Awol Erizku’s image Origin of Afro-Esotericism has compositional force and a rhythmic use of full-blast color. In the image are five faces each with varying modes of representation. One of them is “Aunt Jemima” (recently renamed Pearl Milling Company), a brand that appropriated a character from a late 19th century minstrel show.
Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
L’herbier (petit Trianon) consists of four “realistic” drawings of plants, screenprinted on transparent PVC. Relying on drawing as a study, this work resembles many sketchbook drawings of the artist, but also alludes to the series titled “Magnolia”. “The subject is a kind of cultural minimum (the plant) and the herbarium tends to this minimum,” Calais suggests.
In Are You Lonely Mr. Claus? , a bottle of whiskey, a red rose, a lit cigarette, and an assembly of kitschy Christmas memorabilia (Santa’s hat, a sugar cane) are displayed side-by-side with artifacts that denote some sort of (typically Californian?) summer leisure time (sea shells, sun block and goggles).
In Eric Goes to Jail , a coffee maker, red lipstick, a pile of cash, some exotic parakeets, a brassiere, a bow tie, and a stained napkin scribbled with a phone number constitute clues to unraveling a mystery and invite the viewer to speculate about the events of the preceding night.
Untitled (1992) responds to the same principles of an economy of means as the artist’s actions and installations: three empty cardboard boxes which have contained photographic film are piled one on top of the other. Nevertheless there is a harmony in the assembly of forms, writing, colors, proportions; an aesthetic construction is carried by this contemporary still life. This work charts the passing of time: the cardboard yellows, the film becomes obsolete in the digital age.
Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films. Here, the still images function in the same way as his cinematographic work: Highly aesthetic, they allow for the appearance of intricate visual patterns and layers of meaning that take scenes of everyday life as its source material. Both Dorsky’s cinematic and photographic works follow a stream of consciousness that rejects representation or fixed narrative structure.
Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points. Light streams from unseen sources and projects rectangular shadows against an adjacent wall. Three-dimensional shapes become suddenly flat as the objects in Kasten’s still life are juxtaposed alongside their ghostly traces.
In his composition, Chocolate Bars, Eggs, Milk, Lassry’s subjects are mirrored in their surroundings (both figuratively, through the chocolate colored backdrop and the brown frame; and literally, in the milky white, polished surface of the table), as the artist plays with color, shape, and the conventions of representational art both within and outside of the photographic tradition. Elad Lassry explores how visual languages are constructed across multiple disciplines and media. His larger body of work responds to the relationship between artistic mediums and their forms, and his prints question familiar modes of viewership and our continuous desire to find and identify clear narratives in photographs.
David Berezin takes advantage of the language of popular culture and our overexposure to it...
Nathaniel Dorsky belongs to a younger generation of filmmakers that follows key figures of the Bay Area avant-garde scene, like Bruce Conner, and is mainly associated with Canyon Cinema...
A contemporary response to the historical motif of the still-life, Awol Erizku’s studio photography is brimming with color and symbolism...
Untitled (1992) responds to the same principles of an economy of means as the artist’s actions and installations: three empty cardboard boxes which have contained photographic film are piled one on top of the other...
Drawing & Print
L’herbier (petit Trianon) consists of four “realistic” drawings of plants, screenprinted on transparent PVC...
Barbara Kasten’s Studio Construct 51 depicts an abstract still life: a greyscale photograph of clear translucent panes assembled into geometric forms, the hard lines of their edges converging and bisecting at various points...
In Eric Goes to Jail , a coffee maker, red lipstick, a pile of cash, some exotic parakeets, a brassiere, a bow tie, and a stained napkin scribbled with a phone number constitute clues to unraveling a mystery and invite the viewer to speculate about the events of the preceding night....
Dorsky’s pieces included in the Kadist Collection are small still photographs from twelve of his most important films...
In his composition, Chocolate Bars, Eggs, Milk, Lassry’s subjects are mirrored in their surroundings (both figuratively, through the chocolate colored backdrop and the brown frame; and literally, in the milky white, polished surface of the table), as the artist plays with color, shape, and the conventions of representational art both within and outside of the photographic tradition...
Awol Erizku’s image Origin of Afro-Esotericism has compositional force and a rhythmic use of full-blast color...