Sam Durant is an artist interested in weaving together ideas of art history, pop culture, and social protest to build the vocabulary of his art. Recently featured in Vitamin D, a new survey of drawings published by Phaidon Books, Durant quotes Lenny Bruce, saying, “Humor is pain plus time” to describe the fundamentals of his work. Based in L.A., Durant was recently review in Artforum for work that was featured in his L.A. gallery, Blum & Poe.
Egyptian born artists Ghada Amer creates hand-embroidered painting that use repetitive patterns which contain images of women taken from pornographic references. Amer challenges the male dominated language of Modernism by employing “craft-based” techniques like embroidery over abstract painting, further underscoring this idea by using imagery that attracts the male gaze. Ghada Amer was selected for exhibition in Whitney Biennale 2000, and has had international solo exhibitions at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Johannesburg Biennale (1997), and the Kwangju Biennial, South Korea (2000). Most recently Amer exhibited with the Gagosian Gallery in L.A.
Monica Cook has been creating autobiographic self portraits which investigate memories while simultaneously exploring elements of daily observation. Cook is a graduate of Savannah College of Art and Design and recently completed a residency at the School of Visual Arts in NYC. She was included in a group exhibition at Stricoff NYC this year, and was featured in the Southern edition of New American Paintings 2005. You can read a recent interview with the artist on NYFA interactive.
Illustrators and fine artists James Jean and Kenichi Hoshine have created an artist collaboration entitled Polite Winter. Through this project these artists have brought to life a graphic narrative throughout a series of paintings and collages. James Jean has been an illustrator for clients like the NY Times, Fables, ESPN, and Nike, and has created his own online store called Process/Recess. Kenichi Hoshine has shown work with Compound Gallery in Portland and Meathaus online.
Jackie Nickerson is a photographer who recently spent two in a half years in Southern Africa documenting Zimbabwe farmers and farmland issues. Nickerson has experience as a fashion photographer and her work continues to have a focus on clothing and materials. Each figure seems to be identified more by their fashion than any other element. In 2005 Nickerson had a solo exhibition titled “Farm and Tennessee” in VCUQ Gallery, Doha, Oman. Jack Shainman Gallery presented an exhibition titled “Farm”, this exhibition will be followed by a solo show in 2007. You can read a review about the artist at findarticles.com.
In March of this year Pierogi Leipzig presented the first extensive exhibition of Ward Shelley‘s Timeline paintings called the Re-materializing Art. These are elaborate works that describe art-historical narratives using illustration, data plotting, and graphical conventions. Each piece references a different figure of recent art history such as Arto Lindsay, and Carolee Schneemann. Other works will address groups and movements such as the Velvet Underground. Shelly is best known for his performance work, and exhibited with Smack Mellon in NYC, and W.A.S.P. at the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna. Ward Shelley is a 2005/06 recipient of the Prix de Rome.
In his first gallery exhibition since 1992, Jonathan Borofsky will present “Human Structures” opening on November 2nd at Deitch Projects in NYC. This exhibition will feature works that the artist has created over the past seven years. The dominant work in the exhibit is a sculpture composed of 366 life sized steel genderless figures all interlocking together to form a modular 44′ x 11′ x 18′ tall freestanding structure. The work is accompanied by an ambient-voice soundtrack, composed and produced by the artist in his music studio. Borofsky has been exhibited extensively during the past twenty years including solo exhibitions in the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.
