Adventuring and Art Linking

I am off to India shortly to spend two months doing research on Indian contemporary art. I thought I would take this as an opportunity to provide you with a few my favorite art websites and blogs.

Daily Serving:
http://www.dailyserving.com/

Indian Contemporary Art:
http://www.thisishowitshouldbe.blogspot.com/

Beautiful Decay:
http://www.beautifuldecay.com/

Art Fag City:
http://artfagcity.com/

ArtCal:
http://www.artcal.net/

Art and Architecture Guardian Blog:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/art/

Art Candy:
http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/art_candy/

Art Observed:
http://artobserved.com/

C-Monster:
http://c-monster.net/

Eclectic Cow:
http://vacascom.blogspot.com/

Super Touch:
http://www.supertouchart.com/

We Make Money Not Art:
http://www.supertouchart.com/

Whitehot Magazine of Contemporary Art (I write for them):
http://whitehotmagazine.com/

Art Daily:
http://www.artdaily.com/index.asp

ArtReview:
http://www.artreview.com/

The Art Newspaper:
http://www.theartnewspaper.com/

Ubu Web:
http://www.ubu.com/

Masala Chai:
http://masalachaionline.blogspot.com/

Brief Introduction: Shana and Robert Parkeharrison

I fell in love with the work of Shana and Robert Parkeharrison years ago and have kept an eye on them since I was in high school. I still get caught up in the mythology constructed in the works. The Parkeharrisons have created a character who wanders a barren earth attempting to take care of it. The photographs read as stills from a silent film as they are clearly part of a narrative. These pieces are stunning and haunting and the large format in which they are usually printed leads to them completely enveloping the viewer--physically and emotionally--in the world the artists creates.

Brief Introduction: Tara Donovan

I had a drink with Tara Donovan the other day and she was such an amazing and down to earth individual that I had to write about her today.

Donovan takes seemingly unremarkable everyday materials (buttons, pencils, styrofoam cups) and turns then into beautiful organic foams. Her sculptures appear to have grown rather than been built. Each pieces appears to be made out of the most precious of materials--an aesthetic she achieves through extended exploration of the objects she uses. Donovan will be showing at the ICA in Boston starting in October. It is sure to be a show you will not want to miss.

Brief Introduction: Dana Schutz

Dana Schutz creates fantastical scenes executed in bright colors and bold brush strokes. Her figures often appear to be melting, while blank eyes look off in different directions. Schutz's world is a place where a blood transfusion with a shark cures the plague, people eat themselves in order to continue to exist, and dogs can live without their heads--it is a sinister, yet stunning world.

Brief Introduction: Tsang Kin-Wah

Tsang Kin-Wah is the painter of stunning floral patterned wallpaper. At first glance, Kin-Wah's work appears to be nothing more than a good example of the imagery seen on the walls of Victorian palors, but a closer look provides the viewer with something different--suddenly patterns transform into words. "BUY$HIT/BUYART$/BUYTASTE/MEETCUNTS/GREEDYARTI$T FUCKINGSHOW" reads one piece, while another reads "ILOVEYOUHANDSOMEGUY/ILOVEYOURCREDITCARD/ILOVEYOURJOB/ILOVEYOURFUTURE". Things are not as sweet as they initially seem to be.

Taryn Simon: An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2006)

Photographer Taryn Simon's series An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2006) presents images of the fantastical. A cryogenic preservation unit, a braille edition of Playboy,and a marijuana research lab are all subjects in this series. There is something terrifying and beautiful about the unknown and Simson is a master at tapping into this.

More on Taryn Simon to come shortly.

Brief Introduction: Simon Edmondson

I first became acquainted with the work of Simon Edmondson about five years ago at Gallery Ditesheim in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, and his painterly post-apocalyptic interiors have occupied my dreams ever since. Edmondson's decaying libraries, salons, and studies appear to be inhabited by the ghosts of intellectuals.
These paintings read as both portrait and environment. The spaces carry such personality and individuality that they may be seen as human--each room has led a full life. On the other hand, the shear scale of each work is overwhelming and causes the viewer to be swallowed up by the world of the painting--the veiwer is not just looking at the painting, but is inside it. To truly experience an Edmondson painting you must completely surrender to the work and allow your thoughts to follow whole-heartly where the painting leads. The space you will enter is impossibly powerful.

Brief Introduction: Heather McGill

The work of Heather McGill melds together tattoo imagery, the world of Alice’s wonderland, and high Victorian society. Her beautiful laser cut paper pieces are impossibly delicate, yet they present the viewer with symbols that bear a high level of permanence in the collective psyche—smoke stacks speak to the irreversible destruction of our planet, while irons and watering cans remind us of idealized domesticity. McGill’s beautiful silhouettes are both reflection of childhood fantasy and memento mori.

Yinka Shonibare: The Gentleman’s Protest

In the contemporary art world, in order to be recognized all artists must present a very strong image of self. In the case of artists who do not belong to the white western boys club of the art world their identity is very much defined by their gender, race, or nationality. In order to secure a place in the consciousness of the contemporary art world they are forced to play into or play with the preconceptions that are placed upon them.

Yinka Shonibare’s work is a clever play on the identity that has been afforded to him. Despite the fact that he only shortly lived in Nigeria during his childhood and was born and schooled in England, Shonibare is presented as a Nigerian artist. While at school at the Bryam Shaw School of Art, Shonibare was informed that the German-expressionist inspired work that he was creating did not truly reflect himself for it was not “African” in appearance.[1] This caused the artist to explore what are signifiers of “African-ness” which led to him discovering Dutch Wax Print fabrics at a market in London in the early 1990’s. Dutch Wax Prints are seen as a sign of African pride, yet are fabricated in Europe and originally intended for sale in Indonesia. Shonibare’s fascination with this material lies in the fact that a colonial construct exists as a symbol of African authenticity. As Shonibare said in 1998, “African fabric, exotica if you like, is a colonial construction. To the Western eye this excessive patterning carries with it codes of African nationalism…a kind of modern African exoticism.”[2]

Shonibare plays with the identity afforded to him by exploring Victorian society through creating elaborate costumes of this period out of Dutch Wax Prints and photographic stories in which he takes on roles in Victorian society no general fulfilled by a black figure such as the archetypical dandy in Diary of a Victorian Dandy and Dorian Gray.His exploration of Victorian society and African authenticity provide criticism of colonialism and racism yet do so in a seductive manner. Topics that are difficult to address and generally painful to view are made beautiful and the violence is hidden. As Shonibare says, “I am here to protest, but I am going to do it like a gentleman.”[3]

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[1] Nancy Hynes and John Picton, “Yinka Shonibare” (African Arts 34.3 Autumn 2001) 61.

[2] Olu Oguibe, The Culture Game (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004) 42.

[3] Hugo Bongers, Yinka Shonibare: Double Dutch ( Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2004) 41.