African American Painter Jack Whitten - Retrospective : Five Decades of Painting, MOCA La Jolla

Jack Whitten: Five Decades of Painting

Museum of Contemporary Art, La Jolla

Article by Cathy Breslaw

Dead Reckoning 1  acrylic on canvas    84" x 84"   1980

Artist Jack Whitten has dedicated the last fifty years to making paintings. The work of this African American artist from the south, is a huge exhibition referencing art history, Jazz music, politics, race and cosmology. This retrospective is beautifully curated by Kathryn Kanjo, and Whitten's passion for painting is eminently clear as the viewer moves from room to room.  Whitten, who now lives an works in New York City,  came into his own as a painter during the early 60’s - he met and spent time with Martin Luther King, musician Miles Davis, and artists William de Kooning, Franz Kline, Philip Guston and others. Titles to his works are tip off to what he was thinking about: “Head IV Lynching”, “The Blacks”, “NY Battleground”, “Martin Luther King’s Garden”, “Mask of God(for Joseph Campbell)”, “Homecoming: For Miles”,”Apps for Obama”. Whitten continues to use his broad based experiments with paint to express his philosophies about history and culture, and his concepts of space and personal identity. His black and white paintings of the 60’s are minimal, lending an out-of-focus photographic quality to seemingly “ghost imagery”.  The 70’s paintings consist of  thick layered paint surfaces that have been raked, trowelled and leveled like concrete, of varying color combinations but are clearly experiments in the viscosity, material and substance of paint. Whitten’s paintings from the 80’s appear to be explorations with the composition of paint and casting, creating new surfaces and textures. Whitten’s works from the 90’s and 2000’s are primarily tessellated paintings resembling ancient mosaics and seem to be influenced by the significant time Whitten spends in Greece. He developed a way of creating slabs of multicolored acrylics  cut into small rectangles as well as castings of acrylic to form large paintings. The most recent two works in the show from 2014, appear to be a conglomeration of his techniques developed over the years, and express a sense of the spiritual and bear relationship to cosmology. Named “Black Monolith, V Full Circle: For LeRoi Jones A.K.A. Baraka” and “Self Portrait 1”, these two paintings are powerful and intense, and begs the question “what will we see

next from this prolific painter?”

Apps for Obama     acrylic on hollow core door   84" x 91"    2011

Ann Weber, Jay Johnson and Adam Belt at Lux

Ann Weber
Am I the only one that has noticed young women collecting cardboard boxes around Encinitas the last few months? One theory for this strange behavior is to aid the artist in residence at the Lux from Nov 15 to Dec 13,  Ann Weber and her work will be on display until Jan 10, 2015 and you can see how she is transformed the humble cardboard, which has been cut into strips and stapled together. They form large strangely satisfying shapes that are coated but still remain fragile enough to have to be kept indoors. 

Weber created works while in residence reflective of the plants in the Lux garden. She also made one huge work looking for a temporary or permanent home in mid-January. And all that cardboard was also used by the multitude of students who visited the artist and was taught the technique in fun lesson plans. The artist who came down from Oakland was one the most favorite visiting artists of the children of our community. The the work appeals to the child in all of us. 

Lux has a wonderful line up of local artist workshops coming up. Watch for Iana Quesnell, Jay Johnson and Adam Belt...all SD Art Prize recipients and Vicki Walsh one of our New Contemporary Artists who is also a visiting artist on display in the Education Pavillion.

Adam Belt and Jay Johnsonare filling the front lobby gallery at the Education Pavillion.

Adam Belt topographical work glow with tiny glass beads

Adam Belt - the area's in between are also glass beads that make this work sparkle in the light

 These mini metal works by Jay Johnson are display in a row above a light box and are the most charming tiny sculptures

Colter Jacobson and Rita Mabride: Opera Ambulate

It is the time of the year for bonuses and we were given a real treat when on Dec 5 we attended the double show at The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego of Colter Jacobson and Rita McBride.  Not only was the work great, but we had real live, up close and personal opera singers performing in and about the works of art. 

Ópera Ambulate, a production of the Centro Cultural Tijuana is a group of professional musicians who create operatic interventions in venues or public spaces not necessarily related to concert music. There were asked to relate to Rita McBride’s Arena - the highly celebrated and well-travelled 4 meter by 4 meter modular tribune has hosted more than 100 artists, poets, writers, architects, musicians, curators, and politicians since its inception in 1997. But instead they choose to expand and perform not just in front of the arena structure but also in McBride's grid structure, out on the patio across from the train station and in the exhibition by Colter Jacobsen: This is How We Walk on the Moon on until Feb 8, 2015.

So far from being a concert, this was more like a flash mob and there is nothing more special than being inches away from an opera voice which is able to raise the hairs on your neck and give you goose bumps. Seeing the expressions on the faces of the public who were not in the museum, but boarding the train, was priceless. 

 

Mr. Jacobsen travelled by foot and train along the west coast and these are photos of found object stains.

Here we see on the left a drawing by Jacobsen made from a photo and on the right FROM MEMORY, the same photo drawn again

In this case the work on the left, the original drawing from a photo, is very much enhance in contrast in the memory drawing

Jacobsen uses an upside down image of a men with paper hat so that we see the man in reflection right side up

Rita McBride's rattan car on a polish wood raised base

Entering the McBride grid

We are watching opera singers in and above the grid

A small visitor in the area

Cecuit Opera troupe

a flash mob singer performs on the train platform

2014 Cannon Art Gallery Juried Biennial

The Cannon Art Gallery’s 2014 Juried Biennial was juried by Tina Yapelli, Director of the University Art Gallery at San Diego State University, and John D. Spiak, Director and Chief Curator of the Grand Central Art Center, Santa Ana. The exhibition features 66 works of art by 34 artists. The exhibition runs from Dec 14, 2014 to Feb 7, 2015

This was truly a show with something for everyone and this is only a small selection from this quality show. 

Annette Cyr presents this charming 3-d combo

Brian Canfield light box of glass is the Incredible Hulk

Impressive to see these new cold worked glass pieces by Dick Ditore

Don Fike's photo of this line of beach feathers was poignant

Fritzie Urquhart's climber is made mainly from paper and it is so fascinating that this slim elegant women sculpts robust and hearty female forms.

Gail Schneider never fails to intrigue us with these footed branches

Ralyn Wolfstein stand entranced by Irene de Watteville's ceramic centerpiece that you can see in more detail below

Joyce Corum shows us her selection of pins and clips

Leslie Nemour's painting is fun when you read the title Fist Fight over Realism

This detail show the stitchery of a large oval work by Michelle Montjoy called Thumbsucker

Ron Nagle, Artist/Musician Exhibits Mixed Media Sculptures in His First Major Museum Show at San Diego Museum of Art

San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego CA

Ron Nagle: Peripheral Cognition

Curated by Ariel Plotek

Through February 17, 2015

Article by Cathy Breslaw
www.cathybreslaw.com
www.artfullifebycathy.blogspot.com

The current exhibition at the San Diego Museum of Art, Peripheral Cognition, comprised of small sculptural works by Ron Nagle, was organized by Ariel Plotek, Associate Curator of Modern Art at the museum. Plotek first became aware of sculptor, Ron Nagle’s work at the Venice Biennale in 2013, and this exhibition is Nagle’s first major museum show. The mixed media and ceramic works in this show span 39 years.  The exhibition required special displays which were custom built in collaboration with the artist. Created for specific eye-level viewing, each small ‘hand-sized’ piece has been deliberately placed and spaced within the spot-lit protective glass displays, in overall darkly lit smallish rooms.  The environment within which the art pieces are shown creates a certain drama, highlighting the ‘preciousness’ of the individual works of art as the viewer is drawn into Nagle’s world. The combination of tiny vessels, cups, organically shaped forms and precisely hewn sculptures share space with one another. Nagle’s works are each truly one-of -a -kind. Originally influenced by the sculpture of Ken Price and ceramicist Peter Volkos, Nagle’s work also bears connection to Japanese tea bowls and ichibana, as well as to the modern, post-modern and pop-art movements. Important to note is that Nagle is also a musician/songwriter which is evident in the rhythm, movement, textures and color choices of the sculptures. There is also an underlying sense of humor evoked in many of the works as well in Nagle’s carefully selected titles for his pieces.  “Lobster Boy”, “Grim Trimmins”, “Sometimes Better to Lull Suspected Person with False Sense of Security” and “Car Bomb” are some of his provocative titles - begging the viewer to take an even closer look at the work, as we search to understand the connections between title and meaning. One entire wall is dedicated to a series of his drawings on old-school yellow and pink legal pad paper. These small drawings provide a glimpse into Nagle’s thoughts and ideas as he develops his work. It is visually and emotionally exciting and fun to experience these intimate, diminutive works that challenge, tease and inform us about the world of Ron Nagle’s imagination. In referring to his work, Ron Nagle expresses his vision best:

"A great song and a great piece of art would have in common the ability to evoke some form of emotion in the listener that they haven't quite gotten before. If you've already heard it or already experienced it what's the point of looking at it or listening to it?"

• Ron Nagle, The Bad Clown, 2003.CeramicCollection Trish Bransten,Rena Bransten Gallery. © 2014 Ron Nagle.Photography by Don Tuttle

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 Lobster Boy, 1999. 3.625” W x 4.25” H x 2.125” D. Ceramic. Ted Rowland Collection. © 2014 Ron Nagle. Photography by Don Tuttle.    

                     

Carbomb, 2012. 6” W x 5” H x 5” D. Mixed media. From the collection of Ron Nagle. © 2014 Ron Nagle. Photography by Don Tuttle.

                                                                                   

Photographer John Pfahl's Show 'Picture Windows' Brings Room Interiors and Exterior Landscape Spaces Together

Joseph Bellows Gallery, La Jolla, CA

Picture Windows  John Pfahl

Article by Cathy Breslaw

2 Balanced Rock Drive Springdale, Utah    vintage Ektacolor print   16" x 20"   1980

814 South Spring Street(East View), Los Angeles    vintage Ektacolor print    16" x 20"    1981

John Pfahl’s Picture Windows is a series of over twenty-five 16” x 20” vintage Ektacolor prints which were made between 1979 and 1981. All photographs were shot within a darkened room through a picture window, from homes, hotels, and businesses all over the west and east coast of the United States. In the image entitled ‘Two Balanced Rock Drive, Springdale Utah”, Pfahl leaves behind a Polaroid print in the foreground, giving us an important clue to his process – nothing is left to chance, as Pfahl meticulously sets up his shots with careful attention to time of day, season and place. He ‘frames’ his images as a painter

would in composing a still life or landscape prior to painting it.  Since the early Renaissance, painters have transformed the picture plane into open windows for symbolic, emotional or compositional purposes.  In Pfahl’s case, he has brought the ‘indoors’ and ‘outdoors’ together into one plane by his method of image-making. The overall shape of the glass windows, and size of the verticals and horizontals of the window panes are integrated into the outdoor landscapes – seamlessly and seemingly effortlessly accomplishing Pfahl’s vision. Though there is a certain drama to the purposefully set darkness of the  interior, framing the well lit exterior city or mountain landscape, the content of these images appear cool and detached.  Pfahl’s consistently sharp images draws our attention to landscapes we may have seen, but not quite in the same way.