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Next month we feature the work of Veronica Ibanez Romagnoli in the TWFineArt Gallery. A major theme in Veronica's work '4:36PM' is the transformative quality of light and the way it shapes how we perceive the world. Veronica's light box installations are created using multiple photo frames of the same interior scene taken over time. Each photograph is printed on glass and superimposed over the other to create a 'cross section' of moments. The work highlights the impermanence of the instant and the transient nature of our existence as our senses navigate reality moment by moment.

Working in a different medium all together, yet linked by the transformative theme, Rebecca Norton is occupied with the hidden geometric transformations of spatial reality. Affine transformations describe the constant movement of spatial planes as we move through reality. Recently Norton has been working on paintings & animations that capture the dynamism of this hidden spatial reality. View Rebecca Norton Animation here.

[caption id="attachment_8639" align="alignleft" width="338"] Untitled, Rebecca Norton 2014[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8642" align="alignleft" width="339"] Untitled, Rebecca Norton 2014[/caption]

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Chris Trueman describes his current body of work as a way of exploring a long-standing interest in the difference between the physiological process of sight and the psychological facet of perception. He is fascinated by the way people interpret visual spaces, extract meaning and build narratives from their perceptions.

In the words of Chris Trueman:

[caption id="attachment_9235" align="alignleft" width="600"] Art by Chris Trueman 72" x 72"[/caption]

"My paintings fuse various styles, gestures, marks and methods of paint application onto the same surface, mixing them with diverse sources from art history and references to popular culture.

Fundamentally, the paintings search out and explore the limitations of parallel processing within our perception. Parallel processing encompasses the ability of our brains to process simultaneous stimuli. In everyday vision the brain processes and analyzes color, motion, shape and depth. Together this set of characteristics is compared to stored memories to identify what we are looking at. Not so long ago, scientists and theoreticians speculated that exposure to technologies such as the Internet and mobile communications would help our brains develop the ability to simultaneously digest multiple sets of parallel processes. Recent research has found that this has not happened. Rather, we are learning to switch trains of thought more quickly and to find connections in a greater number of ways.

I am taking advantage of both aspects by constructing paintings that can not be processed at once; they are intended to remain multiplicitous, and refuse resolution into one unified object. When first viewing the artwork, the viewer’s eyes follow lines, shapes or compositional elements. As one moves through the painting the changes between styles are integrated into a common space, allowing the viewer to slip between styles.

[caption id="attachment_9236" align="alignleft" width="550"] Art by Chris Trueman 46" x 36"[/caption]

By the time the viewer realizes they are no longer looking at the same style, they are following another modality.

As I construct the paintings I work with each style or methodology as a system of ideas revolving around a set of formal devices. By sampling from diverse sources, I am able to tap into a familiarity and cultural memory. I mix color, style and art historical references from hard edge abstraction, architectural rendering, abstract expressionism, pop art, manga, Los Angeles flow painting, and representational painting. I can undermine the essential logic by which each school operates, clashing the appearance and behavior of each system. The finished painting is an irresolvable space that fluidly changes systems of thought as each system begins to contradict its own logic, resulting in greater clarity of the differences between the various systems.

We will be featuring Chris in a solo exhibition in the month of October. Be sure to see his work in person at TW Fine Art!

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We love taking a peek inside the working lives of our artists. Inside their studios you'll find an added love for their work and a glimpse of their processes. Revealed here is Steve Gibson in StudioCritical: Learn more about Steve's art and studio process in this insightful interview: http://studiocritical.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/steve-gibson.html?spref=fb  

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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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YELLOW as a paint color has a long history. It was first seen in the cave paintings of Lascaux over 16,000 years ago. Originally derived from the yellow ochre pigment in clay, all kinds of yellows can now be synthetically produced through modern chemistry. The first three words that spring to mind when I hear the word ‘YELLOW’ are light, accent and bold. Light because yellow seems to mimic the color and warmth of the sun. Accent because yellow has the ability to highlight any other color that it’s backed up against, and bold because of it's power to do so. For all those reasons yellow can be tough to use in a painting, but spectacular when used successfully. We’ve put together a selection of our favorite paintings from history that master and celebrate all that is YELLOW. [divider] [caption id="attachment_8204" align="alignleft" width="489"] Yellow Painting, Barnett Newman 1949[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8209" align="alignleft" width="501"] Small Boudoir, Willem DeKooning 1949[/caption]               [caption id="attachment_8205" align="alignleft" width="445"] Veluti in Speculum, Hans Hofmann[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8206" align="alignleft" width="514"] Untitled, Conrad Marca-Relli[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8226" align="alignleft" width="435"] Le Grande Julie, Fernand Léger (1945)[/caption]     [caption id="attachment_8210" align="alignleft" width="510"] Number 22 , Mark Rothko 1949[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_8207" align="alignleft" width="507"] Keith Haring, 'Untitled,' 1982[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_8212" align="alignleft" width="478"] Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1960[/caption] [caption id="attachment_8227" align="alignleft" width="433"] Said, Gerhard Richter 1983[/caption]     [caption id="attachment_8214" align="alignleft" width="389"] Ring Image, Robert Mangold 2010.[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_8211" align="alignleft" width="699"] Untitled 11, MIKE KELLEY 2008-2009[/caption]   [caption id="attachment_8208" align="alignleft" width="372"] Cy Twombly's “Untitled (Camino Real)" 2011[/caption]              

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