Monthly Archives: October 2019

Lisa Stefanelli: Post Millennial – An Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition Opening Today!

Stefanelli Forager 18042 1 2017 for MMFA

Lisa Stefanelli: Post Millennial – An Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition Opening Today

Mark Moore Fine Art its pleased to announce an exclusive ARTSY online Exhibition of the new work by artist LISA STEFANELLI titled “The Post Millennial Series” comprised of three bodies of work from her “Crowd Pleaser”; “Forager”; and, “A Season of Litanies” digital compositions.

VIEW THIS EXHIBITION NOW AT THE FOLLOWING LINK: http://bit.ly/36fogpd

Lisa Stefanelli is an artist living and working in New York City and Easton, Pennsylvania. She attended the Rhode Island School of Design and received her degree in 1989. She has been a practicing artist for the last three decades.

“The underlying pursuit of my studio practice is to examine the possibility of being simultaneously involved and uninvolved in the complexity of all of our relationships, both animate and inanimate. Elements of the environments we inhabit—signage, sound/music, advertising, and popular culture (basically the cultural clutter of our lives)—are primary in informing the paths and trajectories of the works’ visual language. The work is elaborate and complicated while concurrently yearning to avoid the entanglements it embodies. And yet there is a joy in the confusion we live in. My practice chases that joy.”

-Lisa Stefanelli (2019)

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Most recent solo exhibitions include Robischon Gallery, Denver, Colorado, Pentimenti Gallery, Philadelphia, Penn, Pierogi Gallery, NYC, Robischon Gallery, and Mark Moore Gallery, Los Angeles, California.

 

She has work in the collections of the United States Department of State, Washington DC, The West Collection, Oaks, PA, The Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, MA, The Mondstudio Collection at the Kunstmuseum, Berne, Switzerland, The Albright Knox Gallery, Buffalo, NY and The Wynn Collection, Las Vegas, NV.

A short video on this artist and her practice in her studio can be viewed at: http://bit.ly/2pNd9Da

A free online catalog of Stefanelli’s works from 2000-2016 can be downloaded at the following link:

http://bit.ly/2WagnwJ

#markmoorefineart #lisastefanelli

“Tending the Fires: Recent Acquisitions in Clay” presents recent additions to Fuller Craft Museum by Zemer Peled

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Tending the Fires: Recent Acquisitions in Clay at the Fuller Craft Museum

August 17, 2019 – May 3, 2020

Tending the Fires: Recent Acquisitions in Clay presents recent additions to Fuller Craft Museum’s ceramic collection. The exhibit can be viewed in Brockton, MA at the Fuller Craft Museum through May 3, 2020.

Zemer Peled’s labor-intensive process that bridges narrative and formalist elements. Peled utilizes a process of creation and destruction to make sculptures consisting of thousands of handcrafted porcelain shards resulting in works that can be read in relation to art historical tradition, outsider art, and natural phenomena.

The sculpture’s narrative impulses lean to encounters with the otherworldly—like complex topiaries marking a not-so-distant land–yet they remain distinctly tied to earth’s patterns. This conflation of the foreign and familiar creates a frenzied dislocation in the work. Inspired by migratory habits of birds, a sweep of feathers, and cycles of change, the works spiral outwardly in rhythmic patterns, interpreting not only the dynamism of nature, but also the startling strangeness of a life lived in transition.

Using white and colored porcelains, Peled transforms sharp slivers of porcelain into feathers, petals, leaves, and spines that describe objects of unknowable origins: seductive but untrustworthy. The forms are complexly ordered from the inside out, often bulging or spilling over with textures both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. The forms are never static; the visual dance of sharp ceramic parts conveys a sense of constant movement. Like a murmuration of starlings, the sculptures appear to shift shapes as you move around them, an identity becoming and unbecoming in front of you.

The act of making for Peled is a feat of endurance, improvisation, and adaptation with the aim to embody a fleeting but fundamental feeling of mystery. The construction of her sculpture parallels negotiations any outsider makes in encountering a new world as they delicately construct a self that is both adaptable and resilient.

Peled’s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, and engages with themes of memories, identity, and place. Her sculptures and installations consist of thousands of hand-crafted porcelain shards; a technique that yields a texture both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. 

Zemer Peled (b. 1983) was born and raised in a Kibbutz in the northern part of Israel. After completing her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem), she earned her MA at the Royal College of Art (UK). In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally, including such venues as Sotheby’s and Saatchi Gallery (London), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), the Henry Moore Gallery at the Royal College of Art (London), and the Orangerie du Senate (Paris), among others. The artist currently lives and works at the Archie Bray Foundation Residency (Helena, MT). Additional information on this incredible artist can be found on our website at: www.markmoorefineart.com

#markmoorefineart #zemerpeled

Extended: Zemer Peled ARTSY Exclusive Online Exhibition

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Mark Moore Fine Art features eight new works from artist ZEMER PELED in this exclusive ARTSY online exhibition on view now and EXTENDED until to November 24, 2019.

VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: http://bit.ly/2lOOBrq

Zemer Peled’s labor-intensive process that bridges narrative and formalist elements. Peled utilizes a process of creation and destruction to make sculptures consisting of thousands of handcrafted porcelain shards resulting in works that can be read in relation to art historical tradition, outsider art, and natural phenomena.

The sculpture’s narrative impulses lean to encounters with the otherworldly—like complex topiaries marking a not-so-distant land–yet they remain distinctly tied to earth’s patterns. This conflation of the foreign and familiar creates a frenzied dislocation in the work. Inspired by migratory habits of birds, a sweep of feathers, and cycles of change, the works spiral outwardly in rhythmic patterns, interpreting not only the dynamism of nature, but also the startling strangeness of a life lived in transition.

Peled_Shards_Flower_8_2

Using white and colored porcelains, Peled transforms sharp slivers of porcelain into feathers, petals, leaves, and spines that describe objects of unknowable origins: seductive but untrustworthy. The forms are complexly ordered from the inside out, often bulging or spilling over with textures both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. The forms are never static; the visual dance of sharp ceramic parts conveys a sense of constant movement. Like a murmuration of starlings, the sculptures appear to shift shapes as you move around them, an identity becoming and unbecoming in front of you.

The act of making for Peled is a feat of endurance, improvisation, and adaptation with the aim to embody a fleeting but fundamental feeling of mystery. The construction of her sculpture parallels negotiations any outsider makes in encountering a new world as they delicately construct a self that is both adaptable and resilient.

Peled’s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, and engages with themes of memories, identity, and place. Her sculptures and installations consist of thousands of hand-crafted porcelain shards; a technique that yields a texture both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. 

Zemer Peled (b. 1983) was born and raised in a Kibbutz in the northern part of Israel. After completing her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem), she earned her MA at the Royal College of Art (UK). In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally, including such venues as Sotheby’s and Saatchi Gallery (London), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), the Henry Moore Gallery at the Royal College of Art (London), and the Orangerie du Senate (Paris), among others. The artist currently lives and works at the Archie Bray Foundation Residency (Helena, MT). Additional information on this incredible artist can be found on our website at: www.markmoorefineart.com

#zemerpeled #markmoorefineart

Yoram Wolberger new work featured in REDPUB Magazine

Yoram Wolberger new work featured in REDPUB Magazine

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Read this article now at: http://bit.ly/2WdfMKQ

Yoram Wolberger uses childhood toys and everyday domestic items to create his large scale sculptures, foregrounding the latent symbolism and cultural paradigms of these objects that so subtly inform Western culture. In this case, Wolberger focuses on the trophies we all used to covet as children in the TROPHY Series works.

By enlarging this ephemera to life size, Wolberger emphasizes the distortions of their original manufacture disallowing any real illusion and conceptually forcing the viewer to reconsider their meanings. When enlarged beyond any possibility of dismissal, we see that toy soldiers create lines between Us and Them, plastic cowboys and Indians marginalize and stereotype the Other, even wedding cake bride and groom figurines dictate our expected gender roles.

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Wolberger (b. 1963, Tel Aviv, Israel) earned his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute’s (CA) New Genres Department. He has had solo exhibitions in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, and has been featured in group exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), deCordova Sculpture Park (MA), the Aldrich Contemporary Museum (CT), Orange County Museum of Art (CA), Museum of Contemporary Art (IL) and the Israeli Museum of Modern Art (Israel) among others. His works have been acquired for the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art (NY), Frederick R. Weisman Foundation (CA), the Orange County Museum of Art (CA), Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California Riverside (CA) and the McNay Art Museum (TX). The artist lives and works in San Francisco, CA.

You can fin more information on this artist and his work at: http://www.markmoorefineart.com

#markmoorefineart #yoramwolberger

Zemer Peled Featured in “It’s All Black and White: Contemporary Art from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation”

Peled_2019_Protea_1It’s All Black and White: Contemporary Art from the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation

August 27, 2019 – December 8, 2019

The work of ZEMER PELED is currently on display in the exhibit It’s All Black and White curated by Billie Milam Weisman for the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art at Pepperdine University. This exhibition looks at a fascinating array of contemporary art that delves into the eternal mysteries of black and white. The exhibit can be viewed at the museum in Malibu, CA from August 27 – December 8, 2019.

 

Zemer Peled’s labor-intensive process that bridges narrative and formalist elements. Peled utilizes a process of creation and destruction to make sculptures consisting of thousands of handcrafted porcelain shards resulting in works that can be read in relation to art historical tradition, outsider art, and natural phenomena.

The sculpture’s narrative impulses lean to encounters with the otherworldly—like complex topiaries marking a not-so-distant land–yet they remain distinctly tied to earth’s patterns. This conflation of the foreign and familiar creates a frenzied dislocation in the work. Inspired by migratory habits of birds, a sweep of feathers, and cycles of change, the works spiral outwardly in rhythmic patterns, interpreting not only the dynamism of nature, but also the startling strangeness of a life lived in transition.

Using white and colored porcelains, Peled transforms sharp slivers of porcelain into feathers, petals, leaves, and spines that describe objects of unknowable origins: seductive but untrustworthy. The forms are complexly ordered from the inside out, often bulging or spilling over with textures both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. The forms are never static; the visual dance of sharp ceramic parts conveys a sense of constant movement. Like a murmuration of starlings, the sculptures appear to shift shapes as you move around them, an identity becoming and unbecoming in front of you.

The act of making for Peled is a feat of endurance, improvisation, and adaptation with the aim to embody a fleeting but fundamental feeling of mystery. The construction of her sculpture parallels negotiations any outsider makes in encountering a new world as they delicately construct a self that is both adaptable and resilient.

Peled’s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, and engages with themes of memories, identity, and place. Her sculptures and installations consist of thousands of hand-crafted porcelain shards; a technique that yields a texture both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. 

 

Zemer Peled (b. 1983) was born and raised in a Kibbutz in the northern part of Israel. After completing her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem), she earned her MA at the Royal College of Art (UK). In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally, including such venues as Sotheby’s and Saatchi Gallery (London), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), the Henry Moore Gallery at the Royal College of Art (London), and the Orangerie du Senate (Paris), among others. The artist currently lives and works at the Archie Bray Foundation Residency (Helena, MT). Additional information on this incredible artist can be found on our website at: www.markmoorefineart.com

#markmoorefineart #zemerpeled

ARTSY Show of the Week: ZEMER PELED: Recent Work

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Mark Moore Fine Art features eight new works from artist ZEMER PELED in this exclusive ARTSY online exhibition on view from September 25 to November 3, 2019.

VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: http://bit.ly/2lOOBrq

Zemer Peled’s labor-intensive process that bridges narrative and formalist elements. Peled utilizes a process of creation and destruction to make sculptures consisting of thousands of handcrafted porcelain shards resulting in works that can be read in relation to art historical tradition, outsider art, and natural phenomena.

The sculpture’s narrative impulses lean to encounters with the otherworldly—like complex topiaries marking a not-so-distant land–yet they remain distinctly tied to earth’s patterns. This conflation of the foreign and familiar creates a frenzied dislocation in the work. Inspired by migratory habits of birds, a sweep of feathers, and cycles of change, the works spiral outwardly in rhythmic patterns, interpreting not only the dynamism of nature, but also the startling strangeness of a life lived in transition.

Using white and colored porcelains, Peled transforms sharp slivers of porcelain into feathers, petals, leaves, and spines that describe objects of unknowable origins: seductive but untrustworthy. The forms are complexly ordered from the inside out, often bulging or spilling over with textures both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. The forms are never static; the visual dance of sharp ceramic parts conveys a sense of constant movement. Like a murmuration of starlings, the sculptures appear to shift shapes as you move around them, an identity becoming and unbecoming in front of you.

The act of making for Peled is a feat of endurance, improvisation, and adaptation with the aim to embody a fleeting but fundamental feeling of mystery. The construction of her sculpture parallels negotiations any outsider makes in encountering a new world as they delicately construct a self that is both adaptable and resilient.

Peled’s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, and engages with themes of memories, identity, and place. Her sculptures and installations consist of thousands of hand-crafted porcelain shards; a technique that yields a texture both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. 

Zemer Peled (b. 1983) was born and raised in a Kibbutz in the northern part of Israel. After completing her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem), she earned her MA at the Royal College of Art (UK). In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally, including such venues as Sotheby’s and Saatchi Gallery (London), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), the Henry Moore Gallery at the Royal College of Art (London), and the Orangerie du Senate (Paris), among others. The artist currently lives and works at the Archie Bray Foundation Residency (Helena, MT). Additional information on this incredible artist can be found on our website at: www.markmoorefineart.com

#zemerpeled #markmoorefineart

PREVIEWED: Amy Myers Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition with Mark Moore Fine Art Opening Thursday

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PREVIEWED: Amy Myers Exclusive ARTSY Online Exhibition with Mark Moore Fine Art Opening Thursday

Amy Myers (b. 1965, Austin, TX) is a New York-based artist whose large-scale abstract drawings and paintings simultaneously reference particle physics, biology, philosophy, the human mind, and the mechanics of the universe.

Myers has received numerous grants and fellowships, including The Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts; Ellen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation Studio Residency and Award at MANA Contemporary; and The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Studio Grant. Past residencies include Yaddo Artist Residency (Saratoga Springs, NY); Dora Maar House (Menerbes, France); and The American Academy in Rome.

Previous solo exhibitions include Mike Weiss Gallery (New York, NY); Mary Boone Gallery (New York, NY);  Suzanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects (Los Angeles, CA); Danese Gallery (New York, NY); Rhona Hoffman Gallery (Chicago, IL); and Dunn and Brown Contemporary (Dallas, TX).

Past museum exhibitions include The Sweeney Art Museum at California State University (Riverside, CA); Pomona College, Montgomery Art Center (Claremont, CA); and University Art Museum, California State University (Long Beach, CA).

Myers has artworks in the permanent collections of the Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum (New York, NY); Pérez Art Museum Miami (Miami, FL); California State University Art Museum (Long Beach, CA); Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Fort Wayne, IN); Greenville County Museum of Art (Greenville, SC); Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (Peekskill, NY); Laguna Art Museum (Laguna Beach, CA); Museum of Fine Arts (Houston, TX); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); and the American Express Corporate Collection.

Myers’ artworks have been cited in numerous publications, including The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Artnews, Art in America, and BOMB.

View the short video interview with the artist titled “Inside the Artist’s Studio: Amy Myers”  at this link: https://youtu.be/QZtKNb97qzk

Mark Moore Fine Art on ARTSY

#markmoorefineart #amymyers

Kara Maria in “To Freeze the Shifting Phantasmagoria: Five California Painters” Opening October 24th

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This 5-person exhibition that includes two paintings by artist KARA MARIA is opening on October 24 at CSU Chico’s University Art Gallery:

Mark Moore Fine Art presents the first ARTSY Online Exclusive Career Survey of the works of painter KARA MARIA. The show features twelve paintings scanning nearly two decades from the artist’s private collection. 

YOU CAN VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: http://bit.ly/32kcQ1g

In this exhibition we survey 12 painting from the career of San Francisco-based painter Kara Maria. Her work reflects on political topics – feminism, war, and the environment. She borrows from the broad vocabulary of contemporary painting; blending geometric shapes, vivid hues, and abstract marks, with representational elements.

Kara Maria produces paintings and work on paper that reflect on political themes such as feminism, war, and the environment.  She borrows from the broad vocabulary of contemporary painting; blending geometric shapes, vivid hues, and abstract marks, with representational elements. Maria received her BA and MFA from the University of California, Berkeley. She has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States at venues including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University; the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston, Texas; the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art; and the Katonah Museum of Art in New York; among others.

In 2016, Maria’s work was featured in a solo exhibition, Head Over Heels, at the University Art Gallery at California State University, Chico, which included an accompanying monograph.  Her work has garnered critical attention in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Art in America. Maria has completed residencies at the Montalvo Arts Center, Recology Artist in Residence Program, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and at the de Young’s Artist Studio. She is recipient of multiple awards and honors, including a grant from Artadia and an Eisner Prize in Art from the University of California, Berkeley. Maria lives and works in San Francisco.

For more information, contact: mark@markmoorefineart.com

#karamaria #markmoorefineart

Zemer Peled and Dirk Staschke in “Cool Clay” at the Crocker Art Museum – On View Now!

I thought you might be interested to know that Cool Clay currently on view at the Crocker Art Museum features the work of ZEMER PELED and DIRK STASCHKE.

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More information on this amazing exhibition can be found here: https://www.crockerart.org/exhibitions/cool-clay

Zemer Peled utilizes a process of creation and destruction to make sculptures consisting of thousands of handcrafted porcelain shards resulting in works that can be read in relation to art historical tradition, outsider art, and natural phenomena.

The sculpture’s narrative impulses lean to encounters with the otherworldly—like complex topiaries marking a not-so-distant land–yet they remain distinctly tied to earth’s patterns. This conflation of the foreign and familiar creates a frenzied dislocation in the work. Inspired by migratory habits of birds, a sweep of feathers, and cycles of change, the works spiral outwardly in rhythmic patterns, interpreting not only the dynamism of nature, but also the startling strangeness of a life lived in transition.

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Peled’s work examines the beauty and brutality of the natural world. Her sculptural language is formed by her surrounding landscapes and nature, and engages with themes of memories, identity, and place. Her sculptures and installations consist of thousands of hand-crafted porcelain shards; a technique that yields a texture both delicate and severe. In some works, large scale-like ceramic pieces appear airy, delicate, and fluffy, as if one’s breath might break it. In others, Peled’s fragments are geometric barbs that mysteriously take on an alluring form – offering a sense of softness despite a sharp actuality. She has recently been featured in Hi-Fructose Magazine, Colossal, National Public Radio, MIND Magazine, O Magazine, and Ceramics Monthly (which featured her on the cover of the May 2015 issue).

Zemer Peled (b. 1983) was born and raised in a Kibbutz in the northern part of Israel. After completing her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design (Jerusalem), she earned her MA at the Royal College of Art (UK). In recent years, her work has been exhibited internationally, including such venues as Sotheby’s and Saatchi Gallery (London), Eretz Israel Museum (Tel Aviv), the Henry Moore Gallery at the Royal College of Art (London), and the Orangerie du Senate (Paris), among others. The artist currently lives and works at the Archie Bray Foundation Residency (Helena, MT). Additional information on this incredible artist can be found on our website at: www.markmoorefineart.com

ARTSY website: www.artsy.net/mark-moore-gallery

#markmoorefineart #zemerpeled #crockerartmuseum #coolclay @crockerart

Closing Sunday: OUT OF CONTEXT – An Exclusive ARTSY Online Group Exhibition

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Image: Ed Ruscha

“There are things that I’m constantly looking at that I feel should be elevated to greater status, almost to philosophical status or to a religious status. That’s why taking things out of context is a useful tool to an artist. It’s the concept of taking something that’s not subject matter and making it subject matter.” —Ed Ruscha

In Out of Context we look at seven contemporary artists that have made the incorporation of text and language a cornerstone for their art – both conceptually and visually. Each artist approaches the subject from their own unique perspective. Artists featured are: Ed Ruscha; Mark Bennett; Kim Rugg; Vernon Fisher; Kay Rosen; Feodor Voronov; and, Ken Craft.

VIEW THIS SHOW NOW AT: http://bit.ly/2YyOcb7

Texts—writings, readings, signs, titles, guides, catalogues, blog posts like this one—are part and parcel of how art is presented in museums. Curious visitors come hungry for enlightening information, for tidbits to connect the dots or stories that humanize the work on view. Art historians act as writers, readers, and investigators whose success can be measured in published output. For those who work with art and appreciate it, language and art are endlessly intertwined.

The history of text and language in contemporary art encompasses most of the last 60 years. Language was an important tool for Conceptual artists in the 1960s. Many used language in place of more traditional materials like brushes and canvas, and words played a primary role in their emphasis on ideas over visual forms. Though text had been used in art long before this, artists like Joseph Kosuth and John Baldesarri were among the first to give words such a central role.

Conceptual artists also used language in the form of instructions detailing how an artwork should be made. Sol LeWitt was among the principal originators of this strategy, which his peers widely embraced. Arguing that ideas alone can be art, he allowed for a measure of separation between the artist and the physical execution of his or her artwork. His work exemplifies this: he would generate ideas for artworks and write instructions on how to make them, which other people—sometimes whole teams working days or weeks—would then carry out.

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Image: Mark Bennett

At about the same time, a cultural revolution was underway, led by activists, thinkers, and artists who sought to change, and even overturn, what was, in their eyes, a stifling social order ruled by conformity. The Vietnam War incited mass protests, the Civil Rights Movement sought equality for African Americans, and the women’s liberation movement gained momentum.

It was in this climate of turbulence, experimentation, and increased consumerism that a new generation of artists emerged in Britain and America in the mid- to late-1950s. These artists began to look for inspiration and materials in their immediate environment. They made art that mirrored, critiqued, and, at times, incorporated everyday items, consumer goods, and mass media messaging and imagery. In reference to its intended popular appeal and its engagement with popular culture, it was called Pop art.

Pop artists strove for straightforwardness in their work, using bold swaths of primary colors, often straight from the can or tube of paint. They adopted commercial advertising methods like silkscreening, or produced multiples, downplaying the artist’s hand and subverting the idea of originality and preciousness—in marked contrast to the highly expressive, large-scale abstract paintings of the Abstract Expressionists, whose work had dominated postwar American art. Pop artists favored realism, everyday (even mundane) imagery, and heavy doses of irony and wit.

But many Pop artists, including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, were very aware of the past. They sought to connect the traditions of fine art with the mass culture of television, advertising, film, and cartoons. At the same time, they challenged traditional boundaries between mediums and techniques, merging painting with photography and printmaking, combining handmade and readymade or mass-produced elements, and bringing together objects, images, and sometimes text to make new meaning.

It is out of this convergence of Pop Art and Conceptual Art from the Sixties that artists like Ed Ruscha and Vernon Fisher were born and influenced generation of artists to follow, like Mark Bennett; Kim Rugg; Kay Rosen; Feodor Voronov; and, Ken Craft. From this collision of pop culture and high art, we find that some of the most interesting art and ideas born of this period are nothing more than our own lives taken Out of Context.

For more information: http://www.markmoorefineart.com

#markmoorefineart #edrusha #markbennett #kimrugg #vernonfisher #kayrosen #feodorvoronov #kencraft