Sreshta Rit Premnath

Work from The Last Image.

“The Last Image draws parallels between the death-drive that spurs urban development and that which fuels image making and meaning making in general, by using the figure of a property developer and builder from Bangalore, M. S. Ramaiah (1922-1997), who is said to have believed that he would die if he ever stopped building.

The series of C-Prints titled The Last Image are constructed using photographs of the builder’s brass bust, and procedures including the re-photographing and scraping of the photographic emulsion. Here the spectral work necessary to prop up a monument, the legacy it stands in for and the representational labor present in the making of the photograph are conflated. Siegfried Kracauer coined the phrase “the last image” to describe the “memory image” that one retains of a person, distinct from the spacio-historical contingency of the photograph. The monument is therefore a kind of “last image” built to postpone corporeal disappearance and yet essential to physically mark the power-structure it simultaneously denotes and hides. The gray and white, checkered Photoshop background and Bluescreen paint employed in these C-prints could be seen as a similar marking of absence – a mere placeholder to be replaced or hidden.

The triptych titled &&& continues this theme of postponement. Each part of the triptych reveals a section of the form of an ampersand cut and folding out of a black rubber surface. This set of formal procedures attempts to create a glyph that is part image and part language; part material and part concept. &, usually a hinge that connects two clauses in a sentence is here unraveled in a series that may be read as “and & and” or “& and &” – both sides of the center competing to be the center.

Finally, in the video loop I Will Die When I Stop Building, the pages of a flipbook animate a construction worker raising his sledgehammer to strike and demolish a dome. The loop of the video reflects the physical life of the portrayed dome, which was part of an architectural complex originally built by Ramaiah in the 1960’s that has been demolished and reconstructed multiple times over the last several decades. Here the figure of Ramaiah stands in for the spectral forces of development that are responsible for the constantly changing shape of a city – In this instance Bangalore, amongst the fastest growing cities in the world – while the concrete body of the laborer is subsumed by the abstract labor that presumably keeps Ramaiah “alive”.

Julian Faulhaber

Work from his oeuvre.

“The German-born photographer made his United States debut in Chisel curated by Kathy Ryan of the New York Times at the first annual New York Photo Festival in 2008. His first gallery show in New York followed in the fall of that year at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler. Since then, Faulhaber has been named a new and emerging photographer to watch in 2009 by Photo District News (PDN) and has been included in the exhibition Reality Check: Truth and Illusion in Contemporary Photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The photographs in Faulhaber’s body of work, Lowdensitypolyethylene, are created in newly constructed spaces in the time between when they are completed and when they become occupied or in use. The intense colors and sheen result from exposure times of 10 to 20 seconds, the perspective selected and the artificial light at the location, rather than from post-production. The resulting image often appears abstract, even unreal, but it is in fact a straight document of the space, reflected in such direct titles as “Supermarket” and “Garage”. Faulhaber’s work comments on the discrepancy between the material reality of construction, the daily experience of a space, and the utopian ideals that inspire the avant-garde of the architectural field. The actual formal points of an architect’s utopian vision are often inspired by the other arts: painting, writing and photography. His work is also embedded in a tradition of German photography that considers the investigation of architectural forms to be important social commentary, a history that spans the work of Albert Renger-Patsch, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Demand. Faulhaber’s work is included in the permanent collections of such esteemed institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Harvard Art Museum, and the Princeton Art Museum. ” -Art Daily

Derek Larson

Work from Commonwealth.

“Commonwealth is an immersive installation of a dilapidated sculpture garden of projected video statuary, presenting a virtual likeness to a grand garden and questioning its function as a common space. Commonwealth is a response to Federica Bueti’s article Give Me The Time in which she states “satisfaction of temporary desire falsifies experience.” This piece points to the divisions in experience between private property and common space.” – Derek Larson

Brian McCutcheon

Work from Out of this World @ the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

“The solo exhibition Brian McCutcheon: Out of this World features a new body of work by Indianapolis-based conceptual artist Brian McCutcheon. For the exhibition, McCutcheon uses video, photography, and sculpture to explore the relationships between play, masculinity, and the notion of flight. After realizing that his son is currently the same age that he was during the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing, McCutcheon chose to investigate the duality of father and son relationships through imagery and footage related to space exploration.

For McCutcheon, historical space exploration continues to represent an extreme form of human imagination and will—and an extraordinary leap of risk and faith. McCutcheon’s whimsical commissions new artworks for this exhibition reflect on how the objects that we associate with these events are peculiarly modern yet nostalgic, highly technological yet fantastical.” – Indianapolis Museum of Art

James Nizam

Work from Trace Heavens

“The large black and white photographs depict the transformation of darkened rooms into uncanny light sculptures that intersect elegant geometry with math-class daydreaming. Bridling sunlight into streamlined rays via perforated and sliced walls, and with the aid of artificial fog to intensify the slants of light, Nizam creates imagery that might bend our perception of photography.

The majority of works in the exhibition were created in a darkened studio space where small mirrors were fastened to ball joints for easy pivoting, perfect for manipulating the light streaming through holes in the walls (see Drill Holes Through Studio Wall) The logistics were no small feat; Nizam sometimes had as little as five minutes of perfect sunlight in which to create his images. And the process of waiting for those brief periods no doubt felt like déjà vu for a photographer who has spent plenty of time in dim rooms watching dust dancing in sunlight.” More info at Canadian Art.

via Triangulation

Alyson Shotz

Work from her oeuvre.

“Alyson Shotz’s sculptures perk up a decades-old post-Minimalist idiom with a dash of pop science. The works in ”Phase Shift,” her fourth solo show at the gallery, are her strongest yet.

Ms. Shotz evokes natural phenomena with accumulations of beads, pins and other common materials. She isn’t alone in this — Tara Donovan comes to mind — but her creations have a geekier, less arbitrary aspect. Often they respond to the challenge of visualizing concepts from theoretical physics (string theory, dark matter)…” – Karen Rosenberg for the New York Times

Haroon Mirza

Work from “\|\|\|\| \|\|\” at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen.

“Using high-end stereo systems from second-hand shops, coloured chains of LED lights, DIY-store water hoses, fragments of film documents and references from popular culture, Haroon Mirza (*1977) creates installations which produce musical compositions in spaces. The English artist of Pakistani origin uses the widest range of devices and materials as instruments in a surprising way and allows them to interact and produces electrostatic sounds. The soundscapes range from analogue handicraft to electronic music and bring together rhythm with a dash of humour. He likes to integrate artistic quotations into his projects and is at the same time working on a redefinition of the concept of sculpture. The artist is particularly concerned with the relationship between object and exhibition space and in the process obviously refers to Minimal Art strategies. Mirza – who was awarded the Silver Lion for the best work by a promising young artist at the Venice Biennale in 2011 – is creating a site-specific installation for Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen and at the same time presenting his largest solo exhibition so far with this Swiss premiere.

\|\|\|\| \|\|\ is not a typing error but the title of a project that is part of a series of works with which Mirza is exploring the idea of site-specificity. He uses architectonic properties of exhibition spaces in various institutions in order to expose them (e.g. shadow gaps or columns). This is done economically and efficiently in that he attempts to achieve the greatest possible effect with the smallest possible intervention in the respective spaces. Mirza started with the show /\/\/\/\ /\  at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, which opened in March. Following the exhibition at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen he will conclude the three-part series in May 2012 at the Ernst Schering Stiftung in Berlin with –{}{}{} {}–{}{}{}{}–{}. The cryptic titles are typographical representations of various wave forms. As codes they represent a summary of sound and form that the artist creates in the exhibition spaces.

Mirza also makes direct reference to the space at the Kunst Halle and reacts to its unique features. He reduces the installation to its essential, physical components and presents LED strips in their most basic form and without any supporting structures (such as the pieces of furniture he frequently uses). The artist creates three minimalist sculptures with these light chains in the primary colours red, green and blue, which are stretched between columns and walls in the first and last rooms. The sounds which the lights generate when going on and off are amplified many times and transported to the middle exhibition room, where they will be heard as a rhythmic composition. Mirza is thus transforming the Kunst Halle into a musical instrument, a vibrating resonator.”- Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen

via Triangulation Blog

Samara Scott

Work from her oeuvre.

” I think about it as a sort of liquidy making, where naive absent-minded processes direct material – leftovers, scum, scraps that I surround myself with – and trickle it through all sorts of ranges. This might be anything from an interiors range, a fashion range or a range of encyclopedic volumes. As the mediums are filtered and exchanged photographs slip towards film, props migrate into sculptures. My latest work, my summer collection! is a range of furnishings – ‘dramatic centerpieces for every occasion’. Processes are similar to simple domestic luxury activity modes, say ‘shopping’ or traveling or daydreaming – tourist stuff. I use these visitations of fantasy style processes and accelerate them into sloppy forms of making. I’m serious about sexy textures, juicy garnishes, stained carpets, glittery waterfalls and silhouettes kissing against sunsets.” – Samara Scott via LVL3

Laurie Kang

Work from Empty Vessels Make the Most Noise.

“Sitting at the intersection between photography, sculpture, collage and installation, Laurie Kang’s practice investigates the space between image and object. Examining the process of abstracting the everyday, her work disrupts the borders of the photograph to occupy three-dimensional space.

This exhibition uses the vehicle of the image—photographic paper—as a point of departure. The artist subjects the material to an array of manipulations, producing, in its final state, a multi-dimensional object. Her abstractions engage photography critically, calling for meditation on the layered act of looking. The adage “Empty vessels make the most noise” acknowledges the potential for failure in Kang’s process, injecting it with a sense of play and experiment.” – Laurie Kang

Peter Puklus

Work from Handbook to the Stars.

Visit the site or buy the book, the experience is vastly different than presented here.

“This project is the continuation of an artistic process defined by the series Budapest Eden, started in 2009. Dreamlike symbols, mock-ups, installations, readymades. This series is the photo-documentation of a sculpting experiment, resembling the form and light exercises of the 20-s avant-garde. Handbook to the Stars attempts to visualize the infinitely flexible and tricky associative capacity of our brain. Peter Puklus chooses not to leave his studio during the making of this series, but to commit himself with body and soul to his vision and observations, in the company of trash and bric-a-brac, in complete isolation of the outside world. Following inner voices, he reveals and gives proof to deep, unknown and invisible relations and conspiracies.” – Gergely László

via Conscientious