Untitled Moon and Branches (2011)

The new series of black and white paintings by Eliza Thomas are intricate.  They navigate the viewer through fields of gray, the motif of uncertainty, while bringing one into thickets of branches, blossoms and leaves. Naturalism is a significant subject for the artist since its form is at once lyrical and rhythmic, bearing a strong resemblance to Asian calligraphy. Also known as the dynamic moving line, Thomas’ paintings connect nature to the larger scope of humanity by embellishing the illusion of the third dimension, located within the representation of the outlying landscape.  Her palette, moreover, captures a wishful, open space that is immediate yet ephemeral.  This selection of work marks the artist’s foray away from color and into the complexity of two tones, created by the wash and line of ink and paint across the sheer surface of rice paper.

Oak Study I is a large piece that features a web of black branches intersecting within similar silhouettes of gray, stalling movement and bringing pause.  Two larger panels titled Distance and Oak Study V expand on the visual vista even though the second piece appears interlaced with branch-like forms.  In both paintings, a horizontal line splits the composition in half, rendering a foreground and background, which pushes the eye to wander throughout the artist’s layered traces.

Untitled 9 (2011)

The rush of white that appears in No Return suggests fluid movement rather than a static portrait of naturalism.  However Shadow Study is less elusive, capturing the spider-like gray form of vines that are nearly swamped by the pale color of rice paper.  An exceptional series of blossom studies appear in For Gary, Wild Orchids, and Untitled 9, using the traces of ink wash and acrylic to define these icons of nature as objects of a contemplative ambiance.

Eliza Thomas’ abstractions stand out as the strongest works of art in this new selection of work due to the fact that their ambiguity keeps them suspended within the space of interpretation.  Having studied sumi-e ink painting with the Japanese Zen master, Shozo Sato, Thomas utilized her studies in black and white to commune with the moving line that has wound itself throughout the vast history of Asian art.  The artist’s paintings, however, remain contemporary as each panel reveals a different kind of creative experimentation with traditional Western media.

Kovno Headache (Right) 2007

Kovno: Kobe by Jonathan Hammer at Miyako Yoshinaga Art Prospects featured a series of ominous drawings that focused on the artist’s family history in Kovno, Lithuania as well as the survivors’ fortunate luck of having been sent to Kobe.  However the artist’s “Kovno Headeache,”-series from 2007 capture the tortured faces of three rabbis.  Additional representations such as “Lithuanian Perpetrators,” (2010) and “Japanese Witness,” (2010) portray several mask-like forms that bear strong connections to Latin American imagery.  Similar to German artist Otto Dix, Hammer recreates fragments of a massive tragedy that are deeply cathartic, leading one to mourn the past.

Lithuanian Perpetrators 2010

The tragedy of loss is reduced to a series of personal memories in Ben Gocker’s exhibition at PPOW titled There is really no single poem.  ”Early Poem,” (2003-10) opens the show and appears as a shrine that consists of numerous handmade items such as notepaper, pencils, and book covers.  ”Untitled (scroll),” (2007-10) is a vivid fictional narrative that portrays landscapes slowly changing into others.  Beyond this shift in context, the exact meaning is personal and unknown.  However it is this sense of mystery, combined with the intricate handmade object, that  makes Gocker’s work most alluring.  Additional pieces such as “Names,” (2010) and “Death & Friends,” (2010) are represented with pleasant pastels, alleviating any emotional gravity from the viewing process.

Early Poem (detail) 2003-10

Death becomes an extension of fantasy in Saul Chernick’s Borrowed from the Charnel House at the Max Protetch Gallery, but simultaneously acknowledges this cryptic event as an extension and summation of the human condition.  In the style of 17th-century woodcuts, Chernick creates a series of large-scale water color and ink drawings that evoke the mood of line, even though the subject matter itself is not immediately compelling.  ”Hot Mess,” (2008) for instance, portrays a distraught but finely groomed show poodle prancing across a partially forested landscape while “Ars Gratis Artis,” (2010) poses as a visually lyrical parody of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) logo.  However this piece could also be seen as a criticism of the cultural death, brought on by the blockbuster hype, that continues to weave itself into popular culture.  Chernick’s framed fascinations of mortuary findings are delineated by an extensive, thirty-five foot long drawing that captures various angles of tombstones seen throughout Brooklyn’s Greenwood Cemetery.

Ars Gratia Artis 2010

Death is a daily experience that mostly occurs outside the flow of life and is always startling to either see or hear of.  The earthquake devastation in Haiti, for example, shocked the world.  And yet at the moment, massive forms of ocean life are meeting a sad and silent destruction as an uncontrolled oil spill continues to fill the Gulf of Mexico, forever changing the livelihood of small, regional communities.  Jonathan Hammer, Ben Gocker and Saul Chernick approach the subject of death on a number of levels while leaving the subject viable.

In English the reflexive verb is used most often in technical writing or personal memoirs, but it rarely appears noticeable when spoken. This particular verb refers the direct object, the self, back to the subject of the sentence or idea. Indo-European languages make use of reflexive verbs more frequently and often without regard to any specific grammatical rules of the language. In other words the articulation of the subject and itself portrays a relation that one has in contrast to others while maintaining a close connection through the stated difference.

The reflexive is complex. It is primarily reciprocal and transitive but can also appear with intransitive verbs. Ethan Shoshan’s exhibition at the Aljira Center for Contemporary Art in Newark titled I’m always thinking of you even when I’m kissing another boy stands as a personal statement of free associations that are embodied through a series of objects which have been collected by the artist over time. Initially given as gifts, these items have become part of a larger narrative that rings universal, conveying the multi-layered, shifting characteristics of memory and meaning.

Experiencing art outside of a market context is suddenly unique but also quite liberating. Shoshan arranges these gifted objects in a personal order: while numbered on a complimentary diagram, this arrangement does not appear sequentially. But in the end, that is not the point. Feelings, thoughts and memories never adhere to a specific order. Instead it is the personal experience that the artist features with each object.

Two small sea shells, for instance, are displayed on a flat, white surface and appear far smaller in real life when compared to the photographed copy that appears in the catalogue. These small shells were kept to preserve the loving memory of a friendship just like the small plastic bag of hair that the artist once shaved from another lover’s chest. Shoshan’s additional incorporation of a first-person narrative immediately allows the reader to identify with the “I”, the self that is presented. And yet, the self is so often masked away as we proceed through the anonymity of life. Postcards, cards and other ephemera represent a series of experiences that symbolize feelings of passion, love, loss, death, sadness and betrayal – events that are critical in shaping one’s individual character.

Is Ethan Shoshan’s installation any different than the objects made by artists such as Elizabeth Peyton or Urs Fischer? Both Peyton and Fischer re-appropriate the found object as well as the found image, but in doing so, the object’s re-representation becomes depersonalized and far removed from anything specific, except its mode of production: a copy of a copy. The elements of Shoshan’s collection, by contrast, are either strictly handmade or found, but not reproduced, preserving the individual imprint of the gift-giver while serving as symbols of particular moments.

When describing this installation, Shoshan refers to these objects as archetypes: the symbolic elements whose meanings we all share. Art, therefore, is about how we connect to an object, as well as others, which signifies a mode of perception that is far different from the recent economic boom in contemporary art. No longer is the idea of value displaced into the dollar. I’m always thinking of you even when I’m kissing another boy divests the art object from its star status but features it within a scope of a larger idea, none of which is for sale. This exhibition marks a beginning. As this idea continues to travel on to different venues, Ethan Shoshan will be collaborating with more artists, who will contribute objects from their own personal narratives as well.

Serena Bocchino, "Fresh." 2009

iPop by Serena Bocchino delves into the knick-knacks of popular culture and comes out shining with bouquets of pastel colored flowers looming over small sculptures of rabbits, squirrels and birds.  Since when has abstraction looked so good when used in a flora-and-fauna context? In iPop, the literal object is shamelessly primary and paired with the artist’s passion for bright colors.  Astroturf covers the gallery’s floor setting up the impression of a casual, backyard setting.  Within this altered environment, Bocchino takes one on a journey to a space of personal fantasy.

Various combinations of pastel yellow, blue, green, orange, pink and purple weave together and mesmerize.  The artist’s interest in gestural painting springs from her own interest in jazz music.  The process, moreover, of is completely unbound from academic restraints.  By taking on subject matter that is both ahistoric and thematically abstract, Bocchino leans toward the decorative but each piece succeeds in its hypnotic effect.

iPop declares that irony is dead.  Instead these paintings are about a naïve, psychological pleasure that is entirely separate from either the shocking grotesque or the political protest.  Bocchino’s passion of bright colors culminates in this small selection of teasers that momentarily justify the slightly abstract representations of those sweet things in life.  It is as if Bocchino wants to add something bright to our new world of gray.  If there is ever a feeling of guilt by association, this show is definitely it.

Walter Gropius, "Törten housing estate, Dessau." 1926–28

The Bauhaus was never meant to be so complicated. As a movement, it considered the complex formalism that had long existed in traditional European art and created a long-running critique that generated a series of studies and designs currently on view at the Museum of Modern Art. The Bauhaus was Modernism’s time-sensitive interpretation of the Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonardo DaVinci (c. 1487) since it investigated how the figural form could successfully exist within the new, mass-produced square.Workshops for Modernity: Bauhaus 1919 – 1933 is unique in that it has brought together disparate fragments of a movement which once enveloped the fields of art, architecture and design, before disintegrating into the weave and weft of the Post War era.

The first room features both sculpted and painted attempts at reconciling the rich tradition of figurative art into far more simplified, accessible forms. “Form follows function,” was the motto of Bauhaus architect, Mies van der Rohe, and it was the defining factor for what was and was not successful in this new aesthetic. Clearly all of the attempts at depicting the figure did not work. Either the literal object was too distorted, as seen in Oskar Schlemmer’s Grotesque I (1923), or it was an object that could not function on its own. Motion studies were no longer a rescue. Ultimately the best way to deal with the figure was to assume its presence in the work, a factor that turned the Bauhaus art object into one of the everyday, as soon as it entered mass-production.

Marcel Breuer with textile by Gunta Stölzl, “African” or “Romantic” chair. 1921

However just as one could accuse mass-production of moving the Modern populace far away from its traditional roots, the artists who sustained this endeavor were all the more keen on maintaining a strong connection to the evolution of human kind. Granted any interest in the European monarchies were off the table. But an interest in the basic human needs was not. Marcel Breuer, in particular, turned his attention to the way of life seen in African tribes. ‘African’ or ‘Romantic’ Chair (1921) was a collaboration with Gunta Stölzl featuring rather thin pieces of wood, reminiscent of skeletal bones, that were connected primarily with a tribal-looking tapestry. This piece of furniture not only was designed to sit low, toward the ground, but its function served as a shadow of the person sitting in it, keeping one propped up in natural form. Although ergonomics had yet to be refined, the efforts at making objects that would fit the figure were of the most interest to Bauhaus artists. The significance of visual decoration was secondary.

Josef Albers "Park." 1924

Josef Albers’ various studies of color squares expanded the critique of decoration, by reducing single colors to small, right-angled forms. The new focus given to color theory also suggested that color could function as metaphor rather than an elaborately depicted figure. Park (1924) consists of different hues of glass squares – primarily green, blue and white – set within wire, metal and wood. The juxtaposition of these mini-grids initially looks like an abstraction of a city map. However Albers’ suggestion of a small section of landscape, typically found within an urban setting, argues that colors not only render but create particular associations.

Erich Consemüller, "Untitled (Woman in B3 club chair by Marcel Breuer wearing a mask by Oskar Schlemmer and a dress in fabric designed by Lis Beyer)." c. 1926

The Bauhaus was a critique, which responded to the technological developments that emerged during the early 20th-century. Paul Klee’s spindly renderings celebrated the expanse of open space while Albers, Gropius, Moholy-Nagy and others attempted to make it a mainstream concept worth understanding. As transportation and communication increased in speed the domestic interior, along with the idea of private life, was suddenly thrown into question. The viability of objects as well as that of public and private spaces was measured based upon utility. Oskar Schlemmer created masks for both men and women that carried a sense of the macabre, even though both were an extension of the artist’s reductivist critique of the individual in mass society. By slipping into anonymity, critical differences such as gender disappeared and a new sense of homogeneity became part of the new standard.

Light Year (Garden), 1979

From start to finish, this exhibition was visually immense while small-scale. V (Garden) (1973) was placed within a shallow structural recess near the gallery’s entrance, leading one directly to the combustible form of Light Year (Garden). (1979)  Placed in a tight corner, this particular piece captures the suggested motion of a lighting rod that is about to move upward through the corner of the room. For Bladen, sculpture and process were strongly interwoven. Every idea consisted of three maquettes, three garden-sized piece and three editions in monumental scale.

In addition, each phase of his creative process was intended to exist as independent works of art, thereby positioning his sculpture to reach out to a broad audience.  Even when looking at the exposed wooden structure seen in pieces such as Coltrane (1970) the dense framework reveals Bladen’s elaborate planning method that underscored the black-painted aluminum surfaces that covered the garden- and monumental-sized sculptures.   Unlike Donald Judd and Carl André, Bladen was concerned with turning sculpture into a medium that challenged both the boundaries of balance and scale.

Coltrane (Sculptural Model), 1970

Irving Sandler once described Bladen’s work as expressive.  His sculptures not only grew away from forms seen before, but they also did not appropriate either the hollowed structure of a painter’s canvas or empty box as Judd’s had done. Bladen began his career as a painter in the late 1950s and focused on extending the heavily tactile surface into three-dimensional space.  Unlike the younger generation of Minimalists, his work was not based on academic training but, rather, on his own experiments that investigated the relationship between shape and structure. From the outset Bladen echoed the evolution of Beat culture as he embarked on a quest to render new forms.  By the early 1960s, the artist came up with an aesthetic that was independent of the recent past, yet consequently, the non-conformist nature of Bladen’s art has most likely been the cause of what has led to the slim recollection of his work within the scope of art history.