John Houck’s brown- , sienna- and golden-toned composition, Untitled #185, 65, 535 combinations of a 2×2 grid, 16 colors , features densely packed lines of color moving diagonally across the creased page. Houck uses a series of self-designed software programs to create these intricate grids of color and line, riffing off of Sol LeWitt, perhaps, in a digital age. Houck takes the output of these programs and then manipulates them manually, creasing the pages of the index print, and then re-photographing them. In the end, this series of Aggregates—as the series is called—presents a synthesis of digital and analogue methods that toy with the 2-dimensional grid that underpins an entire digital world.
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.
Mapa-Mundi BR (postal) is a set of wooden shelves holding postcards that depict locations in Brazil named for foreign countries and cities...
Book Review: "Writing the Modern: Selected Texts on Art & Art History in Singapore, Malaysia & Southeast Asia" | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles September 12, 2018 By Carmen Nge (1300 words, five-minute read) In the vast firmament of Singaporean-Malaysian art history, no star illuminates as radiantly as T...
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Podcast | The Year in Review 2023: the biggest stories and the best shows | The Week in Art Art market Museums & heritage Exhibitions Books Podcasts Columns Technology Adventures with Van Gogh Search Search The Week in Art podcast The Year in Review 2023: the biggest stories and the best shows From the British Museum thefts to the consequences in art and heritage of the Israel-Hamas war Sponsored by Hosted by Ben Luke ...
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Vietnam's visual arts and COVID-19 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Nguyen Duc Phuong July 30, 2020 By Quyen Hoang (2,100 words, 8-minute read) On a rainy evening towards the end of May 2020, it seemed like Saigon’s most dapper guys and modish gals all flocked to Galerie Quynh...
The artist’s Passings series are hand-sewn works composed of radiological scans of items of clothing loaned by the Tiraz Foundation in Jordan...
Carland’s series of large-format photographs Lesbian Beds (2002) depicts beds that have been recently vacated...
Calle’s drawings all inhabit received forms but alter them to call attention to specific qualities...
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Palo Enceba’o is a project by José Castrellón composed of three photographs, two drawings on metal, and a video work that creates a visual and cultural analogy between the events of January 9th, 1964 in Panama City and the game of palo encebado carried out in certain parts of Panama to celebrate the (US-backed) independence from Colombia...
For many years Tripp has been involved in reviving Karuk ceremonies that had been discontinued for decades, he developed his signature abstract style, based in Karuk design, ceremonial regalia forms, and related cultural and political iconography...