Liao Yibai “Real Fake"

Liao Yibai’s is a Chinese artist who was born in Jiang An, Sichuan, China. He lives and works in Beijing and Chongqing, China. He graduated from Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts (SIFA) and received his MA from Chongqing University. He has had solo exhibitions in both China and New York and has been in many group exhibitions all over the world.  

Yibai’s welded stainless steal sculptures are magnificently molded and are of oversized hand bags, high heel shoes, watches, rings and other luxury objects with high labels. He is trying to depict the real and fake confusions that take place in China’s market place. He shows luxury labels in his works as well as creating his own luxury brands. He is questioning China’s rags to riches and through his sculpture, he elaborates on material obsession. Through his work he is trying to confront the multitudes of popular brands and logos and their overwhelming presence in today’s society. These immaculate sculptures are truly amazing and Yibai’s careful detail is extraordinary.

Liao Yibai’s current exhibition “Real Fake” is taking place at Mike Weiss Gallery located at 520 West 24^th Street, New York, NY from September 10^th - October 30^th. 

Javier Piñón “O Babalon”

Javier Piñón is a Cuban American artist born in Miami, FL and raised in Huston, TX. He received his MA from Rhode Island School of Design. His work has been shown both internationally and internationally in shows including El Museo del Barrio’s Bienal and the Beijing Biennale. Piñón received a 2007 artist fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA).

Javier Piñón’s work caught my attention because it is so different from other artist’s work. He places nude women in his collage’s whose backgrounds are of fantasy lands. His collages are unusual and mysterious but at the same time intriguing and beautiful. Some are more strange than others but are all made out of beautiful compositions and colors. A lot of his collages have naked nudes in nature settings with animals acting in strange ways. (The explanation is explained on the gallery’s web-site.) Even though this work might be beyond comprehension, it is still very interesting and appealing in a weird way. 

According to SierherSmith’s web-site “Javier Piñón’s 2010 exhibition of collages is built around depictions of the highly charged image of the earth goddess Babalon, her attendants, priestesses and their mystical terrain unfolding in a narrative of liberation, sensuality, death and rejuvenation.” He uses clips from mid-century magazines like Arizona highways and The Time Life Nature Library, a group of books, he studied as a child. In other works you see the use of cowboys, medusas, saints, and stacks of chairs, which are gruesome in some way but compelling non-the-less. Piñón is very distinct from other artists and has an astonishing style, this is some out of this world crazy art.

Javier Piñón’s most current exhibition “O Babalon” is taking place from October 14^th-November 13^th 2010 at ZieherSmith Inc. gallery located at 516 West 20^th St. New York, NY.

 

Bo Bartlett "Paintings of Home"

Bo Bartlett, an American realist graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and has a certificate in film from NYU. He has had many one person exhibitions and has had retrospectives at the Columbus Museum in Georgia in 2003 which traveled to the Greenville County Museum of Art in South Carolina, the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California and Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Pennsylvania. 

Everything about Bo Bartlett’s paintings reminds me of Edward Hopper. The landscapes, the architecture and the people he paints definitely remind me of Hopper’s work. In this exhibition, he depicts scenes from his childhood home in Columbus, Georgia, where he has recently made a studio and seasonal home.He has been working on these series of personal and universal paintings for the past few years. He breaks it down that home is not just a specific place or a house or a yard but its rather a town, region and state of mind. In his painting’s he conveys history, both enclosed and re-imagined, some are portraits of notable residents of the artist’s hometown and some include objects from his past. His work depicts the beauty of everyday life.

The reason I find Bo Bartlett interesting is because he is a personal artist and his art reflects is own life. He paints what he knows best and to me that makes the paintings a lot more valuable and obviously more meaningful. For example he has a dual portrait of his aged parents, also the largest work, entitle “Home” which shows Bartlett’s life condensed in time through a scene played out in his childhood home’s back yard. I like when art is meaningful and Bartlett’s focus in his art is to be meaningful. He tells a narrative description of his life but also keeps it open to the public, allowing it to become universal from personal.

His most current solo exhibition is called “Paintings of Home” is taking place at P.P.O.W gallery at 511 W 25^th Street at 10^th Avenue, New York, NY from October 14^th – November 13^th 2010. 

Nicky Nodjoumi “Invitation to Change Your Metaphor”

Nicky Nodjoumi is an artist from Kermanshah, Iran, and currently lives and works in Brooklyn. Nodjoumi received his BA from Tehran University of Fine Arts in Tehran, Iran and received his MFA from the City College of New York in 1974.

His wonderful oil paintings are filled with vivid colors and symbolism and his art is very political. His paintings depict the western hemisphere and the Middle East simultaneously. He excites individual dialogues with a continuous backdrop of symbolism, methodology and uncertainty. According to Payvand’s Iran News, “Nodjoumi creates large scale oil paintings using a visual narrative that combines Persian metaphors and Iranian iconography with references of Western and foremost American culture and politics.”

What I like most about Nodjoumi’s work is that they are so random and aren’t narrative, you don’t really know what is going on, and its up to your imagination to figure out. Another aspect of Nodjoumi’s work that draws my attention is that he makes distinct separations of his compositions with dividing lines that make you wonder why he does this. Nodjoumi places his subjects either above ground, suggesting the existing world, or below into a nondescript, subterranean space equivalent to the underworld. He also leaves an overall feeling of displacement behind. His work has been shown in many international and national solo exhibitions including Seyhon Gallry, Aria Gallery and a 1980 Retrospective at The Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art in Tehran, Iran. Addition exhibitions include Iran Inside Out at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, NY and at the DePaul University Art Museum in Chicago, IL.

Nodjoumi’s newest exhibition “Invitation to Change Your Metaphor” will be held at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art gallery located at 547 West 27th Street, New York, NY from October 28th to December 30th 2010. This exhibition is Nodjoumi’s response to the political events in Iran, impacting the international community in the summer and fall of 2009.

Storm Tharp "Ashby Lee Collinson"

Storm Tharp is an artist who was born in 1970 in Ontario Oregon, and lives and works in Portland, Oregon. His work consists of very unique portraits. I found this artist to very interesting in which the technique he uses to create his art and how well he succeeds at it. The way in which he does this, is that he draws his characters by first drawing contours on the page with water. Before the water dries, he adds drops of ink, which expand into various forms and shapes. This process is repeated in various instances to build forms and light sources, which is clearly shown. After the ink is dry, Tharp manipulated the form in a variety of ways such as drawing and erasing. According to the Whitney, “Tharp takes his inspiration form a wide-ranging sew of influences including 1970’s American cinema and Japanese portrait prints.” In addition his character’s have names, histories, and narratives but they suggest multiple interpretations.

    

Tharp has also exhibited at the Portland Art Museum and the Belleview Art Museum,
Belleview, WA and was included in the 2010 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. His work is in several public and private collections. He received a BFA in Painting at Washington University in St. Louis.

His most up-coming exhibition “Ashby Lee Collinson” will be help at the Nicole Klagsbrun gallery located at 526 West 26^th Street No. 213, New York, NY from October 29^th to December 31^st 2010. 

  

Russell Roberts "Pockets of Accumulation"

Russell Roberts grew up in NYC, he received his BFA from Vassar the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and received his MFA from Boston University. Russell is a mature abstract artist and experiments with the slowness of the mediums liquidity and transparency, its opacity and density. Robert’s plays with lines and forms, some paintings incorporate both, and he also experiments with color by the stretching of his canvases.

 He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in painting in 1997, and his work had been included in group exhibitions at the Nielsen Gallery, the Danforth Museum and group exhibitions in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2001, he also had a one person show at the Sherman Gallery at Boston University and at the Farrell Pollock Gallery in Brooklyn.

Robert’s latest exhibition “Pockets of Accumulation,” consists of new oil paintings and works on paper at Heskin Contemporary from October 21st - December 4th. The gallery is located at 443 West 37^th street between 9^th and 10^th avenues and is open from Wednesday’s through Saturday’s from 12-6pm. 

Omar Chacon "Bacanales"

Omar Chacon, born in 1979, is a New York abstract artist who is originally from Bogota, Columbia. He received his BFA at Ringling School of Art and Design and his MFA at San Francisco Art Institute. His work has recently been shown in 2008/2009 at Queens International Museum of Art and Hunterdon Art Museum in Clinton, NJ. His work has also been shown in private art galleries in Milan, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sarasota, and Stanford. His work consists of bright ovals of vibrant hues, where he greatly inspired by his vibrant life of his native Columbia and from his grandfather’s paintings.

In order to create these beautiful paintings, Chacon uses a process in which he builds up acrylic paint on a plastic surface for each oval, then peels each shape and then adheres them to canvas. Chacon is also influenced by intricate patterns and weavings found in the traditional folk art of South American indigenous peoples. 

Chacon has a current exhibition called “Bacanales” showing at Margaret Thatcher Projects from October 21^st  - December 23^rd  2010.  The gallery is located at 539 West 23^rd Street , New York, NY. 

Nathan Sawaya "The Art of the Brick"

Nathan Sawaya is an unusual artist compared to other artists. Instead of using marble, bronze, wood, or limestone for his sculptures, he uses building blocks, and to be more specific LEGOS. According to Sawaya's web-site "The Art of the Brick," Sawaya's art is currently touring North American museums titles "The Art of the Brick." It is the only exhibition focusing exclusively on LEGO as an art medium. Sawaya is a New York sculptor known for his pop art and surrealism pieces made up of only LEGOS. Above is a photograph of one of the many "hugmans." Sawaya waned to start doing graffiti, but being the brick artist that he is allowed him to come up with something only using bricks, so eventually he came up with "hugman," which basically likes to hug sign poles, park benches, bike racks, fence posts and many other things. Sawaya intentionally placed many "hugmen" around NYC to act as his "tag." He has also traveled with many "hugmen" and have left them all over the country.

The figures Sawaya creates show great expressionism and great human emotoion. His distinct sculpture

can be found in public and corporate collections such as the National Marine Corps Museum, Neiman

Marcus, New Orleans Public Library and the New York Times, and Sawaya has also sold pieces to Donald Trump and musician Pete Wentz as well as numerous other private collections around the world.

Sawaya was born is Colville, Washington and raised in Venenta, Oregon. During Saway's college years he attended NYU. His sculptures are large scaled and very unique, and even though Sawaya is using LEGOS as his medium which are very angular blocks, he still manages to somehow show great curvature and expression. What I like most about Sawaya's sculptures is that they all show heavy emotion and the challenge to do so by using angular blocks like LEGOS. 

An up-coming exhibition of Sawaya's work in New York will be held at Agora Gallery, a contemporary art gallery that was established in 1984, located at 530 West 25th Street, Chelsea, NY starting November 23rd to December 14th 2010. This is a show you will not want to miss, since there is nothing else like this out there. 

Philemona Williamson "Fractured Tales"

Philemona Williamson is an African American artist originally from New York City. She now resides and works in Upper Montclair, New Jersey and has a studio in Bloomfield. Williamson's paintings depict children and adolescents, which come from her imagination and some from her own childhood. Williamson's most popular medium is oil on linen. Some say that her paintings show children's innocence, some say they show sadness, and others complement her use of vibrant colors. Williamson has received awards such as the National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship and Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant. Williamson is also part of the Brooklyn Art Association. She received a bachelor degree from Bennington College and a Masters Degree in painting from NYU. Williamson has been in many solo exhibitions as well as many group exhibitions. She has many collections which include The Mint Museum which is located in Charlotte, North Carolina and Hampton University Museum in Virginia.

Philemona Williamson will be having an exhibit coming up soon at June Kelly Gallery from November 12th to December 14th featuring new paintings entitled "Fractured Tales". June Kelly Gallery is located at 166 Mercer Street, New York, NY which is open Tuesday's-Saturday's from 11am-6pm.