Pared: Matthew Deleget + Ellen Nagel at U·turn Art Space

Alright, so Matthew Deleget out of New York and Ellen Nagel out of Cincinnati opened at UTurn on Saturday night. There were definite elements that unified these artist, color pallet, the element of found objects, overall the show worked. Deleget worked with severely discounted art books as art objects in the white cube, and his headlining piece (pictured above) color fields referencing a beatles song made of found bags. All in all a clever piece and mix of cultures. It still had a strong aesthetic quality and interesting concept which seemed to fall a little short in my opinion for Ellen Nagel's work. She focuses on subtlety and restraint with her pairing of objects, and is interested in how these objects relate in the space of the viewer as sort of collage-like avatars. This as a viewer was either too cryptic or too trite from image to image. I personally enjoyed more of her subtle pieces involving just a manipulated bicycle tire as apposed to those involving real clothing. There is something about a chocolate brown leotard with scarf through the leg holes, painted coat rack down the middle and brass "nipples" that I had a bit of trouble relating too. Though I found some of her fabric and flaccidity and hardness choices humorous. All in all it was a show worth seeing whether or not it has long standing interest.

weenie animation of the day

Dang. It has been a while. After a long break I am back to work at school and back to shows as well. I am attempting to learn how to edit and compile sound for my animations which will be a long learning process. This might block me a bit from posting stuff up here of my own work. Otherwise, maybe I will figure out how to post my sound pieces and maybe you guys can crit me a bit. Anyway, just wanted to let you know I haven't forgotten and show reviews start tomorrow and I'll be back in the habit.

until then, here is the slowly but surely crap I have been working on.

retro IMAGE!

Classy.

thanks sarah!

On the Scene.

us at the R. Mug. Show.

Everyone can be Ryan Mulligan

I went to Ryan Mulligan's solo show at semantics this weekend and was impressed with the amount of work he produced for this show. There were two rooms of small paintings and drawings and a large Wall mural. I know his process is pretty quick, but I love the direction his work is going. It seems to be taking a more abstract turn from his last show I attended at the Westin last year. That show was much more about drawing/depicting real objects in a false space. This work seems much more about abstraction, movement, and design. I'm happy to seem him take a turn towards more expressive and less illustrative work. I am excited to see where he takes these forms and colors in the next few years. Objects of his drawings maybe?

One thing though, his color palette is very similar to someone else I know. He constantly tells this person he hates their color palette. Wonder who that could be.

By the way, since Ryan was in New York all weekend there were name tags all over the place with his name on them, and andy was taking pictures of everyone as ryan mulligan. The name tags were a great take away to bockfest going on downtown. Ryan you should be thanking us for all the free advertising, especially all over the women's bathroom at Neon's Bar. ::wink:: you're welcome.

IMAGE!

People Who Make Us Smile. U turn.

I don't know who made it out to Uturn gallery space on saturday with the rain and bockfest keeping everyone busy, but there was a show about humor that had some interesting work. The show was called People Who Make Us Smile. It was full of installation work and funny images. DVDs of funny shows and movies, A 75 dollar Bart Simpson "don't have a cow man" cup full of yellow liquid, collages, one featuring my favorite "Pizza the Hut", a running jersey that has "you have fat ankles" in a convincing logo, to list a few. All of the work was pretty light and a fun show to spend some time in. I was proud of the people who submitted work because while it did contain some one liner art, some of the pieces were a bit more than that, which was refreshing for a cincinnanti show about humor. It was a nice mix of objects and images that brought their wintertime viewers a bit out of their seasonal affective disorder.

Show highlight was a photograph in a studio/garage space of a typical midwest looking mom sticking her head through the "O" in a giant sign that said "Mom". She is grinning and standing on the remnants of where they cut out the "O". Her expression and dress combined with the surroundings made everyone laugh when they looked at this piece in a gallery setting.

Show sadness, my friends Chris Reeves and Loraine Wible had a couple video pieces that people kept turning the volume down on. I didn't even really get to hear the piece, bummer.

IMAGE!

Grad Poster Forum!

ok, so, end of the quarter exhaustion is setting in, but I told myself I would keep up with this blog, so sorry if half assed posts appear. It will get better once break comes I promise.

anyway, so THE GRADUATE POSTER FORUM!

As always we are invited to put up cool pictures we drew while we may or may not have been drunk amongst extreme curing cancer type research posters. At least we have a lot of experience now at making scientists laugh.

We had our own little gallery space at the beginning of the poster space where we set up our work at about 9am. A bunch of us had to leave to meet up with jimmy baker but we noticed before hand that there were tags and labels for a "carlos guitarlos". We know pretty much everyone in the program and as genuine of a name as carlos guitarlos sounds we were very curious who this person could have been. So when we came back for the crowning ceremony at around 2pm there was still no carlos. This made us all wonder if they really check peoples names because nick quickly realized "Hey I could have put in a picture of my famous FetalJuice under carlos' name and people would have never noticed." I guess that is true. There's always next year nicholas. Maybe Carlos will win one of these years.

I do want to give a big thank you to the poster forum staff too. Jennifer had all of these ceramic blackbirds that represented all of the blackbirds that are poisoned by the government as pest control. A couple of them were broken for emphasis as they were supposed to have fallen from the sky. When we can back at 2 suddenly there was this woman constantly complaining that she had to be the art guard because they were worried about work getting destroyed. I thought that was an interesting occurrence that made me angry and thankful at the same time. But all in all the poster forum was a good experience.

After all the votes were tallied and the girls had lined up in the ballroom for the crowning our lovely winner was shannon with her scientific detritus portraits. Very fitting for the medical and engineering type poster forum, and as always she works incredibly hard and deserves any recognition given so... CONGRATS SHANNON!

Contrast/MGGM

Contrast: Video installation work that examine the small details that make it all worth while. A long name for a show. This was made up of drawing/photo pieces by reid radcliffe, and video installation work by Austin Brown and Frank Malone. This was another show that was on the smaller side for Museum Gallery.

Reid's work were abstract expressionist type black ink drawings with photos of themselves adhered in the center giving them a mirroring, picture of a picture effect. It seemed like this work was in the beginning stages and though not really developed yet I am interested to see where it goes, if he decides to take it anywhere else. It seems like this is a pretty big digression from the other performance and installation work by reid.

The music installation in the second room was about 15 minutes long and had video sequencing of water and nature and outdoor urban landscapes, all with decent movement, but the strong point was really the music. I could take or leave the imagery but the music was worth the 15 minutes your time. It was mostly synthesized and had a good pace and enough variety to enjoy and keep your attention.

Show highlight though, a crazy freakishly strong hobo from OTR. Apparently while I was watching the video installation a man came in and tried to steal beer. Austin told him no, and he went a little crazytown. After being bounced out once he came back while I was in the first room, and now I had the opportunity to see him go berserk. It took five art nerds and two to hold the door open to restrain and get him out of there. With only one crushed ventallation pipe and one real punch thrown, every guy involved from the gallery had their egos inflated for at least an hour, yelling and strutting to follow. It was a fun show, but I am looking forward to something a bit stronger from MGGM coming up. I hope. Maybe summer is their season.

weenie animation of the day

IMAGE!

YES! Gallery

I finally made it to YES! Gallery on friday for their final friday opening in OTR. I have been meaning to get to this space forever because of its emphasis on print and how much I wanted to snoop around their studio space. I was not disappointed.

I tagged along with my friend James who has been learning silkscreening by one of the artists at YES! and doing a damn good job. I was shocked to see what these artists were able to do in such homemade facilities. They have spent less than $100 on supplies and had rigged up everything they needed. This is music to my ears since I want to start my own space. They made a mop sink out of a giant plastic bucket and hooked a hose where they took out a toilet. It works perfectly for rinsing screens. They made a homemade darkroom and created their own exposing table. It is a great place for cincinnati. Now this print shop, along with the more professional and traditional clay street press is getting cincy some variety in print studio spaces. I'm really interested to see how far they can go on little money. I am taking notes all the way for my own place too ;)

as far as the show it was great. An interactive giant coloring wall with giant paint "markers" everyone can use. They did screen printing totes for everyone to see the process and had books out for view and sale as well. It really reminded me of the print shows I would go to when I lived back on the east coast.

Hopefully YES! Gallery, even though they are new, can keep it going. I'd love to see the product lines and designs expand, and I'd love to see some visiting printmakers exhibit and work in the space.

Jimmy Baker at the CAC

So I went to the artist talk with Jimmy Baker the other day at the CAC. He is a local to cincinnati, went through the UC MFA program, teaches at the art academy, and is having a solo exhibition in one of the smaller galleries there. It was really nice to get to hear a little bit about his process and concept and also about his life and opportunities, which were fascinating to all of the grad students I'm sure. We want any sort of reassurance that we aren't spending all of this money so we can work at half price books and doodle drunkenly on bar napkins the rest of our lives.

His surfaces were worked beautifully. He took some great modernist concepts and put a very contemporary spin on them with his process. His work is super methodical and planned out. He creates a photographic composition from images researched from the internet, projects them, paints a layer, takes the canvas to the printer and gets an image digitally printed on the painted layer, then goes back and reworks the surface painting in other areas. Then he coats the surface with a high gloss type of light clear resin so they have an incredible shine. I thought this process was super interesting and the layering went great with his concept of how we receive information and the different ways of "seeing". The collage elements were really strong and I was fascinated with what he chose to reveal and conceal, what he decided to render photo realistically and distort. The play of comfort and discomfort within his landscapes really drew you in and kept you there. The only thing I found a bit stale were his images involving war. I know this is a relevant topic for everyone in the world, it goes with the ideas of modernism he is playing with, etc. but it is just not my thing seeing guns, soldiers, and military landscapes. I get it in relation to classic war paintings, the color scheme and allusion is totally there, but that subject doesn't really do it for me. If you are talking about the information people in society take in this (maybe even though it should be) is not high on the list. Although I do enjoy his cryptic nature in the handling the imagery. He doesn't give it all away. You might recognize a piece of architecture, or a certain color scheme, or an internet meme line from the title, and then the viewer is let in on the specifics of the subject at different degrees. That is something I enjoy in painting and 2D work. Although I hope he elaborates a bit on that idea of pshyic in his statement, I am intrigued with how artists are talking about this more and more.

As far as his personal story goes, its also pretty fascinating. It was comforting to hear that his success was based on pure networking ability and luck. He went to a chicago art fair while still in school at UC, got lucky and pestered a tiny (like 12ft by 6ft, tiny) gallery in NY for a group show and got it. He showed a bit there but didn't get representation so he played the field and while in communication with an LA gallery got more attention and a solo show from the NY gallery and then from that solo show got the representation in LA. It seems like confidence, communication, and timing are really in his favor. He got lucky with a paris gallery and fully admits timing and luck have a big hand in his success as well.

It was really nice of him to do such a personal talk with us grads. Even though he has a bit of a reputation for not being the nicest guy in the world I thought he was very approachable and seemed reserved but very willing to help and talk if we needed.

Go see the show at the CAC, its worth it to see some strong paintings for a change.

IMAGE!

Haha on the scene

Chase and I at the Today Show Opening.

Check out the rest of the photos.

are my eyes looking two different directions?

studio IMAGE!

lets see if this is any better

Today Show

Ok so this was my first time going to the new CS13 space on main st. for the Today Show. This was an exhibition in which the artists had 24hours to create/curate/open. All in all, the artists did a great job. The only thing I kept thinking when hearing this concept though was... wait a minute, shouldn't it be less than 24hours? Talking with my friend Loraine (who runs MG/GM on sycamore) she had the same thought because a lot of artists are so last minute they are used to making and installing in one day. 8 hours and the audience would have really smelt and felt the desperation. Also, then there would have been some real questionable decision making which would have made for some interesting art.

But anyway, I thought going to this space was super refreshing. I have found that the group shows I have gone to in cincinnati have been a bit over saturated. Even some of the ones I have been in have been way to dense and conceptually all over the place, so it was nice to go to a show and have some room to breathe.

Jordan Tate's work as always is a conceptually interesting take on technology and new media. The print of a projector on a projector, the image of a kindle on a kindle, it makes sense, and doesn't disregard aesthetics either. I'm interested to see where he takes these ideas in his next few moves. I would love them to take a bit more of a stance maybe (do I even know what that means, I don't know I'll have to think about my wording). But they are very clean and concise and always strong pieces whenever I see them.

Sarah Blith-Stephens, I'm always biased in favor of because she is my BFF, but she has good work too. She did one of her signature plaster walls for the exhibition, which there are pictures of in their little catalogue before it fell, but it did crumble into a beautiful white mess on the floor. In talking to Sarah after the show she regretted not doing something new or taking a risk with something different, but next to Jordan's and especially John's work I thought it was great. Also, in her past work the plaster walls were in tact with a different form of movement and clean aesthetic. In this exhibition it had completely fallen. Leaving the in plastic tarp changed everything for me. It became more about the residue and traces on the tarp which recreated the plaster in my eyes.

John Night's pink was a show highlight for me as well. He mentioned that after being a preparator at the Contemporary Arts Center it was hard painting a wall in that way. I think the action came across as necessary for him and his audience. In that clean white space the subtle arbitrarily mixed pink in white and flippantly painted wall was a very interesting breath for the visuals of my brain. Once again the traces went with Sarah's tarp, but I thought simply the color of the pink was a smart decision. John said he has been obsessed with that pink lately on an intuitive level, that pink and bob dylan lyrics in his titles. The connection, who knows, but its working, and I'm interested to see what connections are next for his work.

The only thing that really drove me crazy about this show was the live video feed of the install. Jordan set up a webcam that I tried to watch a couple times over the night and it barely worked. I was super disappointed. It was just a few stills of the empty room. There was also a chat function for those watching the feed and no one would talk to me. What happened to the interaction! Don't comment in an art chatroom if you aren't ready to trash talk.