Sculpture (Sculpture)

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. This technical rework allows for a clinical inspection of the material contents of the piece and the resulting slanted industrial monolith echoes minimalist sculpture, although with a different expressive texture. Indeed, Untitled can be seen as a contemporary pyramid with a painterly surface.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

After being cast, the resulting resin block used in JCA-25-SC was cut into thin slices obtaining a series of rectangular shapes that resemble ceramic tiles. Usually displayed in grid against the wall or in a corner, the viewer is able to follow the sequence of cross sections to visually recreate the work’s genesis. In this way, Caesar’s pieces embody an interesting x-ray or archaeology of the artistic process itself.

Photography (Photography)

Slow Decay (Girl with Phone)

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Although typically sold today as a novelty item for flower arrangements and interior decorating flourishes, cotton can also be seen as a proxy, through synecdoche, for US slavery. Dead Zone (4) by Aria Dean presents a preserved blossom of that trade’s primary cash crop, cotton, crystalized in a state of non-decay whilst encased under protective glass. Hidden in the base of the work is a signal jammer which prevents mobile phones from broadcasting when nearby.

Installation (Installation)

Corey McCorkle’s 2016 installation Pendulum is developed around the Cavendish family and their role in importing bananas to Europe. Cavendish bananas were named after William Cavendish, the 6th Duke of Devonshire. In 1834, Cavendish received a shipment of bananas from Mauritius, and developed these bananas in the greenhouses of Chatsworth House with his gardener Sir Joseph Paxton, and were later given to missionary John Williams to take to Samoa.

Painting (Painting)

What Color is Luke Murphy’s outstanding digital painting that elegantly loops in nonstop motion. The artist cleverly usurped the familiar signage of brightly scrolling words that we ordinarily see calling out to advertise a Bodega or sidewalk cart’s fast food. In a DIY manner, Murphy constructed the extra-luminous LED panel screen and also wrote the code that sets the pace and pattern of the flowing words.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Camil has made numerous paintings and photographs of halted projects along Mexico’s highways (she calls them “highway follies”), and of abandoned billboards that look like theater curtains dramatizing failed capitalist strategies. (Espectacular, the colloquial Spanish term for “billboard,” also translates more literally as “spectacle,” and of course recalls Guy Debord’s famous 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle .) In Mexico, the urban landscape has been taken over by billboards; they are totally integrated into the landscape.

Photography (Photography)

To produce her photo and film works, Diane Severin Nguyen makes amalgam sculptures from found materials, both natural and synthetic. She captures these ephemeral constructions at close range, enlarging minute tensions. Nguyen uses transient, prosthetic lighting—the glow of sunset, an iPhone flash, battery-powered LEDs, fire—so that the camera intervenes moments before these temporary arrangements and their lighting change.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

Butter Mountain is part of an ongoing series of works that combines a sense of painterly mass and substance with sculptural language to examine the synergy between a topographical landscape and a landscape of the human condition. The work intentionally alludes to the materiality of the human body and of the land. A stool has been consciously repurposed as a “support”, that by its nature and identity provides evidence of human presence.

Photography (Photography)

To produce her photo and film works, Diane Severin Nguyen makes amalgam sculptures from found materials, both natural and synthetic. She captures these ephemeral constructions at close range, enlarging minute tensions. Nguyen uses transient, prosthetic lighting—the glow of sunset, an iPhone flash, battery-powered LEDs, fire—so that the camera intervenes moments before these temporary arrangements and their lighting change.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Takeshi Murata developed an interest in space inspired by his architect parents. OM Rider features the artist’s characteristic absurdist humor and aesthetics–a mélange of highly attuned lighting and composition (in homage to Ken Price), with retro modeling and minimalist, almost antiseptic spaces.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

If one had been guessing at Takeshi Murata’s criticism of American consumerist culture up until watching Infinite Doors , it would be solidified after hearing the announcer from The Price is Right squawk prizes one after the next. In the two minutes of the film’s runtime, can count the word “new” used twenty-eight times, and “car”—the holy grail of prizes on that show—used eight times. The bodacious women introduce free prizes, the doors slide open repeatedly, and the crowd cheers with an insatiable appetite in a clear signal of an American propensity for numbing overconsumption.

Photography (Photography)

LaToya Ruby Frazier is an artist and a militant; her photos combine intimate views of her relation with her parents and grandparents with the history of the Afro-American community of Braddock, Pennsylvania, where she grew up and where her family still live. She reports upon the decline of this steel-producing town, which was once prosperous and where the local population today is devastated by poverty, unemployment and health problems linked to pollution. The town has currently closed the hospital which increases unemployment and makes access to treatment complicated for the residents of one of the most polluted towns in the USA.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

This work exemplifies George Pfau’s interest in zombies and liminal embodiment. In different ways, zombies are present here as an icon of coming apart, yet they retain a persistent thereness. In Zombie Swallows The World, the image of the figure is almost overcome by strong light that visually blows away the edges of the body.

Installation (Installation)

Untitled (San Francisco) was made in Idaho in 1984 and was facetiously dedicated to Henry Hopkins, the then director of the San Francisco Museum of Art who added “modern” to its name. Assembled from the remnants and found objects from a hotel room, including a collage, shelf and small lamp, this playful piece—a satirical shrine of sorts—echoes the decidedly un-modern spirit of San Francisco’s bohemian culture. Kienholz’s works, with their critical and anti-establishment content, are often linked to the 1960s Funk Art movement in the Bay Area.

Photography (Photography)

In Ante la imagen (Before the Image, 2009) Muñoz continues to explore the power of a photograph to live up to the memory of a specific person. Since a photograph is fixed, it cannot encapsulate the spirit of someone who is gone. Muñoz etched onto the surface of a mirror an appropriated historical image, a daguerreotype from 1839.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

This work exemplifies George Pfau’s interest in zombies and liminal embodiment. In different ways, zombies are present here as an icon of coming apart, yet they retain a persistent thereness. In Zombie Examined, the frayed edges of the body are undone by a clinical look, rather than a visual effect.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

This work exemplifies George Pfau’s interest in zombies and liminal embodiment. In different ways, zombies are present here as an icon of coming apart, yet they retain a persistent thereness.

Sculpture (Sculpture)

This work exemplifies George Pfau’s interest in zombies and liminal embodiment. In different ways, zombies are present here as an icon of coming apart, yet they retain a persistent thereness.

Painting (Painting)

Arima’s free brushstrokes gesture towards traditions in Expressionist painting, and Ticket could be seen as an attempt at “pure painting” in which the aesthetics of the medium supersede content. But if his portraits resist social commentary, they nonetheless challenge conventional standards of beauty through a decided embrace of decayed forms and colors. Inspired by underground creative cultures, his paintings have the slipshod spontaneity of graffiti and other types of street art.

Painting (Painting)

Arima’s free brushstrokes gesture towards traditions in Expressionist painting. As with the acrylic painting Ticket (also 2015), Person in Red Sweater could be seen as an attempt at “pure painting” in which the aesthetics of the medium supersede content. But if his portraits resist social commentary, they nonetheless challenge conventional standards of beauty through a decided embrace of decayed forms and colors.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material. For this project, Oppenheim procured the original glass negatives, which had been damaged over time, from the archives of this newspaper. She then printed the negatives as is, highlighting the multitude of physical flaws that had ‘spoiled’ the negatives.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material. For this project, Oppenheim procured the original glass negatives, which had been damaged over time, from the archives of this newspaper. She then printed the negatives as is, highlighting the multitude of physical flaws that had ‘spoiled’ the negatives.

Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)

The Damaged series by Lisa Oppenheim takes a series of selected photographs from the Chicago Daily News (1902 – 1933) as its source material. For this project, Oppenheim procured the original glass negatives, which had been damaged over time, from the archives of this newspaper. She then printed the negatives as is, highlighting the multitude of physical flaws that had ‘spoiled’ the negatives.