ZZ+Contemporary+Artist+Research+Projects

[|drug rehab facilities] [|inpatient drug rehab] [|drug rehab programs] Contemporary Artist Research Project =**Sigmar Polke---**=

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Sigmar Polke's works are direct, striking, and yet paradoxically complex. Alongside the likes of Gerard Richter, Polke was involved in the startup of a relatively small artistic movement in 60's germany called "Capitalist Realism," talking inspiration from the grabbing effect of advertisements. Many of Polke's pieces include text- small, powerful statements that go along with an image. Having focused for a long time on photography and its ability to both bring out and manipulate reality, he developed a strong interest in the visual effects caused by chemical reactions, like those worked with in film photography. This shows in many of his pieces, as he often experimented with producing different chemical reactions with paint. The blunt wit he brings through with language brings focus to his somewhat chaotic multimedia creations, working consistently with his emphasis on consumerism- again, mimicking advertisements, while simultaneously expressing an almost anarchistic style of artmaking. anti-style? Sigmar Polke is a sly guy who's got a lot to say, and he'll put it right up in your face, on top of one of his awesome multi-layered scapes, until you get it.

//"////Polke reflects a fiercely intelligent yet remarkably accessible interpretation of how we perceive and misperceive the social, political, and aesthetic worlds that we live in."// -Dave hickey

//"He is fixed, seemingly, on one thing — how (and with what) paintings can be made, from the ground up — but he is polymorphous and perverse."// -Roberta Smith

//"////Polke’s paintings and photographs may seem dirty and haphazard, but his art, as messy as life, was wildly creative, sumptuously colourful and often radiantly if not psychedelically beautiful, teasing a lush but gritty beauty from quotidian ugliness."// -Joshua Mack


 * -Dianne**

//Afrodizzia// 1996 untitled, 2003 pencil, water colour on paper  24 x 16 cm
 * __ **
 * Chris Ofili**



//She//, 1997, acrylic, oil, resin, paper collage, glitter, map pins, // No Woman No Cry, 1998, // Mixed media on canvas, 243.80 cm x 182.80 cm and elephant dung on canvas, 8 ft. 3 7/8 in. x 6 ft

Elements used: The elements that Chris Ofili uses in many of his works are pattern, color, line and shape. These four really form all of his works and are key ingredients in his paintings. Pattern can be seen in No Woman, No Cry, and even She and Affrodizia. Though the She and Affrodizia seem like random psychedelic designs, on further examination it can be seen that there is much more deliberate planning.

Before I started my real research on Chris Ofili, I simply looked him up on Google, and tried to get a quick image in my head of who he was before I dove into the 268 page book that I chose. The cover was intimidating, but I was still drawn to it because it reminded me of one of my own pieces, my soda can necklace. The image is in a private collection, so after searching for twently minutes all over the internet, I decided that the image simply is not up for public viewing. I will try to describe it, because I, and clearly the others who put this book together felt as if it accuratly depicted Chris Ofili's work. It's called, //Monkey Magic-Sex, Money and Drugs-Flip Side,// 2001. Its described as being acylic, oil, polyester resin, paper collage, pencil, glitter, map pins and elephant dung on linen 96 x 72 inches, and right below the frustrating words of "Private Collection" appear. This one work summarizes Chris Ofili. With its black background spattered with organized polka dots, and then tiny black bead looking objects create their own layer on top of the polka dots. Chris Ofili knows very well how to use color, patter, and a wide variety of materials. Namely, elephant dung, which he most often uses as stands for his works as shown in some of the pieces I posted above.

**Anna**
=Frank Auerbach = = elements present in the work: I find that Auerbach's strongest element is line. His brush strokes, although not exactly following the body, exageratte and emphasize the important aspects of it (see the vertical line of the bottom middle photo). These lines accomplish a distinct form, shape, and texture of his heads. He also uses value in a specific way, having a fairly nuetral palatte for some work, with thin accents of bright colors. = =the visual strategies they use: controlled spontaneity. Auerbach will sit either outside along the streets for days/years on end or in his studiot ofind the essence of the scene or the face of his model. Repetition is a huge part of his strategy, formulating the composition through multiple painting or sketches. = =the concepts they are engaging with: Auerbach deals with making tiny instants last into the future. Also he mixes landscapes into portraiture and portraiture into landscape having "tangible spaces, intamacy and distance reconciled." = =-3 compelling quotes from the texts along with citations of their original author = "Very violent and uite in a world of his own; quite frightening in the beginning"- E.O.W., the subject in many of his paintings describing his painting style, she did hundreds of sittings for him for years. "if he stops trying to do the equivalent of knitting with robe, accepts his medium for what it is, and realises that every artist has a duty to communicate with the minimum of ambiguity consistent with his purpose, he may go far." John Berger "The degree of conviction i so absolute. Why are painters so much greater than pretty well everybody else? Because you believ n them more, don't you agree?" - Lucian Freud

**Emily**
=Fred Tomaselli= //Big Raven//, 2008. //Echo, Wow, and Flutter//, 2000. Leaves, pills, photocollage, acrylic, and resin //Geode//, 2006. Leaves, photocollage, acrylic, //Guilty//, 2005. Print, 13 X 13 inches.

//Untitled (Expulsion)//, 2000. Leaves, pills, insects, acrylic, photocollage, and resin on wood panel, 84 x 120 in.

//Hang Over//, 2005. Leaves, pills, acrylic, resin on wood panel, 84 X 120 in.


 * Elements present in work:** Patterns, collage, pills, medicinal and hallucinogenic plants, drugs, magic, mystery, religion


 * Visual strategies/Concepts:** Tomaselli looks to create magical environments, combining reality and fantasty, truth and imagination. After printing images, many taken from magazines such as L.L. Bean, on archival paper, he collages them with pills and other drugs onto wood panels and applies thick layers of plastic resin, giving the pieces a sense of depth and mystery otherwise unavailable.


 * How his process is linked to his idea:** By trapping the elements of his pieces under Resin, Tomaselli changes the everyday into participants in another, untangible world, paralleling his inspirations such as transubstantiation and childhood innocence.


 * Quotes:**"Tomaselli's paintings suggest a potential for transfiguration, an extension beyond the physical world into the spiritual" - Heidi Jacobson

"Tomaselli's pictures...project mostly interior visions, hallucinogenic or otherwise--things captured through an intriguingly adjustable lens or conjured from within." - Linda Norden

"...the underlying persistence of the Garden metaphor speaks to...the opposite, a determination to cling to an idealization of both innocence and ecstasy that runs deep enough in our culture to bind Fred Tomaslli to Bernard F. Ebbers." - Linda Norden

**Catherine**
//Elements, Visual Strategies, and Concepts://Rauschenberg uses a variety of familiar and unfamiliar images, along with expressive swaths of paint, often brightly colored, in his works. In his Combines he uses found objects such as doors, tires, his mother's handmade shirts, quilts, and even animals as ties to the familiar and commonplace. Many of his works include his own photographs, or photographs from his childhood. In //Big and Little Bullys//, above, he has repeated a photograph of his parents. Through his use of recognizable objects, Rauschenberg allows (and encourages) viewers to spin narratives around the pieces. In his ROCI pieces Rauschenberg used techniques, materials, and objects familiar to the cultures of the specific countries where he was working. In Cuba, Rauschenberg made red the main color, and drew from the colors of the 1950's-era cars that people still drove there for images in his pieces. For ROCI Venezuela, Rauschenberg used pigment made from the berries of the onoto plant, something used by the indigenous people there, to portray the color of the Amazon. In his work, Rauschenberg strives to give his viewers something to grasp, to hold on to, which he accomplishes through the incorporation of images of celebrities (see //Signs//), screen doors (//Whistle Stop//), and things that remind the viewer of themselves.
 * Contemporary Artist Research Project: Robert Rauschenberg**

//Process://As I said above, for his ROCI project, much of Rauschenberg's process involved familiarizing himself with the culture of the various countries. In China, Rauschenberg rode his bike around every day, snapping photographs to be used in his collages. In China Rauschenberg worked with the world's oldest paper mill to create materials unique to his project while also referencing a major aspect of Chinese history and culture. Rauschenberg's process drew on experience, be it a childhood memory or a partially planned-out experience related to his project. The personal nature of his pieces attracts the viewer, making them draw on their own memories to understand the piece.

//Quotes://"His goal [is nothing less than] to introduce the world to itself." - Donald Staff

"In the ROCI project one may eventually see the flowering of Rauschenberg's mature identity: the arcadian as utopian, spinning a poetry of affirmation out of an opaque and hideously conflicted time." - Robert Hughes, //Time// magazine

"For Cage and Rauschenberg, the purpose of art was not to create enduring masterpieces for an elite, but to further a perpetual process of discovery in which everyone could participate. They wanted to break down all barriers between art and life. Rauschenberg wrote, 'Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. (I try to act in that gap between the two.)' Art, said Cage, should be 'an affirmation of life--not an attempt to bring order out of chaos nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living.'" - Mary Lynn Kotz

"Rauschenberg, [Ileana Sonnabend] felt, combined a 'strange mixture of boastfulness and humility, depression and high spirits....There was a spiritual quality in his works, as well as a poetic and ephemeral quality. People like to hold on to what they know. Bob [Rauschenberg] likes to take them out of their habits.'" - Mary Lynn Kotz

**Grace T**
Contemporary Artist Research Project

“… in its actuality as “photograph,” the image is formed almost entirely out of light and shade: light reflecting from the white surfaces and projected from inside constructed space, revealing stark walls and hiding secrets in their shadows. Narratively, a host of stories could be told of this image… the image now takes on the role of architecture itself.”--“Staging Lived Space: James Casebere’s Photographic Unconscious” by Anthony Vidler

“Casebere manipulates interior and exterior until they no longer exist….In the exteriors the background landscape or sky is a void contained. The blackness does not stretch to infinity; it limits and confines. The endless depth of space becomes an impenetrable wall….[this is] The dissolution between inside and out…”--“Grand Illusion” by Chris Chang

“Socrates, in a fundamental sense, is a figment of imagination. He is known only through interpretation…. //The Republic,// Book X:

“Mimetic art produces a product that is far removed from truth in the accomplishment of its task, and associates with the part in us that is remote from intelligence, and is its companion and friend for no sound or true purpose.””--“Grand Illusion” by Chris Chang

James Casebere photographs obvious models of white cardboard, lit artificially. His photographs deal largely in manipulation of shade and light. As part of his visual strategy, he does not show what lies behind the architectural models in his photograph. In some pictures, such as //Two Tunnels from Right (Vertical)// he presents the spatial puzzle that the closer one looks at the photograph, the farther the tunnels recede. His visual strategy serves to give his subjects an uncertain status “which present[s] us with the image of the “just abandoned,” or perhaps also the “about to be inhabited,” that is so characteristic … in the Caseberian uncanny,” (Vidler 11). Focusing on the idea that “the camera opens up the realm of the unconscious to representation… termed the “optical unconscious,”” (Vidler 14) Casebere hopes to reveal spatial secrets, thereby restoring a sense of aura to photographs—the sense that “light… struggles out of the darkness,” (Vidler 12).Conceptually, his work plays with the idea of solitary confinement. More than this, it gives hope to the Enlightenment ideals which have largely failed, countering other artists by giving his architectural models a sense that they were formally symbols of oppression, but are no longer. In this way, his process parallels his ideas. By deliberately contrasting between the realities photography is meant to capture, and the artificial models he has pictured, Casebere questions our current understanding of reality. His bizarre illumination of sections of these otherwise bleak models speaks of the need for renewed hope in the possibility of progress. The concept behind his less enclosed pieces is the realization that individuals are only fleeting inhabitants of space which will long outlast them. In this way his process of not showing what is behind various aspects of his model serves to heighten this realization by extending the setting far beyond the viewer’s perception. His process of not showing what lies behind intensifies the sense that these settings can stand alone, and are not dependent on human habitation. This meshes well with his visual strategy that these models are “just abandoned” or “about to be inhabited.” The isolation of his subjects, amidst a mass of impenetrable darkness, furthers his analysis of space, enabling his process and visual strategies to parallel his conceptualization of the piece.Exploring how space is perceived in contrast to how it is represented, Casebere’s brilliance culminates in his manipulation of water as a medium. This water, warping the architectural elements around it in reflection, represents what space was like before geometry. With this visual strategy, Casebere conceptually explores the landscape of dreams. He also calls into question our own sense of grounded reality, as this can be warped merely by the addition of water.Throughout his work, Casebere continues to question the legitimacy of reality, particularly spatial perception. By playing with the viewer’s expectations, he asks them to question their reality. Ultimately, he hopes that this questioning will lead to progress which legitimizes the auras of illumination he dares to incorporate in otherwise stark surroundings. By exploring the permanency of space, Casebere calls into question the legitimacy of space itself, yet also suggests that the space which an individual will occupy will long outlast them. Asylum--an example of Casebere's <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">“light… struggl[ing] out of the darkness,”

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">Panopticon Prison #3 Western Street

<span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">two examples of Casebere's impenetrable black background, feeling of isolation/desertion, and yet hope shown by the lit window [s] <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">interesting how both basically have the same visual strategies and yet manage to produce entirely different atmospheres

Street With Pots--an example of Casebere's aura in photography (manipulating light)

Two Tunnels from the Left (Vertical)--an example of Casebere's <span style="font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%;">spatial puzzle that the closer one looks at the photograph, the farther the tunnels recede

Pink Hallway 2--an example of Casebere's manipulation of reality through the use of water, presenting the equivalent of a dream scape

**Cameron**
=**Contemporary Artist Research Project: Barnaby Furnas**= 1. //Kissers//, 2001 2. //Antietam I//, 2007 3. //Suicide// 4. //Hamburger Hill//, 2002 5. //Untitled (Battlescene)//, 2004 6. //Untitled (Flood)//, 2007

2. "Furnas's interest in collapsing time across violent events suggests that certain of the grand themes - here war and death - are endemic to humankind regardless of culture or period." --Shamim M. Momin 3. "Drug use is not so much a content source as an effect on the fundamental reordering of time that is the subtext to his project." -- Shamim M. Momin
 * Elements present in work:** Furnas' pieces typically contain the human form in a figurative style, These forms are distorted, blown apart, or altered in some way. He focuses on violence and war scenes that attempt to release historical time from a fixed state, working mainly with the Civil War. His chaotic and bloody renditions imply that not only is violence a part of our makeup, but there really is no victory in it's brutality. Furnas incorporates a very deep, scarlet, blood-red to articulate this brutal violence.
 * Visual strategies/Concepts:** Furnas' paintings are filled with red, with the red representing blood. Shamim M. Momin writes, "he is not rendering blood in paint, but asking the material to act as its image." In addition to his heavy use of red to depict blood, Furnas deconstructs organic forms such as the human body. To do this, he uses lines which cut through a typically solid form/object. Most of his paintings share a similar landscape; green grass, yellow sun, and a baby blue sky. This almost creates a sense of timelessness, as if these events could've happened in the same time frame or setting. It also creates a sort of tension. You have this serene setting vs. incredible violence and bloodshed.
 * How his process is linked to his idea:** Early in his career, Furnas would simply apply red pigment to a puddle of clear water on the canvas and watch the red "explode through" the water. Again, his actual artistic process supports what he's trying to depict; this senseless violence and chaotic explosion of blood. Furnas describes his process as the inversion of traditional painting - where the action (the fighting images, the spurting blood) comes first and the location (the landscape, the sky) is laid down around it. This inversion allows the action to retain its sense of immediacy and presentness. The action is retained with the greatest clarity, and the landscape slowly fills in and solidifies around it.
 * Quotes:**1. "Throughout Furnas's work, he strives to integrate the immediacy of the body - the physical enactment of an experience, the explosive intensity of orgasm, the sexual implications embedded in religious or political imagery, the savage destruction of limbs and life." --Shamim M. Momin

**Alli**
Contemporary Artist Research Project: __**CAI GUO-QIANG**__ Cai Guo-Qiang uses gunpowder in order to “directly manifest the pure force of energy” (Alexandra Munroe). In his work, Cai presents an entire existence, from creation to inevitable destruction. Cai has a very wide range of subject matter: Buddhist metaphysics, cosmological science, ancient healing systems, and modern car bombings. However, the core of his work is “the ideal that art links—if you want to believe—the seen and unseen worlds" (Alexandra Munroe).

<span style="font-family: tahoma,arial,'nimbus sans l',sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">"I make explosions, so I pay attention to explosions."- Cai Guo-Qiang <span style="font-family: tahoma,arial,'nimbus sans l',sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">"Perhaps we are still in some ways the spring rolls at the banquet, but if the spring rolls carry bacteria, they can ruin the entire party."- Cai Guo-Qiang

"The pleasure of Cai's explosion events, beyond their dangerous flirtation with a violence that is never fully domesticated, is that they end too soon."- David Joselit <span style="font-family: tahoma,arial,'nimbus sans l',sans-serif; font-size: small; line-height: normal;">"His work pursues events and invents them." -Wang Hui

"...the more he paints to ridicule Western art critics, the more he gets invited to Western biennales or receives requests to collect his work."-Zhu QI



**Kelley**
Comtemporary Artist Research Project: Elizabeth Peyton

<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> //<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Zoe's Kurt ////<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Marie after Vigee LeBrun ////<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Louis XIV // <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> //<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Earl's Court ////<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Sharon (Berlin) ////<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Craig at the gramercy // <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"> //<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Prince Harry at Westminster Abbey, London, November 1997 //

<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">Elizabeth Peyton uses oils, watercolors, charcoal, inks, colored pencils, and pencils to create her artwork. She usually works on small scale pieces they depict a variety of people, through very bold colors. Her portraits are of friends, American celebrities, and the European royals. She uses photographs to create her images. Some of these photographs are well known while others she takes herself. She uses the photographs to capture the emotions of her subject and is able to capture it into her artwork. Her fast paced brush strokes are very controlled and are able to convey the subject's emotions.

Elizabeth Peyton uses large brush strokes to express emotion through her pieces. It is easy for a viewer to be able to follow exactly how her hand moved over the piece. She paints because she wishes to show the emotions of the people in her everyday life and celebrities she knows of.

<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">"Her style is a strange blend: part Abstract Expressionist, part Renaissance miniature, with a touch of Pre-Raphaelite romanticism thrown in for good measure." -Robert Smith

<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">"That, I think, is why the photographs are here: to draw these fansasies into reality; to show you the things she loves actually exist." -Jerry Saltz

<span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">"By way of meditation, the artist in the end reconfirms the necessity of direct experience, whose demise we have so often foud ourselves lamenting." <span style="font-family: 'Garamond','serif'; font-size: 12pt; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">-Giorgio Verzotti

**Taylor**
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">Contemporary Artist Research Project

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">William Kentridge

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">William Kentridge stuck to black and white sketches, and he very rarely used any color. His pieces are also very simple and the images present in his works are very simple too, like an animal or a man. By drawing the simple images in such a minimalistic manner really emphasizes his concept of simplicity. Although most of his work is of some simple object, he drew them in such a way that looks rushed and loose. He used very dark lines that are not precise in any way; they almost look like sketches that he did in five minutes or less. He also used different types of paper to hold his images, like for instance he like to use newspapers or just any old paper with writing on it to draw on top of to almost recreate the old paper into something new and interesting. Some of his work is also very cinematic in the sense that his works are scenes that give the portrayal that something is going on behind the scenes, and he also took his life and background and put it into many of his pieces. He also dabbled in making films as well so his quick simple sketches also served as a preliminary stage to his movies. The dark charcoal and colored pencil also give of a dreary and gloomy and scary feel because the pieces are so dark and the lines are so dramatic and bold. He also includes political issues into his pieces because being from South Africa he became accustomed to the societal issues there with the second-class citizens feeling repressed.

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">"To say that one need art, or politics, that incorporate ambiguity and contradiction is not to say that one then stops recognizing and condemning things as evil. However, it might stop one being so utterly convinced of the certainty of one's own solutions. There needs to be a strong understanding of fallibility and how the very act of certainty or authoritativeness can bring disasters."

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">“The drawings don’t start with ‘a beautiful mark’. It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn’t have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion.”

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman',Times,serif;">"Some of the drawings are continuous, like drawings that don't have an end, So in a sense the drawing has its own form of animation."

**Chandler**
=<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 140%;">CONTEMPORARY ARTISTS: Olly & Suzi = "Our art-making process is concerned with a collaboration, mutual response to nature at its most primitive and wild. Through live and direct interaction we aim to document the passing of animals, habitats and tribes that are here now but may not be for much longer. We make our work in response to the natural world from first-hand experience. In this way the bush has become our studio." -Olly & Suzi

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace;">Reindeer Herd, 1999 <span style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;"> <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">Single Anaconda Print, 2000 <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9px; line-height: normal;">

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace;">Adolescent Orca, 2002 Cheetahs, 19 98 <span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 9px; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace;">Shark Bite, 1997 <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Console',Monaco,monospace;">Matata, 1997

"Olly and Suzi are a law unto themselves, and they bring back the evidence to prove that they are right. They bring back the world the rest of us shut out through timidity and lack of imagination. They prove that our exploited, overpopulated, tourist-ridden planet is still what it always was: a place where we are not the only creature that matters, and where we still have a task to register and cherish the beauty that we can never tame." -Clive James

"To improvise, according to the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari, is 'to join with the World, or meld with it'. This is what Olly and Suzi do, and it goes beyond their broad contribution to an ecological sensibility that stresses the continuity and interdependence of living beings in the contemporary world." -Steve Baker

"The knowledge we gather arms us, but fear is still present: a warm glow, keeping us warm." -Olly and Suzi

The artists' idea is their process. With this particular approach to art, the process and the idea and the piece are are intimately and interdependently intwined. As Olly point out, "The whole of our work is process, and it's about chance. I don't know what Suzi's going to do, she doesn't know what I'm going to do, we don't know what the animal's going to do, what the environment's going to do." The movement of their pieces, the movement of their models, the interaction between it all is what makes each individual piece. Their idea is to express a live being in its natural environment--whether it be a lion by the watering hole or a great white in the ocean or an iceberg in the arctics. They aim to work with the being as an observer, a documenter of its expression, a mutual dweller of the Earth, and by recording it through art its natural environment they are representing its natural state.

The artists use line and shape to create a composition of the model at hand, while using usual few colors per piece and interesting textures. The fascinating textures are demonstrated through Olly and Suzi's use of tools from the environment around them as they paint or draw in their nature "studio," the habitat of the animal being represented, often using berries or mud for paint and sticks and leaves for brushes, among other things. The pieces are always well-balanced, something that seems to come naturally from each piece created, and often unity is observed through the use of a single or few colors, shapes and textures, making the work come together. Rhythm is used in some pieces through the repetition of a similar shape, creating a melodic-looking work, such as the piece "Twenty-Four Hour Ants," in which we can almost feel the ants marching along. Conceptually, they are creating an art representation of living being in their own natural environments through these methods of visual elements and principles.

**Zoe**

 * Contemporary Artist Research Project: David Schnell**
 * 1. Thermik (Thermal) 2007 2. Moment 2010**
 * 3. Aussicht 2005 4. Bretter (Planks) 2005**
 * 5. Schatten (Shade) 2009 6. Bienenstock (Beehive) 2008**

2. "Design and reality obviously got in each other's way." --Markus Stegmann 3. "When all of the factors are just right, the protagonists vanish into their activities, become oblivious to their backgrounds, society's rules, time, and space, and join the natural world." --Markus Stegmann
 * Elements present in work:** Schnell primarily paints landscapes. He combines the nature we know of from wildnerness with the nature we know from our cities--developed and structured to look a certain way. He also focuses somewhat on architecture, although a more deconstructed type. In some of his paintings, this deconstruction approaches the idea of an explosion. All of Schnell's paintings lack any life-forms, so this in combination with the deconstructed buildings give his work a sense of abandonment.
 * Visual strategies:** In order to compose his paintings, Schnell uses grids and a vanishing point perspective. His work is very geometric and rigid, designed to draw the viewer's eye inward to the depths of each piece. Schnell usually has one main vanishing point, but the lines of this are often overlapped with competing vanishing points, which creates the feeling of multiple dimensions. He also plays around a lot with bright, vibrant colors.
 * Concepts:** He includes bits of civilization within his nature landscapes in order to comment on the over-development of our forests and wilderness areas. He paints flying objects in order to establish a fragmented relationship to reality. His twisted presentation of almost-life-like objects gives his work a sense of existing in another dimension of reality.
 * How his process is linked to his idea:** Schnell's process relates to his idea because his geometric style of architecture contrasts the organic shapes of the nature-like parts of his paintings. This contrast highlights his main concept, which is that we have developed and synthesized nature to a point where it transforms into something less than nature. His fragmented reality of flying objects and unrealisticly colored plants shows that we need to stop developing and reproducing nature like we have been doing.
 * Quotes:**1. "The more intensely one attempts to situate oneself inside the painting, the more one gets lost inside of it in the web of overlapping levels and staggered horizons." --Ute Stuffer

**Haley**
Rachel In Fur <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px;">Girl in Field Homemade Pasta <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The Bra Shop <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">"I wanted this to be like a Chardin painting, with the two people watching something--an allegory of looking at the painting. At the time, I was really fascinated by painters like Boucher and Fragonard, who created their own races of people--big-eyed girls with boyfriends who were boy versions of them. I thought that in my case, the identifier of my group of people would be enormous breasts. I was trying to make the faces on these girls, and I didn't want to make any kind of class distinctions through their representation. I remembered my Kennedy painting, and I thought that I should make this with a palette knife. THe palette knife reminds me of the way it feels when you ruin something with love. You can't improve it, you can't smooth it out--it only gets worse the more you touch it. The more love you show, the more you destroy it. I had already received a small amount of criticism about my sexism, and I wanted to make something that I wouldn't have to worry about being termed sexist--because the image is so sexist that it's sort of beyond repair, it was already ruined before I started."-John Currin The Cripple Park City Grill"

The guy, at any rate, is unlikely to attract many viewers to his side: something about the way his left arm reaches behind the girl's back, the crudeness of his idea of his idea of making his move, plus the caricatural tough-guy grin on his face make him seem too overbearing, just too coarse, in fact, for the girl he is with. He awkwardness, clear in the way she holds her glass and in the nervous hilarity of her expression, suggests that she may not have enough experience to really hold her own here. Does she elicit our sympathy, then? Maybe so: perhaps we hope she can use her naivety as her strong card."-Norman Bryson

**Monica**
==**Untitled (Tokyo)****Seemless**== ==**Still Life with Flowers**==
 * Sarah Sze**
 * Sarah Sze is a spectacular 3-d artist. Atfirst and up close, her work may look like a page ripped out of one of those I-Spy books, an explosive whirlwind of the strange and the familiar. However, she arranges every-day odds and ends in such complex and beautiful ways that the mind can't help but recognize patterns in her chaotic peices. Strong line and a sense of movement appear in almost all of her peices, especially her later works. She contrasts cold clean plactic lines with organic, messy, and often whimsical bits of string and curled wire to creat a false sense of movement and action in her pristine, tiny worlds. Yes, worlds, because that is what her peices truly seem to be. Artificial landscapes for who-ville-sized inhabitants, places as futuristic and alien as they are recognizable. She really uses the patterns and colors of the materials she works with to her advantage, somehow making dirty-green dish-sponges fit in with caution-tape yellow and an entire spectrum of other candy-colored bobbles.****Quotes:****"...Sarah Sze's worksare not representations of escape; they're models that function analogically, interactively, and diagramactically, furnished homes for our projected thoughts and behaviors, previously occupied by the artist."-Linda Norden****"...Sze's art depends on a type of self-recapitulating ontology, a kind of organic, almost self-reproducing and evolving private language..."****-Linda Norden****"[her art's] origionality may be perhaps implied by the suggestion that had she not created these works, nothing like them would have existed. They are not so much hers, but her."- Arthur C. Danto**

**Lee**
<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px;">Ritchie is often seen foremost as a painter, but his work lies mainly in drawing. Ritchie scans his drawings into the computer so he can manipulate them by blowing them up, deconstructing them, and/or transforming them into three-dimensional pieces. He digitally makes his images smaller and larger in order to further develop his ideas beyond paper. In an interview with Art: 21, Ritchie explains his drawing process here: “I start with a collection of ideas...and I draw out all these different motifs, and then I lay them on top of each other. So I have piles of semi-transparent drawings all layered on top of each other in my studio and they form a kind of tunnel of information. Out of that, you can pull this form that turns into the sculpture or the painting. It’s literally like pulling the narrative, out of overlaying all of the structures. That’s how I end up with this structure. It’s derived from a series of drawings that I scan into the computer and refine through various processes...and send to the sheet-metal shop down the road where it’s cut out of metal and assembled into larger structures which are too big for my studio.” This method allows Ritchie to reshape his images into sculptures, floor-to-wall installations, interactive web sites, and short stories. <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px;">His work deals with the theme of information. Ritchie explains this theme with a few rhetorical questions and statements: “…for me the theme of my new structure was information, how do you deal with it? As a person is it possible for you to grasp everything and see everything? You’re presented with everything and all through your life you’re trying to filter out, you’re really just trying to control that flow.” These questions posed by Ritchie rightfully describe his thought process while creating his art, allowing the viewer to better understand his pieces beyond their aesthetic characteristics.

<span style="background-color: #ddeefe; color: #3266bb; font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 17px; margin: 0px 0px 1px;">[|Hutton, Molly. Matthew Ritchie: In the Anderson Collection. The Anderson Collection] <span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px;">“Influenced by everything from the mythic escapades of comic-book superheroes and [|pagan] gods to the meta-narratives of philosophy, religion, and science, Ritchie has developed a mythical narrative or cosmology of his own, and his art is communicated via a variety of art spaces and installations, including galleries throughout the world and the World Wide Web

<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px;">"At the beginning of his artistic maturity, Ritchie wanted to build a universally decipherable visual language comprised of configurations, symbols, and equations potentially accessible to a vast and varied audience. In order to achieve that, he first had to build a universe. With cavalier disregard for historical cohesion, he commenced to mix, match, and fuse myth, religion, science, pop culture, and art." -Klaus Kertess, Painting As Information Jazz

<span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size-adjust: none; font-size: 13px; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 19px; margin: 0px 0px 6px;">"He regarded painting not so much as a construction of space but as a continuous flow of slowed down information-multiple strands of overlapping information that might readily interrupt and or threaten to cancel each other out." -Klaus Kertess, Painting as Information Jazz

**Grace B**
Contemporary Art Research"Paradoxically, incidental qualities prove to be essential ones, for they animate the moment. Otherwise--lacking incident--a moment is nothing."--Richard Shiff "Doig's art may be 'not at all real' or all too real, depending on where we locate it. His illusions fail to correspond with reality, but his materiality is undeniably present." --Richard Shiff "Peter Doig's paintings take us to strange places. They might be ordinary enough places in many respects, but an odd quiescence hangs over them--not calm, but dead stillness, with an undertow of disturbance."--Judith Nesbitt Peter Doig often searches for the right "atmosphere" in each respective painting. The atmosphere he often creates is one that is familiar to the audience but with a slight twist. There is something not quite right about each painting. He likes the idea of memory and how our own memories portray a relationship between ourselves and the subject, something he strives to convey in his paintings. He doesn't paint things that are current, but things that are memories and thus aren't perfectly clear. He sometimes uses telescopes to both clarify the subject and also remove some of the information that could be found in a simple photograph. =="The Blotter "Figures in a Red Boat" "The Hitchhiker""Pond Life" "Jetty" "Window Pane"==

**__Andreas Gursky__**
==  == “Time and again he blends his observations with the inner promptings of his protagonists.” - Hentschel

“And it is their physical closeness to these natural features that turns them into something that gives satisfaction. Sojourning in nature like this means adapting it to some extent....Only by first taking the wider surroundings does it become clear how people behave towards nature.” - Hentschel

"In the 1980's, he started using colour film and spontaneous observation to make a series of images of people at leisure, such as hikers, swimmers and skiers, depicted as tiny protagonists in a vast landscape." - White Cube

"At Essen, Gursky encountered photography's documentary tradition, a sophisticated art of unembellished observation, whose earnest outlook was remote from the artificial enticements of commercial work." -MoMA

Gursky uses the relationship between people and nature a lot in his earlier works. The initial aspect of the picture that you notice is the massive nature scene; only when you look closely at the photograph do you see the small people interacting with their surroundings. He uses the pure awesomeness of nature in National Geographic-like shots to contrast against the seeming normality of man.

Thomas Struth


<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Thomas Struth is a photographer that strives to capture the world as it is at that very moment. He spends weeks focusing on one subject or place, waiting for the perfect moment to capture all that is happening. He is most famous for his photos of people looking at famous pieces of art in museums. His pictures are kept simple, he doesnt make them overly busy, but somehow the simplicity creates a new depth that makes his work so interesting. He photographs jungles that look too perfect to really be in the jungle--they look like they were set up. The cityscapes that he photographs look like he recreated it on a much smaller scale, then captured it. But he doesnt do that. Struth does this because he was a painter for a long time, & painters create scenes that are perfect, with only things the painter chooses to include in the work. Its not so easy to do this in a photograph, but its what Struth aims to do. "Struth wishes, mischievously, to show his former mentor that photography hasn't spelled the death of painting, after all." The portraits that Struth photographs are never of the person or family smiling. Struth captures what he considers to be "mechanical reproduction" & his portraits reduce modern life to the abstraction that was used in modernist paintings, before photography. Struth's photographs seem to undermine the nature of human beings, the places that humans have created & modified & human life all together. In the soullessness Struth captures, it is a continuous question if he is showing the lack of soul in humans because he wants to humanity to change, or if he is showing that all humans have at least one thing in common--that we are all the same without our souls.

Struth himself has said that a photograph "has a clear language, one that speaks openly not only about its subjects ... but also very much about the attitude of the photographer toward these things. In this regard, a photograph is always objective."

"I wanted to remind my audience that when art works were made, they were not yet icons or museum pieces." "When a work of art becomes fetishized," the affable, articulate artist points out, "it dies."

"I realized that I was more interested in working on things that resided out in the world, and were not restricted to my own psychological field. I realized I was more of a social and political person, and that I was more fascinated by analytical processes. It also bears saying that every part of my work reflects the position of a human being who actively takes part in life, which maybe sounds very banal and general to say expressly, but that is nonetheless what I’m interested in."

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">“My own work is about different situations in which people find themselves. About streets as public space, where specific and collective attitudes affect us every day, where architecture represents society and culture as the dynamic of the group. About private people in front of the camera and the photographer: how individual characters represent themselves; what can be deduced from them. About families and couples: what their relations, their roles, their history might be; what the encounter between the artist and those portrayed was like on this very day when the photograph was made.” - Thomas Struth

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: normal;">Juleon

Baldessari works in a number of different mediums, from painting to photos. In some senses, his visual strategies change through these different mediums, but in another sense his strategy remains the same. In order to rebel against what he calls "high art" he goes against it with numerous photos that are "wrong" and different collages that have pieces missing. Using this strategy of going against what would be expected, he manipulates what we think of as art and the connections that we make, both between pieces and about art in general. In some pieces he uses the organization of the pieces on the wall in order to show a certain connection between ideas or images, while in others he literally makes the decisions for us in order to make a point. Another one of Baldessari's visual strategies is the use of words in place of images. He allows the words to do the same job as the image and let the viewer decide whether or not they will "believe" what the words are saying; while words are arbitrary, images are not. Baldessari has said, " I think the artist should make things difficult for the viewer," and many of his images succeed in making the viewer really consider their own personal thoughts before finding a real conclusion.

"That's essentially John's teaching method: Here's a pile of things, find something that you can use." - Jim Welling

"I sense the openness of art, Baldessari’s receptivity, and the sight of an artist exercising what D. H. Lawrence once called 'insatiable American curiosity.'" - Jerry Saltz

"Baldessari reinvented conceptualism, in his own vein of laid-back, irreverent humor." - Calvin Tomkins

Pictures: