Under, over, inside out places

The strange world of David Wojanarwicz...a juxtaposition of natural and commercial and the battle that ensues...a world of cartoon devils and strange floating monsters and historical symbols...What makes to work so interesting is how these seemingly diverse images all go together...the disharmony in an overall context creates acceptable harmony...the collage and painting together...he handled the images in such a way that the picture plane stays intact...when multimedia falls apart, it usually in how the collage is attached and worked over...or in most cases not worked over...his imagery is fixed by a painted surface...to embed the image into the surface, as if carved...


The other strength of this piece is his use of color...it is vibrant and intense...another contrasting element, warm verses cool color schemes...the blue of the sky, vibrating along side the reds and yellows in the advertisement...His use of values is also intriguing, unusual placement in some other paintings, combining strong neutrals with vibrant colors..,other works also take on highly charged conceptual issues, concerns of sex, sexual orientation and death...

I need to spin you

An object of beauty and allure...the top that might spin, but could break apart if you try...the potential for function...kinetically balanced in a space between the desire to see what could happen and the fear of loosing it all...something so unusual and sensual...do you risk it????

This small scale sculpture by Maria Carra Rose is a great example the tearing down and re-configuring the everyday...like Oldenburg, but in a precious way, unto itself...decorative...Oldenburg, through scale made the everyday important and significant, he used different materials to create an allusion, but make us think differently about the mundane...this sculpture utilizes the decorative and also plays with our senses through the contrast between luxurious materials...this is a unique piece for Maria, but I find it so successful...The color treatment is natural and contained within the believable, it doesn't try to be something it is not...it stays within the natural world...


A clean and well crafted piece...I cannot help but want it...and isn't that really one of the main lynch-pins in quality art? The obsession of needing it all to ourselves?

The proverbial 500 hundred pound blond gorilla in the room...the way Petros Chrisostomou pushes and pulls the environment spatially is interesting in this photograph...we know there is the potential for manipulation in the image, God knows we have seen it so many times, we are skeptical even when the image is real...as if conditioned to not believe a word of anything (okay, verging on a double-negative, but you get my drift)...



What is really successful here, is the use of a monochromatic color scheme...it is what really drew me to the piece...I was excited by the juxtaposition of the large hair covered form in this palatial room-scape, but what locks me in visually, is the way I subtly move across the picture plane in shades of grey, white and cream...the tension between the organic, flowing hair and the structure of the architectural details is inspiring...the three essential elements converging into perfect harmony - concept, form and material...we are seduced by the concept and the validity, ground in a photography, then formally we are kept by the visual tension and color choices...

Can I borrow your gun?

So what would happen if the animals fought back? The recent work of AJ Fosik talks often about this topic...however, I think he does it in an interesting and compelling way...I am often intrigued by how an artist chooses to seduce her/his viewers...And I believe AJ is very good at manipulating us...the way the work comes off the wall, has a surreal but recognizable foundation...He uses simple materials, wood and paint but does an amazing job of arranging them to create these outlandish animal forms...part comic book and part Chinese New Year dragon, these works are formally sophisticated and unique...



He is influenced by the work he has done on the street and this shows by how things on the wall are arranged...the heads are not enough, often times there is geometries built around the heads...a stage, or a structure behind the structure...the surfaces are gathering up materials, aging with time, layered the re-covered...but in this piece, Goon Eater Ghost, we are allowed to just focus on the form...the animals are taking back the streets...it would be scary, if they weren't so beautiful...



There is a great video of AJ Fosik talking about his process...



http://vimeo.com/5412772

Floating in the darkness

Herbert Baglione can't seem to help himself from creating symmetry with his human forms...as if the world may spiral off its axis and float gently off into space like the balloon form in this piece...Many of Herbert's figures are connected by these dotted and dashed lines...the figures are holding onto the balloon with their vocalizations, sound made into visible form...music seems to play an important roll in this work...the rhythms and beats in the form of patter and sequence...the largest of these decorative elements, the circles and sun forms are beautifully geometric and colorful...scale wise, they have great importance to the piece and they exist asymmetrically with in the picture plane...these are sophisticated elements....

Sometimes the figures take on this ghost like form, stationary and dangling...visually they are attached to and behind walls of pattern...the shape of this work is also alluring...an elongated rectangle...the way the forms flow up into the top of the visual chimney, feel right and certain...there is confidence in this work and its execution...the piece is a nice blend of complex values and bold colors...a balanced dialogue...