NEWSgrist - where spin is art

New York, I Love You, But...

 

Khalik Allah, Annie Berman, Sophie Blackall, Nathan Fitch, Brian Foo, Joy Garnett,

Suzanne Goldenberg, Nina Katchadorian, Paul McDonough, Lawrence Mesich,

Ron Milewicz, Amy Park, Maddalena Poletta, Casey Ruble, Ken Schles, Terreform ONE

 

OPENING THURSDAY NOVEMBER 5, 6-8PM

Gallatin Galleries
Gallatin School of Individualized Study at NYU
1 Washington Pl @ Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Get Directions: Map

Mon – Fri: 9am – 9pm.
Sat: 10 am – 6 pm.
Sun: Closed.

Curator’s Statement

All the arguments against it are right: too crowded, too loud, too spread out, too expensive. But also: too exciting, too energetic, too fast, too much. All superlatives. New York, I love You, But… is a glimpse at the superlative that is New York, an audience to the internal conversation of the person pressed against the subway door, smelling something unidentifiable on the journey home from some unique, strange wonderful New York moment. It is a glance at the instances of excess and intimacy, humanity and wonder that define being a New Yorker.  “You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now,” (Colson Whitehead) because being a New Yorker is as much about the frenetic thrust into the present (and by that we mean the future), as it is about harboring nostalgia for a New York that is eternally slipping away. CBGBs or Shea Stadium, Ebbets field or the Twin Towers; affordable rent or addicts in Times Square: all gone. What is lost is our city, the city that each of us individually makes through momentary encounters, reflections in the window of a cab, panoramic vistas we didn’t know existed, but became ours because that is where we fell in love, were held up, got away, and all the other endless events that create the place we call home.

As part of that bifurcated experience, New York also lays out too plainly its problems. Economic disparity is nowhere so clear as on a walk through the city. If you walk an hour in any one direction, you see it. A multi million dollar  pied-à-terre, not even inhabited most of the year, minutes away from a cockroach infested five story walk up. The changes imposed upon neighborhoods, blind the already existing owners and tenants. A white man claims to have “settled” a part of Brooklyn, and we all know what he means: moved into a Brown space, a POC space, before the caucasian influx, made it safe for the late comer, as if it were an uninhabited desert, forgetting (if only momentarily), of course, that he too is an invader. The admixture of race and class, ethnicity and education, location and proximity make the turbulence apparent on the surface, all too quickly. The split is everywhere, and the only ones who seem not to see it are literally above the fray, in buildings with park views that push the clouds a little bit further up.

Within that constant but often unstated battle there remain the connections and crossings that fill ones day with a reminder of how strange and magical New York can be. Tourists openly marvel at acapella gospel groups on the subway, but die hard New Yorkers too look up with a warm recognition of talent. And on those platforms and trains, glances cross and moments had that push distant strangers into accidental intimacies. It’s not just Tinder and Grindr, OK Cupid and Bumble, but also real human bodies that meet by chance and make us murmur New York, I Love You, But…

 

- Keith Miller, curator.
 

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FOODshed: Art and Agriculture in Action at CR10

CR10 Arts & Francine Hunter McGivern present
FOODshed: Agriculture and Art in Action
Curated by Amy Lipton

Exhibition Opening – Saturday, August 8, 2015, 4-6pm
On view through September 5.
 

The exhibition focuses on sustainable agriculture, entrepreneurship, and artists’ use of food as subject matter or medium. Many of the artists in the exhibition are known for bringing community-specific issues into their work and are exploring the real-world implications of small-scale farming, and raising community awareness about their food systems. 

 

Information at LiptonArts.com

Artists include:

Joan Bankemper/Black Meadow Barn
EcoArtTech/Leila Nadir & Cary Peppermint

Joy Garnett (The Bee Kingdom)
Habitat for Artists Collective (Simon Draper, Aidan Draper, Michael Asbill, Carmen Acuna, Faheen Haider, Jessica Poser, Elyssa Willadsen and Green Up)
Natalie Jeremijenko
Lenore Malen
Kristyna and Marek Milde
Peter Nadin/Old Field Farm
Andrea Reynosa
Jenna Spevack
Susan Leibovitz Steinman
Elaine Tin Nyo
Tattfoo Tan
Linda Weintraub

 

FOODshed: Art and Agriculture in Action originated at Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, NY in June, 2014. This new version at CR10 will include many of the same artists with new projects and a few new artists working in the Hudson Valley.

Information at CR10.org
CR10Arts, 283 County Route 10, Linlithgo, NY

 

Human Territory @ SLAG CONTEMPORARY’s 2nd location: Sunday, July 26, 3-6 PM

 

 

Joy Garnett, Tangerine Dream, 2015, oil on canvas, 20x24 inches. Photo: Samantha Keely Smith.

“Human Territory” brings together works from twelve primarily Brooklyn-based artists in an exploration of man’s experiences and interactions with landscape. No longer confined to the traditional definition of landscape as pastoral scene, the works focus on varied territories - whether those are aerial views and scenes of a city-made-war-zone, the imagined playscapes of fairytales, or the shifting topographies of faces and everyday life.

Tirtzah Bassel
Tirtzah Bassel studied drawing and painting at the Jerusalem Studio School in Israel and holds an MFA from Boston University. Her work has been reviewed in Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, New York Daily Report, Arts in Bushwick, Ynet, The Forward, and The Boston Globe. Bassel is Assistant Director of the Institute for Music and Art at Brandeis University.  She is the recipient of a 2011-2012 LABA Artist Fellowship at the 14th Street Y in New York, was invited to the Sixpoint Asylum International Artist Retreat in 2013, and currently serves as a resident artist of the Chashama Visual Arts Program in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Avital Burg
Avital Burg is a New York based artist. She has shown work recently at various venues such as Spaceship Gallery in Tel Aviv, the Greenpoint Film Festival in New York, Hanina Gallery in Tel Aviv, and Slag Gallery in New York.  She is the recipient of Award for Excellence from the Israel Museum (2003), among other awards. Burg attended the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, the “Hatahana” school of figurative drawing and painting in Tel Aviv, The Slade School of Art in London, and the New York Studio School.

Henry Chung
Born and raised in New York City, Henry Chung studied engineering at Columbia University's School of Engineering and Applied Science and Photography at New York University's Tish School of the Arts. In 1992, Henry established his first photography studio in Brooklyn, which he has maintained at various locations since. In the years during and after his education Henry worked as a typesetter and computer programmer. Henry lives in Brooklyn, NY and his current studio is in Red Hook, Brooklyn. His work has most recently been seen at Lesley Heller Workspace (2014), HERE Art Space, New York City (2013), Harbor Gallery, Bushwick (2013), Governor’s Island Art Fair (2012), Aqua Art Miami (Miami, FL, Fall 2011), The Affordable Art Fair (NYC Spring, 2011), Old Stone House (Brooklyn, 2011), Storefront Gallery (Brooklyn, 2011), The London Art Fair (London, UK, 2011), and in numerous private collections.

Hannah Cole

Hannah Cole holds a MFA in painting from Boston University, Boston, MA, a Post-Baccalaureate degree in painting from Brandeis University, and a BA in Art History from 
Yale University. Cole’s first museum solo show "Time's Wife", curated by George Kinghorn was hosted in 2014 at the University of Maine Museum of Art. Also, her work was exhibited  at the Hickory Museum of Art, North Carolina. Hannah Cole's previous solo exhibitions include: AAA: Hannah Cole, Maria Stabio, Kaitlin McDonough, Galleria Atlantica, Vicenza, Italy, Two Way Street, Slag Gallery, New York “Mantle”, Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, 
”I Move to Keep Things Whole”, Laconia Gallery, curated by James Hull, Boston, “Instant Sublime”, Greene Contemporary, New York, 
”Wish You Were Here”, former Lebanon Pavilion, Venice.

Joy Garnett
Joy Garnett is an artist in Brooklyn, NY. Her paintings, based on night vision and surveillance imagery, dwell on scenes that cannot be observed with the naked eye. Her work has been shown at the Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK), aeroplastics (Brussels, Belgium), Boston University Art Gallery, Illinois State University Galleries, MoMA PS1, CUNY Graduate Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, and is included in the permanent collections of the National Academy of Sciences (Washington DC), Altria and The West Collection (Oaks, PA). She has received grants from Anonymous Was a Woman, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Wellcome Trust (UK) and The Chipstone Foundation (Milwaukee).

Ben Godward
Ben Godward was born in Indianapolis, grew up in Webster Groves, MO and received his B.F.A. at Alfred University after a year-long hiatus at Shidoni Art Foundry in New Mexico. Ben received his M.F.A. in Sculpture from the University at Albany and won the 2007 Outstanding Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture award from the International Sculpture Center. After Albany, Godward moved his studio to Brooklyn, where he currently lives. He has shown at Lesley Heller, Moti Hassan, The Laundromat Gallery, Pocket Utopia, Famous Accountants Gallery, NYCAMS, Norte Maar Creative projects in the Art, Storefront Gallery and Factory Fresh. Recently he has brought to life two large outdoor art projects, in 2010 at Franconia Sculpture Park in MN and in 2011 at Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, NY. Ben’s work has also been featured in The L Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Sculpture magazine and on WNYC Radio.

Dumitru Gorzo
Dumitru Gorzo received a BA in Painting and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Advanced Studies in Painting from the University of Arts in Bucharest, Romania. He is a co-founder of the artist group and movement Rostopasca, the most influential artist group in Romania for the last few decades. Gorzo has had solo shows in museums such as MNAC (Bucharest), NJ MoCA (New Jersey), and Brukental Art Museum (Sibiu), as well as in art galleries and not-for-profit art institutions across the US and Europe. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions at prestigious art venues such as the Istanbul Biennial, Marina Abramovici Institute (San Francisco), Kunsthalle Budapest (Mucsarnok), MODEM Modern and Contemporary Art Center (Debrecen), and Museum Küppersmühle (Duisburg) and Boulder MoCA just to name a few.

Tim Kent
Tim Kent received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from University of Sussex at West Dean College, UK and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Hunter College, NY. His work continues to be exhibited both nationally and internationally, in both group and solo shows such as The Gambit, Slag, Brooklyn, NY;  The Best of Times, Moncrieff Bray Gallery, London, UK;  All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Factory Fresh, Brooklyn, NY;  Camera to Camera, Moncrieff Bray Gallery, Petworth, UK.   Kent’s work has been appeared in the likes of Brooklyn Rail, Fine Art Connoisseur, New American Paintings, and in the New Criterion. 

Naomi Safran-Hon
Naomi Safran-Hon received a Masters of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 2010 and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Studio Art and Art History from Brandeis University in 2008. She is also a 2012 Skowhegan Residency alumnus. Some of her selected  exhibitions include: Brooklyn Museum, “Heimat: Chronicle of Absentees”; Brandt Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherland, “ Salmat Beton va-Melet Gown of Concrete and Cement”, Hartford, CN;  Centaurs and Satyrs”, Asya Geisberg Gallery, New York, NY.  Currently, Safran-hon’s work can be viewed as part of a group show at Haifa Museum of Art.  In 2016, a solo exhibition of her work will be hosted by Silber and Rosenberg Art Galleries, Baltimore, Maryland.

Hartmut Stockter
Hartmut Stockter (1973) was born in Wilhelmshaven (DE), lives and works in Copenhagen (DK). He graduated from Hochschule für bildende Künste Braunschweig in 1998, and received his MFA in 2002.  Stockter had numerous solo shows such as "Hut-Imker, Nachtwandler, Privatkartograph", Frise Künstlerhaus und Abbildungszentrum, Hamburg, Germany/ "Day Trip Tool Box", ON gallery Posznan, Poland/ "Wundergarage", Kirkhoff Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark/ "Approved Inventions", CirkulationsCentralen, Malmö/ Kristinehamns Konstmuseum, Sweden/ “Messages from hibernation”, Skulpturi, Copenhagen, Denmark/ “From the treasure chest of an affable blackberry picker", LARMgalleri, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Dan Voinea
Dan Voinea is a graduate of the National University of Art Bucharest. He had his first solo exhibition with Beers Contemporary in May 2013, which was also the first time he exhibited in the United Kingdom.  His work has been exhibited in a number of solo and group exhibitions in Europe such as East Wind ‘Les Cordeliers’ Romans Sur Isere, France; Finish the Poem, ‘S.A.N’ San de Senart, France; Heroes and Judges, Carturesti Gallery, Bucharest.  In 2014 Voinea’s work was exhibited at Boulder MoCA, Colorado. Voinea’s first solo show in US will take place in September 2015, at Slag Gallery.

Robert Walden
Robert Walden attended the Atlanta College of Art (BFA, 1994). He received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2003), participated in Emerge 2001 at Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, Newark, NJ and was a fellow at the Edward Albee Foundation (2005). Walden’s work has been seen in galleries and museums throughout the United States and in Europe, including The Berardo Collection Museum, Lisbon, Portugal and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO. Robert Walden lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

 

Irina Protopopescu

Slag Contemporary (1st location)

56 Bogart St.

Brooklyn, NY 11206

T 212 967 9818

Thursday - Sunday 1-6PM

Monday - Wednesday by appointment

[email protected]

www.slaggallery.com

 

Slag Contemporary (2nd location)

81 Grand Street

Williamsburg, NY 11249

T 212 967 9818

Thursday - Sunday 1-6PM

Monday - Wednesday by appointment

[email protected]

www.slaggallery.com

 

 

The Treachery of Images

Above: Robert Hovden's four nanolithographs in When Art Exceeds Perception at the Jill Stuart Gallery, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Courtesy of Robert Hovden.

 

When Art Exceeds Perception is an exhibition of works produced and conceived by Robert Hovden, a PhD candidate in Applied Physics at Cornell University. Hovden has mounted an exhibition to probe our assumptions about the copy, authorship, and ownership. Predictably, he has provoked the ire of one (dead) artist's estate and the admiration of those who dispute the wisdom of overreaching copyright, including the editor of this blog. See below for excerpts from blurbs and press.

~ the editor, NEWSgrist (where spin is art)

 

Cornell Council For the Arts - Intimate Cosmologies Projects Biennial
WHEN ART EXCEEDS PERCEPTION
Robert Hovden
Dates:  Oct 30, 2014 - Dec 15, 2014
Location: Jill Stuart Gallery, Human Ecology Building
Link

When Art Exceeds Perception explores the implications of replication and plagiarism by reproducing famous works of art inscribed onto the surface of a silicon crystal wafer at 500x smaller than the eye can see and 5x smaller than the wavelength of light.

The art was inscribed by accelerating charged ions to high-speeds and focusing them on the silicon wafer. By scanning an ion beam in an image pattern, molecules on the wafer surface were sculpted and etched like clay. The material sculpted at this scale is high-purity, crystalline silicon with an atomically smooth, flat surface. This is the same silicon medium used in modern digital devices for transistors and provides an exceptional medium for physical manipulation and design.

In a digital era where information is encrypted and stored in the atomic bits of nanoscale devices, answers to philosophical, moral, and legal questions surrounding artistic ownership and copyright become muddled. When Art Exceeds Perception focuses on this issue through the creation of tangible, if immediately inaccessible, art — not stored as bits, but rather as an indirectly interpretable image. Its final representation is not digitized or encrypted, but identical in image to the original, if merely too small to be perceived.

Above: Source images used for nanolithography. Courtesy of NEWSgrist.

 

via Torrentfreak:

This ease of copying has provoked legal aggression and endless debate as to the purpose of copyright law and its role in protecting the interests of artists. In particular, entertainment industry companies often declare that no matter what its nature, infringement negatively affects those creators. But is that always the case?

A new project developed by Dr Robert Hovden at Cornell University aims to provoke discussion on that very topic by pushing replication of content – and indeed the law – to their absolute limits.

A self-confessed gradeschool downloader and former undergraduate at Jet Propulsion Labs, NASA, Hovden went on to study nanoscience at Cornell. His passion for studying the world at the tiniest possible levels has given birth to “When Art Exceeds Perception”.

The project, which will be exhibiting at Cornell University this November and December, explores the implications of copyright infringement, replication and plagiarism when the ‘pirated’ works are so tiny they cannot be perceived by human senses.

To this end, Hovden has ‘pirated’ four famous works of art by scribing them into the surface of a silicon crystal using a focused ion beam. The features in the artwork replicas are five hundred times smaller than the eye can perceive and five times smaller than the wavelength of light. [...]

Above image courtesy of Robert Hovden.

via Torrentfreak, cont'd:

 

“To take a piece of art, copy it, and share it with the world without the original artists’ permission is traditionally viewed as wrong and, in most cases, violates copyright laws,” Hovden says.

“Such laws are intended to protect an artist’s financial interests and provide incentive to create. However, in a digital era where information is encrypted and stored in the atomic bits of nanoscale devices, answers to philosophical, moral, and legal questions surrounding copyright become muddled.”

This leads to Hovden’s big question: When a copyright work is copied, framed and presented for public consumption on a nanoscale as it will during November and December at Cornell, has something been taken from the original artist?

“Thus far, people have discussed this project from a science or art perspective, but I believe that the readers of TorrentFreak are best equipped to understand this work. The exhibition is highly conceptual – completely beyond perception – and critical of current views on replication,” Hovden told TF.

 

via The Verge:

Artist M.C. Escher died in 1972, leaving behind iconic optical illusions that are now generations old. Painter Joy Garnett was born in 1965, and her career is in full swing. But when nanoscience researcher Robert Hovden copied works from both for a recent project, he could use Garnett’s with impunity. Escher’s estate, meanwhile, thinks he’s breaking the law.

Unless he told you, though, you’d never know he’s ripping off someone else’s work.

When Art Exceeds Perception looks like an exhibit of blank gray discs. Those silicon discs, however, hold a series of miniscule etchings: sketches made by a process called nanoscale lithography, in which charged ions blast away silicon atoms like an invisible chisel. The technique can be used for beautiful effects, like sandcastles printed on a single grain of sand. In this case, the images' individual details are roughly a tenth of a micron wide, and each picture is so small that it’s impossible to see even with a high-powered optical microscope — you’d have to turn to more recent inventions like the scanning tunneling microscope. At Cornell University’s Jill Stuart Gallery, where the installation will hang until December, "people will stare, and they usually find small imperfections in the disk," says Hovden. "They think maybe that's where the art is. But probably not."

Above: Joy Garnett, "Laylah K.", 2003, oil on canvas, 26x36 inches. Courtesy of the artist. CC-BY-SA.

via CNET:

You're looking at a reproduction of an M.C. Escher drawing, but you'd never know it. It's inscribed onto the surface of a silicon crystal wafer at a scale 500 times smaller than the eye can see.

Robert Hovden etched the Escher tessellations using focused high-speed ions. Why? Because he's a nanoscientist who spends his days studying objects with electron microscopes. And because maybe no one will notice he's copying famous works of art if the reproductions are so tiny.

But don't call the intellectual-property cops just yet. Hovden has copied famous works of art deliberately and openly for his exhibit “When Art Exceeds Perception,” an exploration of plagiarism in the age of bits and bytes.

"To take a piece of art, copy it and share it with the world without the original artists' permission is traditionally viewed as wrong and, in most cases, violates copyright laws...However, in a digital era where information is encrypted and stored in the atomic bits of nanoscale devices, answers to philosophical, moral and legal questions surrounding copyright become muddled," reads Hovden's statement for the exhibit, part of the Cornell Council for the Arts Biennial  "Intimate Cosmologies: The Aesthetics of Scale in an Age of Nanotechnology."

For the campus-wide show, which runs through December 22, artists and scientists "explore the cultural and human consequences of seeing the world at the micro and macro levels, through nanoscience and networked communications." Participants have done things like render the microscopic textures of a sheet of paper as a 3D inhabitable landscape and create wearable sensors to detect methane and poisonous gases.

Hovden, a Cornell Ph.D. student in applied physics, etched works of art onto the atomically smooth, flat surfaces of silicon wafers used in modern digital devices. He chose works "where copyright is relevant to the discussion" -- pieces by Escher, Magritte, Matisse and contemporary artist Joy Garnett, who releases work under a Creative Commons license.

Above: Robert Hovden: "Nano-Laylah K," 2014, nanolithography. Dimensions: diminutive. Courtesy of Robert Hovden.

via Art Law Blog:

M.C. Escher is well-known for his finely crafted compositions integrating mathematics and art, creating brain-teasing images, transforming creatures and impossible architectures. Escher’s optical illusions, explorations of geometric patterns and perspectives make him a favorite among scientists and mathematicians. So it is no surprise that Nanoscientist Robert Hovden chose Escher’s Regular Division of the Plane  as one of the microscopic etchings in his new show, When Art Exceeds Perception. Hovden chose this Escher work for its ” lovely tessellation with symmetries that can be found in the crystalline silicon substrate on which it was etched.” Unfortunately, the Escher Estate sees the use of Escher’s image as nothing more than a copyright infringement.

As readers of the Art Law Journal are keenly aware, Copyright Law has few bright lines, made even hazier when confronting issues surrounding new technologies, such as nanolithography. Is copying art that nobody can see an infringement? Does this new technological process, or the pattern created by millions of Escher’s, transform the work such that it is considered fair use? Does an analysis of this issue even work within the bounds of the Copyright Act and current case law? Let’s take a look.

Above: Focused Ion Beam device. Courtesy of Robert Hovden.

LINKS

Cornell Council For the Arts
Exhibition: WHEN ART EXCEEDS PERCEPTION
Artist:  Robert Hovden (Applied Physics)
Dates:  Oct 30, 2014 - Dec 15, 2014
Installation Location: Jill Stuart Gallery, Human Ecology Building

Cornell Council For the Arts - Intimate Cosmologies Projects Biennial


PRESS

Torrentfreak
Scientist Deliberately Pirates Art on a Nanoscopic Scale
By Andy on November 2, 2014

ACM News
Cornell Biennial Celebrates Nanotech as Art
By Anne Ju, November 4, 2014

WIRED (Germany)
Design | Robert Hovden schrumpft Raubkopien, bis sie keine mehr sind
06 November 2014 von Max Biederbeck

Above: "Rofl"

The Verge
These are the tiniest copyright violations ever made:
Good artists copy. Great artists steal, in nanoscale
By Adi Robertson on November 19, 2014

CMOA Blog (Carnegie Museum of Art)
How Museums Affect the Brain, the Art of the Cover, and Other News
By Matthew Newton, Associate Editor, Friday, November 21st, 2014

Art Law Journal
Artist is in Trouble for Nanoscale Copies of an M.C. Escher
Steve Schlackman, November 22, 2014

CNET
These works of art are too tiny to see (but trust us, they're there)
A Cornell Ph.D. student in applied physics etches famous works of art -- Escher, Magritte, Matisse -- onto silicon wafers used in modern digital devices.
by Leslie Katz, December 3, 2014

Every Eye (Italy)
Robert Hovden: copyright e nanotecnologia - Speciale
Inviato il 03/12/2014 da Luca Chiappini


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Being There Again and Again: Joy Garnett at Platform Gallery (via New American Paintings)

Joy Garnett | Standoff, 2013, oil on canvas, 38 x 44 inches. Image courtesy of Platform Gallery.

 

 

Being There Again and Again: Joy Garnett at Platform Gallery

—Erin Langner, Seattle contributor

Most of the time, as soon as I am awake, I begin scrolling through the layers of news on my phone, while still laying in bed. The ISIS updates, the new Ebola cases, and the pithy comments on the latest art world drama barely stick during this first round of skimming headlines and images, my awareness of the day coming into focus as I work through the tweets and the “Likes.” This activity would seem to have little to do with the meticulous, studied ways we usually interact with paintings. However, Brooklyn artist Joy Garnett proves otherwise, as evidenced by her new show, Being There, which opened at Seattle’s Platform Gallery last week. Pulling images from the media—including photographs of conflicts in the Middle East and screen grabs of leaked US military videos—Garnett’s new paintings bleed and blur their scenes into places that seem as familiar as the widely-disseminated photographs they reference. However, the artist also brings out the distant, fleeting way we absorb these images, turning their subjects into things we can never fully know.

Garnett’s process mirrors the way news is consumed: fast and in the immediate moment. Painting quickly and in a single sitting, this results in brushstrokes and textures that bring her subject matter into a curious, in-between state. Exchange of Fire can look like a sentimental still life of flowers fit for an aging hotel suite or an oily mass of artillery exchange, too dense to see through the smoke trails. The Square could be a series of explosions overtaking a sea of people gathered for protests or a pastoral landscape of Western Europe, tinted pink by a set of chrysanthemum fireworks overhead. Once you know the paintings’ backstories, it is easier to see their points of reference, but as museums often point out, the brief time most people spend with works of art does not usually involve reading wall text details—another consequence of a fast pace and a skimming eye.

When confronted with Garnett’s more direct Fire Breathers, however, little room is left for interpretation. The brash, orange cloud that engulfs the scene stems from an ambiguous set of antagonists, who stand with their weapons raised. This bright, spotlight of anonymous violence, pinned against dark patches of shadows, flashes back to the mise-en-scène of Francisco Goya’s iconic, The Third of May, 1808, a memorial to the Spanish citizens massacred during the French occupation. The sense of politically motivated tragedy common to both paintings, hundreds of years apart, implies the timeless tale of history’s repetition. Being There imparts the sense that its images—in both their painted and photographed forms—command a longer, harder look, if we are to ever to break this cycle of returning to the same postures, and the same poses, over and over again.

---

Being There is on view at Platform Gallery in Seattle, WA through November 29. Joy Garnett is a multidisciplinary artist and writer.  She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, at venues that include the Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Craft Portland, MoMA PS1, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Her work is also included in the permanent collections of the National Academy of Sciences, Philip Morris, and The West Collection. She has received grants from Anonymous Was a Woman, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and The Chipstone Foundation.

Erin Langner is an arts writer and program associate at Seattle Arts & Lectures.

 

Read in full on New American Paintings or download Download New American Paintings review 2014 (PDF)

Most of the time, as soon as I am awake, I begin scrolling through the layers of news on my phone, while still laying in bed. The ISIS updates, the new Ebola cases, and the pithy comments on the latest art world drama barely stick during this first round of skimming headlines and images, my awareness of the day coming into focus as I work through the tweets and the “Likes.” This activity would seem to have little to do with the meticulous, studied ways we usually interact with paintings. However, Brooklyn artist Joy Garnett proves otherwise, as evidenced by her new show, Being There, which opened at Seattle’s Platform Gallery last week. Pulling images from the media—including photographs of conflicts in the Middle East and screen grabs of leaked US military videos—Garnett’s new paintings bleed and blur their scenes into places that seem as familiar as the widely-disseminated photographs they reference. However, the artist also brings out the distant, fleeting way we absorb these images, turning their subjects into things we can never fully know. - See more at: http://www.newamericanpaintings.com/blog/being-there-again-and-again-joy-garnett-platform-gallery#sthash.V7BYFZPy.dpuf

Most of the time, as soon as I am awake, I begin scrolling through the layers of news on my phone, while still laying in bed. The ISIS updates, the new Ebola cases, and the pithy comments on the latest art world drama barely stick during this first round of skimming headlines and images, my awareness of the day coming into focus as I work through the tweets and the “Likes.” This activity would seem to have little to do with the meticulous, studied ways we usually interact with paintings. However, Brooklyn artist Joy Garnett proves otherwise, as evidenced by her new show, Being There, which opened at Seattle’s Platform Gallery last week. Pulling images from the media—including photographs of conflicts in the Middle East and screen grabs of leaked US military videos—Garnett’s new paintings bleed and blur their scenes into places that seem as familiar as the widely-disseminated photographs they reference. However, the artist also brings out the distant, fleeting way we absorb these images, turning their subjects into things we can never fully know. - See more at: http://www.newamericanpaintings.com/blog/being-there-again-and-again-joy-garnett-platform-gallery#sthash.V7BYFZPy.dpuf

Most of the time, as soon as I am awake, I begin scrolling through the layers of news on my phone, while still laying in bed. The ISIS updates, the new Ebola cases, and the pithy comments on the latest art world drama barely stick during this first round of skimming headlines and images, my awareness of the day coming into focus as I work through the tweets and the “Likes.” This activity would seem to have little to do with the meticulous, studied ways we usually interact with paintings. However, Brooklyn artist Joy Garnett proves otherwise, as evidenced by her new show, Being There, which opened at Seattle’s Platform Gallery last week. Pulling images from the media—including photographs of conflicts in the Middle East and screen grabs of leaked US military videos—Garnett’s new paintings bleed and blur their scenes into places that seem as familiar as the widely-disseminated photographs they reference. However, the artist also brings out the distant, fleeting way we absorb these images, turning their subjects into things we can never fully know. - See more at: http://www.newamericanpaintings.com/blog/being-there-again-and-again-joy-garnett-platform-gallery#sthash.V7BYFZPy.dpuf