Penelope Umbrico

Work from the series TVs, Office / Still Lives (as Photocopies), and Mirrors.

Umbrico is a photographer/curator of sorts who sources home improvement catalogues/websites  as  fodder for cultural/conceptual commentary. Her website is full of great projects,  that only  afraction of are represented here. Some others that I didn’t have the space to publish are: Classic Still Lives, Pets and Babies, Instances of Books as Pedestals and the awesome video, Credits.

Statements in order of project listing:

“TVs are taken from televisions in idealized room suites in home-improvement magazines and catalogs. I isolated the entire blank television screen, with its muted reflection, and digitally skewed it back into flat perspective to face the viewer. With their muted reflection, the resulting blank screens refuse to fully reveal the reflected spaces behind the viewer, but neither do they express the (questionably) seductive media that we are accustomed to viewing there. Instead, the surface expresses a kind of anonymous darkness in which one struggles to distinguish one thing from another.”

“‘Mirrors’ were taken directly from mail-order catalogs and brochures displaying idealized room suites. I scanned the mirrors, isolating them from their surroundings, and digitally skewed them back into a flat perspective, to bring them into the space of the viewer. I have enlarged the images to the dimensions of the actual size of the mirror being sold in the catalog. The Mirrors are then mounted face forward to non-glare laser-cut plexi-glass and hung on the wall as a real mirror would. While the mirrors in these catalogs serve to locate the viewer within the space by reflecting what would be behind him/her, all the seductive trappings arranged in mirror’s reflection become surrogates for the missing reflection of the viewer – the viewer witnesses his/her own disappearance and replacement by sellable objects.”

“‘Office / Still Lives (as Photocopies)’ are a suite of 16, 8” x 10” images taken from an office supply catalog advertising office cubicles. I scanned the catalog images with special attention to the arrangement of objects and photographs on the desks in the cubicles. I then applied the ‘photocopy’ filter in Photoshop to create a fake photocopy document of the fake office environment. The effort to humanize the otherwise dry, cold, emptiness of the represented workspace is played out in the fictional family photographs and plastic plants. The mute computer props punctuate my gridded arrangement, ominously refusing to communicate anything.”

Zadok Ben-David

Work from the series Blackfield. I saw Ben-David’s show Wednesday at Galerie Albrecht in Berlin. The field of delicate, minature black trees and flowers was compelling enough, but walking past the work, every plant simultaneously exploded into a field of color (each piece has one black side and one intricately colored side).

The work was previouslly shown at the Annandale Galleries in Sydney, Australia. Below is the press release from that show.

“To embrace the world of Zadok Ben-David is to find oneself in a state of wonder. It is a world full of surprises where things are never quite what they seem – an illusory 
world of ‘magical reality’. 

The monumental ‘Blackfield’ installation, the centerpiece of this exhibition is made up of nearly five thousand flowers and plant sculptures no more than a few inches in height. The individual sculptures that make up Blackfield are black on the front and hand painted in colour on the reverse so as we circle it the work, gradually and miraculously, comes ablaze with colour. The eye is continually surprised and may not rest for any length of time in a single place. Even a blink, never mind physically moving and changing one’s perspective, confronts us with an entirely new viewpoint, both similar and utterly different to what one has encountered a few seconds before. The images are on a scale akin to Mughal miniatures and individually appear impossibly fragile. When confronted by such a massive installation it is hard not to rub one’s eyes in wonder. How is something so substantial, so big, made from elements that are so small – even ephemeral. 

The Perspex Glass Boxes are random groupings of the flowers – segments of the overall installation, encompassing the larger installation in a smaller format. One cannot move around them so the colour is seen by a clever use of a mirror that makes the piece appear doubly as large and full of illusionist colour…”

Simon Schubert

Work from Papierarbeiten.

I saw Schubert’s show yesterday at Upstairs Berlin, and it was quite a treat. The works are made only of folded paper and are remarkable. He is represented by the Kudlek van der Grinten Galerie. On a side note, searching for his website led me again to the phenomonal West Collection and their magnificent holdings (and taste), which one day I hope to be a part of.

“Being. Having been. Becoming.

I- Morning – shadows from the right; evening – shadows from the left. At noon light and shadow may offset each other. What is existence? An instant. What is in it was hitherto not in it and is forthwith no more. Existence as a state is irreal, stirred from all that went before and all that is possible thereafter, and yet neither is in it; the former long dead, the latter perhaps not even germinating. Is there anything conceivable that could be more uncertain? Memories as delusional as expectations. Augustine put his finger on the spot: the past is not, the future is not, the present takes place at the border between the two. Thus the second is (should we think we are immortal) a synonym for eternity. Almost nothing, it is everything. It can expand, virtually. But then nothing is truly rational. Thinking, if it is to justify its name, is fantasizing: becoming aware through fantasizing of what you are, what has come down to you and want to go on having an effect. Naturally you go down no path a second time; even the one you think you know can be a path through hell or through nothingness. Both may be preserved in the universe that we believe we are in. Whatever totality lays claim to implies its opposite. If what happens to us is everything, then it is at the same time nothing. Everything that was is not, everything that will be is not. On the narrow edge to which we cling, nothingness is all.  

II – But then we do experience. How far is our own experience free of what has come down to us, as experience goes and per precept? Who am I beyond any so-called imprinting? Hypotheses: universally valid? And the much-cited thrownness? Life is being, having been, becoming. Experience is the inner acquisition of something by living it through. The great adventure? For everyone? If not, for whom then what? Illuminated, each of those concerned steps into the morning light; at sundown, in shadow, he might step back into the dark. I is another, Rimbaud said; perhaps he was conscious of the dimension of this statement. It holds true for every moment in life independent of the fact that I exist could turn those against me who sit in judgment. Whoever it may be who acts in me and out of me: I know I shall be his witness. Do I know it, should I know it? In ancient scripts there is talk of the sons of God who are to gather before Him. I am not named, but I know, even if I don’t believe, that I am one of them.

III – The objects, the rooms, they seem to persist more. We encounter them; when we depart, we leave them untouched and empty. To us they only seem animated if, bethinking them near or far, we ensoul them. Their felt warmth vanishes with those feeling the warmth. Are they traps, does their emptiness enclose us? What would they proffer if we never asked? Does what is created possess the spirit of him who created it? Can spirit be forced to remain bound to one place? Verily everything is echo, a reaction. We ourselves are what we encounter in the objects, sometimes, for a while, often enough not. Whoever looks, dreams up, visualizes, a picture. Look, look once again, precise and sharp: never is the picture reliable. Every picture is inside, also that of the so-called outside world. World is always that of whomsoever perceives it, from moment to moment, unassured. Nothing can be held onto permanently; all possession is uncertain. You go from room to room, graze the walls, step across thresholds and treads, touch this, release that. And during this while, things feel our weight, our pulse, our radiation. They remain what they are it seems; yet longer is their span, more distant their disappearance. But would they exist at all if there were not the consciousness within which they are? A mirror without there being something to mirror would not be one. But it mirrors everything, even were it nothingness.

from: Papierarbeiten/Paperworks – Simon Schubert, 2007, Meurer Verlag”

Industry of the Ordinary

Work from the projects 

Industry of the Ordinary is the collaborative performance art/sculpture team of Adam Brooks and Mathew Wilson. Their manifesto is: “Through sculpture, text, photography, video, sound and performance Industry of the Ordinary are dedicated to an exploration and celebration of the customary, the everyday, and the usual. Their emphasis is on challenging pejorative notions of the ordinary and, in doing so, moving beyond the quotidian.”

Works, in order:

Well Groomed (with Max King Cap) – Industry of the Ordinary Exchange Facial Hair.

Champion – Industry of the Ordinary hand out business cards inscribed with the word “CHAMPION”.

Match of the Day II – Industry of the Ordinary, as Old God and Young God, play table football, first to 100 goals, on the promontory point by North Avenue beach.

Final Words – Industry of the Ordinary collect the last lines from ten significant works of 20th century literature.

Ariel Rubin

Work from the series Decomposition and Box of Fools (statements and work in their respective order).

Statement for Decomposition:

“We have a tendency to think of ourselves as separate from nature. We assumethat anything found in the natural world is unrefined, pure and uncontrolled. We make similar assumptions about photographs as a portrayalof truth. 

In both nature and photography this belief is often fictitious. Both arestrongly affected by the conditions in which they were created. There isalways a viewpoint behind a photograph and there is human influence now onnearly every part of the planet.

These photographs are about the dichotomy they express. They are images of arepresented world and at the same they are simple delicate objects. Theyshow us a view of nature and are printed on plastic. They have beencarefully honed by hand and yet the process of creating them was chaotic anddifficult to control.

The distortions in these images express a question I continue to ask as anartist: How much do we have power over and how much is natural andintuitive? These photographs, hand printed through negatives that wereliterally scratched and burned, call into question some of our assumptionsabout nature and art. By peeling back the layers we are given the chance tocreate our own truth, one that may or may not sit just below the surface.”

Statement for Box of Fools:

“As humans we have a fascination with the face. Portraiture is an ancientpractice in art yet we never seem to tire of watching each other. Brokendown, we all have the same basic features, so why is it that we can’t seemto get enough?

These images started with Shakespeare’s character of The Fool. The Fool’srole is to mock, to contradict and in the end to allow the audience to seelayers of the story which would otherwise be hidden. The Fool must alwayswear a mask and so I have painted the faces of my subjects. By making upthese faces, a paradox is created. There is a layer hiding each face, yet atthe same time they are revealed at a deeper level, through the focus that isdrawn upon each of their many nicks and flaws. Each portrait is a blendingof opposites, old and young, comic and sad, male and female.

I want these images to remind the viewer of the vast history of portraiturewhile simultaneously pulling their attention to the quality of thephotograph. It is the large format of the images, crisply printed and deeplysaturated which allow us to see the details of the subjects.

In the end it is not the makeup, the box or the red ruffle that holds ourattention. It is the gaze of the subject. Each life of pain, joy and fearappears in the eyes of the Fools who draw us in, simultaneously mirroringour own lives and questions.”

Jolie Dobson

Work from the series Untitled Land.

“In the series, Untitled Land, I am focusing on the struggle between nature and civilization and the foreseeable defeat of both. Humanity’s exploitation of the natural world questions the ecological sustainability of the future. The constructed photographs represent the catastrophic event of an environmental apocalypse and critically responds to the complacency of society as we head towards our very own extinction. The work addresses my own anxieties about the environmental condition and the way our culture inhabits and dominates nature.

The composite photographs reflect the world we are physically constructing and, paradoxically, the world we are destroying. The photographs present us with the possibility of an apocalyptic world: a world of deteriorated bleak landscapes, a world of contamination, a world of death. These images are meant as cultural awareness. For me, Untitled Land functions as a catalyst for change and as a form of agency to sustain the health of the land.”

Nikki S. Lee

Work from the series Parts. As promised, more work that deals with the medium of photography and photographic seeing.

Statement courtesy of the Numark Gallerey, where you can see more of Lee’s works.

“In Parts, the artist departs from the snapshot depictions of cultural identity for which she has become internationally known to explore how more intimate relationships affect personal identity. As in her previous work, Lee appears in each photograph, which is shot by someone else. Now, however, she carefully stages narrative scenes in which she appears with other performers, typically male companions, who she subsequently cuts out of the picture. The viewer is left to guess the parts that are missing — the identity of the missing person and the missing holes of the narrative story. Although Lee is recognizable in each image, she appears slightly different, emphasizing the artist’s interest in the fluidity of identity and the role of personal relationships in one’s sense of self. 
The artist’s act of cutting the image posits not only a post-Romantic quality of absence in this body of work, but also makes overt the inherent decision making process of the photographer. Every photographer in composing an image is making a choice of what to include or exclude in her shot.  Parts  , by physically cutting out one side of the image and face mounting the resulting print, showing only three borders around the image, makes these choices part of the subject of the work. “

Brad Farwell

Work from the series Lottery. I also reccommend An African Mask Looks at Sites of American Blackness and Fourth, the Tourists. Farwell’s Lottery work reminds me of Nikki S. Lee, who I guess I will have to post tomorrow, because it is awesome.

“Large, vision-filling photographs, minutely detailed, with rectangles of metallic silver ink silkscreened over the images. The rectangles have the texture and color of scratch-off lottery tickets. The rectangles obscuring something or someone. The photographs flattening out, dropping from deep space to simple surface.
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I’m interested in the photograph as a 2-D object, in the seen and the unseen, in our investment in what we cannot see, our demands for surveillance and the belief that if we just had all the information we could be safe. I want to create a photograph where the image is an explicit construction, created in the mind’s eye of the viewer, filling in the holes in the document. The substance that we create, the individual and unique internal photograph, is the real image.”

Joe Hardesty

Work from the series Text Drawings. Hardesty’s work with text drawings is a conceptually compelling look at the content of photographs and how one reads an image.

“I make seemingly simple drawings on paper that address ambiguous and contradictory aspects of our cultural landscape. By focusing viewers’ attention primarily through the use of text, my drawings work both as a concrete reality created on the page and as a changing series of interpretations as each viewer “reads” the text differently. I want the process of making art – the act of imagination – to be both visible and entertaining. Using only language to describe what the viewer is experiencing, the drawings inhabit a space somewhere between text, image and the mind’s eye.”

Erin Tyner

Work from the series Half Awake. I cam across Tyner’s work on the Hey Hot Shot contenders blog, and once again (as with Lori Nix) I am very very glad I quit working with scale-models before I saw this work, because it is far more sucessful than I ever was with models (hence the reason I quit). I enjoy the quite narrative feel that these images have, there is a subtlety to the tension in them that really pulls it together.

“In my Half Awake series I construct scenes by combining household items, natural objects, and train figures under one inch in height. By pairing figures and context I create characters that are engaged with an unfolding narrative. I use dioramas to provide a voyeuristic peek into the vulnerability of each subject as they reflect upon their surroundings. Minimal yet familiar settings leave room to focus on emotions, grand or small, that often get lost in the minutiae of daily life.”