Waiting for Prospect.3, four artists

Firelei Báez

Firelei Báez was born in 1980 in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic, to Dominican and Haitian parents. She immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. Báez received a B.F.A. from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, NY, in 2004, attended the Skowhegan School Of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, in 2008 and graduated from Hunter College, NY, with a M.F.A. in 2010. She has held residencies at The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace, The Lower East Side Print Shop and The Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace and presently lives and works in New York, NY.

Artist's Statement:

"My artwork consists of paintings, drawings and prints that regard my physical self, my personal history, and Caribbean folklore. Caribbean folklore allows for malleability in the creation of the self, but I find my status as an Afro-Latina in the United States static and limiting in comparison. In response, I try to disrupt the current system of social categorization through the creation of characters that refuse definition. As more people become multiracial, skin tone is no longer a sufficient signifier. Growing media presence and more commonplace interactions via technology in our daily lives reduce each individual to a small part of a larger demographic. I use symbolically loaded scenarios to metaphorically illustrate the multiplicities and hypocrisies that make up the current discussion about race and class within popular culture."

Ebony C Patterson

Ebony G. Patterson is a Jamaican artist born in Kingston in 1981. She has taught at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts in Kingston, Jamaica, the Sam Fox College of Design & Visual at Washington University in St. Louis. She has taught at the University of Virginia and is currently an Assistant Professor in Painting at the University of Kentucky. She lives and works in Lexington, KY and Kingston, Jamaica.
Her work includes paintings, drawings, collages and recently she added photography, installation and performance. The female body as an object is the subject of her early works with her "Venus", a search for "beauty through the use of the grotesque but visceral, confrontational and deconstructed."
One of Patterson's most recognized body of work, is a series entitled "Gangstas for Life," which explores conceptions of masculinity within  dancehall culture and subjects related to this, like homosexuality within a predominantly homophobic culture, race, stereotypes and beauty.
 She has shown her artwork in numerous solo and private exhibitions, such as Infinite Island: Contemporary Caribbean Art, Brooklyn Museum, (2007). National Biennial, National Gallery of Jamaica,(2006,2008,2010),Ghetto Biennale , Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Rockstone and Bootheel, Real Artways, (2010) Wrestling With the Image, Museum of the Americas,(2011)

link to National Gallery of Jamaica blog


Tavares Strachan


Tavares Henderson Strachan (born in Nassau in 1979) is a contemporary, conceptual artist whose multi-media installations investigate science, technology, mythology, history, and exploration. He lives and works in New York City and Nassau, Bahamas.
Initially a painter, Strachan earned his Associate of Fine Arts degree from the College of the Bahamas in 1999. In 2000, he moved to the US to enroll in the glass department at the Rhode Island School of Design and completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2003. Strachan went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts degree in Sculpture from Yale University in 2006. In 2006, Strachan joigned the international art scene with his piece titled "The Distance Between What We Have and What We Want" which involved a 4.5 ton block of ice from the Alaskan Artic displayed in a solar-powered freezer in the courtyard of his childhood elementary school. The work was later exhibited at Miami Art Basel and the Brooklyn Museum.
Strachan developed further the themes of exploration, displacement and the idea of pushing the body’s physical extremes, with a four-year, multimedia body of work "Orthostatic Tolerance" which documented Strachan’s experience in cosmonaut training at the Yuri Gagarin Training Center in Star City, Russia and experiments in space travel conducted in Nassau under the Bahamas Air and Space Exploration Center (BASEC), the artist’s version of NASA for his native country, with photography, video, drawing, sculpture and installation.
Last year a 20,000-square-foot overview of Strachan’s work from 2003–2011, subtitled Seen/Unseen,was presented at an undisclosed New York City location and was closed to the public. Tavares Strachan: seen/unseen is fully documented with a forthcoming catalogue, designed by Stefan Sagmeister. Strachan’s solo exhibitions include Orthostatic Tolerance: It Might Not Be Such a Bad Idea if I Never Went Home Again, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA (2010); Orthostatic Tolerance: Launching from an Infinite Distance, Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO (2010); Tavares Strachan: Orthostatic Tolerance, the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (2009); Where We Are is Always Miles Away, The Luggage Store, San Francisco, CA (2006); and The Difference Between What We Have and What We Want, Albury Sayle Primary School, Nassau, The Bahamas (2006).
In 2013, Tavares Strachan represented The Bahamas in the country’s first national pavilion at the 55th International Venice Biennale.

link to Artsy
link to Prospect.3


Antonio Vega Macotela

Antonio Vega Macoleta was born in Mexico-city, Mexico, in 1980. He attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas, Mexico City, Mexico and obtained his BA in 2005. In 2011 he was accepted for a residency at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The conceptual artist worked several years with the inmates of a prison in Mexico City and set up a "time exchange project" which resulted in a Series of works called Divisa , 2006-1010, a reflection on the concept of time. He also produced series like The Ungovernables for the Second New York Triennial, at the New Museum in 2012,
He participated in several group exhibitions, the latest at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Summer 2014.

Featured at Prospect.3

Tarsila do Amaral 


Tarsila do Amaral (1886-1973) was born in Capivari, a small town in the countryside of the State of São Paulo. She grew up in a wealthy family of farmers and landowners who grew coffee and was encouraged to pursue higher education despite being a woman. As a teenager, she traveled to Spain with her parents and was noticed to have talent reproducing artworks she was exposed to.
In 1916, she studied sculpture in São Paulo with Zadig and Montavani and later drawing and painting with Alexandrino, all respected conservative teachers. In 1920, she moved to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian and with Emile Renard. Returning to São Paulo in 1922, she joined Anita Malfatti, Menotti Del Picchia, Mário de Andrade, and Oswald de Andrade modernist artists who had just organized  the Semana de Arte Moderna ("Week of Modern Art"). They became  the Grupo dos Cinco and their goal was to integrate Brazilian culture into modern art. Now known simply as Tarsila, the artist was described as "the Brazilian painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style."
During a brief return to Paris in 1923, Tarsila was exposed to Cubism, Futurism, and Expressionism while studying with André Lhote, Fernand Léger, and Albert Gleizes. European artists were also finding inspiration in African and primitive cultures and Tarsila applied the same model in her practice, integrating her own country's indigenous forms with modern styles. While in Paris, she painted one of her most famous works, A Negra (1923). The painting marks the beginning of her synthesis of avant-garde aesthetics and Brazilian subject matter. She returned to Brazil at the end of 1923, traveled with the poet Oswald de Andrade and illustrated his book of poems entitled Pau Brasil published in 1924. She also made drawings of the various places they visited gathering ideas for future paintings. During that same period, she rediscovered the colors she "had adored as a child" and the hues became more vibrant on her canvas. Her initial painting from this period was E.C.F.B.(Estrada de Ferro Central do Brasil), (1924) which is a reflection of her interest in industrialization and its impact on society.
Tarsila married Andrade in 1926 and they traveled  throughout Europe. She also had her first exhibition in Paris and the positive reviews highlighted her use of bright colors and tropical images.
While in Paris, she was exposed to Surrealism and upon her return to Brazil, Tarsila began a new period where she began incorporating surrealist themes into her nationalistic art. She was in sync with the artistic movement in Brazil which strove to appropriate European styles and influences and developped an art typical of Brazil. Collaborating closely with Andrade, her first painting representative of this period Abaporu (1928), "Man Who Eats" was featured on the cover of Andrade's manifesto Anthropophagite Manifesto, which called Brazilians to create their own style and culture.  Another famous work, Antropofagia made the following year was in the same vein. In 1929, the artist had her first solo exhibition in Brazil and in 1930, she participated in exhibitions in New York and Paris. That same year saw the end of Tarsila's marriage and her collaboration with Andrade.
In 1931, she traveled to the Soviet Union where her works were exhibited at the Museum of Occidental Art in Moscow. There, she discovered the poverty of the Russian people and their struggle to survive and upon her return in Brazil in 1932, incorporated social themes in her work  like in Segundo Class (1931) which features impoverished Russian men, women and children. She was even emprisoned for a month, suspected of communist sympathies.
In 1938,Tarsila finally settled permanently in São Paulo where she spent the remainder of her career painting Brazilian people and landscapes. She also wrote a weekly arts and culture column for the Diario de São Paulo, which continued until 1952.
Her legacy includes 230 paintings, hundreds of drawings, illustrations, prints, murals, and five sculptures, but more important is her influence on the direction of Latin American art.The Amaral Crater on Mercury is named after her."


Lucia Koch

link to Prospect.3 blog 
link to the artist's website 
link to Artsy
link to biography (Christopher Grimes Gallery) 
link to statement 



Remy Jungerman

Remy Jungerman (1959) was born in Suriname of mixed parents with roots in Europe and Africa. He first studied art at the Academy for Higher Arts and Cultural Studies, Paramaribo (Suriname) then after moving to Amsterdam in 1990, at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy. He presently lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Going back to his Afro-Surinamese-Dutch roots has brought him to find inspiration in his trans-cultural experience which he is expressing through his collages, sculptures and installations and art has become his "vehicle for considering what it means to be a global citizen, someone believing in the potential of art to raise social consciousness and inspire cultural awareness".

Staging traditional materials and objects in different contexts, he challenges the established notions of their representation within Western society. "By using the three-dimensional cube, grids and other geometric forms and combining them with traditional objects, this gives me the opportunity to question modernism from a different angle. By doing this, I create a reference to the traditional and the modern."

 Since his first group exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Jungerman has participated in several solo and group exhibitions worldwide.
His work has been acquired by various institutions and private collectors worldwide among which: Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, MMKA Arnhem, Museum Het Domein Sittard, Zeeuws Museum Middelburg, ARC Collection Amsterdam, Droog, NY USA, the Rennies Collection Vancouver.
Private Collections in the USA, Canada, Suriname, Cuba, Brazil, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Germany, France, Belgium and The Netherlands.

link to website
link to interview

The objects/elements never die, symbolically, in the artwork. By using these elements in contemporary art, they do change from their religious meaning but the new context might serve to enrich the way we look at them – allowing us to see them from a different perspective. Even traditional religious forms are changing over time because of their flexibility, especially Diaspora Afro-traditional religions and their attributes. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2014/05/inspired-from-within-an-interview-with-remy-jungerman/#sthash.ogGz0iFs.dpuf

The online exhibition I curated for the March 2014 edition of the Dutch art magazine Mister Motley gave me the opportunity to see that not much has shifted in my ties to my rich Surinamese heritage, in the aesthetics I gained from the surroundings in which I grew up and in what I have learned at art schools. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2014/05/inspired-from-within-an-interview-with-remy-jungerman/#sthash.ogGz0iFs.dpuf

With creating artworks I have the possibility and freedom to use objects and materials from a traditional context – mixing them to give other aesthetic meanings. By using the three-dimensional cube, grids and other geometric forms and combining them with traditional objects, this gives me the opportunity to question modernism from a different angle. By doing this, I create a reference to the traditional and the modern. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2014/05/inspired-from-within-an-interview-with-remy-jungerman/#sthash.ogGz0iFs.dpuf

  In 2005 I returned to Suriname to bury my father. While there, I visited the ancestor altar of the Maroon heritage of my mother – I was born from mixed parents with roots in Europe and Africa. At that moment I realized the richness of my African roots and made the decision to do further research into that spiritual context. From that day, I knew my work would change. I knew it would take a more spiritual and religious direction, with a connection to Winti, which is an Afro-Surinamese traditional religion. I realized that there was so much aesthetic material from the practice of Winti, which I could connect to the knowledge I have gained from contemporary art, especially Modernism. All of the residue from the rituals seem like finished art pieces. The only thing I was missing was the “how” – how to make the link with contemporary art practice. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2014/05/inspired-from-within-an-interview-with-remy-jungerman/#sthash.ogGz0iFs.dpuf

Visual artist Remy Jungerman was born in Moengo Suriname and his lived in Amsterdam since 1990. Through his collages, sculptures and installations he brings various materials, symbols, socio-historical contexts and locations in the world into communication with each other in order to address ideas of the local and the global. Jungerman’s work draws on Maroon culture in Suriname and the Diaspora, specifically Winti, which is an Afro-Surinamese religion.
His latest piece entitled “FODU: Ultimate Resistance” demonstrates his sustained engagement with the intersections of traditional religious practices and current trends in art. The work is now on display as part of the group exhibition Bezield: Seven Artists on Religion, Rituals and Death, which opened on May 10, 2014 at CBK Zuidoost, Amsterdam. The word “bezield” translates to “inspired” in English. I used this term as an entry point for talking with Jungerman about his art. In the interview, he pinpoints traditional and modern inspirations but he also identifies an inner stimulus – a source within him that acts as a ground on which his art is built.
- See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2014/05/inspired-from-within-an-interview-with-remy-jungerman/#sthash.ogGz0iFs.dpuf

The online exhibition I curated for the March 2014 edition of the Dutch art magazine Mister Motley gave me the opportunity to see that not much has shifted in my ties to my rich Surinamese heritage, in the aesthetics I gained from the surroundings in which I grew up and in what I have learned at art schools. - See more at: http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2014/05/inspired-from-within-an-interview-with-remy-jungerman/#sthash.ogGz0iFs.dpulink to websitelink to interview

Sculpting Tires

Chakaia Booker's latest exhibition Eradication: A Form of Obsession at the Newcomb Art Gallery on the Tulane University campus is the occasion to rediscover the artist, famous for her sculptures made with rubber tires. Following my first exposure to her work at the New Orleans Museum of Art, then an encounter at Art Basel Miami Beach and lately a daily walk by FOCI, an outdoor sculpture located on Poydras Street in New Orleans, I assumed that I knew the artist. After all, what else can be said in the monochrome medium? The conceptual artist's practice has been discussed, analyzed, interpreted and the metaphors about her work abound, alluding to forced labor, industrial revolution, racial differences, scarification,  consumerism, global economy, colonization, social disparities... The artist states her goal in the introduction to the exhibition: "...how broad, complex cultural transformations can continue to be expressed through common material".
At first sight, the visitor is drawn to a relief sculpture Color of Hope, 2010, a haptic landscape, harmonious construction made of rough material overtaken by curly pieces of rubber resulting in an organic composition, vision of generous opulence and growth surrounded by two intimate, smaller sized wall pieces Misleading Circumstances, 2005 and Masked Appeal, 2012.
The show includes also six sculptures in the round, and the visit becomes an aesthetically pleasing experience looking at Conversion, 2006, a strange animal built with pipes on one side and a rubbery, reptile-like material on  the other, Mixed Message, 2005, black ribbons flowing to the ground, like water out of a fountain, Wrench (Wench), 2001, an over-sized industrial tool featuring a boa feather for a handle or The Nest, 2003, evoking sexuality and birth with its feminine shapes. Privilege of Eating, 2012, goes straight to the point with two shovels representing the voracity of an opulent world  in contrast with the crumbled signs "private property", "no trespassing" embedded in the work, pieces of food carts, a broken door lock, symbols of a deprived world and its resulting marginalization.
The New Jersey hills in Booker's neighborhood are not made of white marble but piles of used tires which have become her medium since the 1990's, bringing analogy to speed, machinery and also pollution. Tearing, cutting, shredding, tugging, carving the tires, the artist's violent gesture to "deconstruct" is  followed by the act of conceptualization and creativity, transcending the material to "reconstruct". The sculptures offer a dialogue between feminine and masculine, roughness and smoothness, wealth and poverty... inviting deeper thoughts, addressing diverse issues with one medium she has transformed into a palette of colors and textures.
What makes the visit at the Newcomb gallery so compelling? The show offers a walk through almost two decades of the artist's practice in a space where the sculptures come alive under the soft natural light diffused through the ceiling and allows to discover the tactility and the depth of the work. An enlightening experience.

photographs by the author:

"Misleading Circumstances", 2005
Detail, "Mixed Messages", 2005
"Industrial Perpetousity", 2001

South of South America to P.3

Analia Saban

Analia Saban was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Following her undergraduate studies at Loyola University in New Orleans, LA, where she obtained a BFA in Visual Arts (2001), she attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where she earned her MFA in New Genres (2005) and was instructed by John Baldessari.  . 

In her early works, Saban reduced the works of Modernists like Wassily Kandinsky, Joan Miró, and Henri Matisse into individual swatches of color, which she then cut out, copied, and rearranged.
Shes describes her own method of working as both artistic and scientific. She questions the tradition mean of painting, what makes a picture a picture and states: "I find pictures are endless at a micro and macro-cosmic level. I am interested in our relationship to technology, to structures and to architecture around us." She uses a spectrum of materials depending on the idea to be conveyed through the conceptual work. Hovering between painting and sculpture, she explores the potential of canvas as textile, stretcher bars as pieces of wood and paint as clay. She is using laser cutters, silicone molds, acrylic and photographic emulsion to apply marks to painted surfaces.

Her work blurs the distinctions between mediums, using elements of painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, and architecture in a way that reinvents the very process of art-making.
Saban has been included in a number of group shows, including at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah, Marco Museum in Spain, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles. 

Solo Exhibitions Her first solo exhibition was the same year while her success was solidified by subsequent solo exhibitions at Galerie Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich (2007); Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris (2007, 2009, 2011); Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles (2009, 2011) and Josh Lilley Gallery, London (2010).
2013
Bathroom Sink, Etc., Spruth Maters Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Datum, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, England
2012
Gag, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York City, NY
2011
Derrames, 11x7 Galeria, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Dig, Gallerie Praz Delavallade, Paris, France
Grayscale, Thomas Solomon Gallery, Los Angeles
2010
Information Leaks, Josh Lilley Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2009
Light Breaks Out of Prism, Thomas Solomon Gallery@Cottage Home, Los Angeles, California
Living Color, Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
2007
When Things Collapse, Galerie Praz-Delavallade. Paris, France
Wet Paintings in the Womb, Galerie Spruth Magers, Projekte, Munich, Germany
2005
Bit by Bit, Kim Light Gallery / Lightbox (Inaugural Exhibition), Los Angeles, California

link to Artspace
link to interview, The Huffington Post
link to Artsy

William Cordova

William Cordova was born in Lima, Peru and raised in Lima and Miami. He earned his MFA from Yale University in 2004 and his BFA from The Art Institute of Chicago in 1996. He currently lives and works in New York and Miami.

Artist's Statement:

"My work attempts to reconcile ideas of displacement and transition through the use of ephemeral residue and vernacular architecture that continually shifts and shapes what could be described as our contemporary situation."

Through his installations, collages, drawings and sculptures, he combines discarded materials to reconsider cultural, linguistic and economic differences, translating the reality of lived experience. Having lived in different countries like Peru, the United States, Europe, raised in different cultures, Cordova translates disparity and displacement through his work.
“Revealing the intersections between magical realism and social realism, he orchestrates collisions between ancient and recent histories, oral tradition and revolutionary texts to make way for an in-between, transitional, and ultimately transformative space.” (Rashida Bumbray)

Cordova's solo exhibitions include untitled (chicanas)>, LAXART, Los Angeles (2010); Laberintos, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York (2009); More than Bilingual, Fleming Museum, University of Vermont, Burlington (2009); Moby Dick, Artspace, San Antonio (2008); Pachacuti (stand up next to a mountain), Arndt & Partner, Zürich (2007); P'alante, Arndt & Partner, Berlin (2006); Drylongso (Pichqa Suyo), P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2006); I Wish It Were True, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, New York (2006); and No More Lonely Nights, Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2003).
Group exhibitions include Neo-HooDoo: Art for a Forgotten Faith, Menil Collection, Houston (2008); Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2008); Prague Triennale, National Gallery (2008); Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova, and Robin Rhode, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, N.C. (2007); The Beautiful Game: Contemporary Art and Fútbol, BICA and Roebling Hall, New York (2006); Scratch, Studio Museum in Harlem (2005); and Utopia Station, 50th Venice Biennale (2003).

link to ARNDT
link to Artsy
link to Whitney Biennal 2008
 


David Zink Yi

David Zink Yi, born in Lima, Peru (1973) is a contemporary artist working primarily in video, photography, and sculpture. He obtained a Woodcarving Diploma at the Berufsfachschule in Munich, Germany, 1995-1998 and studied at the Kunst Akademie, Munich, Germany, 1997-1999 followed by the Universität der Künste, Berlin, Germany, 1998-2003
He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

His work often deals with the idea of the body and stems from his Peruvian, Chinese and German cultural heritage. The artist has an interest in the relation between Latin music, the body and performance and has been quoted as saying the "body is the space and the medium in which the process of questioning of identity takes place."
Over the past few years, David Zink has worked within the ceramic tradition to create a series of sculptures modeled on Architeuthis, the deep-sea-dwelling giant squid, prominent creature in myths and legends.

Solo Exhibitions

2014 Johann König Gallery, ‘David Zink Yi’, Berlin, Germany

2013 Hauser & Wirth, ‘‘Why am I here and not somewhere else – Independencia II’, Zurich, Switzerland Kunstverein Braunschweig, ‘Why am I here and not somewhere else – Independencia II’, Braunschweig, Germany Kunstfenster der Deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI, Berlin, Germany

2012 80m2 Livia Benavides Gallery, ‘Angel, is it you?’, Lima, Peru
MALI Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Peru
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, ‘David Zink Yi’, Berlin, Germany
2011 Hauser & Wirth, ‘Pneuma’, New York NY
Midway Contemporary Art, ‘HORROR VACUI’, Minneapolis MN

2010 MAK Gallery, ‘Manganese make my colors blue’, Vienna, Austria
Johann Koenig, ‘David Zink Yi’, Berlin, Germany

2009 Kunsthalle St. Gallen, St. Gallen, Switzerland

2008 Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, ‘David Zink Yi. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff Stipendium 2008’, Dusseldorf, Germany
Open Space / Art Cologne, ‘Roma 395’, Cologne, Germany

2007 Franco Soffiantino, Turin, Italy

2006 Johann König, ‘Geschlossen Kurve, bei der für jeden Punkt die Summe der Entfernungen konstant ist. Auslassung insbesondere inmitten von etwas’, Berlin, Germany
Museum Ludwig, ‘Independencia I’, Cologne, Germany

2005 Kunstraum Innsbruck, ‘Der soziographische Blick 12. David Zink Yi’, Innsbruck, Austria

2004 Hauser & Wirth Zürich, ’6 x Yta Moreno’, Zurich, Switzerland
Galerie Johann König, Berlin, Germany
Künstlerhaus Bremen, ‘Alrededor del dosel / Umgehen der Baumkronen’, Bremen, Germany

2003 Galerie Johann König, ‘De adentro y afuera’, Berlin, Germany

link to Artsy
link to MORFAE

Back to the Future

The threatened land of South Louisiana is one of the entities where the frailty of our environment can be physically felt and where Dawn Dedeaux found inspiration for her series MotherShip, a reflection on our planet earth and our future.
Following Aboard the MotherShip part 1: Postulations of Myth and Math which took place at the Centre for the Living Arts in Mobile, AL, the latest exhibition at the Acadiana Center for the Arts, MotherShip 2: Dreaming of a Future Past is displayed in a large space, allowing DeDeaux's work to take its full breath. At first sight, the somber colors give a sense of the prevailing bleak mood. The display can be viewed as a whole installation built from stories told in different media, each occupying a dedicated area like Test Tubes, 2010, related to water contamination and its effect on species, Chimes: Burnt Timber, 2005-2013, made with pieces of burned wood from Dedeaux's own studio or Step Home, 2007, a glowing minimalist sculpture symbol of Katrina's aftermath followed by Falling Junk Space with Shoes, 2013 and Back Pack, 2013, relating to recent terrorist activities carried out through everyday objects. If we feel somewhat touched by the allusions to events that concern all of us, our emotions are stirred by Souvenirs of Earth, 2014, a collection of worn out dusty objects which have lost their function but have gained a symbolic value. An old violin case, a broken toy, damaged photographs, the accumulation of  "things" filled with memories evoke abandonment and loss, allowing melancholy to seep in. Should they be left behind? Should they be part of our future? Questions we had to answer too many times following the Katrina disaster.
Hovering above abandoned farm equipment, rings of metal refer to the now defunct airships Zeppelins. In response to the drought and the subsequent food shortage, MotherShips offer an escape to a few so are the fragile ladders made of charred wood or clear glass spread throughout the exhibition. Wall pieces include figurative portraits like Guardian at the Levee Gate or landscapes like Evangeline, dark digital drawings on metal which heighten the eerie atmosphere reinforced by a few splashes of red, color of fire and drama adding to the apocalyptic vision offered by DeDeaux. Comments along the works help the visitor decipher the symbols: rings for the alliance of man and technology, ladders to reach higher consciousness, horse signaling the end of earthly time and triumph over evil... Our gaze is drawn to the centerpiece, a towering life-size sculpture of a horse perched on a high pedestal, vigorous, dynamic and free. A kind of a conclusion to a stirring exhibition which can be seen from a bird view point looking through the glassed mezzanine.
At the present rate of growth the earth will need to sustain nine billion inhabitants in 2045. DeDeaux brings a sense of urgency, an anxiety born from the numbers and the threat of cataclysms looming over our planet. Future Past resounds like a warning, we already have lost control over our future and there is a sense of inevitability in the artist's gloomy premonitions. Confronted to our powerlessness, her answer is a scenario of escape and abandonment.
A century ago, Futurism was a cry for change, action, filled with enthusiasm as opposed to the recent  statement from the philosopher Félix Guattari: "The future has lost its zest and people have lost all trust in it: the future no longer appears as a choice or a collective conscious action, but is a kind of unavoidable catastrophe that we cannot oppose in anyway."
Is there any hope according to DeDeaux? Is the artist describing realities we choose not to see?

photographs by the author:
Views of the exhibition at the ACA

White Linen Night

Saturday, August 2, I was at White Linen Night. It was a success considering the number of attendees. I did not see art, just got a whiff of it making my way through the crowd. For the 20th anniversary, I noticed more colors on Julia. This is not Saint-Patrick's day, a touch of white won't do, white should be worn from head to toes.

For a start, I visited the Ogden Museum of Southern Art which presents Rolland Golden's works in an exhibition aimed at highlighting his style of "Magical Realism" or as he calls it "Borderline-Surrealism". Born in New Orleans, raised in the South from Mississippi to Alabama to Louisiana, taught by the regionalist painter John McCrady and the owner of a studio/gallery in the French Quarter for a decade, Golden possesses all the needed qualifications to be called a Southern artist. Nevertheless, I had difficulty finding the South in his compositions combining realist and surrealist styles. Figurative, bathing in Fauvist colors, usually built with a quiet landscape in the background and the narrative in the foreground, the repetitive technique brings boredom. French countryside, bridge in Paris, church, southern landscapes are all looking soulless and empty, lacking the mystery and the suspense felt in Magritte's paintings, the Surrealist master Golden refers to in one of his works. There are no surprises while going through the seventy oil paintings, watercolors and drawings.

Encased in a dark room, Shawn Hall's Pastoral Universe is an experience for the senses. Immersed in the cosmic composition, the visitor walks around a central island bubbling like magma, spewing oval sparks of light on the floor and the walls. The installation includes "one mirrored terrain, two suspended projectors and one channel video loop with sound" and the well hidden machinery creates a world of reflections on the walls, through mirrors and projection of images. The meditative piece is spoiled by the number of visitors, chattering and taking selfies. This is not the best time to savor the work.
On the top floor, Shawn Hall is also represented by a diptych for Louisiana Contemporary, the annual statewide-juried exhibition assembling Louisiana artists. Two works from Bonnie Maygarden are prominently displayed at the entrance. Desert of the Real and Greyscale both pieces made in 2014 are evidence of her commitment to the world of "virtual reality" or hyperreality. One can also find a piece from Cynthia Scott, Punditry, 2014, a great satire with punchy images. There is art for every taste, figurative, abstract, sculptures and a walk through takes some time to discover all the artists.

Across the street at the Contemporary Arts Center, more female artists from New Orleans are featured for the exhibition Mark of the Feminine. The themes are enduring and treated through different media, like at the entrance, a work from Vanessa Centeno made with canvas, polyfill, glitter, LED lights, a psychedelic rendition with a provocative title Keep It Up which  made me think of a white version from Yayoi Kusama, 1962, Accumulation #1. Farther, Cristina Molina's  Saber, Sabor, Savor, 2011, is a gallant stereoscopic installation in which she relates twenty five sites with a meal, a romantic text with courtship in mind. From video like the untitled piece from Ariya Martin to sculptures like Annoint, 2014, from Kristin Meyers, all media is represented and no subject is taboo.
My wandering along Julia to visit the galleries was cut short when I got bogged down in the crowd...
an evening to enjoy the company, the food and have a drink like everybody else.

photographs by the author:

view of Julia Street
"Startled by Magritte", 1991, Rolland Golden
"Pastoral Universe", Shawn Hall
"Keep It Up", 2014, Vanessa Centeno

From South Africa, Uganda to Prospect.3

From South Africa to Uganda, two photographers and film makers at Prospect.3.

Pieter Hugo


Born in 1976 in Johannesburg, South Africa, Pieter Hugo is a self-taught photographer based in Cape Town. His interest in photography started at an early age when he received his first camera at 10 years old. He explains why he has chosen portraiture as his main practice:

"I am six foot tall. I have blond hair and blue eyes. I stick out like a sore thumb in the locations I visit. I quickly realized that the traditional photo-journalistic approach of capturing a fleeting moment wasn't going to work for me. Firstly, my reflexes are too slow and secondly I am not a fly on the wall, I have a presence."
 His is considered a leading photographer in Africa, known for his socially and politically charged works which include depictions of Albinism (2003-2006) to documentation of the aftermath of the massacres in Rwanda in 1994 (2004). His most famous series The Hyena and Other Men (2005-2007) is about
a group of itinerant animal handlers, peddlers and performers he followed during a two years period, living with them several weeks at a time to understand their culture and thinking.
Pieter Hugo professes skepticism toward the "power of photography": "I am of a generation that approaches photography with a keen awareness of the problems inherent in pointing a camera at anything."

Major museum solo exhibitions have taken place at The Hague Museum of Photography, Musée de l’Elysée in Lausanne, Ludwig Museum in Budapest, Fotografiska in Stockholm,  MAXXI in Rome and the Institute of Modern Art Brisbane, among others. Hugo has participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions including Tate Modern, the Folkwang Museum, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, and the São Paulo Bienal. His work is represented in prominent public and private collections, among them the Museum of Modern Art, V&A Museum, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Walther Collection, Deutsche Börse Group, Folkwang Museum and Huis Marseille. Hugo received the Discovery Award at the Rencontres d’Arles Festival and the KLM Paul Huf Award in 2008, the Seydou Keita Award at the Rencontres de Bamako African Photography Biennial in 2011, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2012.

Zarina Bhimji


Zarina Bhimji was born in Mbarara, Uganda in 1963 to Indian parents and moved to Britain in 1974, two years after the expulsion of Uganda’s Asian community in the Idi Amin era. She is a photographer and film maker working in London and Berlin.
Zarina Bhimji was educated at Leicester Polytechnic (1982 – 1983), Goldsmith's College (1983 – 1986) and  Slade School of Fine Art, University College London (1987 – 1989).  Following a post-graduate program, she became an Artist in Residence at Darwin College in Cambridge.
In her works, she intermingles reflections on colonialism, global migration, diaspora, persecutions through images referring to cultural memory like dilapidated architectures, abandoned interior spaces and personal narrative. India and East Africa are her sources for inspirations and in Out of the Blue commissioned and produced by Documenta 11 in 2002, she returned to Uganda to film the ruins left by Idi Amin's reign of terror. Yellow Patch (2011) was inspired by trade and migration across the Indian Ocean and communicates the same aura of decay and abandonment. She was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007 and was the subject of a mid-career retrospective tracing 25 years of her work at Whitechapel Gallery in 2012.