Blindseye Arranger (Max) (2013) features a greyscale arrangement of rudimentary shapes layered atop one another like a dense cluster of wood block prints, the juxtaposition of sharp lines and acute angles creating an abstracted field of rectangular and triangulated forms composed as if in a cubist landscape. As the video progresses, however, a disembodied hand begins to move these forms, animating a pictorial frame that was previously still. The hand – ostensibly the “arranger” of the works title – functions as a metonym of the artist’s hand, quite literally bringing a motionless work to life. The hand in Blindseye Arranger , though, also signals a shift towards the performative, functioning as a reminder that all works of art are created by a maker’s “hand” and, in such, are never fully separate from the context in which they are made. Bress’s gesture towards interdisciplinarity in his work, by extension, signals an important moment in which questions of medium-specificity give way to more trenchant inquiries into notions of authorship and creative process.
Although originally trained in filmmaking and animation, Brian Bress explores the influence of pictorial traditions on contemporary media-based practices. His single-shot videos utilize painterly effects such as geometric abstraction to create visual compositions that blur presumed boundaries between contemporary media-based work and more traditional disciplines such as sculpture and painting. His work is deliberately processed-based and his videos, by extension, explore how visual motifs “evolve” over time through as a viewer engages with a given object or image. Animated figures and actors – such as disembodied hands – disrupt these seemingly still frames, repositioning these works in the context of film while also suggesting the presence of the artist’s hand. Bress’s videos may seem overtly indebted to creative lineages, and his images frequently border on the surreal. But in gesturing towards past works, his videos signal the emergence of creative practices enabled through technological advancements while also offering a meditation on a durational aesthetics privileged in media-based work.
Untitled is a black-and-white photograph of a wave just before it breaks as seen from the distance of an overlook...
In the 1980’s, while browsing Parisian fleamarkets, Barbara Bloom stumbled into an anonymous watercolor (dating to around 1960) in one of Paris’ fleamarkets, probably a study made by an interior designer for a bedroom...
The voids in Baldessari’s painted photographs are simultaneously positive and negative spaces, both additive and subtractive...
This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...
Hill of Poisonous Trees (three men) (2008) exemplifies the artist’s signature photo-weaving technique, in which he collects diverse found photographs—portraits of anonymous people, stills from blockbuster films, or journalistic images—cuts them into strips, and weaves them into new composition...
For Untitled, Caesar encased recycled objects such as scraps of plywood, paper or cloth in resin and then cut and reassembled the pieces into abstract forms...
7-headed Lalandau Hat by Yee I-Lann is an intricately woven sculpture evoking the ceremonial headdress worn by Murut men in Borneo...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
Hill of Poisonous Trees (three men) (2008) exemplifies the artist’s signature photo-weaving technique, in which he collects diverse found photographs—portraits of anonymous people, stills from blockbuster films, or journalistic images—cuts them into strips, and weaves them into new composition...
For Untitled, Caesar encased recycled objects such as scraps of plywood, paper or cloth in resin and then cut and reassembled the pieces into abstract forms...
In Up All Night, Waiting for the Chelsea Hotel Magic to Spark My Creativity Mario García Torres constructs and documents a hypothetical scene, situating himself within a lineage of artists and creatives that used to congregate at the historic hotel...
The types of objects Feldmann is interested in collecting into serial photographic grids or artist’s books are often also found in three dimensional installations...
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This selection of photographs taken between 2014 and 2019 focus on Piotrowska’s long-term preoccupation with issues of domesticity and containment...
MUM , the acronym used to title a series of Rogan’s small interventions on found magazines, stands for “Magic Unity Might,” the name of a vintage trade magic publication...
While his works can function as abstract, they are very much rooted in physicality and the possibilities that are inherent in the materials themselves...
In his evocative Landscape Paintings, McMillian uses second-hand bedsheets, sourced from thrift shops, as his starting point...
Clarissa Tossin’s film Ch’u Mayaa responds to Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House (constructed 1919–21) in Los Angeles, an example of Mayan Revival architecture...
This still life falls apart, or rather floats apart as the composition is proved unstable and constantly morphing...
Defunct Mnemonics (2012) plays off woodworking traditions found in indigenous art in order to create a body of formally minimal objects that are both beautiful in their restraint and profoundly moving in their associations with the totemic...