Oakland-based artist Deth P. Sun will be presenting new paintings for an exhibition titled I See it All, opening this weekend at Giant Robot‘s GRNY Gallery on East 9th St in New York City. The new works will feature the artists epic landscapes and characters which reference both cosmic and very personal worlds. The narrative works attempt to create “a place where cold mountains loom under the stars, cloaked figures arrive with the night, and lone dreamers struggle.” The show is inspired by the films of Terry Gilliam and the work of David Attenborough.
Washington DC’s Hirshhorn Museum has embraced the history and technology of cinema, launching a large scale video exhibition that explores the perpetually shady filmic relationship between fiction and reality. Called The Cinema Effect: Illusion, Reality, and the Moving Image, the exhibition is divided into two parts. The first, Dreams, ran through May 11th and focused on the imaginative capabilities of film. The second part, Realisms, is on view now. Realisms itself is divided into to sections, one of which emphasizes fictive realism – including pop culture references and Hollywood-inspired ventures – while the other emphasizes documentary-style film work.
As the above video discusses, Realism highlights the cultural, historical savvy of today’s most innovative film artists, while also probing the unique technological capacity film has to question what’s “real.” The exhibition continues through September.
A new collection of works by Hong Kong born artist Kate Beynon are currently on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Demonstrating influences from a range of art forms including calligraphy, graffiti and textiles, the series reflects a variety of multicultural stimuli in order to create the artist’s interpretation of today’s global citizen. Oriental inspired imagery is a prominent feature of the artist’s work, while the merging of Western attributes reflects the artists own dual heritage of being born to a Chinese mother and Welsh father. Her work is bold and ornate, often consisting of both acrylic paint and aerosol enamel, on either canvas or linen, adorned with clusters of Swarovski crystals.
Beynon immigrated to Australia as a child where she later studied at various universities including The University of Melbourne, Prahran College and The Victorian College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited on both a local and international scale at institutions including The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Bendigo Art Gallery, Netherlands Media Art Institute and Stills Gallery, Edinburgh. She has received various awards and grants for her art practice including The 1995 George Award at Melbourne Fringe Festival, the 1999 Arts Victoria Women’s Artist Award and a 2004 Professional Development Grant from the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australian Council for residency in Harlem, New York.
A new collection of paintings, collage works and drawings by Sydney based artist Ben Quilty are currently on display at Grantpirrie, Redfern. Entitled Smashed, the exhibition contains numerous works which are influenced by Rorschach inkblot tests, as the canvases have been folded in half with paint to create a symmetrical print. Skulls are a common motif within the series, as some eerily appear as black and white Chinese ink works, while others as school boy doodles in blue biro. Quilty’s oil paintings are vibrant and textured, often appearing quite momentous as some extend to almost three metres in length.
Matthew Ronay’s sculptures are centered on the several social and political issues including everything from funk music to possibility or implausibility of future revolution in America, yet his sculptures may not easily reflect this. The artist has stated, “my sculpture may not look like it is socially or politically
loaded. It only functions when it enters the mind of the spectator. That is, when it becomes an act of direct communication.”
These narrative metaphors are intended to act as a visual puzzle and are often quite indiscernible as a result. The artists uses the familiar aesthetic of cartoons in his work and transforms them into sculpture, alluring the viewer in and offering several layers of meaning as you begin to engage the work.
The artist was born in Louisville, Kentucky, and is an MFA graduate from the Yale University School of Art. Last year, Ronay exhibited “Oh My God What Are We Gonna Do” with Vacio 9 in Madrid, Spain, and “Going Down, Down, Down” at Parasol Unit in London. The artist is currently represented with the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York City and has been involved in several notable group exhibitions, including “Make It Now: New Sculpture in New York” at the Sculpture Center in Long Island City and “Uncertain States of America: American Art in the 3rd Millennium” at the Astrup Fearnly Museum of Modern Art in Oslo, Norway.
Opening next Tuesday at Zach Feuer Gallery in Chelsea is Tickle the Shitstem, the third solo exhibition of Phoebe Washburn with the gallery. Washburn’s work explores absurd systems of production and the by product of waste. Tickle the Shitstem is a developed system in and of itself where the production and the waste are of equal importance. Some of the products produced in the exhibition include beverages, pencils, colored urchins and t-shirts. The installation will remain in production for the duration of the exhibition.
Born in 1980 on Williams Air Force Base in Arizona, Whitney Lynn received her M.F.A. in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute in California, where she currently lives. Having recently described herself as a “bit of a political blog junkie,” Lynn pays attention to how visual elements shape our cultural perceptions of objects by examining military culture and its interventions in our civilian landscape.
In order to do this, Lynn selects something familiar or neutral, such as a pillow fort, and exploits its hidden conceptuality by artistically investigating it. This naturally leads her to work in a variety of different media. Children often play military games, whether chasing each other around the neighborhood (or Air Force Base), playing with water guns, or building forts in living rooms, and this concept is of interest to Lynn. By using pillows, mattresses, and sheets to create a sculptural installation of a fort, the similarities between civilian and military culture become less distinct. In another project, the artist took the familiar story of an army general walking up to the opposing side’s fort with a butterfly net and paper. Claiming to be sketching butterflies, the general really writes down the floor plan of the fort. For the exhibition Decoy at LoBot Gallery in Oakland earlier this year, Lynn presented large paper butterflies with secret floor plans laser cut into their centers, an artwork with penetrating precision, both in concept and aesthetic. Whether she is using pillows or paper, Lynn imparts her accuracy and sensitivity in perception to the viewer. Lynn has previously exhibited at Swell Gallery in San Francisco and Spur Projects in Portola Valley.
