Pixy (Yujin Liao) on Vice

http://www.vice.com/read/matte-magazine-presents-pixy-405

Raven McCarter - Weekly Artist (Short Film)

Directed by Craig Macneill, Late Bloomer is a compelling and humorous short film about 7th grade sex ed class gone horribly wrong. Loosely based on the dark tales of HP Lovecraft.

I thought that the page could use a bit of humor, and I particularly enjoy this short, Late Bloomer. it's the sex ed we all wish we had, but in all seriousness the short film brings humor to a conversation that is going on in the United States today; sexual education for kids and the conversation of sex in general.  Church and sex (appropriate, seeing as how a common theme in HP Lovecraft in atheism) . But even without puritanical repression, sex is pretty much monstrous when you really think about it. Nature at its most visceral and raw.  The way I always saw it, the sex in Lovecraft's works, is more about passing on the corruption than it is about sexual gratification. Sex is the tool of control by the 'outside force'. Our bodies treated-like our minds- as manipulatable tools, so far removed from the human experience as to make them so unknowable to their very beholders. The sexual tension within this film is more about the repression of the antagonist's observed actions. And as often what we get in Lovecraft's stories is an almost clinical observation of events even once the horror is realized and the narrator has gone mad, why should sex be treated any different?

Taylor Stevensonson: Zohra Bensemra

Zohra Bensemera is an Algerian photographer whose work focuses in the Middle East and North America. Bensemera is a photojournalist she has covered world issues including the conflict in 2000 between the Albanians and there Serbs. Then in 2003 she covered conflicts in Irag. Most recently she has been working on the coverage of the referenda in Sudan, the Tunisian uprising and the revolution in Libya.

As I flipped through Bensemeras work it was interesting to see how her interest in the area and how socially aware she is. I admire her ability to capture these moments and her going to the very limit to get her photo.  Knowing she needed to submerse herself into the culture she was photographing, or the subjects wouldn't let her capture these intimate scenes.  

Shelby Hastings: Weekly Artist - Gregory Halpern

Gregory Halpern is a Buffalo born artist, but currently living in Los Angeles. He received is MFA in Photography in 2004 and has been working since around that time. A series I love that is still an ongoing from project is his Buffalo Pictures series. It was started in 2003 and he's been documenting the city in the winter. His pictures have this very cold feeling color scheme and it quite frankly invigorates me. 

weekly post- teddy leinbach

Sweetgrass is a film directed by Ilisa Barbash and Lucien Castaing-Taylor.  This documentary follows a small group of shepherds as they lead a pack of sheep through the beartooth mountains in Montana.  The journey is one that shepherds have been making for over a century and it is a dying mode of transportation.  The film is beautifully shot, using a slow-paced reflective style of filmmaking.  As shots hold for minutes at a time, the viewer gets to experience the space, the animals, and the people in the film.  The wide angle shots give a sense of the environment and the close ups give a more intimate feeling.  The movie is not for everyone.  It is very slow and can get tiring.  At some points it is hard to stay awake but there are also exiting moments.  Mary Beth showed is this film last year and it was one of my favorite films that she showed us.

Heres the trailer:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AV9iah71iPQ

Here are the two directors IMDb accounts:

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3626583/?ref_=tt_ov_dr

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3625974/

Weekly Artist Post - David Benjamin Sherry

look here, friend.

DBS is someone that Jon showed me today. The work reminds me a looooot of Florian Maier Aichen. Just the color cast on the landscape is visually similar to me. On his website it says that all the photos are given the color while developing these massive photos, so I'm curious about A.) that process and B.) how the physical nature of the manipulation affects the art piece. What do you think? I genuinely have no idea so I would like some insight from others. After looking at this work in conjunction with FMA's stuff I can definitely tell that these new takes on landscape are very interesting to me, and I'm hoping that its something Ill be more knowledgeable about soon.

Weekly Post-Anne Forrester

Into the Abyss

Into the abyss is a 2011 documentary by Werner Herzog that chronicles the case of two individuals found guilty of murdering three people in order to steal a car in Texas. One of the two individuals is about to be executed as the movie opens. The film digs into the many different aspects of the crime and the friends and family of both the victims and the convicted killers. It is shot very traditionally with interviews and crime scene footage comprising most of the film. What I found most impressive were the color and quality of the interview shots. I also think its interesting that Herzog chooses not to edit his voice out behind the camera when he is conducting interviews. The film has a very blunt and direct approach that is clear in many of his films, a style that implies his control and vision for his work without being overly aggressive in the ways he wants his films to turn out, letting the reality of the characters create most of the story. 

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/into-the-abyss-a-tale-of-death-a-tale-of-life-2011

http://www.wernerherzog.com/index.php?id=67

Maika Elan - The Pink Choice

First and foremost (and scraping the surface of a previous discussion), the work is simply beautiful. This is what I find most appealing about the photos. Aside from this, her intentions and the way she portrays the subjects are particularly interesting. She’s exhibiting a group of people in a new light when the media in that specific region is representing only a small segment of the struggle of acceptance of homosexuals. I also find myself drawn to these beautifully composed environments with the couples (and singles), which really show how each and every couple is unique in a sense.

Her site is down, so here is a Vimeo interview: Vimeo

Lenscratch Info. Lenscratch

Weekly post- Aichy

Tom Hunter is a renowned photographer who lives in England. His main focus of his art is primarily in his hometown and community in East London. In my last crit, there was discussion about how to "clean up" a picture, like what is needed/what is not important to the overall image. However, I think I just found the artist who successfully conveys any and all information in his work. I am really drawn to his style and the concepts behind each of his works. One in particular was a project where he recreated tableau images based off of headlines that were printed in the local newspaper.

Weekly Artist Post! - Adam Landis

Christopher McKenney

Okay, so just from looking at these images and knowing some of my own art, I think you all can understand why I chose McKenney's work to talk about this week. This Kid, that's right hes just 23, is quickly becoming a prolific horror and surrealist photographer, though he himself disavows the term, preferring to be known as simply an artist. His images simply intrigue me, though i don't feel that is necessarily shallow to endorse something based on that. There is also an element of jealousy I have for his work and accomplishments, much the same way I hold jealousy for the work of Joey L. It inspires a hot feeling of failure, knowing that compared my own work falls short. Concerning the concepts involved, McKenney has already stated in A.R.T.S.Y. Magazine that a lot of this more or less happened, there wasn't some overall theme driving a series or some message he's shackled to, which makes this more intriguing to me since I look at these and I don't get it. I don't get it and it is at once aggravating because I can't look away and completely fine because it would ruin the work for me if i could. (I'm posting so late because I accidentally spent 3 hours looking at his work.) Any of the meaning applied to the work has developed afterwards, as a product of inspecting his own work and musing at what he thinks other people may think. I unabashedly dig all of his work. I am completely biased.

Favorite Quote: Read this.

"Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

Ira Glass. He's great. This quote has stuck with me for years and I want to share it because right now feels really really stressful. 

*Weekly Artist Post*

I want to talk about painting.

Because I don't think I could be more in love with an artist. 

Hope Gangloff ~ painter living and working in NYC. 

http://www.hopegangloff.com/drawings.html

I took a snip of Gangloff's interview with Bomb Magazine below. She's talking about what she was painting in college and her responses just feel familiar to me. She is someone who draws inspiration from the people in her closest circle, and likewise, paints them into believable/ semi-believable hyperbole states. Her work is just a step enough away from reality that the benign scenes can hold your attention for hours at a time (at least they do me.)  

YM And what were the images of?

HG Y’all—always of my friends or people I was hanging out with or liked at school or wanted to tease or get some kind of reaction out of. It was a way to communicate. It’s my sense of humor too: I do whatever I want visually and then just pretend that I don’t know what the big stink is—like people’s reactions to being teased.

Vera, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 81 × 54 inches.

YM In a way, you were monumentalizing the people around you.

HG That’s entirely accurate. I was definitely painting my artistic community, my peer group, people who I loved and respected. I was imagining circumstances that translated well into a painting.


She's a doll. Her colors, her line work, her genuine interest. I want more of my work to reflect this kind of time and care. But that is an incredibly terrifying statement to make, isn't it? 

Scott Csoke-Weekly Artist Post

Lauren Poor

Washington, D.C. based photographer, Lauren Poor is extremely interesting to me. I love it when an artist isn't afraid to push their own boundaries. Like we were talking about with Shane how artists sometimes put themselves on a leash. Clearly, Lauren Poor got rid of that leash a long time ago. Her exhaustion of color and all things glittery and shiny make for a truly interesting photograph. It does come off as a little scrap booky but even if the collage wasn't there i still think it'd be a strong image. Even in her more "traditional" work she finds patterns and little obsessions people have. I envy people who can create their own world and I really feel like Poor has done this. 

Liesa Collins - Weekly Artist Post - Darja Bajagić

Darja Bajagić

Darja Bajagić is a photographer that deals with taboos and sex that isn't being talked about in a public sphere. Currently attending Yale for a MFA in Painting and Printmaking, Darja Bajagić has often had to disregard accusations made by her faculty. She makes artwork like shaped asymmetrical assemblages that use painted and printed canvas, letters of prisoners who write to young women who write to them, and clipped images from Brat magazine that cater to men who fetishize pubescent girls and the girls who want to be fetishized just to name a few. For me, the work is a statement of how women are to be portrayed in the eyes of men. I am in admiration of her work an the bravery she has to release it. 

Hannah Nees - Weekly Artist Post - Jamie Campbell

Jamie Campbell is a Toronto-based photographer with multiple series under his belt as a photographer. These photographs are from the series Looking Askance. His other series include 'Fever Coat', 'This Will Never Last', 'Only the Fantastic has Some Chance of Being True', and 'Mourning Light'. Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada graduating with a BFA in photography. He recently completed his MFA at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.

Campbell works with themes like insecurity, burden, vulnerability, and desperation. He is seen as showing these scenes with humor, though. I enjoy Campbell's photographs, because of the lighting he is able to utilize. Every photo he takes seems to have a profound light source that seems to be other-worldly. His portraits are also admirable, because of how unusual but extraordinary they are.

http://www.jamiecampbellphotography.com/

Failures of Language, Pt. 2

All forms of art, like literature or photography, are comprised entirely of metaphor. Even nonfiction writing is a form of metaphor, as we have to try to understand concepts using our ideas of old things to understand a new idea. That's what a metaphor is.

Does this mean that it is impossible to really properly convey an idea to someone outside of yourself? I don't know, maybe. Maybe we are really alone entirely. If we can only even believe and hope that we understand one another. But we don't even really try to do that very much, do we? When we approach a piece of art, what do we do first? Talk about what we see, then what we think about it. Again, this comes down to, often times, first impressions and quick reactions. Yes, we look at EVERYTHING, but I don't think we look very far past ourselves.

When considering the choice to incorporate a certain element, we ask ourselves "Why would I do that?". This ensures that, while we do in fact ask why certain elements exist, we don't try to understand the thought process of the artist, we just analyse our own thought process to find an answer. This is inherently misleading.

If art is a language, which I think it is, then we are only really talking to ourselves. If we take the approach that everything is open to personal evaluation before considering the intentions of the artist, then we choose to only think about ideas in terms of things we already understand. This ties back to the metaphor stuff above. If we disregard what the artist is trying  to say, and only focus on what we are hearing, we cannot possibly have new ideas, only our old ideas repackaged with new colors and compositions. In fact, in order for art to act as a language, we should probably disregard our initial reactions, because those reactions come from prejudice.

Here is what I'm not saying:

1. Art has to convey the artist's ideas/be understood
2. We can ONLY consider the artist's intentions
3. Art has to act as language

Good art can come from uncertainty, and can provide insight into subjects. Also, art can be analyzed in terms of your reaction and also provide insights. But we cannot claim to use art as a visual language when we disregard the intentions of the artist entirely, and only look at the creative choices from our pre-established understanding of art and language. When we stop looking at art as a language by deciding to ignore the possible intentions of the artist, art instantly becomes a mirror that bounces our preconceived notions back at us in a feedback loop. 

Kudos if you got this far, because I'm convinced no one reads anything anyone posts.

Failures of Language

When we create a piece of visual art, we can generally agree that the artist's intentions become secondary to the reception of the audience. This isn't a new idea at all, and in linguistics it's called post-structuralism. Postmodern art was acted as a kickstarter to post-structuralist ideas, which is why so many people hold a disdain for it because, as Shane said, it forced "art" to adopt an "anything goes attitude". This idea is reinforced when we break an image down like we did today, with the image of the woman holding her boyfriend. Anything goes, no stress, don't worry, just look and react. I think that this is an important development and has a ton of good sides, but I just have to ask the question how the fuck do you convey meaning to someone? How do I tell you about point A without you inferring point B, C, D, purple, and rectangle? How do I guide you to an understanding of my thoughts when so much pressure is put on the idea that anything goes? Does this not promote laziness? Knee-jerk reactions? Mistranslations?

I was told I was racist today because I made the comment that the embrace the woman had on the man looked like a sumo grapple. Here's a picture to demonstrate my point:

The quick reaction to my comment was "Huh, sumo is an Japanese tradition, these people are Asian, James is just making this connection because he's thinking stereotypically and with a narrow mind."

Are you fucking kidding me? 

Additionally, the comment "Oh, it has to be Sumo, really, James?" Was met with an inflammatory, unhelpful, and antagonistic "Oooooh" by someone else.

If we are so limited by our ability to convey messages and meanings to one another, and we are all so quick to jump to outlandish, and unfounded conclusions about things (statements made in class and artworks alike), what motivation is there to speak when accusations such as racism are being thrown around without consequence?

I can't help but think that the attitudes and approaches we are so quick to adopt in terms of artistic critique and understanding also undermine our ability to understand one another.

I mean, why bother trying to understand the comment about the Sumo hold when you can just casually accuse a classmate of being racist?

Weekly Artist Post - Joakim Eneroth

Yo.

I found this guy on the blog American Suburb X, definitely go check it out. He does some weird stuff, and incorporates a lot of different mediums into his actual photography, like sculpture. He does have a lot of photo books though, which bothers me. I dislike the idea of photography for a few reasons, but it's mostly because I feel like it devalues the pictures severely. This is an entirely personal belief though. His "Short Stories of the Transparent Mind" series is pretty interesting, and he does a good job of mixing different subjects together to create unique juxtapositions. Oh, also his Swedish Red series has some of the ugliest pictures I've ever seen, but I can't tell if I find them good ugly or bad ugly. Guess it's a mystery????????

Here are some pics:::::