Carol Dronsfield is a Brooklyn based photographer who uses advertising detritis as inspiration.
Her photography is used almost as a mosaic where she focuses in on a portion of a much parger image, often including areas of distress or detritis, and using that abstracted portion in part of a much larger work of art. The effect of of a fully formed abstract piece of work that stands apart from its original form and look.
Benjamin Pineros reports on groundbreaking ceramic artist Ronit Baranga.
Israeli sculptor Ronit Baranga is making waves with a series of ceramic works that blend grotesque human forms with traditional dinnerware. Her work blends wide-open mouths, sprouting fingers and other body parts with cups, plates and kettles, turning inoffensive, everyday items into nightmarish and fascinating sculptures that look like they’re right out of a David Lynch film.
Baranga uses different kinds of clay for her works, creating partial casts of the different parts of her eerie figures and then connecting them together to form the final piece.
She repeatedly uses fingers and mouths in her sculptures because of their inherent sensuality. Isolating them from the context of the human body gives them a powerful, whole new meaning she wants to explore.
As she stated in an interview published on Emptykingdom.com, “The seamless combination of these organs in plates or cups, appearing as one, creates, in my opinion, new items that “feel” their environment and respond to it.”
A commonality in her body of work is a never-ending exploration of the relationship between inanimate and living entities.
“I try to change the way in which we observe useful tableware,” she says. “The useful, passive, tableware can now be perceived as an active object, aware of itself and its surroundings – responding to it. It does not allow to be taken for granted, to be used. It decides on its own how to behave in the situation.”
Ronit Baranga’s most recent work was displayed at the Gross Anatomies show at the Akron Art Museum.
Rocio de Alba poses in a series of humorous and processed self-portraits, which shows us different contemporary mothers in current modern families. Current statistics confirm that the diversity of family structures are affected by many situations including the rise in divorce rate, interracial unions and legalization of same sex marriages. These statistics support the change in the mother prototype.
By taking humorous and dynamic self-portraits, Rocio explores what mothers should look like in the progression of the “modern family”. Statistically, the diversity of modern family structures is caused by divorce. She uses these facts and her own experiences as a base to her concerns and questions.
De Alba’s ongoing series, “Honor Thy Mother,” is featured in the Atelier Gallery at the Griffin Museum of Photography from June 6st through September 3rd, 2017. An opening reception will take place on July 13th, 2017 from 7-8:30PM. Event is free and open to the public.
Rocio de Alba shares, “In my early twenties my pious old fashion Hispanic parents divorced. Years later they confessed their most devoted accomplishments were sparing us the un-pleasantries associated with step-parents. Yet almost immediately my mother began a relationship with a man… and my father courted many women. Baffled, I witnessed my strict marital ethics unravel through the adults that enforced them and seamlessly integrated into what is referred to as the “modern family”.” In these self-portraits, de Alba uses props and minor Photoshop edits to transform herself into these numerous characters which “[focus] on the gamut of the contemporary mother archetype. Rocio herself has undergone broken relationships and separated children. She says, “As the evolution of a progressive family dynamic ensued, it revolutionized societal doctrines that enforced what mothers should look like and instead made mothers reinvent themselves unconventionally and with disregard to social biases.”
Rocio de Alba is a fine art, multimedia and conceptual photographer based in Queens, New York. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts and is an award winning book designer and handmade book instructor. Her work has been featured on many platforms including CNN Photos, New York Magazine, and the New York Times Lens. Her work has been part of different group exhibitions including at The Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado, Blue Sky Gallery in Oregon, and at the Vermont Center of Photography. Her handmade book has earned a finalist position and was displayed at the Festival Documental in Barcelona. On April 2017, the book was also selected for the INFOCUS Exhibition of Self-Published Photo Books at the Phoenix Art Museum.
As described by Bryce Grates, E. Thurston Belmer is an independent artist currently based in New York who is best known for his strikingly dark oil portraits and prints. With a Masters from Washington University in St. Louis and a BFA from Lyme Academy College of Fine Art, Belmer is well equipped for success and hitting the gound running this year, with already participating in three shows.
Belmar’s portraits have an intriguingly dark twist to them, unlike any traditional portrait. Often including surrealism, nudity, pained facial expressions and lots of contrast, the oil paintings are aesthetically interesting in an unconventional way that one doesn’t traditionally experience in a portrait. The paintings evoke emotions from the viewer that pry them to consider the life of the subject, and question their identity and place in society. The portraits also have dark titles that lend themselves to the pieces, such as “You may cut down my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy.”, which depicts a nearly-nude female body seemingly “floating” about a half-visible male body that is curled up on the flood below her, and “I am. I am. I am.”, which shows a woman alone, slouched on the ground of a hallway.
Belmar lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and has shown his work nationally.
Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Liene Bosquê (1980) is a visual artist based in New York City. In 2013 she was a resident artist at Workspace Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), having received the Manhattan Community Arts Fund. Bosquê has attended the New York Foundation for the Arts Mentoring Program for Immigrant Artists, in addition to participating in the 2012 Lower East Side Studio Program and being granted a place at the 2011 New York Art Residency and Studios (NARS) Foundation.
"I am interested in the relationship between place and people. My work deals with the exploration of sensorial experience within architectural, urban and personal spaces. By the process of creating traces, shadows, impressions, imprints, and reflections, I emphasize context, memory, and history. My multidisciplinary practice, including installations, objects and site-specifics, finds ways to fragment habitual spaces, transforming rigid, subtle architectures into more fragile and pliable materials. I'm interested in materials that hold a memory and also already saturated with meaning. I investigate the passage of time, which changes place and how we look at place, through the presence and absence of who inhabit these places," she says.
Bosquê holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2011), a BFA from the São Paulo Estate University (2003), and a BA in Architecture and Urbanism from the Mackenzie University (2004), also in São Paulo, Brazil. While living in Lisbon, Portugal, she was the recipient of the 2007 "Anteciparte" Award, having completed, in 2008, the Advanced Course at Centro de Arte e Comunicação Visual (Ar.Co.).
Her installations, sculptures, performances, and site-specific works have been exhibited internationally at locations such as MoMA PS1 (2016), William Holman Gallery in New York (2015); the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago (2013); Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Arts Center in Governors Island, New York (2013); and New York Foundation for the Arts Gallery in Brooklyn, New York (2013); the Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, Illinois (2012); Carpe Diem in Lisbon, Portugual (2010); Museu de Arte de Ribeirão Preto in Ribeirão Preto, Brazil (2007); among others non-profit galleries and public spaces in Brazil, Portugal, Turkey, and United States.
Theresa Friess creates beauty from discarded objects. Her works are a compilation of everyday objects arranged to offer the viewer a compendium of surfaces, colors and shapes.
Friess works in Bushwick Brooklyn where she participates in Bushwick Open Studio.
By George Tibbett, curator
Perhaps even more exciting than the opening of the anxiously anticipated extension of the Q subway line along 2nd Avenue in Manhattan was the mosaic art in each new station. Many NYC subway stations have some mosaics but these new stations bring it to a new artistic level with artwork by Sarah Sze, Chuck Close and Vik Muniz all translated into large mosaics.
So will this push the art of mosaics into greater acceptance in the established art world? Mosaics as with ceramics, has long been relegated to crafts rather than fine art. But this may be changing. Established ceramicists, such as Betty Woodman, have had solo shows at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Emerging ceramicists like Lulu Yee have been the toast of Bushwick Open Studios. So as go ceramics, so go mosaics?
Mosaics should mean more than just a jigsaw puzzle of pieces that form an image. Great mosaic art should expand the range of the medium. Here is a list of the top five ground-breaking mosaic artists working today:
Jorge Campos aka Pixel
Pixel, is a Santiago street artist whose mosaic work pixelates cultural heroes such as Nicanor Parra, artists such as Van Gogh, and iconic artwork like from Roy Lichtenstein. Pixel brings his mosaics to the streets where his work blends with other forms of street art for people to enjoy on the streets of Santiago. According to MosaicArtNow, Pixel explains the relationship of his art with the public. He says, “At first, people think they are facing a painting. Approaching and touching, they realize they are in fact facing a mosaic. Then, they wonder if it was really hand made. They also play with distance to appreciate the work in detail, take photos, and when the image is revealed perfect and detailed on the small screens of their smartphones, they fall for it!”
Using a range of different materials, King’s mosaics are complex compilations that, as her website states, stimulate the imagination. Some of her work is described as coded messages. She asserts, “These mosaics explore the dynamic tension created when familiar organic shapes can be seen as both macro and micro visions of our landscape. Shapes that are simultaneously at rest and moving, pulling the tesserae together into a complex composition while exploring the interaction of each element and the mystery of the spaces between.”
Weisler describes herself as an urban artist with an interest in decaying and discarded objects. First starting in photography, Weisler was captivated by decaying, peeling and eroding street art. From there, she gravitated to collecting and assembling discarded and broken objects to not only capture their inherent beauty and mystery but also to create new mosaic images. She explains, “My mosaics are often unplanned and are created organically as the pieces come together to tell their story. A broken mug, a piece of shattered plate or a discarded misshapen object are all important elements in my work.”
Isaiah Zagar might be best known for one of his greatest achievements – The Magic Garden in Philadelphia, which is essentially a full house and side yard of compiled mosaic art. As described by Lonely Planet, “Think of all the things you have thrown away this week – an old shoe, a broken mirror, a loose button, an empty bottle of wine. Then picture all of it broken apart, artfully cobbled together with quirky objects like antique tiles and hand-carved Mexican dolls, and applied to a wall with cement, clay, paint and glue to form a gloriously colorful mural. This is the work of septuagenarian Philadelphia-born Isaiah Zagar: mosaic artist, world traveler, visionary, dumpster diver.”
Better known as a painter, Zapata had a chance encounter when he walked into Koko Mosaico in Ravenna, Italy. It was there that he saw the potential of mosaics to translate his paintings into formative artwork. “With these pieces, I wanted to create great contrast and pay tribute to the history of art. I find taking a painting done in graffiti and recreating it using these ancient techniques helps me to understand the contemporary moment. These works represent to me where we have been and where we are going – they derive their strength from this duality,” he states on MosaicArtNow.
Inspired by 18th C. porcelain figurines, Chris Antemann’s work employs a unity of design and concept to simultaneously examine and parody male and female relationship roles. Characters, themes and incidents build upon each other, effectively forming their own language that speaks about domestic rites, social etiquette, and taboos. Themes from the classics and the romantics are given a contemporary edge; elaborate dinner parties, picnic luncheons and ornamental gardens set the stage for her twisted tales to unfold.
The pieces Chris is making in the Meissen Art Campus use the literary technique of a frame narrative, a story within a story, to build relationships and create layers of information between the sculptural aspects and the painted surfaces. The main story is presented in the guise of the 18th century porcelain figurine as a context, which frames a parody or second narrative between the sculpted characters. Other stories and in many cases, the sources of inspiration for the piece are painted into the scene in elaborate detail.
Chris earned her M.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Minnesota and her B.F.A. in ceramics & painting from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has exhibited extensively in the United States and China. Her work can be found in many private and public collections, including the Museum of Arts and Design, The 21 C. Hotel Museum, The KAMM Teapot Foundation, The Archie Bray Foundation, and the Foshan Ceramic Museum in China. Her artist residencies include The Archie Bray Foundation and The John Michael Kohler Arts Center, where she was the NEA funded resident. In 2010 she was the First Place Winner of the Virginia A. Groot Grant, a prestigious grant awarded to artists working in 3D to allow them time to further their work.
İnci Eviner is a gatherer: she collects the memory of crowds, unearths folk narratives, and retells their stories in her own language. She is a hunter: she traces misogyny, detects hierarchy, and targets it with the tools of a unique feminist visual lexicon. Although she doesn’t specifically identify her work as feminist, Eviner dissolves dichotomies and prescribed identities using the female body—but just as often, ungendered bodies—as an agent through which womanhood, gender, and the politics of identity are performed.
To understand Eviner’s art, which spans nearly every conceivable medium, one needs to break the mindset of a western linear understanding. The tales in her works mushroom in different terrains, hatching into a rhizome. As in Deleuze and Guattari’s model of the rhizome, which opposes a hierarchical, tree-like model of culture and thought, Eviner’s work rejects a continuous, unbroken, orthodox perception of the world. Unlike the tree that sprouts from a single seed, branching out from a stable trunk, the rhizome is a root-like organism that spreads and grows horizontally, making diverse, but not necessarily continuous connections and appearances.