Feb 29, 2012

Frances Hynes

 Frances Hynes at Phyllis Stigliano Gallery


Cliff House, 2007
This is an old house on the cliff overlooking small sea inlet.The house is so old, it seems like a part of landscape. It immerses into the environment. The house is full of see. You can see the water almost from any point inside the house. Even the theme of the interior decor is maritime. Despite that the structure is almost dissolved, it protects you and what you call home - the house, the cliff and the lagoon (the doubled lines running along the top and the right edges). 

Feb 28, 2012

Julia Goldman

Julia Goldman at American Contemporary


Scraps 4b, 2008
This is memories of a summer vacation. Sunny days. Lazy warm days on the beach. Water. Waves. And then come nights - parties, drinking, flirt (green blue figure in the bottom right corner). The nights are a little bit embarrassing, now when you grew older. But the experience is good. Sometimes, you think you should repeat it.

Feb 27, 2012

Ken Buhler

Ken Buhler at Lesley Heller Workspace


Coral Series # 19, 2006
You meet someone. S/he is attractive, funny and smart. You two are having a good time. Everything is fine, rosy, fresh green. The skies are blue. You are starting to build a relationship. Then the arguments start. The conflicts lead to a breakup, which was messy and painful.

Feb 25, 2012

Weekend Edition 16

Robert Motherwell at MOMA


Personage, with Yellow Ochre and White, 1947
You are reading a book. It is a about a small village There are several plot lines, but everything is pretty simple and predictable. So you are trying to understand why this book is so popular(a magnifying glass - black lines in the middle creating a rectangle and a oval). But then  a new  character is introduced. he is a real hero. he does everything right. He is perfect, too perfect(yellow oval in the upper  center). You learn that he has some sort of mystery from his past(black shadow around yellow oval). Now the character looks much more realistic. the mystery sucks you in. You start to see the whole plot in absolutely different light (the ochre band over the top ).

Feb 24, 2012

Pamela Jorden

Pamela Jorden at Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

Untitled

This is Sea. It is always moving. It is always changing. In the open sea there is nothing, only water(blue, grey), skies(blue, grey) and the whites of wave crests and sails. There are promises of exotic lands that you are going to see (stains of other colors). But those destinations are not the ends, they are means to motivate you. The journey is the ends. The purpose is to challenge yourself, to see if you are capable to do it.

Feb 23, 2012

Miriam Cabessa

Miriam Cabessa at Hendershot Gallery


Gold No. 2
 This is a stack of old newspapers. They made a fence that is held in the air by itself. It shows that sometimes the media is a world by itself without any relation to the reality.When you are behind a fence, your world point of view is defined by the fence(media). The more the media reporting is distorted, the more your opinions are further from the truth. And the most disturbing part is that we learn about past events by what was reported in the media.

Feb 22, 2012

Mamie Holst

Mamie Holst at Feature Inc.


A Town Called Mindington #8, 2010
The regular life is routine. Black line, grey line, white line.Black line, grey line, white line.... And then there is Magic. It turns the bleak colors into something bright, light and interesting. This new thing is more permanent, it goes through entire life span.This is art. The magic that makes the art is Talent (thin blue line in the middle). Talent is magical when it transforms ordinary everyday things into something different - a piece of art.

Feb 21, 2012

Mary Weatherford

Mary Weatherford at Brennan & Griffin


black cave, 2011
The Cave is black, scary and unknown(the black overlapping figure). When you enter the cave, you feel fear(black). But under the fear there is hope and curiosity (blue smudges at the bottom). Those two takes you deeper and deeper inside.You think you will find something interesting, if not valuable(yellow background in the upper right). And when you return from your adventure, you are hoping you will sit with your friends, drink wine(burgundy on the left side) and tell stories about the cave. The overall figure looks like a slice of bread. Black bread. It's just a reminder that it is dangerous and you can get "burned" any minute.  But it's like food for you, you cannot live without adventures.

Feb 20, 2012

Mark Kurdziel

Mark Kurdziel at Walter Wickiser Gallery


Animals in Landscape, 2002
Choices we made change the path of life we are moving on. You can start from yellow figures in the lower left corner, and your faith will take you over the water straight up into the sunrise. Or you can take a path along the edge between the blue deep waters and green shore.That path is covered in brown(common sense) and grey(doubt). The analysis of the world as a reflection in the water (in the center) takes you to the next level(upper right corner). This new level opens up in the clouds of doubt and uncertainty (the grey background layer). There you can go to the sunrise or keep exploring. And the game never ends.

Weekend Edition 15

Paul Klee

Architecture with Window


This is knowledge. It is built from bits and pieces. The new layers use the previous ones as a foundation. The colors represent different fields of knowledge. To advance you have to glue together bits from seemingly unrelated fields of knowledge. Some elements are going back to revise what already was finished before.That's why the structure looks chaotic and there are different styles. This grandiose structure of information and wisdom is used as a small window onto ourselves and the world around us.

Feb 17, 2012

Yvonne Estrada

Yvonne Estrada at Von Lintel Gallery


LD15-10 Blue, 2010
It's a woman. She is frivolous, empty, naive(blue figures) and illogical. She constantly changes her mind. She thinks she is the center of the universe and everything revolves around her (the orbiting black circle in the lower right part of  the structure). Usually she doesn't know what she wants.Those things are true, but they are only a decoration. An adornment. Look deep inside, you will see her real character. It is a steel pole(the grey line in the middle) . It is so strong it holds the whole structure. It is straight as a ray of light.It is unbreakable.It is very hard to bend.  

Feb 16, 2012

Ernst Caramelle

Ernst Caramelle at Tracy Williams, Ltd.


Double Vision, 2003
Things that happen to you in your life, change your perception and understanding of your world. Those things could be external events, or it could be internal events, like illness. You start young, fresh and full of energy (left edge - green, blue, yellow). But you have a disease (upper left corner burgundy). It creates an obstacle ( the adjacent white figure). it distorts the green and almost blocks blue.You get depressed (the grey figure in the upper center). Those white obstacles are making you bitter and your scope smaller. At the end what left is pragmatism and common sense.

Feb 15, 2012

Fran Shalom

Fran Shalom at The Painting Center


Untitled
This is Love. You are in the ocean of hope (blue background). In the middle of it there is an island, island of Desire.It is possible that the island is not the best island, nor the best looking island. But it is your island. You are attached to it as if you were on a leash. This attachment (the red line) defines the edge for you.The edge that "cut" you open and gets your soul out.And when you really get your soul out, you are getting into a bliss (the red line). Then you are hooked like a fish was pulled out and lying on the sand.

Feb 14, 2012

Jack Whitten

Jack Whitten at Alexander Gray Associates


28 Black Holes, 1994

This is Japanese rock garden in its western reincarnation. Where there should be rocks and pruned trees to symbolize a natural landscape, there are dress buttons. Those buttons represent how materialistic our world became. Instead to admire and meditate the abstract landscape created with rocks and sand, we admire and meditate on things and objects we possess. Did we lose the true meaning of life? Or all these objects that we have that make our life easier. That we don't have to think about some mundane details. And we can concentrate on what is really important.

Feb 13, 2012

Pierluigi De'Lutti

Pierluigi De'Lutti at Taglialatella Galleries


Autunno Canadese, 2010
Autumn in Canada. There is a lot of yellow, red and burgundy. There are days when the sun is out. You can see the bright light and blue sky, but it's very cold and windy(white undertones). It is getting dark pretty fast.The more the Nature is rough, tough and unforgiving, the more we are attracted to her.

Feb 11, 2012

Weekend Edition 14

Georges Braque



Still Life with grapes and clarinet

A table on the patio. Green grapes in a vase. Clarinet is playing in the background. You remember your trip to Tuscany. Vineyards. Small villages. Green hills. Bright sun. The contrast between the sunny side and shades. Blue skies. White (yellowish) wine in a glass. Grapes look like notes that you hear from clarinet (black circles on white background). The music takes you to Italy and back in a matter of seconds.

Feb 10, 2012

Gerhard Richter

Gerhard Richter at Barbara Mathes Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled (29.1.94), 1994
The green season (spring-summer - the green stain in the center) was before the red one(autumn)(the bottom red part). And before that it was a white season(winter). And the pattern was repeating itself as long as you remember. You don't move that much in these days.It is a winter season all the time. Everything is white, everything is starting to disappear under the snow. What is left for you is to sit near the window and watch. What is left to you is your memories.

Feb 9, 2012

Luiz Zerbini

Luiz Zerbini at Galeria Fortes Vilaça (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Modernista Desconstruído Vertical, 2011
You are watching something that could be dangerous. But you are safe, the watched object is behind the bars. You feel empowered, so you get very very close. You can see every possible detail.Pixel by pixel.Getting so deep into the details prevents you from viewing the whole object. You can't recognize what the object is, because it is so pixelated. And still you don't want to move away, you are afraid to loose your "advantage". Information overload is as bad as lack of information.

Feb 8, 2012

Terry Winters

Terry Winters at Matthew Marks Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Tessellation Figures (6)
Human brain works on patterns.It builds statistical models of every input the brain gets(the floor tiles of different colors). Then the brain uses the models to predict what happen next, so it would be ready to react accordingly. Sometimes the patterns and theories fail, and people need to invent a new theory. That's why you see several layers of tiles one over the other. And still the world that surrounds us is so vast that we can't explain everything.

Feb 7, 2012

Cathy Wilkes

Cathy Wilkes at The Modern Institute (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
Life is black.Life is dark. Life is confusing. That's true when you are absolutely alone. People define your life. People give your life proportions, directions and colors(the rectangles). Some of people are nice, some are more bleak. But interactions with this huge, diverse crowd are the essence of everyone's life.

Feb 6, 2012

Stanley Whitney

Stanley Whitney at Team Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


05-2010

This is our society. The rectangles are people. Some rectangles are extended to make a base on which a layer is built. Those are artists. They see different, they think different. They do stuff that other people don't. Some people can think that the artists are parasites, that they don't do anything useful. But the artist are beautifying our life, thus making all of us better. The artists (designers are artists in every sense) build their work on layers of work of previous generations. 

Feb 3, 2012

Lesley Vance

Lesley Vance at David Kordansky Gallery(Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Untitled
Everyone changes with the time and the surrounding environment. The person (the big sphere in the middle) has underwent a major change, but the change didn't touch his inner beliefs and principals (the peeled part reveals the inside layer of the same color). The change is unpleasant and probably painful, but the person remains the same person.The second change that we can see here is the inner change. .The inner reflection (the light blue figure in the middle) of the outside entity(turquoise figure in the lower left corner) makes a profound effect on the person. The change was growing inside, and only after a while it crawls out(the brown figure in the upper middle).


Feb 2, 2012

Janaina Tschäpe

Janaina Tschäpe at Carlier Gebaue(Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Staubwolke
Entertainment is an universe in itself : celebrities, gossips, games and new releases. It is very tempting and mesmerizing. It can keep you busy for hours.By diving deep in this ant house you can forget the main purpose of it - to fill the void. The entertainment is a veil to cover up a vast empty dessert(the bottom part of background reds and oranges). The question is whether it is good or bad. And the answer probably depends on what kind of entertainment you are using to waste your life on.

Feb 1, 2012

Joaquin Torres Garcia

Joaquin Torres-Garcia at Adler & Conkright Fine Art Gallery (Art Basel Miami Beach 2011)


Composicion Constructiva
Everything has its limits and expiration dates. Voyages, plants, history, people. The Time has limits. Even things that you think are constant are to end some time (the anchor). So the key (the key in the center :) is to be philosophical (the bottle above) and to choose wisely (the stack above the bottle) what are you going to keep and cherish (the jar in the upper right corner).