art shows & news

Works That Disturb is an exhibition that continues through March 27th, 2010 at the Alphonse Berber in Berkeley, California. It certainly features some disturbing, wonderful things.

Annie McKnight’s Untitled features bracelets made of… taxidermied mice.

“Kim Ye’s living sculptures connect artist and model, work and world in a collaborative act of animation. Crafted of silk, nylon, latex, wire and wood, Ye’s costume-like constructions appear in two incarnations during the exhibition. At the opening reception, live models step into the sculptures and confront spectators as artifacts from a post-human game of Pygmalion and Galatea. Afterward, like so many snake-skins, the works are displayed without their human centers - a metamorphosis that leaves them “unpeopled” and alterior. Like Yves Klein’s anthropometries or the plaster ghosts of Pompeii’s last inhabitants, Ye’s constructions effect an anthropomorphic apophasis; they invoke the human body only to affirm its impermanence.” - Alphonse Berber Press Release

Other works include Angie Crabtree’s Crucified Comfort, which shows Jesus with um, his penis out, and photographs on death and dying.

Langdon Graves gentle, somewhat off-kilter drawings.

Louie Cordero’s Having Reached Climax at Age 28 … I am a zombie — made of styrofoam, acrylics, and cement, 2006.

Amborama on Flickr.

Michael Kenna’s Quixote’s Giants, Study 2, 1998

Paul Ulrich

Alright, Chinese New Year has come and gone, but on display now at the Munky King are some Chinese New Year-inspired works, including this one, by Martin Hsu!

About it, Hsu says:

“I wanted to show that Tigers bring kids infinite happiness and vice versa.”

Guess that’s what the outstretched arms are for!

Artist Mark Mulroney can be extremely crude, with fluids and body parts galore, but that only serves to add character to his fascinating murals and sketchbook illustrations. This particular series of murals below interests me because of their atypical use of shape and space. It’s extremely uncomfortable, but that’s what makes it work. (His website is also very uncomfortable. I’m not sure if it works, but I guess it does, since I’m linking it. Here.)

Jonathan Zawada takes some age-old surrealistic influences and adds some mythical creature all up in them.

Fenk’s photography certainly captures the vibrance of life…

Heather Jansch’s horse might look like the Bodies Exhibit gone animal, but it’s actually made out of driftwood! Thank god!

One of Ray Caesar’s common characters seems to give up the ghost in a glowing, gold leaf-lined kind-of-way.

Huskmelk goes nuts with designs for Michael Jackson-related prints, and this might be our favorite from them.

I dare say this might be bit intense of a graphic to hang on your wall, but that doesn’t mean this Blik Graphic by Hannah Stouffer, entitled Darkest Night, doesn’t really, really rock. It’s almost Escher-ish in its lines… minus the skulls and shadows, of course. Buy that design and more here. (And below is a slightly more commonly appropriate piece available by Stouffer!)

We’re going to save you from all of the Valentine’s Day hearts we just posted, and simply go with some good, neutral, non-love-related art.

Lissy Elle’s most recent works seem to combine fantasy stories and fashion to study the contours of the human body in a fanciful setting. But she’s not all pretty things, either; her older pieces can get quite raw. It seems that she is on a photo-a-day 365-day photo journey, and it’s astounding how far she’s come in that time period. You can go through her Flickr to see the progression.

Below is another recent piece of hers, of which she says:

“My Sunday school teacher once told me when I was little, that she always pictured God as just hands, holding the universe in his palms.”

Stuntkid throws female illustrations into clean, vibrant worlds with gentle linework. Mmm.

Fabulous wood-burning art on paddles, by Onionize.

This is an amazing show poster by Charles Bergquist. It is highly, highly recommended that you visit his website and view his other print works as well as videos of projections he has made.

Photography by Alex MacLean, who takes truly astounding aerial photographs which make us realize we truly underestimate how much we know about our world.

An image by Aurel Schmidt, who doesn’t seem to currently have a website — and frankly, she doesn’t really need one. She’s shown at the Saatchi Gallery, has been featured on Fecal Face, and was at ArtBasel.

Ah, Valentine’s Day — a dreaded holiday for some and the ultimate heart-warming day for others. In either situation, though, viewing some diverse art is a good remedy. Here are some good shows taking place on Friday the 12th, in Portland and Seattle. They’re group shows that show that it’s not just about selfish relationships on Valentine’s Day! Community love’s worth something, too.

SEATTLE - ARTIFAKT SHOW

Yet another event from Seattle art collective Artifakt

Damager by Grym.

Terror by BeeryMethod.

Lutjanus campechanus by Crystal Barbre. Oil on canvas. 42″ x 72″.

Matroyshka Dolls by iamintricate.

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PORTLAND - LOVE SHOW

For the fifth year in a row, the Portland Love Show will be taking place this year at the Olympic Mills Commerce Center (107 SE Washington St.) from 7:00pm to 12:00am.

Here are just some of our favorite pieces showing this year.

Inevitable by BMAC. 16″ x 20″, $100.

Love and Lust Contemplating Their Predicament by Chuck E. Bloom. 14″ x 18″, $950.

Tied by Kindra Crick. Encaustic mixed media. 10″ x 8″, $180.

last of the famous international playboys by John Gajowski. 17″ x 22″, $250.

A diptych by Levan Kakabadze

Hydrogen, by Schühle Lewis, which Lewis says is good for Physicists and Scientists and bad for Creationists. The image is based off of a quote by Edward R. Harrison, which can be found here.

Artist Morgan Blair is all about bright colors and abstract shapes. Her website is dizzying, but a lot of her pieces intersperse geometric shapes with well-drawn figures, and it is these that are most interesting. See below.

Recoat’s Good Wives And Warriors.

Caitlin Hackett combines beauty with decay in this amazingly illustrated Vulpes Masquerade.

Digital collage by Katty Bouthier that is simple but otherworldly.

A drawing by Chris Scarborough that turns this deer into quite a mound of shapes.

There’s a lot of crap on Tumblr. Here’s our weekly update that sorts through the crap to bring you the best of the week. (Click here to add us on Tumblr.) This is a big week for photography, so hopefully you like that!

There was a time when 3-dimensional-crafted shapes were all the rage on the internet and gracing the covers of electronic albums everywhere. For large part, that trend died down due to the fact that the shapes started looking much too artificial; they were unsophisticated polygons with no real textures or moods other than “metallic” or “clean.” Paul Lee has managed to take these polygons, manipulating them in a way that keeps them current.

Photography by Swedish multi-disciplinary artist John Falk Rodén, who runs his own creative company with his partner, Andreas Lewandowski, called Ajja.

Minimalistic photography that will take your breath away, by Thorsten Konrad. Oceans are frequently calming, but this takes that almost to another level.

Buttonmooon weeds through vintage cameras and film to create images like this that are basked in saturated colors. This could quite possibly be the album cover for the latest indie singer-songwriter.

Al Magnus combines photography with manipulation to create that walk the line between fantasy and reality. (And maybe gives a heads up to Wizard Of Oz?)

Gunta Stölzl, German artist. This is a wall hanging from 1931; she was ages ahead of the current hipster trends in textile art and patterning. Ages!