This lecture was interesting because most of the audience was an older crowd of men and women. It really made me understand how important this woman must have been.
Paola Antonelli's lecture was titled The Design Exhibitionist. She came to speak at VCU because of the work she is known for doing at the MOMA in New York. Her lecture was very different because she was showing us elements of design instead of the artists we are usually used to seeing. She has a history in teaching fashion classes but she was trained in architectural design.
She spoke alot about design in today's world. One interesting idea she talked about was called "an organic path" which is basically her way of saying go with the flow, love your work and love what you do. She also emphasized an idea of leaving things open ended to keep the audience wondering about the art and design. She spoke of "lard and honey; " which was her way of expressing the idea of brings odd things together that really shouldnt be together that end up somehow working perfectly together. Lard and Honey was something she said had that effect.
Showing posts with label Visiting Artist 2010. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Visiting Artist 2010. Show all posts
Friday, April 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
VISITING LECTURE: 3/25/10 Hamza Walker
Hamza Walker
Hamza Walker visited VCU as the Juror for the Anderson Gallery Student Exhibition. Walker is the Director of Education and Associate Curator for the Renaissance Society at the University of Columbia. The Renaissance Society is a non collected museum that is devoted to showing contemporary artists and their work in their amazing 3500 square foot gallery.
The Renaissance Society was opened in 1915 and showed artists like Pablo Picasso, Diet Mondrian and Cindy Sherman. Recently the gallery has shown artists such as Kara Walker and Felix Gonzalez - Torres.
Walker is "known beyond Chicago't art scene not only for his innovative curatorial work but also for his wide-ranging thinking and writing about contemporary art." - From theUniversity of Chicago magazine online.
The 3500 square foot gallery at the Renaissance Society is a wide open space that Walker transforms for every show he orchestrates in the space. He showed us examples of shows and how the space transforms. Walls move and it looks completely new with each new show. It was interesting to hear him talk about some of the shows he has put together. Such as a show about black art, everyone told him not to do it, but he did it anyways.
As the juror for the Anderson gallery student exhibition this lecture was also for the purpose of explaining his decisions about his choices for the show. Walker was interesting to listen to because he is very lighthearted. He described some of his decisions as " I just had to.." with a hearty laugh. It seems he choose some pieces because they were out there and bizarre. He also chose pieces based on their relation to other images by other artists. It was interesting to see how he saw things.. he described how one piece would comment the other and he just had to put them together. The photograph above is Cassie Mulheron's work about identifying as a race. He was intrigued by the painting of the face and how it related to similar images in the show that was of tribal face painting.
That is how he choose the show, by pairing similar things together. Congratulations to all the Photo Seniors whose work got accepted!
Friday, March 26, 2010
VISITING ARTIST 3/11/10 Sanford Biggers
Sanford Biggers is a LA native living in NYC. His work is a combination of scultpure, performance and other various medias. Most of his works involve alot of preparation and are heavily involved in the processes of making them. Biggers has attended many residencies and had living in many major cities in America as well as Japan.
One of the first pieces that he showed us was a linoleum floor that he laid with a design. This floor was meant to be used for break dancing and biggers was interested in showing the space created and the way a space is treated. The square he designed from break dancing became a kind of a scared space to those dancers that same way that temple and churches are sacred to other people. This floor is show in galleries with all the wear and tear of it being danced on, and occasionally it was danced on with in the gallery spaces.
One of my other favorite things that he showed us was a video. It was two screens side by side showing "Middle Class America. " This was a collaboration he did with a white artist and they took home videos from when they were young and took similar scenes and put them together as a movie. It really just shows that even though they are different colors their families were no different from one another.
Pictured above is a glass piece called Lotus. The flower petals are actually diagrams of slave shifts formed into a photograph. It speaks to peaceful religions as it is the shape of a gong and how it is a circle. It is an intense image that is a strong reminder of what happened in the past.
Sanford Biggers work is so vast it is had to describe him in just a few words. His work covers ideas of race, social standings of the past and black culture.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
VISITING ARTIST 2/16/2010: HANK WILLIS THOMAS
You cannot deny the power of an artist that is truly truthful, honest and inspirational.The Hank Willis Thomas lecture was just that. Thomas was so truthful in the way that he spoke and just utterly honest it as hard not to be entranced by his work and by his words.Thomas started off the lecture with a quote from Carl Hancock-Rus that expressed that there is not such this as "black" and "white." "Have you seen a white person before?," Thomas asked us, " you haven't."
Thomas's mother is a Photographer and an Art historian. He was really influenced by his mother but did not decide he wanted to be an artist until he was grown up. They did a beautiful collaboration piece together called, "Sometimes I see myself in you" where they combined their portraits together.
Sometime i see myself in you, 2008 Digital C Print 50" x 21"
Thomas's work as so much to do with branding. Branding with the interest that simple advertisement and imagery can build a billion dollar business. Thomas appropriates branding techniques to convey subjects of race, class and history in a easy to read and convey form. Here are a few examples where Thomas uses common advertisements to make a statement about the relationships or today to the times of slavery. Specifically the practice of branding of slaves, and the way that we are all branded by name brands today.
Branded Head, 2003, Light jet print, varible Scarred Chest, 2004, Lightjet Print, varible
Hank Willis Thomas's work ranges from pieces like the ones above to ones where he deals with advertisements from years past, he deals with the beauty of black women and how the trends change. He works with concepts risen from the murder of his close cousin. The best thing about this artist is the way he speaks and how he is not looking for justification for things that happened in the past, but he makes connections between the past and things today. If anything I think this man is a bridge to understand the difference, or more the like lack of difference there is between people of different colors or backgrounds. We are all people.
At the end of his lecture I think we were all amazed by the video called "Along the way." It is a portrait of America. Watch a piece of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-1AZi7AUzE
Thomas's mother is a Photographer and an Art historian. He was really influenced by his mother but did not decide he wanted to be an artist until he was grown up. They did a beautiful collaboration piece together called, "Sometimes I see myself in you" where they combined their portraits together.
Sometime i see myself in you, 2008 Digital C Print 50" x 21"
Thomas's work as so much to do with branding. Branding with the interest that simple advertisement and imagery can build a billion dollar business. Thomas appropriates branding techniques to convey subjects of race, class and history in a easy to read and convey form. Here are a few examples where Thomas uses common advertisements to make a statement about the relationships or today to the times of slavery. Specifically the practice of branding of slaves, and the way that we are all branded by name brands today.
Branded Head, 2003, Light jet print, varible Scarred Chest, 2004, Lightjet Print, varible
Hank Willis Thomas's work ranges from pieces like the ones above to ones where he deals with advertisements from years past, he deals with the beauty of black women and how the trends change. He works with concepts risen from the murder of his close cousin. The best thing about this artist is the way he speaks and how he is not looking for justification for things that happened in the past, but he makes connections between the past and things today. If anything I think this man is a bridge to understand the difference, or more the like lack of difference there is between people of different colors or backgrounds. We are all people.
At the end of his lecture I think we were all amazed by the video called "Along the way." It is a portrait of America. Watch a piece of it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-1AZi7AUzE
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
VISITING ARTIST: 2/15/2010 Paul Pfeiffer
Morning After the Apocalypse, video installation, Paul Pfeiffer, 2003
Today's lecture was with Paul Pfieffer. His work deals a lot with photography and appropriated imagery and video. As he was speaking about his work, I often found myself very confused by his intent or the reasonings to why he create some of his odd pieces.
One series called "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is a series of more than four images of basketball players. Pfeiffer appropriates that images, and erases the contextual information for the photography, moving the figure to different areas of the court. The images of these players are interesting because they are of high tension moments for the players. I was confused by Pfeiffer when he said that the name of the series really had nothing in relation for the work. But later I read in an interview on Art:21 that he used the name from a historical reference of the history of evolution. He said that he was interested in the combination of the history of evolution with the dramatic ending or scene being displayed in the photograph.
It make me wonder why he didn't give that explanation during this lecture.
Pfeiffer really showed a great variety of work that spread over a good period of time. He works a lot with the ideas of erasing identity from images. I really admired his project in the World Trade Centers where they filmed eggs hatching and the chickens growing up in real time and played it back in real time on the televisions in the World Trade Center. When he was speaking about the video I pictured in my head something beautiful and graceful but when he showed a clip from it you see that it is a little rough and intense because it is very close up and ground level with the chickens. I think he was trying to remind people of the cycle of life but I would be interested to learn peoples reactions to the imagery.
Another work that I admired was the "Morning After the Deluge." In this work he took two real time videos of the sun rising and falling and turned one upside down and butted the horizon lines together. The end product was a beautiful film show the sun set and rise at the same time. The sun stays in the same spot on the frame and the horizon line moves up and down the page.
These two piece I have described really remind and influence the work I am working on now. Because I am focusing on appreciating everyday and realizing the time going by, these two works reflect the idea of the cycle of earth never ceasing.
One series called "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is a series of more than four images of basketball players. Pfeiffer appropriates that images, and erases the contextual information for the photography, moving the figure to different areas of the court. The images of these players are interesting because they are of high tension moments for the players. I was confused by Pfeiffer when he said that the name of the series really had nothing in relation for the work. But later I read in an interview on Art:21 that he used the name from a historical reference of the history of evolution. He said that he was interested in the combination of the history of evolution with the dramatic ending or scene being displayed in the photograph.
It make me wonder why he didn't give that explanation during this lecture.
Pfeiffer really showed a great variety of work that spread over a good period of time. He works a lot with the ideas of erasing identity from images. I really admired his project in the World Trade Centers where they filmed eggs hatching and the chickens growing up in real time and played it back in real time on the televisions in the World Trade Center. When he was speaking about the video I pictured in my head something beautiful and graceful but when he showed a clip from it you see that it is a little rough and intense because it is very close up and ground level with the chickens. I think he was trying to remind people of the cycle of life but I would be interested to learn peoples reactions to the imagery.
Another work that I admired was the "Morning After the Deluge." In this work he took two real time videos of the sun rising and falling and turned one upside down and butted the horizon lines together. The end product was a beautiful film show the sun set and rise at the same time. The sun stays in the same spot on the frame and the horizon line moves up and down the page.
These two piece I have described really remind and influence the work I am working on now. Because I am focusing on appreciating everyday and realizing the time going by, these two works reflect the idea of the cycle of earth never ceasing.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
VISITING ARTIST: Alec Soth 1/27/10
Wednesday January 27, 2010
The lecture started with an interesting little film about Lee Freelander. Soth expressed that he liked to show this film because it shows Freelander's shooting technique of driving around and shooting. Soth talks a lot about how he likes the idea of driving around and taking pictures of whatever he feels like.
The image above is from his series entitled Sleeping by the Mississippi. He traveled down the river and took pictures. He explained connections between the photographs and how their connections really had nothing to do with the river. The river was rarely shown either. I picked this image to show here because i liked the loneliness of it. It seems like a place you would find in the middle of nowhere, but there is evidence that people live there from the laundry hanging on the line. The laundry gives the scene color and interest.
It seemed to me that most of his series were created in the sense that he could just travel anywhere and create images. His photographs are connected because of simple comments or facts that occur and exist mostly in his own mind, though some of the connections are evident through the imagery, mood and setting of the photos.
I was and am still pretty confused by his work and his purpose, but i did admire the video that he created where he walked to meet Eggleston. I liked the simplicity, and the little humors that came out of the simple film.
Even though i could not find a strong connection to his work I did appreciate some things that he said. I am taking a film class this year so his comments about telling a narrative where important to me.
The lecture started with an interesting little film about Lee Freelander. Soth expressed that he liked to show this film because it shows Freelander's shooting technique of driving around and shooting. Soth talks a lot about how he likes the idea of driving around and taking pictures of whatever he feels like.
The image above is from his series entitled Sleeping by the Mississippi. He traveled down the river and took pictures. He explained connections between the photographs and how their connections really had nothing to do with the river. The river was rarely shown either. I picked this image to show here because i liked the loneliness of it. It seems like a place you would find in the middle of nowhere, but there is evidence that people live there from the laundry hanging on the line. The laundry gives the scene color and interest.
It seemed to me that most of his series were created in the sense that he could just travel anywhere and create images. His photographs are connected because of simple comments or facts that occur and exist mostly in his own mind, though some of the connections are evident through the imagery, mood and setting of the photos.
I was and am still pretty confused by his work and his purpose, but i did admire the video that he created where he walked to meet Eggleston. I liked the simplicity, and the little humors that came out of the simple film.
Even though i could not find a strong connection to his work I did appreciate some things that he said. I am taking a film class this year so his comments about telling a narrative where important to me.
-"photographs don't exist in time, stories need moving time to exist."
-photographs can show fragments of a story, the viewer has to fill in the blanks (connect the dots).
These ideas really show important reasons why photographs can be difficult to tell a whole story with. The viewer is needed to interpret and fill in the blanks.
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