Matthew Farina: Recent Collages at The Painting Center
November 1 – 26, 2011
The Painting Center
547 West 27th Street, 5th Floor
(btwn 10th and 11th Ave)
New York, NY, 10001
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 11 AM – 6 PM
http://www.thepaintingcenter.org/exhibitions/matthew-farina-recent-collages
Artist Statement
I collage fabricated reality, remove it from original context and give it a renewed worth. The reality of mass printed matter is often static or stale. I find these images and recognize them for what they meant to us at a point in time. They were once important to us, caused a sensation; I bring that back through reverence and labor. Pornography, magazines for parents, books on puppies; where do they fall in our lexicon of reality? They are fabricated, untrue, altered and yet we worship and then dispose of them. If we worship the image of beauty, of sex, of the cute and coveted, where lies our true religion?
Website
http://www.marylauramau.com
“Donut”
“Hands”
“Walking”
“Worker”
Jungle Time
Riddle 1
All I Wanna Do
Fishing Dreams
Shifting to Suit the Moment
Statement
Although the principle behind my creative work is framing, my intention is the realization of an unexpected use of the photograph. Leaving aside the obvious path, the one indicated in the manual, creating my own manual of the new technologies. My intention when creating is to manage to generate a work-spectator game in which habitual perception is replaced by a new perception. Either by taking almost ignored elements from daily life and placing them in the spotlight in the piece or from photographs of distant places I have visited– seeking to reproduce the surprise in the visitor in the face of the new space to walk around, assimilate, take in. My work is a kind of experiment with elements which, on their own, cannot attain what they manage when they are interrelated. A sort of socialist utopia is thus created, which is realized effectively on canvas. Reciprocal relationships, equality, the possibility of creating a ‘whole’ from the ‘parts’. Something that seems to be further and further away of really coming to happen in present-day societies after the complete loss of the sense of ‘tribe’ or ‘community’ and the advancement of the every day more predatory decaying capitalism that fractures everything and upsets the balance. My reply to such phenomenon is to seek balance in a virtual manner, inventing an answer for the deficiencies of real life in my work, something like a parallel society or a more peaceful world to inhabit in which we can see ourselves reflected and which we might feel inspired to turn into our reality.
Website
http://www.celestenajt.com.ar/
UDF redux, 2010. Archival UltraChrome Print, 30" x 40"
August, 2004 with Apollo Cam, 2010. Archival UltraChrome Print, 30" x 40"
August, 2004 with Rover, 2010. Archival UltraChrome Print, 30" x 40"
Woman with Flowers, 2010. Archival UltraChrome Print, 44"x32"
Mare Tranquillitatis, 2010, Archival UltraChrome Print, 30" x 40"
Artist Statement
This body of work seeks to reside in and thereby comment upon the liminal space of photography, that space between the document and that of the art work. I am interested in the medium of photography itself and in its representational function pointing outside of itself to an aspect of cultural narrative and memory. At the same time, I am drawn to the self-referential quality of photography that stems from the history of modernism and painting. By choosing to keep the identities of each layer in my photographs evident, balancing these in turn creates a push and pull dynamic between the content of the images and the formal aspects of color, line and texture. By layering and juxtaposing images from the protest surrounding the 2004 Republican National Conference in New York City with those of the Apollo moon mission, Joseph Albers compositions, found and acquired old photographs, as well as direct drawings, I create dialogues between each image. New contrasts old, just as hope and optimism reside simultaneously with disillusionment or apathy, and unity opposes individualism. This discourse dictates an aesthetic in which layered imagery by way of material choices approach and thereby utilize the vocabulary of abstraction. Technically, these prints are produced in the same manner as traditional print making and silk-screen where layers of ink are printed on top of the other, yet I utilize the resolution and control of digital resources. Imagery, color, ink type, and paper are carefully considered and selected to control opacity as the paper is sent through the photo printer anywhere from 3 to 8 separate times leaving behind a history of it production, time, and the artists hand. This is often not evident in the cold mechanical reproducible nature of photography and leads to varying and intensified experiences when viewing the work as multiple levels of detail emerge as one alters their distance from the work.
Website
http://rzollinger.com
The Street (detail)
Biography
“A creative mind not content to simply sit back and observe- her work is alive.”
Linda Zacks has a passionate love affair with words and letters. Her signature is the way she uses type in her art – clever verbiage drawn from her trusty stack of sketchbooks. She uses words like artillery, firing back Life as it whizzes by your nose.
Linda’s work- part poetry, part paint reflects the adoration, anxiety, filth, fear, and visceral energy of just being alive and aware, and that makes its way into each picture. Tension. Calamity. The urban obstinance that turns a jackhammer into a musical instrument. That’s what it’s like. If it’s not cathartic, it’s not in her artistic vocabulary.
Her creations capture the essence of a restless mind- clever commentary about the world we live in: the wonders of being female, America the strange, Love & Hate and the twisting of traditional concepts, such as beauty and war. Every moment has the potential to be captured in a painting or a unique handmade book.
Nothing is out of the question: old wood, torn paper, rusty metal, ink, duct tape or a scribbled-over Polaroid. And the textures–gloppy skid marks, bumpy nodules and crusty scabs smother the surface.
Linda spent much of her life moving around – including living overseas in England as a young child and attending high school in Holland. Before moving to New York City in 1995, Linda graduated from Brown University studying semiotics and creative writing and spent her junior year across the street at The Rhode Island School of Design. This unique blend of studies led her to a career as an accomplished designer and fine artist.
Website
http://www.lindazacks.com
Artist’s Statement
Film, obsession and beauty
The focus of my work is in the chance union of forms, symbols, images and colors. It is through cosmetics, in the sense of making up the world in an almost shaman-like manner, that my work plays with a pre-established language of beauty pervasive in popular culture and attempts to establish a complicated link to a mythological world. My work is about obsession and beauty.
Bio/Resume
Born in Florida, and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Francisco López has been based in New York since 2001. He graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 1999. His work has been exhibited at the Boston ICA, Trieste Film Festival in Italy, Sala Mendoza in Caracas, and Transhudson Gallery and Momenta Gallery in New York. In 2004 he showed a video installation as part of the Young Architects Program at PS1 MOMA in New York and his video “Telepathic Numbness” was exhibited at the British Council Electric Earth Show in Caracas, Venezuela. He has lectured at the California Institute of the Arts and Fashion Institute of Technology in 2009.
Website
http://www.mogollon-ny.com/
Saturday, May 1st and Sunday May 2nd, 2010 from 12–6 pm
Screwball Spaces, Gowanus Canal’s newest addition of artists’ studios in Red Hook, Brooklyn, opens its doors to the public for a rare glimpse into the work spaces of New York’s contemporary artists.
http://openstudios.screwballspaces.com/
Henry Chung, Studio 50, Anonymous #23, 36″ H x 24″ W (framed), Computer Punch Tape
http://www.HenryChung.com
Enrico Miguel Thomas
Studio 90
Miranda Maher
Studio No. 56
http://www.miranda-maher.com
miranda_maher@hotmail.com
miranda@miranda-maher.com
347-431-5275
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Yasha Butler, studio 80, Title: Off Circle, Media: Porcelain and Glaze / wheel-thrown and altered, Size: 6.5″h x 10″ x 10″, www.yashabutler.com
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Message – acrylic collage – 10in. x 10in. – 2006
Dordogne acrylic collage 10in. x 10in. – 2006
Blue – acrylic collage – 10in. x 10in. – 2007
Spring – acrylic collage – 14in. x 14in. – 2008
Quiet – acrylic collage – 14in. x 14in. – 2008
Website
http://sophiesejourne.com/
Upcoming Exhibit
Clover’s Fine Art Gallery
Earth + Goddess April 15th – May 31st
Opening Reception – Saturday April 17th 4-6 pm
Five artists celebrate the natural wonders of the earth.
lines 001: 9″ x 9″; ink, paint marker, automotive paint, on paper
bagtag 006: 9″ x 9″ ; found printed paper and glue on paper
lightning: 24″H x 36″W; found printed paper and shellac on canvas
jellyfish: 72″W x 48″H; housepaint, acrylic and shellac on canvas
Artist Statement
my work is about the mechanical expression of natural phenomena. I’ve heard my studio described as the CERN lab of patterns, as if i am actually getting all these individual visual elements moving near light speed and just smash them together on a canvas, looking for the birth of a new universe.
that actually doesn’t sound bad.
each of my pieces is the result of dozens, hundreds or thousands of actions taking place in the same space. each actions bends and transforms the next, adding layers and layers of richness to the surfaces. i have almost found the secrets to bending these forces to my will. almost.
Website
www.scottfaucheux.com
Artist Statement:
Excavations and Adaptations is a series of more than sixty small works that combine ink drawings from my sketchbooks (through the use of xerox transfer) with collage. The drawings are mostly based on photographs, both found and personal, with a few drawn from direct observation. The collages vary from simple swaths of color to complex abstract patterns.
About five years ago I started to collect old photographs, and then I began to draw from them. I find these photographs at flea markets, in antique and junk shops. They are often family snapshots, from the 1920s through the 1970s, or studio portraits from the last quarter of the 19th century. I find it strange that these documents are for sale as part of a consumer market place, instead of being in albums on bookshelves in the homes of the families of those in the photos. I find myself at the intersection between a fascinated voyeurism and a determination to know these documents as well as humanly possible in order to give them new, longer life.
Website
http://www.simkinberke.com/
Toujours Prêt, collage and paint on wood, 14″ x 10″
Black and White Chair, acrylic on paper
4-Part Red and Yellow Chair, acrylic on paper
Artist Bio
Diana Leidel is an artist who is also a creative director in magazine publishing and is currently art director at Playbill Magazine. She has been the recipient of numerous design awards for her work with Pointe magazine, Pilates Style magazine, and Dance Magazine, and has been a contributor to Graphic Design USA. She holds a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MA from New York University, where she also taught graphic design.
She exhibits in New York and Brooklyn and is a member of the Brooklyn Artists Gym.
Her paintings, on canvas and paper, are color studies of single objects that celebrate the world of the everyday.
Diana describes her collages and drawings as Non-Fiction Art, in which the fictional world in the artist’s mind meets the news in the real world. She combines words and statements from news stories and consumer media with painting, collage and found containers to make wall-piece boxes. The pencil drawings are portraits of newsmakers, performers and innocent bystanders, from chickens to tango dancers
and health workers. Her abstract work is also inspired by images from print media.
Website
http://dianaleidel.com
East West (2007)
Paper collage and oil paint on canvas
30″x40″
“East West” explores the visual similarities between Western graffiti and images from Eastern societies. This series, which I just started, is inspired by a recent trip to Pakistan.
Subway Space 2
Paper collage and oil paint on canvas (2006)
36″x36″
In my series “Subways”, I contrast the vulnerability, helplessness and passivity of the subway riders to the hardness of their surroundings: the metal structures, beams, platforms and tunnels. The riders are reduced to “subway legs” which evolve in an angular, distorted and somewhat threatening environment. These paintings and collages were triggered by the subway bombings in London and Madrid and my own experience riding the subway in New York City.
Harmony 4 (2007)
Paper collage and oil paint on canvas
30″x40″
“Harmony” is an attempt to reconcile and join two geometrical symbols, the
circle and the line through the imagery of architecture and music.
Artist Statement
My work reflects the tension, uncertainty and unease permeating our societies today. These feelings are in part generated by international terrorism, violence and militarism.
My photographs are usually at the base of my creative process. I travel extensively and the shots taken on my trips are integrated into my paintings. In recent years, I have been particularly fascinated with graffiti and photographs of graffiti have now become an important visual element in my work.
These images are printed on paper and glued onto the canvas. Graffiti from New York, Paris and Berlin, glass architecture from modern European cities, Mogul buildings from Pakistan, headless mannequins from the streets of Paris are collaged together. They may or may not “fit together”. Out of this visual cacophony, I create a harmonious whole. It is like a puzzle. I use oil or acrylic paint. I proceed through trial and error and constantly build and destroy. Each piece is different with its own unique problems and solutions.
In my latest series “ Veni, Vidi, Sgraffiti”, I started incorporating drawings into my work. This new development has enabled me to inject humor in a serious discussion about war and violence.
Website
http://www.helenemukhtar.com/
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