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. Stamp -X, Stamp -Y consists of a careful collage of uneven scraps of paper. On their versos, these fragments of blue, white, and manila papers hold the artist’s childhood stamp collection; turned as they are, these shards of envelope become planes of colors that Houck manipulates in a vaguely grid-like fashion.
An MFA graduate from UCLA, John Houck works primarily in the medium of photography and specializes in still-life vignettes. To make his works, Houck arranges an object on a sheet of paper, photographs, and prints it, then places that print back into a new composition, repeating the process again and again until arriving at an aggregate image. The layers appear to be digitally altered, but he does not utilize any postproduction interventions. But Houck is not a purist by any means; he is significantly influenced by his professional experience as a computer programmer, and his artistic methodology mirrors a kind of algorithmic code. By referencing a conventional artistic genre through an iterative and contingent process, Houck offers up photography as a mode of thought.
Untitled #242 is part of Houck’s Aggregates Series, which uses digital tools to manipulate chosen sets and pairs of colors, creating colorful index sheets, bathed in colors and lines...
Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films...
The video Swimming in rivers of Glue is composed of various images of nature, exploring the themes of exploration of space and its colonization...
Human Quarry is a large work on paper by Leslie Shows made of a combination of acrylic paint and collage...
Poised with tool in hand, Jeffry Mitchell’s The Carpenter (2012) reaches forward, toward his workbench...
LAB (2013) conjures the body as the trace of a sooty hand appears, spectrally, on a crumpled paper towel...
Continuing Oursler’s broader exploration of the moving image, Absentia is one of three micro-scale installations that incorporate small objects and tiny video projections within a miniature active proscenium...
Though the title might suggest an Adonis, Jeffry Mitchell’s The Swimmer (2012) is a squat, jolly man with a protuberant belly...
Rojas’s two pieces in the Kadist Collection— Untitled (four-legged…) and Untitled (Bird’s Eyes) —are representative of her pictorial style which uses bold colorful blocks of paint and female and animal characters...
It may take a minute to recognize the background of New Fall Lineup – the colors are tweaked into a world of cartoon and candy, and it is covered by leaping energetic figures and flying squirrels...
The Last Post was inspired by Sikander’s ongoing interest in the colonial history of the sub-continent and the British opium trade with China...
In Captain X , Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner, is limply draped over a large boulder in what looks like a hostile alien environment...
Ongoing Time Stabbed with a Dagger was Farmer’s first kinetic sculpture that added a cinematic character to an “ever-reconfiguring play presented in real time.” The assembly of various objects and props on top of a large platform constitutes not only a work, but, to a certain extent, a show in itself...
Choke documents the artist filming a wrestler “choking out” his teammate until he is unconscious...
Black Curl (CMY/Five Magnet: Irvine, California, March 25, 2010, Fujicolor Cyrstal Archive Super Type C, EM No 165-021, 05910) is a visually compelling photogram...
Central Station, Alignment, and Argument are “situation portraits” that present whimsical characters within distorted and troubling worlds...
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...
Conrad Ruiz loves to paint subjects related to the “boy zone”: video games, weapons, games, science fiction, fantasy, and special effects...
Although seemingly unadorned at first glance, Yang Xinguang’s sculptural work Phenomena (2009) employs minimalist aesthetics as a means of gesturing towards the various commonalities and conflicts between civilization and the natural world...