29 July 2015
“What the superior man seeks is in himself; what the small man seeks is in others.” ― Confucius Following World War II the relevance of individual identity in art has been disregarded. This blog intends to shed light on the continued expression of individuality by artists. Karl Zerbe (1903 – 1972) His technical excellence assured the survival […]
29 July 2015
ART BOOKS FOR COLLECTORSBooks can be obtained through amazon.com and other Bookstores. Below are a few books related to collecting art that we suggest. New York School Abstract Expressionists: Artists Choice by Artists A Complete Documentation of the New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals: 1951-1957. Readers’ opinion: Amazon.com Almost Perfect – Very Important! Best […]
28 July 2015
Week 20 – 18-24 May – D.Cheeseman, O.Hagen, R.Trotta (by Alix Mortimer) This is week twenty, and once more we are in the white room drinking a sticky drink. This is where the truth/beauty-makers show their pictures and other made-things,. You will have seen that AJ has already written about week twenty-one and put it up in its own […]
28 July 2015
Week 28 – 13-19 July – Patrick Coyle & Francesco Pedraglio (by AJ Dehany) Fig-2 is famous for its collaborations. The project itself is a direct collaboration with each week’s artist where the artist and curators work closely to craft a seven-day show. Several of the weeks have also featured two or more featured artists in collaboration, and […]
28 July 2015
Week 21 – 25-31 May – The Rot of the Stars (by AJ Dehany) “Rot of the stars” is one name given to ‘star jelly’ – the gelatinous substance found on grass and branches that folklore records as having been deposited by meteor showers or shooting stars or formed from the inedible bits of frogs and toads. […]
28 July 2015
Week 18 – 4-11 May – Kathryn Elkin – The Elephants In The Room (by AJ Dehany) First Movement: Trauermarsch (The Elkin in the Room) Second Movement: Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz(Mahler The Elephant) Third Movement: Scherzo (Beethoven’s Elephant) Fourth Movement: Adagietto (Okkyung Lee: Improvisation and Composition) Fifth Movement: Rondo-Finale (Bernstein: Killing An Elephant) Death is love’s final form. The sexual climax, la petite mort, is the […]
14 July 2015
Picture credit: Jack Brindley, ‘Original Copy’ installation view, Cactus Gallery, 2015; Photographer Harry Meadley An exhibition examining the usefulness of art and twenty-first century arts centres is to open at Bluecoat, Liverpool’s centre for the contemporary arts. Featuring work from a wide range of UK-based artists RESOURCE is inspired by the 1927 founding manifesto of […]
13 July 2015
Is this what Andy Warhola looked like without the rug? If so, well done him. Maybe we should bring back wigs – and codpieces and less boring clothes for men. Unlike so many artists today, at least he was colourful and fun. Jeez come back Andy, all’s forgiven.
2 July 2015
AP Contemporary proudly presents “RU : REUNITED” group exhibition by Oleg Tselkov, Alexander Zakharov, Olga Tobreluts and Gago Chtchyan from 7 July to 31 August, 2015. Opening Reception on 7 July 2015 ( Tuesday) from 6pm – 9pm Russia has the longest persistence in socialist realism art and restriction was until the dissolution of Soviet […]
25 June 2015
Albert Kotin Early New York School Abstract Expressionist Albert Kotin belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist artists. He was among the 24 artists from the total of 256 participants who were included in the famous “9th St.” Show, (1951) and in all the following New York Painting and Sculpture Annuals […]
24 June 2015
It’s hard to believe that Bernini was only twenty-four when he created this sculpture. Having worked in stone mysef, I know just how difficult it is to force and cajole the material into appearing plastic and soft. Somehow he achieved this with Pluto’s fingers as they press deeply into Prosperino’s body. The marble has become […]
22 June 2015
According to Marilyn Stokstad, the art historian: “Expressionism (is) the manipulation of formal or representational elements to convey intense feelings.” American Figurative Expressionism ● New York Figurative Expressionism ●Boston Figurative Expressionism ●Bay area Figurative Expressionism New York Figurative Expressionism of the 1950s represented a trend where “diverse New York artists countered the prevailing abstract mode to work with the figure.” Nicolas Carone (1917-2010) […]
18 June 2015
My Pinterest I hope you’ll like it!
18 June 2015
International artist Tom Estes has been invited by curator Rebecca Feiner to act as Honorary Mayor of DEN-City1. Estes describes himself as a “Sci-fi inspired Carnival Sideshow Conceptualist, combining a bare-bones formal conceptualism with an eternally adolescent, DIY comic-prank approach”. Organised with Middlesex University, DEN-City1 is part of The London Festival of Architecture, a month long celebration of architectural experimentation, thinking and practice. I’ m sure […]
17 June 2015
Photographs by Aaron SiskindAll rights reserved by the artists and by his legal delegates. New York School Action PaintingPost World War II Abstract Expressionist Artists in New York City represented a new artistic innovation that by the 1950’s had been recognized across the Atlantic including Paris. New York School Action Painting became the leading art movement […]
10 June 2015
My new paintings explore the Stroop Effect. They demonstrate that the brain’s reaction time slows down when it has to deal with conflicting information, for example, if the name of a colour, say “RED” is printed in different colour, say blue. When a word’s meaning is combined with distracting information, such as a colour, two […]
4 June 2015
Week 17 – Charlotte Moth – 27 April-3 May – The Story of a Different Thought Fig2 – Week 17 – 27 April-3 May – Charlotte Moth – The Story of a Different Thought (by AJ Dehany) When Max Ernst was six years old his beloved pink cockatoo Hornebom died on the same day that his […]
2 June 2015
Yesterday evening opened an exhibition of Duane Hanson in the Serpentine Sackler Gallery. The exhibition shows a collection of the artist’s sculptures produced between the mid-1970s and the mid-1990s. The subject of each sculpture of the avarage person, could be anyone from the society of workers. According to the press release, ‘Hanson sought to produce […]
30 May 2015
The Art of Carmine Capone- Caserta -Italy To Carmine Capone is a creative production of long breath of expression, which takes place snodando joints of a process that moves from a commitment to return the real to reach a disarticulation of the object reduced to fragments and splinters of empirical darting materiality.
28 May 2015
When JMW Turner died in 1851, he bequeathed over 300 paintings and 30,000 sketches to the nation, with the proviso that they should all be housed in ONE special building. Thanks to his family and other vested interests, his wishes were totally ignored and the collection, which is worth at least £1bn, was split between […]
22 May 2015
Each morning during Jacopo Miliani’s week at fig-2 he rearranged the presentation of the light blue fabric rolls suspended from the skylights, and added another bunch of flowers. The idea was to create “a choreographic score as exhibition.” A choreographic score is a set of instructions for dancers. How can an exhibition, a presentation of ‘things’, function as […]
22 May 2015
The quarterly White Review publishes photography and art (decide for yourself what and means in that sentence) alongside the usual shorter literary forms from essay to poetry. It is named after and partly inspired by La Revue Blanche, the French art and literary magazine run between 1889 and 1903, which was strongly associated with Marcel Proust in the days before […]
22 May 2015
Have you ever wondered what the connection is between Diogenes of Sinope, Anarcho-Primitivism, the Unabomber, and Science Fiction? Suzanne Treister’s HEXEN 2.0 is a compendious project that brings together technology, philosophy, politics and literature to discover dystopic and utopic futures for humanity. There are five vast charts that visually map connections along the following themes: Historical Diagrams/From […]
22 May 2015
The third of the eight part seminar series with the title Politics of Display will investigate the charged liminal space between a work of art and audience, and the art institution. Bringing forward Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine’s publication Exhibiting Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Display, the seminar will focus on the relationship […]
22 May 2015
Part 1: Art For All The fig-2 openings are getting hectic. I think some bastard has been publicising them. This isn’t how counter-culture works. It’s more like.. in the year 2009 full-time Eddie Redmayne impersonator and occasional guest on Star Trek Professor Stephen Hawking threw a party for time-travellers. Afterwards he sent out the invitations. Nobody […]
22 May 2015
Present: Tom McCarthy (author, installation artist), Fatoş Üstek (curator, mathematician), Clémentine Deliss (curator, researcher), Alfie Spencer (Flamingo Group Head of Semiotics), Mark Blacklock (author) Apologies: Claude Levi-Strauss (anthropologist), Levi Strauss (businessman), Bronisław Malinowski (anthropologist), Guy Debord (situationist), Paul Rabinow (anthropologist of “the contemporary”), Alain Badiou (thinker), Roland Barthes (semiotician), Jacques Derrida (deconstructionist), Douglas B. Holt (author on […]
22 May 2015
It follows me around like a fog, or I move through it like a ghost. Neither one thing nor another, everywhere and nowhere, I’m never sure what I’m supposed to be. Liminality in general usage is variously employed to mean ‘between two things’, kind of both and neither. The state between caterpillar and butterfly; the periods […]
22 May 2015
SIX LOVELY PEOPLE In the Silent Disco Diner, someone is murdering the six individuals from the Match.com adverts, one by one. Who has the means, motive, and opportunity? And can Labby, the amateur labrador detective, solve the mystery in time? My God, it’s full of twats. The Silent Disco Diner was heaving with bodies. On […]
22 May 2015
This week in Kabul, Afghan artist Kubra Khademi was forced into hiding after publicly wearing a metal suit featuring exaggerated breasts and buttocks. The suit was so designed because “this is all that men see of women”, to highlight the sexual harassment of women. After only eight minutes a mob of men shut her down. On the […]