It is quite a big month of exhibitions for some of TWFineArt's artists, with Max Greis, Emily Silver and Margarita Dittborn Valle all having exhibitions opening this month. To learn more about these exhibitions follow the links below and visit their page at TWFINEART.COM to see the artists work in limited edition print! MAX GREIS - The Garage Door Video Series at BRIC Contemporary Art.

"The Garage Door Video Series, Between Now and Then, is a look at landscapes in the process of change. Whether material or ethereal, these videos explore cycles of decay and rebirth. Artists in this series locate changes within broad thematic spectrums that range from the natural environment to human history. While some address visions of progress, others comment on acts of deliberate destruction. Most of the videos apply a specific technique of cut-out collage animation, which super-imposes moving images upon two-dimensional planes. This technique helps achieve unexpected optical delights, which, at times resemble moving paintings. Through the visual juxtaposition of stillness and movement, the marks of transformation over time become apparent." Exhibition curated by: Shireen Abrishamian and Banyi Huang

 

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EMILY SILVER - Savage Mentality at Cerritos College Art Gallery.

"Savage Sentimentality presents a group show of artists of unique backgrounds and interests connected by a tenuous relationship to sentiment. The artists included allude to and/or embrace sentiment while simultaneously ravaging it, either with a brutish material response or vice versa - a subject matter that contradicts the sensitivity of material handling." Guest curated by Steven Hampton.

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MARGARITA DITTBORN VALLE - Retrospective at Parque Arauco 

"Like the artists of yesteryear, Margarita Dittborn Valle's (Born: 1981 ) pure ambition is to create a sublime visual experience.... We love the subtle nostalgic and fanciful themes ever-present in the work of this photographer and winner of a transcendent self-taught artist in the national and international space."

[caption id="attachment_8959" align="alignleft" width="700"] Santa Lucía, 2006. Print by Margarita Dittborn Valle[/caption]

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EXCERPT FROM ART LTD MAGAZINE [divider] Julika Lackner: "Major New Works" at Alex Mertens Fine Art  by charles donelan Jan 2014 Spectral Phase #4 2013 Acrylic, Oil + Alum-Silver on Canvas 96" x 72" Photo: courtesy Alex Mertens Fine Art Occasionally a young painter makes a quantum leap forward to a new level, and this seems to be the case with Julika Lackner, as evidenced by a fine and comprehensive exhibition this fall at Alex Mertens Fine Art, in Montecito, just outside of Santa Barbara. Lackner was raised and educated partly in Santa Barbara, partly in Berlin, and the balance she's achieved between the representational rigor and psychological tension of the Northern European tradition and the sun-soaked pleasure principle of Southern California makes her work both viscerally and intellectually engaging. Her new tack, which, to be fair, has been underway for at least three years, involves a shift from representation to abstraction--from standing apart from the scenes she paints to a kind of merging with the atmosphere. The self-assured elegance and power of this change was made possible by long hours of research and practice painting representational light situations, from lively night skies to lurid urban lightshows to aerial views semi-obscured by gauzy clouds. The new series of works, which are titled Spectral Phase numbered 1-8, were painted in 2013; they follow other, large immersive canvases from the years 2011 and 2012 with names like Daybreak and True North. They combine great washes of saturated acrylic color with reflective aluminum surfaces and fields of geometrically arranged brushstrokes in the ovoid shape of small lozenges, or, as critic Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe has termed them, "boats." Their overall impact lands somewhere between Mark Rothko and the avant-garde cinema of Stan Brakhage. The term "boats" derives from the look of Lackner's 2008 series of representational aerial views of Los Angeles, and in particular from an image of Marina del Rey, called From Above, that depicts actual boats. However, in her new paintings, these floating signifiers have shipped anchor and begun to move through a new element that's part air, part water, and all visual sensation. Their presence in the midst of Lackner's masterful control of adjacent color values and reflective surface effects makes these paintings a persuasive contribution to the ever-shifting tradition of contemporary art in California, and beyond.

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  [divider] [caption id="attachment_8150" align="alignleft" width="464"] Act II, Oil on canvas 20" x 20" 2013[/caption] Larissa and I met in New York, on the job so to speak. Many lunches and morning coffees were spent together discussing each others work, what shows we'd seen recently and what had caught our eye. I've always admired her gusto. Larissa now lives in Chicago and I have had the pleasure of watching her work develop from afar. I remember her early works, dark and frenzied with murderous marks, as if she was attacking the canvas or paper with her tools. Dismembered bodies and featureless faces were drawn like comic figures, making the work an unsettling combination of horror and humor. Larissa's early color palette included a lot of red and brown, reminding me of blood, both wet and dry. Fresh wounds mixed with those of the past. Incessant scratchings on the surface, the repetition of similar marks over and over again like some inner torment was being played out on the surface. Great artists evolve, their work informs itself and in time, thoughts become more complete and the artwork more accomplished. Larissa is one such artist. Her work is forever evolving, becoming whole - she'll never rest though, I can't imagine that her work will ever be enough for her and that's what makes her great. [caption id="attachment_8153" align="alignright" width="446"] Echo, Oil on canvas 20" x 20" 2014[/caption] From our chats I know of Larissa's love and respect for the art that has come before us. Her understanding of modernism is evident in the sophistication of her work. She has selectively stolen a little bit from here, a little from there and made it her own. I see the references, but I also see something exciting and new. These latest paintings invite you into a fresh space, both physical and psychological. The frenzy, aggression and humor are still there, but they have become weaved amongst a sophisticated sense of space and color. I get displaced when looking at her new work. I'm thrown into a territory where I feel multiple sensations simultaneously. Anger, joy, frustration, peace with glimpses of a familiar reality. Her art mimics life, there are no definite answers, just moments of clarity and confusion, comfort and discomfort. Larissa tells stories through her work without being didactic - a condition that plagues contemporary art. Her work is charged by both process and content, a multi-dimensional drama that plays out in two dimensional space. Perhaps what I love most of all is the spatial evolution of Larissa's work - I have spent many hours just sitting in the MoMA looking, marveling really, at The Piano Lesson by Matisse. I think it is a masterpiece, formally and emotionally. It has the power to invite you into an imagined, somewhat abstract space and hold you there. It is this quality that I see in Larissa's paintings. I'm so excited to see where she goes next, because I know it will somewhere exceptional.     [caption id="attachment_8162" align="aligncenter" width="465"] The Administrator, Oil on canvas 16" x 16" 2013[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8163" align="aligncenter" width="557"] All Dried Up, Oil on canvas 30" x 40" 2014[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8164" align="aligncenter" width="558"] An Offering (For Basic Necessity) Or Lack Of, Oil on canvas 60" x 60" 2013[/caption]      

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American painting has long embraced the philosophy that bigger is better. From Jackson Pollock to contemporary artists like Mark Bradford, large scale works have been a consistent part of the modern American tradition. [caption id="attachment_8091" align="alignleft" width="301"] © JAMES SIENA, Untitled 2009
19-1/4" x 15-1/8"
Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York[/caption] Lately though, there has been a shift. I noticed it first in the younger artists studios and then in the work of well known contemporary artists like James Siena. Instead of making epically scaled paintings, these artists are making work that is smaller, painterly, intimate and inviting. It was through my interest in James Siena's painting that I discovered the work of Ben Pritchard, a Brooklyn based artist creating small, heavily labored drawings and paintings. Siena included Pritchard in two exhibitions that he curated, first at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2009 and again at DC Moore Gallery in New York City in 2010. The surfaces of Pritchard's paintings are quite heavy and evidence layers of under painting. Gone is the grand format and familiar clean canvas edge. Instead, Pritchard's paintings are human scale and sit on awkwardly shaped surfaces where the forms appear to wrestle with the uneven edges. The intense workmanship and elegant simplicity of the final image combine to make Pritchard's work both charming and compelling. Ben's drawings are also intimate labors of love. Although in his drawing there is no layering or masking of the work involved. The detail sits on the surface and the finished image is an intricate concoction of marks that conform to a set of rules established by the artist at the outset of the drawing. All this work is squeezed onto a piece of paper not much larger than your average A3 sheet. Again the forms appear to wrestle within the asymmetrical edges of the paper to create intriguing, dynamic compositions. Pritchard's work represents a beautiful shift towards intimacy. He has stepped away from the massive, bold 'look at me paintings' of the past while skillfully preserving that certain something in painting that compels the viewer to take notice - only this time, it is not from a distance. To view more of Ben's work, visit his website or his TWFineArt print portfolio. [caption id="attachment_8138" align="aligncenter" width="494"] Oscar Fate, Ben Pritchard 2009-14, Oil on canvas, 24/28"[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8135" align="aligncenter" width="542"] Title Unknown, Ben Pritchard[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8093" align="aligncenter" width="405"] Santa Theresa, Ben Pritchard Ink on Paper, 2011,48/65cm[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8094" align="aligncenter" width="429"] Potatoe (Rhizome) Ben Pritchard Ink on paper, 25.5/19.5, 2012[/caption]          

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DRAWING ALGORITHM: Begin with 1cm horizontal line drawn in 7 colors, stacked vertically in top left corner. Move horizontally & follow with 1cm vertical line in 7 colors, stacked horizontally. Move horizontally & follow with 1cm horizontal line in 7 colors stacked vertically.   Move Vertically & follow with 1cm vertical line in 7 colors stacked horizontally & REPEAT [divider] This simple (albeit made up) example of a visual algorithm shows how an image can be created using the same self-imposed, predetermined sets of rules or algorithms used in the mathematical calculations that drive things like computer programs. When combined with an artist’s hand and a certain amount of unpredictability, generative art can produce some stunning results. TWFA’s Briony Barr has collaborated with physicist Andrew Melatos in Drawing on Complexity, an initiative that creates ‘art experiments’ in the form of large-scale, rule based floor drawings made by groups of participants using colored electrical (PVC) tape. Barr and Melatos invite external participants to create a drawing based on a set of devised rules. The artists do not direct the drawing process, instead they let the participants (agents) create the artwork just as much as the rules they are following. Over time, the interactions between the agents and the rules accumulate to create ripple effects that feed back into the artwork (or system) changing it's course. This happens over and over again, making the drawing complex and unpredictable. The artists document their work in time lapsed video with a written account of the project that is then uploaded to their website. This month the pair coordinate Drawing/Undrawing at NGV community hall in Melbourne. Stay tuned for future projects and be sure to check it out and contribute! Below is the pairs documentation for Experiment #4 at the National Museum of Modern & Contemporary Art in Seoul. [divider] Experiment #4 Duration: 5 hours Agents: 24 Size: 12 x 12 m Location: The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea Date: 2013 The drawing was structured using an underlying pencil grid, providing two ways for the different agents to move around; on top of the lines articulating the grid (S1) or inside each grid square (S2). In phase one of the drawing, we allowed agents to have only four ‘children’ (four collaborations) before moving on. In phase two, agents working together were allowed to combine their genetic material as many times as they wanted. This rule variation resulted in many agent duos choosing to have rather a lot of ‘children’. In almost every drawing experiment we see this tendency towards the most efficient way of doing something. In the case of Experiment #4, working as a couple over a longer period of time, repeating the same act, means better strategies can be developed for getting things done (i.e. making a collaborative drawing). This is common sense and also a fundamental tendency of nature; to take the most energy efficient route.

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