Mythos: fantasy, fiction, legend, saga, parable, fable, narrative, invention, fabrication, yarn. The conceptual distance between myth and the concrete manifestations of mythology is a potentially endless—yet meaningfully orderable—list of synonyms. But with each word the gap shrinks, as mental images of processes and then objects emerge, even if just as puns. Wendy Given is bridging the gaps between the abstract idea of a mythos and[…..]
Diminutive triumphal arches, human-sized Playmobil figures, and model prison quarters (both to scale and miniature) are a few of the many forms Hugo Orlandini’s work has taken. For categorization’s sake, we could call Orlandini a conceptual sculptor; however, his work incorporates layers of visual and social research culled from public events that richly complicate this subject matter. Orlandini approaches each work by digging deeply into[…..]
Transitioning from one distinct medium to another is often a challenge—one that many artists attempt. However, not all accomplish it with the seeming ease of Rachel Brumer. Working in varying combinations of textile, installation, sculpture, photography, and collage, Brumer diligently investigates a number of subjects. Foremost in her work is an almost pathological focus on remembering and honoring people, places, and moments through what she[…..]
Tom Pazderka’s work has a visual weight and intensity—scarred and blackened reused wood, grids made of charred book jackets, charcoal- and wood-burning drawings of ancient, destroyed, and invented places—that is matched only by the artist’s descriptions of his subjects. Pazderka takes an interest in history as a flexible structure with multiple readings: “That which most [people] would rather leave alone I find the most interest[…..]
Matt Hendon’s ongoing body of work in mixed media, Everything That Can Expire, is about challenging himself: first, to reimagine what it means to work with images instead of creating drawings or illustrations; and second, to create compositions that complicate his own and his viewers’ visual aesthetic sense. In addition to being a visual artist, Hendon works as a designer, and there are interesting and[…..]
Rachel Debuque works with myriad subjects and forms. In her work, installation, performance, video, and sculpture collide with themes of domesticity, the still life, and the eccentricities of both individual personalities and physical spaces. Through all of this, her oeuvre coheres around a central concern: the visual re-codification and conveyance of memory through spatial sensitivity. Debuque’s Cacti-Smash (2013) is an installation-based performance that features two[…..]
Jeff Depner’s commitment to one medium, in this case to painting, is rare in the current climate, in which artists work across increasingly varied platforms and often combine mediums. Depner’s paintings simultaneously explore paintings’ storied and experimental past and burgeoning future. Most of his richly layered acrylic works systematically investigate the possibilities of the medium by following a similar internal logic that in turn gives[…..]
