The Zimmerli

Blocks of Color: American Woodcuts from the 1890s to the present

I went to the Zimmerli this week to see the new wood block exhibition. The color woodblocks were from a range of American artists and influences from the 1890's to present. There were many prints that were inspired by Japanese prints because prints like these originated in Japan and were once imported by wealthy families in Europe and America. These woodblock prints reflected Japanese prints both in composition and subject matter. Some incorporated people and others were landscape. There were also some that were abstract or design and color. I have never worked with woodblocks before, but the pieces were reminiscent of watercolor paintings. I honestly did not feel any connection to any pieces from this show, but I might have taken a couple to decorate a living room in my house.

I wandered the Zimmerli some more to see if there was anything else that would inspire me or that I could connect with, but the only other piece that caught my attention was a photorelief print by Georges Meunier since it looked like a Toulouse Latrec print. Meunier is a French artist and the piece "A program for El Dorado" is similar to the work Latrec would have done as well.

Exhibition of my choice...

Mark Bradford & Kara Walker Exhibition
Last weekend I went to Chelsea to see the Kara Walker exhibit at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. She was exhibiting with Mark Bradford, which I thought was a good collaboration because at first viewing of the show I hardly noticed that there was more than one exhibitor. They both used collage and cut paper in their work that focused on societal and cultural issues. It only took a moment for me to recognize Kara walker's work from freshman year art making class where we did a paper cutout assignment that was inspired by her. Something I admire about her work is her craftsmanship. Her paper sculptures were meticulous and elegant. Aside from her notorious black and white silhouette pieces she had some color works with intricate details and a couple large pieces in this exhibition where she used white paint over paper. This really forced her viewers to look at the painting in order to see everything presented in it. The works were very beautiful and elegant, but the content mostly dealt with race, sexuality, and violence in a grotesque manner.
Through the last room of the gallery, almost unnoticed, was a small room where there was a pretty amazing film of hers playing was pretty amazing. I'm really interested in film and I thought that her use of the black-silhouetted figures in her silent film aided in the style of movie. I thought it was absolutely amazing how real she was able to depict body movement through paper dolls. The music the film was reminiscent of music that would play if watching a show of marionettes and changed with the tempo of the plot. The content of the movie was violent and captivating evolving into a fight scene of African slaves against white farmers.

Last week's Chelsea Gallery Visit cont.

(Blue Lake Pass)



MAYA LIN: Three Ways of Looking at the Earth
PaceWildenstein
Maya Lin’s show at the PaceWildenstein was truly extraordinary in size and content. The gallery itself is a huge space, but her work filled the gallery space almost entirely, forcing people to walk around and through the different sculptures. The show consisted of three pieces and was titled “Maya Lin: Three Ways of Looking at the Earth,” which are selections from her environmental installations, “Systematic Landscapes.”
The first piece was a topographic sculpture made of cut 2x4s, called 2 x 4 Landscape, which she systematically placed on the floor to build what looks like a hill or a wave. This piece, although tempting, was not meant to have viewer interaction and there was a pathway around the massive work. Similar in her use of stacked wood material, her second piece Blue Lake Pass uses cut plywood sheets to topographically suggest the narrow passageways of a region of mountains in Colorado. Lin calculated these mountain passages and scaled them down into twenty units that she spaced like a grid where the viewer is able to walk through and around each unit. The final piece, Water Line, was constructed of wire and reflected a map of the ocean floor down the Mid-Atlantic ridge. This piece differed in material as well as placement in the gallery since it hung from the ceiling where viewers were able to walk underneath it. I thought that the addition of the third piece was strategic since it introduced a new medium as well as another type of landscape. It also put the viewer in the interesting position of walking underneath the represented ocean floor.
The visual aspects of Maya Lin’s large-scale sculptures were really thought out and constructed from her research of the actual environment. The topographic research behind each piece emphasized her interest and concern to express new environmental issues of the world we inhabit.



(2x4 Landscape)

Design Observer Review

Virginia Smith
Two Dutch Logos




This article gave a review on two dutch logos, one a new logo for the Hague by Anton Corbijn and the other the logo for the DOCOMOMO in Rotterdam designed by David Knowles. Smith talks about how design and the Netherlands were developing, and the ideas behind each design. I couldn't help but think back to the Aperture gallery that is exhibiting Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art, and how that relates to these logo designs. Knowles' design seemed to be a lot more effective in its purpose- It definitely portrayed modernism with the use bold futura and two cool shades of blue/purple. When thinking about the transformation of Dutch landscape, this design most definitely alludes to new architectural design in Dutch landscape. Unfortunate to say, I found Corbijn's logo design to be careless and ineffective. Smith mentioned that his idea behind the logo was merely following the orders of the commissioner, "make it emphasized the city's freedom." A kite to symbolize freedom- how cliche. :/ anyway, it gets worse when he defines the parts of the logo saying "The blue stroke is intended to evoke The Hague’s location near the sea...while the yellow, green and black strokes allude to Mondrian's painting Victory Boogie Woogie which is in the city's collection." How thoughtless. If he put any deeper thoughts into the construction of this logo, the allude to Mondrian would not be so painterly, and rather more geometric and/or accompanied with a modern typeface. Sadly, Mondrian's painting that he refers to does not even contain the color green. It is also noted that his experience with criticism allows for him to not care what other people say about his work- maybe Corbijn should just stick to photography since the effectiveness of a design is important and goes hand in hand with what people think about it.

Interview with Naqeeb Stevens

So I thought that the interview assignment would be a lot more painful than it actually turned out to be. I interviewed Naqeeb Stevens and we ended up having a really good experience with it. I got to learn a lot about what it was like for him as a student and photographer. We talked for a while before the actual taping of the interview so the video sometimes seems more like a conversation. Naqeeb is interested in getting a narrative from his photographs. Sometimes he succeeds with a single photograph and other times his narration comes with a series of photographs. He talks about his decisions in capturing narratives around 2:45min of the video. This is the photograph that is specifically talked about.



At 6:40min we talked about his participation in the BFA show with an abstract video commenting on social networking. I asked him about the concept behind it and his view on using abstraction in his work. He basically feels that he will use abstraction if it is necessary in what he is trying to depict.

I show some photographs at 8:44min that he printed from his camera phone and talked about the quality of the photographs and what makes them interesting due to the convenience and availability of the camera.