Conrad Ruiz loves to paint subjects related to the “boy zone”: video games, weapons, games, science fiction, fantasy, and special effects. He also often works at a very large scale to emphasize a connection to the tradition of history painting. Blockbuster (2011) was, at the time of its creation, the largest watercolor painting he had ever made. This commissioned piece combines his bombastic and playful style with a tribute to San Francisco’s thriving arts and culture scenes. It is a lively depiction of famous landmarks in the city, and a somewhat fanciful and lighthearted recapitulation of how a potential earthquake would shake things up in the ultimate “boy zone.”
Conrad Ruiz makes watercolor paintings of fantastic scenes. Bursts of color and energy sit behind flying figures and animals. Images become painted patterns, as rows of repeated objects and buildings’ striations verge on geometric abstraction. Ruiz’ identifies his work with the “ultimate boy zone”, and the connection is clear. His paintings are populated by explosions, giant sharks, and athletes. Ruiz creates his painting carefully, tracing projected images and carefully following lines. The semi-transparency of his watercolor fills gives his otherwise firm images a shimmering quality, contributing to their overall impression of dreamy unreality.
In Monster (1996-97), the artist’s face becomes grotesque through the application of strips of transparent adhesive tape, typical of Gordon’s performance-based films that often depict his own body in action...
Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films...
Central Station, Alignment, and Sumo are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
Gabriel Orozco often documents found situations in the natural or urban landscape...
John Houck’s multi-layered photographic compositions immortalize nostalgic objects from the artist’s childhood, manipulated in the studio and in post-production into unreal still-life arrangements...
Vallance’s Rocket is a vibrant picture in which masses of color and collage coalesce into a central vehicle, yet the whole surface seems lit with the roar of space travel...
Though the title might suggest an Adonis, Jeffry Mitchell’s The Swimmer (2012) is a squat, jolly man with a protuberant belly...
Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...
Long Long Live (2013) takes the viewer to the setting of the Oasis Villa on Green Island, once a reform and re-education prison to house political prisoners during Taiwan’s martial law period...
Central Station, Alignment, and Argument are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
Central Station, Alignment, and Sumo are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
The photographic quality of the film Baobab is not only the result of a highly sophisticated use of black and white and light, but also of the way in which each tree is characterized as an individual, creating in the end a series of portraits...
In her recent work, Biernoff is interested in investigating fictions and fantasies embedded in the remnants of consumer culture (for example magazines) or through ephemera such as postcards and old photographs...
The artist writes about her work Borrando la Frontera, a performance done at Tijuana/San Diego border: “I visually erased the train rails that serve as a divider between the US and Mexico...
Poised with tool in hand, Jeffry Mitchell’s The Carpenter (2012) reaches forward, toward his workbench...
Baby Shoes, Never Worn is part of photographer John Houck’s series of restrained still-life photographs capturing objects from his childhood...
Conceived as a large-scale mural-like projection, Color of History, Sweating Rocks is a neo-futuristic, hybrid film that combines cinematic language, collage, animation, and inventive forms to highlight the plight of the peoples of the Sahara—and refugees in general—who have been displaced by oil-mining....