Up & Coming :: Adoration / Objectification // Pulse // Art Miami

Adoration / Objectification
The Shore Institute of The Contemporary Arts
Long Branch, NJ / Curated by Douglas Ferrari
Reception: Sunday, December 6, 3-6pm
Dec 4, 2009 - Jan 22, 2010

The objectification of the female form had been taboo in the visual arts and declared anti-female. Today, however, many artists -both male and female, are exploring the naked and nude female form and are being embraced by the art world. This show will illustrate this and explore why this change has occurred. Those artists whose work is being sought for inclusion are Anoush Abrar, Ghada Amer, Guido Argentini, Catherine Brooks, Orly Cogan, John Currin, John DeAndrea , Jeffrey Gold, Jane LaFarge Hamill, John Kacere, Mel Ramos, Alicia Ross, Gina Triplett, A. Vargas, Cindy Workman, & Lisa Yuskavage.

Also:

NEWS :: INTERVIEW with ART:21

Alicia had the pleasure of being interviewed by Art:21's current guest blogger, Maria Stenina—a designer and writer based in New York City.

M: "Your work is so sinful. It is not a woman's place, after all, to explore pornography and overt sexuality with such craft and beauty. Can you address your dealings with the grotesque and the sensual?"

A: "My work isn’t necessarily an exploration of the grotesque or the sensual independently, but rather an examination..."

http://blog.art21.org/

Phrenology Study of Anna Nicole Smith, 11 x 14 in oval, cross-stitch on cotton, 2009

Phrenology Study of Mackenzie Phillips, 11 x 14 in oval, cross-stitch on cotton, 2009

Untitled (Sonya Thomas), video loop, 2009

Phrenology of Michelle Duggar, 11 x 14 in oval, cross-stitch on cotton, 2009

Phrenology Study of Nancy Grace, 11 x 14 in oval, cross-stitch on cotton, 2009

New Work

Threshold, 29 x 39 inches, cross-stitch on cotton, 2009

Art Review: An Excellent Short Summer Group Show at Black and White Gallery, NYC

Black and White Gallery’s current exhibit is characteristically relevant, cutting-edge and well worth a jaunt over to the western fringes of Chelsea. Michael Van den Besselaar provocatively addresses denial and in so doing takes a casual slap at pop art shallowness. Softly photorealistic portraits of vintage television sets from the 70s – two of Asian manufacture, one European – project images of terrorist activity (a hijacked airliner, a helicopter and a trio of Mercedes 240 series sedans) from their grainy black-and-white screens. Eerier still is a set of six Weegee-esque dead womens’ faces. Bonnie Parker, Marilyn Monroe, Mother Teresa, Evita Peron and Rosa Parks are smaller in death than life; the Anna Nicole Smith portrait pans down on her, puffy and lifeless in the purest sense of the word.

Most striking of all is Van den Besselaar’s Lethal Chamber Series. Whether or not these are actual depictions of the rooms where American executioners paralyze and then inject convicts with caustic de-icing chemicals, they’re impossible to turn away from, the curtained white rooms with their gurneys and straps radiating a brutally sarcastic soft-focus light.

Also on display: all-white, lifesize gas masks by Konstantinos Stamatiou; starkly strange cross-stitch-on-canvas figures by Alicia Ross...read on