Tail, 50”x50”, oil on...

openlabmagazine — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 18:33:00 -0500

fortrevoryoung:

Trevor Young, Dark Tail, 50”x50”, oil on canvas, 2012

Open Lab S/S 2013 was published this week!

Check out interviews with Trevor Young, Kevin Sloan, Kevin Francis Gray, Nathalie Miebech, Judy Fox, and Melanie Bonajo.

Available for preview and purchase here.