Reeder’s works often start with language—and his Pasta Paintings are no different. After the phrase for the title came through his head, the artist set about trying to figure out how to make a mark with pasta. These paintings are the result, made using the pasta as something of a stencil, with the paint being applied after the noodles have been scattered on the painting’s blank surface. The serene, patterned surfaces that this process creates are at odds, somewhat, with the simplicity and the absurdity of their making.
Detroit-based artist Scott Reeder threads his multimedia works through with humor and a dry sense of irony. His output ranges widely, and includes sculpture, painting, and curatorial projects among other things. No matter his medium, there is always a certain acerbic wit to Reeder’s work—a wit that can be both blithe and slightly confrontational. It’s a sense of humor that, as an artist, he traces back to the visual puns of Duchamp, or to the simple, deadpan forms of John McCracken and Blinky Palermo. For Reeder, the punch line is often the practice of making art itself; he mines the absurdity of the artist’s life for works that speak both comically and poignantly, at times, to the creative process.
Federico Herrero’s energetic paintings reflect his experiences on the streets of his native San José, Costa Rica, and in the surrounding tropical landscape...
The small drawings that comprise Study from May Day March, Los Angeles 2010 (Immigration Reform Now) and We Are Immigrants Not Terrorists are based on photographs taken at a political rally in downtown Los Angeles in which thousands of individuals demonstrated for immigrants’ rights...
In 1977, as an already-established artist best known for his films, Bruce Conner began to photograph punk rock shows at Mabuhay Gardens, a San Francisco club and music venue...
#17 Pink is a photogram, a photographic image produced without the use of a camera...
Natasha Wheat’s Kerosene Triptych (2011) is composed of three images, one each from the digital files of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Field Museum tropical research archive...
Catherine Opie’s candid photograph Cathy (bed Self-portrait) (1987) shows the artist atop a bed wearing a negligee and a dildo; the latter is attached to a whip that she holds in her teeth...
Telescopic Pole is an adjustable telescopic pole that extends vertically from floor to ceiling and is held up by its own internal pressure...
This untitled work from 2012 is a print originally made as part of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art’s artist limited edition series...
Casa de la cabeza (2011) is a drawing of the words of the title, which translate literally into English as “house of the head.” Ortiz uses this humorous phrase to engage the idea of living in your head....
Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...
Ben Shaffer’s Ben Deroy (2007) is part performance, part self-portrait, and part spiritual vision...
Chris Johanson’s Untitled (Painting of a Man Leaving in Boat) (2010) pictures a canoe drifting toward an off-kilter horizon line, which demarcates the cobalt sea from the cerulean sky...