Other Artists Represent'n Fashion

via

Well, it looks like Anna Gaskell isn't the only artist on the fashion scene.

A handful of New York artists were chosen to appear in the J. Crew mens catalogue this season, including Ryan McGinness and Vito Acconci. J. Crew's site offers interviews (sort of) and links to the various artists' studios which I must say, upon looking at their spaces, I am quite jealous of.

Any thoughts?

Anna Gaskell in Gap Ad?

Ok, I discovered this ad yesterday while watching ‘The Office’ on hulu, I almost walked out of the room as it ran, and then Anna Gaskell’s name floated across the screen and all I could do was sit dumbfounded at the fact that I was watching the Anna Gaskell sit on a stool and talk about her work; suggesting that her lifestyle as a fine art photographer somehow correlates with the Gap image.

At first, I was just really confused, if you are familiar with Anna's work, a bodysuit of denim just doesn't come to mind when considering her subjects and photographs.

Actually, all her work tends to draw on the dementia of constructions within storytelling, highlighting the plight of female subjects being manipulated and pulled apart by other female characters. Gaskell's photographic series By Proxy investigates the re-imagining of a world as from a mother suffering Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Her Wonder and Override series fragments and reconstructs imagery inspired by Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, but by avoiding the literal nature of Carroll’s story, Gaskell’s imagery suggests that one has gone down the ‘rabbit hole’ so to speak and there really is no way out. The settings she chooses often include over-embellished interiors that both suggest and highlight the entrapments of domesticity sickly entwined with the need for story-telling and narcissism. In these spaces the anonymous characters interact through ambiguous scenarios that could be interpreted as either playing with one another, or tearing one another apart; as with an image in which hands are reaching into the frame and tugging at the tights of a little girl. Often using candlelight as her light source within these decorative interiors, Gaskell manages to have a conversation with the past histories of women and domestic space, while considering the contemporary issues of women's plight in motherhood and childhood: both subjects often neglected in contemporary culture where childhood has all but disappeared and motherhood no longer carries the accolades of the past.

Gap's entire image just seems to deny ignore all the investigations that have taken place within Gaskell's photographic work, I just don't get it.

I suppose she looks the part.

Colette Fu

Ok, so while I've been crawling the internet looking for RIT MFA Alums to add to the RIT MFA blog, I came across this artist Colette Fu on the EnFoco's website. Her work is really quirky, which I like, and her pop-ups are pretty amazing. While the site leaves something to be desired, her pieces are an interesting juxtaposition of popular imagery and objects, of absurdly menacing miniature scapes. I do love absurdity, especially when it is completely unapologetic. ManRay in 3-D? I don't know how to describe this work, which is probably why I respond to it.

Her china blog is crazy too, it's like National Geographic on a binge. See it HERE!

Actually, upon spending a bit more time with these images, Colette's work also reminds me of Daniel Gordon's work, although the subjects are disparate, the approach and imagery seem somehow related.

Yeah, that's right, I just plugged an artist from RIT's rival program... Yale.

(un)natural worlds

Via RIT MFA Blog.
I just had to re-post this as John and Stefan are alums of RIT's MFA program, and Dornith and I share an Alma Mater with Rice University...it's a small world... seems entirely relevant to this show. All the work is pretty interesting, Texas doesn't get enough respect.


Via
A group show of photographic art from seven contemporary artists, curated by John Aäsp, is currently on display at the Rockport Center for the Arts:

"The unnatural, that too is natural." -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Join seven contemporary artists using photographic processes to create worlds of intrigue, curiosity, and personal vision.

On view September 9-October 10, 2009.

This show, includes work from Dornith Doherty, Susan Dunkerley, Charles Lindsay, Stefan Petranek, Ansen Seale, Trish Simonite, and Sterz. Stefan Petranek is another RIT MFA Alumnus who also teaches here in SPAS. The imagery for(un)natural worlds extends the gamut of aesthetics and ideologies concerned with the connections between science and visual languages used in our representations of the spectacle that is Nature. I am sad that I won't be home in Texas to see this show, but the artists' sites are definitely worth taking a look at. Enjoy!

John Aäsp is currently Curator and Visual Arts Director at Rockport Center for the Arts on the Gulf Coast of Texas, where he also serves as co-director for the Rockport Film Festival.

a brief review of the show is HERE at Glasstire.com, under Rockport.

Summer Must-Sees: Photoconceptualism at the Whitney Museum

Photoconceptualism, 1966–1973

Sadly, I missed viewing this on my recent trip to NYC, and as it is closing week for this exhibition I thought it fitting to announce it on my blog as one of the final 'Must-Sees' for the Summer Season as it surprisingly still feels like Summertime here in The Roc, but it will very soon be Fall.

May 22-September 20, 2009

The final installment in a three-part series taking a closer look at photography in the Whitney’s collection, this exhibition focuses on works by conceptual artists of the late 1960s and early 1970s. During that time, photography became a favored medium (along with video) for art that placed more importance on concepts than on aesthetic and material concerns and rejected the necessity of the gallery or museum as a primary site of exhibition. The presentation features work by Mel Bochner, Adrian Piper, Bruce Nauman, Michael Heizer, and others.