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

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.

Head over to the Fulcrum Gallery in Tacoma tonight for the closing night of Monument, Troy Gua’s current amazing show exploring the effects of war on, well, the human body. There’s also an artist talk going on tonight, which should be interesting. Reception starts at 6:00pm, but though it’s the closing reception, closing night isn’t until March 13th! Be confused!

Gua says:

“This installation is my memorial to loss. I’m not a soldier I have never seen war. How do we reconcile this experience? How do we grieve loss?”

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.)

Rodney Smith’s elegant vintage photographs. He also has 3,000 pieces of stock photography, browsable by keyword! Amazing!

Mario Wagner fuses grungy textures with collage. This piece is Control the World for Sony Playstation / Vice Magazine.

Polish painter Jacek Yerka’s fantasy worlds are hazardly beautiful.

Jonathan Calugi’s style seems to give illustrations typographic treatment.

David O’Brien’s geometric explosions. What’s even better: the explosion is not just mere geometric shapes; it’s fucking little people! Actually, they’re called memes, and they represent singular ideas, symbols, or practices. You can read more about them on O’Brien’s website here. But see below for details:

Mutant Hands‘ Pea Stag. Sure, animals are played out, but at least this is a little different from your typical animal drawing.

Naoko Ito’s Ubiquitous takes the oft-used theme of urban nature and explores it in a new, spatially-challenging way.

Kathy Liao’s Making Face - Juicy Goodbye (with love) is a huge mixed media on canvas piece, at 70″ x 60″! Holy!

Andre Meca’s Explosions Of Colors And Shapes is pretty much exactly that.

In a couple days, street artist Aakash Nihalani will be featuring his tape art in an enclosed space (The Carmichael Gallery).

Nihalani will be creating site-specific installations using brightly-colored tape, proving that simple geometric 2-dimensional shapes, when placed into 3-dimensional settings, can challenge viewers’ perceptions and spatial understandings.

Below are examples of his non-gallery work:

BUT.
As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, the show will also feature works from Mark Jenkins. Yes, MARK JENKINS!

“Who the hell is Mark Jenkins?” you ask? Maybe some photos will enlighten you, because chances are, you’ve seen his works on the internet a million times but never knew the name that went with them. Now, you do.

And now you know why you need to go if you live in the Los Angeles area. You’d be a fool not to.

These images by Gretchen Bennett, now on display at the Howard House in Seattle through the end of the month, definitely demand a double-take. For starters, ghosts of images are buried deep inside what initially looks like just a swamp of colors, but closer inspection reveals that the swamp is actually composed of Prismacolor colored pencils, making the images all the much more compelling. Colored pencils are already an underplayed medium these days, but to use them in such a manner is pretty much astounding.

Be

Ghost Dog

Bennett also has more installation and street art-oriented works, which you can see on her website.

Be scared, oh yes, be scared… or be really, really impressed. This grotesquely dizzying installation by UK-based artist is really made of piles and piles of pigeon feathers, felt, glue, and polystyrene. Looking at it might give you the feeling of practically suffocating on the feathers, sure, but the amount of time and attention to detail must have made Sluice a humongous undertaking.

In any case, this is just the beginning, too. Kate MccGwire has worked with feathers for years, and she is an expert at site-specific installations. Visit her website for more.

 
 
Street art pioneer Dan Witz now has a show on display at Carmichael Gallery that might just get you respecting street art if you’re a skeptic.
 
 
Inspired by Amsterdam’s Red Light District, the works feature human and animal faces and figures trapped behind dirty, shoddily painted glass panes and window frames, looking out as if trapped or curious about the world outside.
 
 
Dark Doings, which will feature recreations of pieces Witz has done on the streets of Brooklyn and elsewhere, shows just how cleverly overlooked doors and windows in alleyways can be used.
 
 
www.carmichaelgallery.com
www.danwitzstreetart.com

Talk about an epic name for a show! One of my favorite galleries in Portland, Oregon, the Together Gallery, has an opening tonight for a show entitled The Mountains And Hills Will Burst Into Song. Featuring new works and installations by Anja Verdugo, Julianna Swaney, Rebecca Artemisa Urias, and Sarah McNeil, the show will be an all-female showcase of artwork that would feel right at home in a woodsy children’s book. Expect delicately-drawn lines, largely muted colors, and a hefty portion of animal art.

A largely black-and-white drawing by Sarah McNeil (minus the hearty nipple!).

Rebecca Artemis Aurias’ wicked mountain, which she describes on her Flickr account, saying, “traveling with little peb to calm the wicked mountain spirits with the milksweet moths.”

Juliana Swaney’s Foxhat, drawing doesn’t mess around; it tells it like it is. It’s a fox hat.

www.togethergallery.com
ohmycavalier.blogspot.com
www.flickr.com/photos/applecheek/
sarahmcneil.blogspot.com