Launching this month will be a collaborative venture between Brooklyn artist Ed Granger and TWFINEART. We have worked together to bring to you 8 exclusive works by the artist in limited edition print.

Ed Granger's Art + Context

“At once composed and formless, I owe an obvious debt to the Fauvists’ supremacy of color over form, an aesthetic approach in harmony—or is it tension?—within these structurally informed compositions. Granger's background in architecture is evident is his compositions. Their controlled fluidity is an intentional effort to create something at once structured and formless, but also allowing the process to happen by chance. His works are about being synchronized in time and space and Granger's intent is to allow his work to act as a vessel to receive a conscious awareness of these subconscious events of daily life, which embodies one’s abnormal physical and psychological stages.”

Granger's work represents awkwardly beautiful fantasy worlds. Nature is a subtle, understated condition in my work. I have always been interested in creating works that asks the viewer to participate in the dialogue and or interaction between objects and their environment.

Granger collect things that have a nostalgic or dreamlike feel that would represent an oeuvre of spirited work that inhibit thought, and early nostalgia electricity with painterly qualities and color over direct representation and realistic values. As he works his way through each layer, the older, beginning layers start to fade away and allow them work their way into the foreground of the composition. Based on his experimental qualities, Ed chooses how the material and its physical presence can rely on another material to do something peculiar and sometimes obscure, to create a language of it’s own. By deconstructing these elements and putting them back together in a pure yet raw fashion, he able to find a repetitive process that engages the viewer and makes you question your senses, which is the source of matter and the space in which we exist. (through our senses is why we choose to live this physical existence) The overlapping of these materials is also way to collect memories or revert back to lost moments, dreams, or childhood.

[caption id="attachment_13264" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Smeared, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Ed Granger[/caption] [caption id="attachment_13266" align="aligncenter" width="542"] Checkered, 2014. Limited Edition Print by Ed Granger[/caption]  

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In line with our mission to make great art more accessible, we are taking you inside the studios of our artists - featuring one artist per month in this special behind the scenes look into their practice. A huge part of our mission is to demystify the art world by making it more transparent and inviting. While a work of art might appeal to you on an aesthetic level, that appreciation can be deepened with an understanding of the artist and their process. We want you to have a connection to your favorite work and the artist that created it. This month we are featuring the studio of artist, writer and academic Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe. To read a great interview with the artist, check out BOMB Magazine by David Shapiro. [caption id="attachment_11904" align="alignleft" width="750" class=" "] Works in progress in the studio of Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe[/caption] Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe’s (b.1945) paintings challenge contemporary ideas of aesthetics and purpose in art from within the art world itself. He was awarded National Endowment for the Arts fellowships in painting and criticism as well as a Guggenheim fellowship in painting, and was presented the 1998 Frank Jewett Mather Award for Art Criticism by the College Art Association. His visual work is included in prestigious public collections, including the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL. [caption id="attachment_11905" align="alignleft" width="711" class=" "] Racks that house the finished work of the artist[/caption] [caption id="attachment_11910" align="alignleft" width="716"] The artists paint selection laid out[/caption]  

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This week we collaborated with US artist Matt Sheridan to bring you his AMAZING work in limited edition print.

Sheridan's aim is to relocate, redefine and re-materialize spirituality in the age of the algorithm.  To that end, Sheridan imagines how the mediums of painting and video -- made concurrently and complementarily in his practice --  combine through orchestrated movement, location, and editing.  His paintings -- hand-painted actions spliced together on canvases originating from film editing techniques -- inform his videos and vice-versa.  Each painting compresses the time of its video counterpart into object; likewise, each of Sheridan’s “painting-in-motion” videos unpacks its painting analog into experience in the form of architectural projections and video sculptures.  Sheridan received his MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California and his BFA from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts in New York.  He has exhibited his work internationally for two decades, most recently in Miami, the XXII Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia; France, Brazil and New York (all 2014).  Since a teaching stint in Singapore ending in 2010, Sheridan has participated in six prestigious artist residencies on three continents while receiving grants from the Center for Cultural Innovation, the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, and SECULT--Secretary of Culture, Bahia, Brazil.  For more information, please visit: www.msheridanstudio.com

[caption id="attachment_11617" align="aligncenter" width="448"] Analog Feedback Loop B, 2013. Art by Matt Sheridan[/caption]

We are so excited to bring you work by such an internationally respected and critically acclaimed artist! Visit his page in our SHOP.

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This week we release a series of limited edition prints from a collaboration with the fantastic artist Nicolas Jorcino.

Nicolas Jorcino is a native of Buenos Aires, Argentina, who has lived and worked in Louisville, KY since 2001. While attending architectural school in his hometown, Jorcino was introduced to painting during weekly sessions at a local master's workshop. He quickly began conducting his own experiments, which led him to become a full time muralist for the next eighteen years. Today his work is still informed by some of the same problems, pursuits and processes of architecture and design; as a social and physical science and also as a fine art. About his work in this exhibit, Nicolas writes, “My formal training is in architecture and urban planning. I began this series of paintings a few years ago while exploring different aspects and similarities between these two disciplines and painting. Identifying light as the primary material of architecture, I looked for a way to present it with the same weight and hierarchy as the concrete structures that control and shape it in the works of some of the masters I admire... In these images, the process is revealed more as an intellectual exercise than a physical execution.”

Nicolas is currently exhibiting at the Carnegie Center for Art & History in Kentucky with another TWFineArt artist and favorite, Rebecca Norton. The is exhibition titled In Between and runs until October 11, 2014.

To see our limited edition print series visit our SHOP.

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TW: We’ve known each other for some time now, but it has been a while since I saw your work in person. There seems to have been a gradual departure away from the type of work you were making when we lived in New York. I once got a verbal scolding when I said to Mike Goldberg that the paintings he made on the Italian Coast during the summer had a different quality about them to the work he made in New York City - I still believe it to be true despite what he said ;-).  I’m therefore hesitant to ask, but how much has the environment in Israel influenced the evolution of your work? KP: I believe that the geographical and political environment we live and work in has a great influential force on the work, as well as the personal and psychological dispositions of the artist. By geographical I mean both natural and architectural scenery as well as a specific quality of light. if you look at the classical northern European paintings you find a unique  quality of light you won't find elsewhere, and the reason to that is the natural light that these great painters knew. Mike Goldberg was part of the New York school of abstract expressionists, who were very much influenced by the writings of Clement Greenberg. One of these painters' endeavors was to create an arena of painting that is exclusive, in which subject matter can only be painting itself, with regard to its history alone. Personally I think that painting cannot release itself from pre knowledge of vision. however, that ideology may explain the verbal scolding coming from Mike... TW: Absolutely, Mike was a purist in that sense but I totally agree with you. The environment around is inescapable, how could it not influence both his perception and use of space and color. I think in retrospect he might look down and agree. Was that a clap of thunder? KP: A few months after I moved back to Tel Aviv, I felt I had to find new approaches to my work, to come up with a different technique than the one I was developing in NY. I decided to put paint aside for a while and was only drawing for a few months, until I felt that one of the drawings needed a space [see painting below]. That space was very much derived by the seascape seen from my studio window, and the beginning of a long painting period which led to the work you are about to show in your gallery. TW: Your earlier paintings were quite process based, with a lot of spontaneous gestural drawing and layering, where you would scrape away the paint with a large pallet knife or squeegee to build the surface. The resulting abstractions had visual references to the photograph or negative. It looks as through the paint brush has returned in your more recent works. Would you say that the content, or subject matter of your later work has driven the type of materials and tools that you use? That being said, has the content of the work become more interesting to you than the process? KP: It is true that the process or the technique was much more evident and extroverted in the older work, and that the decisions that were made while working were more spontaneous because of the rapid nature of the work. However, the full content always reveals itself through the work, and I never know where the work on a painting would lead me to. It is always the process that really creates the work for me, not so much an idea or prevision, even though every painting begins with one. I think that along my evolution as a painter what mainly changed is the temper or tempo. I would say that the Temper of the older work had more to do with hysteria and hunger whereas now it is stiller. Also, the older work was more physical and it's substance more evident, almost like sculpture, the new work is lighter in substance and tends to the gaze more than to the body. TW: I know your art vocabulary is very extensive. Who have you been looking at recently? Who have you found interesting and/or inspirational? KP: Last June I took part in a project by Gilad Ratman that represented Israel at the Venice Biennale and thus was able to look at the fabulous work of a Belgium painter named Thierry de Cordier  that was shown there. His dark seascapes stayed with me ever since. also, a few years back i saw Peter Doig at the British Museum, which i found very interesting and I believe had touched my work. [caption id="attachment_10455" align="aligncenter" width="577"] Seascape - Thierry de Cordier[/caption] [caption id="attachment_10454" align="aligncenter" width="587"] The Milky Way - Peter Doig[/caption] TW: The horizon has always been a part of your work in some form or another, plastically and or conceptually. I remember a beautiful piece that you did a long time ago (during the more process driven period) where the canvas was seamed together to create an horizon. The horizon has become much more a part of these later paintings. What is it about the horizon that interests you? KP: Wow i really can't believe you remember that, it's fantastic! You are right, the horizon carries a great metaphorical meaning for me thanks to its liminal quality. To me It represents the meeting place and conciliation of endless dichotomies such as mind and matter, knowledge and faith, catastrophe and salvation, etc etc. I think that the clash of such dichotomies lies at the root of our being and is a source of great wonder as well as deep agony and frustration. TW: Your newer paintings have a darker, more brooding color pallet in contrast to the lighter, quite joyous paintings from Series 1. Has this been conscious and where do you feel the work is heading? KP: True, the work has lately become less joyous and more dramatic. The conscious decision, which of course is only part of the full picture, was to examine the roll of color in my work. I wanted to see to what extent the work relied on color, and if I only painted monochromes, when or if  the use of color became a necessity. Also, to me there is something very strong about the vast white fields. They carry the quality of a silent and ambiguous desire craved to be fulfilled, and this is also a good metaphor to end with regarding where the work is heading; It is an ambiguity that I desire to reveal. [caption id="attachment_10476" align="aligncenter" width="708"] Untitled 2014 - Keren Paz[/caption] We are thrilled to be exhibiting Keren's work. For a great art experience, be sure to visit the TWFineArt Gallery in September and see it in person!

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