The Next Big Thing in Graffiti
Graffiti has risen to the top of cutting edge pop culture. What was once seen as vandalism is now dubbed street art. Many of our favorite graffiti artists have teamed up with big brands and now make their marks on anything from skate decks to swagged-out shoes. And who could forget the official induction of Bansky into the realm of “Stuff White People Like”? The major appeal of graffiti has been it’s edginess, attitude and it’s no rules vibe (much like the charm of a young Christian Slater). Now that graffiti has become popular, street artists have started pushing forward and developing new techniques to maintain the fresh, innovative spirit of public art. H...Read more
filed under: art
tags: Graffiti street art yarn bombing throwies reverse graffiti green graffiti
Formalisms: Joel Swanson at Redline
The overwhelming monochrome of this show is made intimately fascinating by pieces that occur only on the extremes of the scale spectrum. One installation of circuiting twigs replicates up an entire wall (slightly disturbed by a fire alarm, as many large works are). The wall-colored shapes hardly seem to stand out but for their shadows, but there they are, big as the gallery. Another piece is tiny: a bud of a lightbulb sprouting from a tall podium. It is small but utterly magnetizing. The piece, a placard explains, is Lady Gaga’s twitter feed translated into morse code. The bulb flashes and flashes intermittently, and one wonders if it is set to loop on a set of previous tweets or...Read more
Painting Murals in the Slums of Brazil
To Americans, the entire nation of Brazil is one giant sports illustrated swimsuit edition. How couldn't we be envious of an exotic, spicy, paradise populated exclusively by freshly waxed and tanned beach goers and the occasional sassy helper monkey ? Ok, maybe the typical American doesn’t automatically associate Brazil with butler-monkeys. Nevertheless, the fact remains that in our national conciousness, Brazil= tropical paradise. As such, many Americans would be shocked to hear that Brazil is also home to drug-cartel fueled violence, crushing poverty and government corruption. Combating this ignorance of the reality of Brazilian life is just one of the Firmeza...Read more
The Dark World of Allison Schulnik
Upon loading Allison Schulnik's website, the first four headings emblazoned in highlighter yellow capital letters read "paint", "film", "thing" and "paper". The "thing" heading is surely an attention grabber, inviting fantasies of a direct link to a human-animal hybrid breeder's website. Sadly, clicking said link will not lead to the loving flippers of a half-man half-shark friend. But fortunately, it will unveil an exciting menagerie of other-worldly ceramic creations. These brilliantly textured figures all share the same haunting, hollow eyes that characterize most of Schulnik's work. Schulnik's portfolio features a cast of disturbing clowns, hobos a...Read more
Interpretation the Key at
In a climate of ephemeral conceptual artistic notions Swiss curator Hans Ulrich conceived do it. Compiling a manual of do-it-yourself sets of instructions from internationaly renowned artists, Ulich invited participating artists to interpret and carry out the instructions. The instructions range in complexity from very simple ("Smile at a Stranger") to very complex ("Find a four leaf clover"), and have been carried out and exhibited in cities throughout the world. Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design Gallery Director, Cortney Lane Stell, is the latest to bring to life Ulrich's manual. Stell brought her own unique approach to the do it concept that h...Read more
Henrique Oliveira and Jessica Moon Bernstein at BMoCA
The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art opened a new show last Thursday which was long in the making. Henrique Oliveira, an artist from Brazil, took over the museum for a few weeks to construct a large wooden installation as well as hang some decent-sized acrylic paintings. The installation is the star of the show: it wraps around half of the main gallery on the first floor. The work looks like an abstract in Photoshop made tangible. It is striped, three-dimensional, and could be poppy if it weren't so subtly colored. The artist made a good choice when he subdued the colors of the installation. Any more color on such a huge work, certainly, would have been t...Read more
Melissa Furness at Plus
Last Friday night, Plus Gallery opened a show featuring new work by Melissa Furness. Unlike most openings featuring paintings, this one was dark. The lights were dimmed so that projections of swimmers could work their way across Furness’s paintings. With the projected swimmers kicking their way across the wall, one has to think of the Pipilotti Rist piece, Sip My Ocean. Yet this relationship is perhaps too convenient. Furness’s work is aquatic in multiple senses, not just in its video content. The lacelike pencilwork patterns the surface in slate, oceanlike blue. The painted swimmers appear stippled with a large brush, particles of color melting into other parti...Read more
MCA Denver Adopts Orphan Paintings: Unknown and Accepted
Today I want to write about the role museums play in society. There are many kinds of museums: Art, History, Science, etcetera. For a long time I did not know there were museums that collect and ones that do not. Take for instance the Denver Art Museum, it is a collecting institution whereas the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver is not. Both exhibit certain kinds of artwork, yet one has a body of work to draw upon where the other relies upon a steady stream of new material. With that in mind it is not so hard to jump to the realization that these places have different goals. Each would like to educate the public on the role Art plays in society, but the way that lesson is conveyed by both is...Read more
Kindrid Spirits form Art Duo, Mad Tatters
Mad Tatters, an artist duo made up of Brandan Styles and Ellie Rusinova, seeks to immerse any who dare in a world of their own creation. It is a world quite different than the one we know, a post apocolyptic landscape where isolation and loneliness replace never-ending interconnectivity. Drawing upon the aesthetics of vaudville, steampunk, circuses and carnivals, Mad Tatters is a conceptual vision realized through the combined efforts of Styles and Rusinova using painting, sculpture, music, and fashion. Brandon Styles Robot Boy 1 Brandon Styles Robot Boy 2 Styles, a.k.a, Dr. B. Zerk, trained in animation, veered from the commercial arts path ult...Read more
Jen Lobo and the '90s
Moms love to collect things. Actually correction, moms love to collect weird things. Thinking back to the early ‘90s, I remember an array of strange maternal collections (and everyone’s mom had at least one odd collection); ancient dolls, fairies, porcelain angels – you know, creepy junk housed up in glass cabinets near the dining room table. Heaven forbid you had the mom with the Precious Moments figurines stacked on shelves far from your dads Bronco’s gear and model car collection. My mom was a particularly strange breed of collector though; she liked unicorns. Well not just unicorns, but mythical creatures in general (although it did appear that unicorns were he...Read more