Monthly Archives: July 2017

Check out See “Ben Charles Weiner: Altered States” at Mark Moore Fine Art on @artsy on Artsy:

https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-ben-charles-weiner-altered-states

#markmoorefineart #bencharlesweiner #benweiner

Image: Ben Charles Weiner, Fade from Black # 3, 2013, 5-hour energy and ink on chromatography paper, 18 x 22 inches

Mark Moore Fine Art is proud to present “Altered States,” an exhibition focusing on Ben Charles Weiner‘s mixed media drawings.

Illuminating a lesser-known aspect of the artist’s practice, “Altered States” presents new drawings, along with earlier works that serve as precedents. In these works, Weiner engages with household products at a physical and chemical level. The drawings use principles from gelatin sliver printing to record an imprint of the chemical reactions between inks and drugs (both legal and illegal), expanding upon Weiner’s practice of synthesizing process painting and photorealism.

You can preview this exhibition now in preview at:

https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-ben-charles-weiner-altered-states

Image: Fade from Black # 4, 2013, vodka, MDMA (Molly), and ink on chromatography paper, 18 x 22 inches

Weiner begins his drawings by coating a sheet of Chromatography paper in a single color of ink. This heavy-cotton lab paper is used in forensics and art conservation to determine the identities of chemical substances. Weiner mixes a solution of a respective drug into a pan of water, using substances such as Aspirin, Codeine, Molly, Marijuana, 5-hour Energy and Vodka. He then soaks the ink-coated paper in this solution, letting the drug break the ink down into a surprising array of prismatic patterns to create, in Weiner’s words, “a material embodiment of altered perception.” Weiner soaks and re-soaks the paper as many times as necessary to arrive at an image he finds compelling, resulting in works that meld painterly action with chemical reaction.

Weiner anchors his investigation with formal allusions to historical movements including Monochrome and Colorfield painting, and in doing so sheds new light on these movements. His drawings begin as literal Monochromes, and it could be said that once soaked in drugs, they remain Monochromes, albeit seen through the lens of their respective drug. Where Monochrome painters such as Yves Klein isolated pure color as an experience unto itself, Weiner’s drawings position perception itself as a medium, to be manipulated through drug use.

Indeed, the luminous, hazy fields of chemical color in Weiner’s drawings beg the question of whether altered experience is inherently abstract. In “The Doors of Perception,” Aldous Huxley postulates that drugs break down filters that organize, and give form to, an otherwise overwhelming flood of abstract visual information absorbed by our senses. Mark Rothko’s paintings could easily support this, given his well known appetite for anti-depressants and alcohol. 

However, Weiner draws no distinction between legal and illegal drugs in his choice of substances. Thus, he positions drug-use not an escape from reality, but as a behavior integrated into our daily routines. In this sense, the drawings reflect his conceptual interest in the relationship between consumerism and mortality within daily consumption routines, and our daily struggle to resist the entropic forces that pull at our mortal selves.

Image: Fade from Black # 1, 2013, MDMA (Molly) and ink on chromatography paper, 18 x 22 inches

Ben Charles Weiner (b. 1980, Burlington, VT) received his BA from Wesleyan University (CT). He also studied under Mexican muralist José Lazcarro at Universidad de las Americas (Mexico) and has worked closely with artists Jeff Koons, Kim Sooja and Amy Yoes as an assistant. He has exhibited his work widely across the United States and in Mexico with solo shows in Los Angeles, New York and Puebla, and group exhibitions in Chicago, New York, Miami, New Haven, Ridgefield, Los Angeles and Riverside. His paintings can be found in the Sammlung/Collection (Germany), the Progressive Collection (OH), The Microsoft Collection (WA), and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation Collection (CA). The artist lives and works in New York City.

For additional information on Ben Charles Weiner, please check out our website at:

http://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/ben-charles-weiner

#markmoorefineart #benweiner #bencharlesweiner

 

ON VIEW NOW:

Stephanie Washburn: Reception

July 03, 2017 – August 06, 2017

On view now at: https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-stephanie-washburn-reception

Review: MEGHAN SMYTHE “CARNAL CLAY” AT MARK MOORE GALLERY by LEAH OLLMAN Art Critic L.A. TIMES 

Installation view of Meghan Smythe show at Mark Moore, including the works “Coupling” and “Young Unbecoming.”

A raw, visceral force at work in sculptor Meghan Smythe’s first solo show, at Mark Moore Gallery “Coupling” is the eye of the storm that is Meghan Smythe’s remarkable first solo show, at Mark Moore.

The two slightly oversized right hands, sculpted in clay and sheathed in milky white glaze, rest on a pedestal, their gently cupped palms facing up. The thumb of one hand makes the barest contact with one of the fingers of the other. This is coupling of a spiritual as much as a physical sort.

Another kind of convergence happens here too. These hands, with their poignantly irregular texture, are quite overtly works of the hand, the clay pressed and pinched into shape by fingers replicating themselves. The means of creation merges with the image created; the act of making couples with the made.

The tenderness and quietness of “Coupling” are nourishing in themselves, but also a reprieve from the demanding intensity of the surrounding work. “Coupling” whispers; the other pieces grunt and pant.

Smythe, from Kingston, Ontario, and now living in Long Beach after a two-year residency at CSULB, harnesses to its fullest clay’s metaphoric power to invoke the very stuff of life.

The raw force of being and becoming, making as well as unmaking courses through these sculptures, which also incorporate glass, resin, epoxy and plasticine. Their energy oscillates wildly between desperate and spent.

“Young Unbecoming” is the most complex of the group, a breathless orgy of bodies grasping, bending, licking, twisting. There are three, or more precisely 3 1/2, female figures in the mix, plus an assortment of stray phalli and a plethora of clutching hands.

Limbs are entwined, tongues extended. Clay is rarely, if ever, this carnal. Some of the skin is mannequin-smooth but veined with cracks. Some seeps a pink foam or a pale fecal flood. Erotic pleasure plays a part here, but is only one of many competing charges.

Throughout this, and Smythe’s other works, there is a violent fragmentation that zigzags between sexual fantasy and deathly dismemberment. With its human shipwreck of compromised flesh, “Young Unbecoming” brings to mind Gericault’s “Raft of the Medusa,” and exudes comparable, palpable urgency.

Smythe is a sculptor of struggle. Primal forces contend in the work, as do various aesthetic and formal dispositions. The sobriety of the relic is countered by the whimsy of glass and resin follies. Figures pallid and cadaverous lie upon a surface oozing with puddles in the happy hues of Easter eggs.

The friction between generation and decay, elegance and entropy, is what makes Smythe’s work so alive and also so tough to digest. It doesn’t go down easy, or at all. Stubborn, sensual, visceral — it sticks.

Mark Moore Fine Art is pleased to announce an exclusive ARTSY online exhibition of award-winning sculptor Meghan Smythe titled “Flesh For Fantasy”, on view July 10 – August 13, 2017. This presentation on recent work can be view now at the following link:

https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-meghan-smythe-flesh-for-fantasy

Sun Burn (Screensaver) (2008), by Penelope Umbrico, is comprised of 365 images from her project Suns from Flickr complied into an animation, and then converted into a screensaver. Download the screensaver here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/0mnm2vdb741mgyj/AACtEMneACibxQxmXxKPJhs5a?dl=0

As the artist puts it: “As a screensaver, the implied danger of burning a whole into your screen is, in fact, not a real threat: the longevity of our newer screens is no longer effected by intense of light or form in one place. Current screensavers function purely for entertainment and distraction, and in fact they use more energy than if the computer were allowed to just go to sleep.”

Penelope Umbrico offers a radical reinterpretation of everyday consumer and vernacular images. Umbrico works “within the virtual world of consumer marketing and social media, traveling through the relentless flow of seductive images, objects, and information that surrounds us, searching for decisive moments—but in these worlds, decisive moments are cultural absurdities.”

She finds these moments in the pages of consumer product mail-order catalogs, travel and leisure brochures; and websites like Craigslist, EBay, and Flickr. Identifying image typologies—candy-colored horizons and sunsets, books used as props—brings the farcical, surreal nature of consumerism to new light.

Penelope Umbrico (born in Philadelphia, 1957) graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto, and received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. She has participated extensively in solo and group exhibitions, including at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York. Umbrico is core faculty in the School of Visual Arts MFA Photography, Video, and Related Media Program. Selected public collections include the Guggenheim Museum (NY), International Center of Photography (NY), McNay Museum of Art (TX), Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), Museum of Contemporary Photography (IL), Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Museum of Modern Art (NY), and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (CA), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (CA), among others. She lives in New York City.

#markmoorefineart #penelopeumbrico

Kim Rugg, The View from Oklahoma (Kim’s Valley North of Amarillo), 2014, Ink on paper / Collection of The Blanton Museum, University of Texas

I am delighted to announce that the work pictured above has been included in the current exhibition at The Blanton Museum, University of Texas.

The work, The View from Oklahoma (Kim’s Valley North of Amarillo), is on view on the second floor in a gallery devoted to contemporary art called “Incomplete Sentences,” alongside works by Glenn Ligon, Gene Beery, Ed Ruscha, May Stevens, and Gregory Blackstock.

Rugg received her MFA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art (London). Her work can be seen in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Art (D.C.) and the Frederick R. Weisman Foundation (CA), the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA), Honolulu Museum of Art, the Norton Museum (FL), and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (TX) among others. She has been included in exhibitions at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art (CA), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NY), Galerie Schmidt Maczollek (Cologne), and Nettie Horn Gallery (Manchester), P.P.O.W. Gallery (NYC), and was the recipient of the Thames and Hudson Prize from the Royal College of Art Society in 2004. She lives and works in London (UK).

For more information on Kim Rugg, go to the MMFA artist page at: http://www.markmoorefineart.com/artists/kim-rugg

#markmoorefineart #kimrugg

Mark Moore Fine Art is thrilled to announce “Rainbow of Chaos“, a presentation of recent work by artist, Feodor Voronov. This exclusive online ARTSY exhibition will be an exploration into Voronov’s manipulation of “operative formalism,” and engagement with language.

View this presentation of paintings and works on paper by Voronov now at: 

https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-feodor-voronov-rainbow-of-chaos

#markmoorefineart

#feodorvoronov

MMFA presents “Reception“, an exclusive online ARTSY exhibition from July 03, 2017 – August 06, 2017 by interdisciplinary artist Stephanie Washburn, including photographs, collages and drawings. Washburn continues her exploration of the interface of material and digital surfaces as well as the persistent relevance of human touch in the construction of pictorial space.

We have posted two free online catalogs on this artist for you to download at the links noted below:

Telltale Series: http://www.markmoorefineart.com/attachment/en/581c5e0c84184e51358b4568/Press/581c5ea984184e51358b80be

Reception Series: http://www.markmoorefineart.com/attachment/en/581c5e0c84184e51358b4568/Press/581c5e9884184e51358b7dc5

The “Reception” series of digital photographs, was composed by staging everyday materials against screen imagery from film, advertising, surveillance footage and the Internet. Washburn works from a screen placed on the floor like the flatbed plane of an abstract canvas and subtly, but also almost violently, alters the implications of the source imagery. The backgrounds, often eerily empty landscapes, are used to set the scene in their original context. However, Washburn diverts those narratives to her own outcomes through the use of materials such as hair, wool, bubble wrap, bottle mouths and burning embers. The resulting photographs subvert the disembodied experience of watching a screen, and ultimately return us to its surface as an unlikely point of contact and physical orientation. Teasing out tensions between constructed and straight photography, the images are clearly theatrical but also present evidence of the ambiguity of place and presence in an increasingly virtual world. Washburn also debuts a related series of collages and assemblages, “Here About.” The work began in response to a group of found vintage silver gelatin prints. Washburn’s cuts, piercings and sculptural additions layer the prints with a myriad of histories beyond their own and question the authority of the photograph to capture a particular moment. “Reception” – as with the later series “Telltale – utilized orphaned materials, ranging from fur to tennis balls, are aggressively detached from their original function and replaced by an animate, almost totemic, and at times uncanny presence. Washburn concludes with two drawings on vellum paper from her series “Walking Back the Cat,” which again refer to screen imagery in a decidedly performative way. Reiterating the importance of touch, the drawings show her hand’s attempt to make sense of the spiraling catastrophe depicted in several looped sequences from the film Earthquake about the end of Los Angeles. The results, delicate but dogged, wrest an apocalyptic spectacle onto an intimate surface layered with the slower time of a real body in action.

Washburn received her MFA from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work has been exhibited at The University Art Museum (CA), The Palms Bar (CA), Atkinson Gallery (CA), Santa Barbara Museum of Art (CA), Eagle Rock Center for the Arts (CA), Los Angeles Municipal Gallery (CA) and Davidson Art Center (CT). Washburn’s photographs have been acquired by the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego (CA) and Sweeney Art Gallery at the University of California, Riverside (CA). She currently lives and works between Ojai and Los Angeles.

You can preview this presentation now at the following link:

https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-stephanie-washburn-reception

#markmoorefineart #stephaniewashburn

One Place After Another: A Survey of Public Art Today

Image: TIM BAVINGTON, Pipe Dream (Fanfare for the Common Man), 2012, Enamel paint on steel, stainless steel, (128 pipes) / 27′- 5″ x 86′ – 8″ x 17′- 1″
Smith Center for the Performing Arts, Las Vegas, NV

Public art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. Public art is significant within the art world, amongst curators, commissioning bodies and practitioners of public art, to whom it signifies a working practice of site specificity, community involvement and collaboration. Public art may include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings, but often it is not that simple. Rather, the relationship between the content and audience, what the art is saying and to whom, is just as important if not more important than its physical location.

MARK MOORE FINE ART looks at a few of the best examples of what the genre of Public Art today in this exclusive online ARTSY Survey. View this presentation now at the following link:

https://www.artsy.net/show/mark-moore-fine-art-one-place-after-another-a-survey-of-public-art-today

Image: JASON SALAVON, American Varietal (US Population, by County, 1790-2000), 2009, Encapsulated prints, 50 10′ lights, electronics, five tons structural steel, 10′ 6″ x 40′ 6″ x 5′. Unique. On Site: United States Census Bureau headquarters in Suitland, Maryland

By definition, Public Art is art in any media that has been planned and executed with the intention of being staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all. Public art is significant within the art world, amongst curators and major art consultants, commissioning bodies and practitioners of public art, to whom it signifies a working practice of site specificity, community involvement and collaboration.

Public art may include any art which is exhibited in a public space including publicly accessible buildings, but often it is not that simple. Rather, the relationship between the content and audience, what the art is saying and to whom, is just as important if not more important than its physical location.

A number of the artists working with Mark Moore Fine Art are actively engaged in the making and realization of Public Art – and number of them have won International recognition for their works. Artists like Tim Bavington, Vernon Fisher, Zemer Peled, Jason Salavon, Andrew Schoultz, Jean Shin, Penelope Umbrico, The Okay Mountain Collaborative, and Yoram Wolberger have all received critical and public acclaim for their Public Art works.

Image: YORAM WOLBERGER, CA Mission, 2011 / Reinforced Fiberglass, Steel, Urethane Paint, H18 ft x L 14ft x 6 in. “Millennium Tower”” Public Art Commission (San Francisco, CA)

These types of public art projects don’t sit on pedestals: they are seamlessly integrated into the surrounding environment. When you bring one of our gallery artists into a project early in the design process, the work of art can be built into construction documents, which can save time and money from a separate art installation. In many cases, the general contractor can perform some of the fabrication or installation, with the artist or fabrication specialist needed only for specific components.

When an artist is included as a member of the design team with an architect, landscape architect, or engineer, they work together and heighten the creativity, surprise, beauty, or whimsy of a place. These types of projects work best when all members of the team are selected at the same time, they are given equal power and control over aesthetics, and each member has a clearly defined project role from the beginning.

Additional information on our past Public Art Projects and the artists in this exhibition on our website at: http://www.markmoorefineart.com/advisory

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Image: Zemer Peled Installation

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