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In Our Masthead: Laura Brothers

by Art Fag City on July 1, 2011
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You may have seen our post last week on the work of artist Laura Brothers (out4pizza). If you did, you’ll understand how excited we are to present her custom-made masthead for Art Fag City. Brace yourself!

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In Our Masthead: Valaire Van Slyck

by Guy Forget on April 4, 2011
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Gracing our masthead this month is a detail of Untitled (2009) by Valaire Van Slyck, whose paintings are themselves artifacts of the post-industrial urban environments he lives in.

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In Our Masthead: Anthony Fuller

by Guy Forget on March 1, 2011
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This month’s featured artist is Anthony Fuller, gracing the AFC masthead with “Untitled” (2011). From one generalized impulse — trying to make sense of ways of belonging — he creates tableaux that are both transparent and inscrutable.

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In Our Masthead: Danielle Mysliwiec

by Paddy Johnson on January 4, 2011
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Danielle Mysliwiec graces our masthead this month, making her the first artist to be featured twice in the space. The artist’s work was first showcased in December 2007. Over the past three years, Mysliwiec has continued to create the seamless illusion of woven paint on fresh surfaces. They are transfixing.  In her latest work [pictured […]

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In Our Masthead: The Listings Project

by Paddy Johnson on November 29, 2010
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Each week Stephanie Diamond sends out listings for studio spaces, sublets, roommates, etc to her a mailing list built on word of mouth alone. The people on this list are by and large art professionals, and tend not to be of the skeevy sort. It’s a real service, and it’s free. This year, I’m donating a little money to keep it that way.

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In Our Masthead: Employee of the Month

by Paddy Johnson on July 14, 2010
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Is there no end to the kind hearts in Chelsea? Society’s most deeply troubled members clean up with the help of Marianne Boesky’s workplace program. AFC introduces its new Masthead with Boesky’s Employee of the Month!

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Last Month’s Masthead: Brad Troemel

by Paddy Johnson on July 14, 2010
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My learning curve learning the new AFC backend had a few glitches, so this post never made it to the front page a month ago. We’re switching the masthead up today but I wanted to make sure at least one image selected by Masthead artist Brad Troemel plus the post intended for it made the main page.

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In Our Masthead: Conor Backman

by Paddy Johnson on May 27, 2010

art fag city, conor backman
Conor Backman, Cold as the Rockies After the Adventure, 2010, Oil on Canvas, 8 x 10 x 5 inches, 2009

Offering a different take on work like Toni Matelli’s bronze beer cans, Conor Backman makes trompe l’oile landscape paintings from used beer boxes. He removes all non-landscape imagery and text from the source material, stretches canvas over the surface and hangs the completed boxes on the wall. The work can be read as a commentary on the commodification of art, though mixing the high and low is at this point well charted territory. More interesting is the artist’s sincere interest in the tradition of landscape painting and Bob Ross. The great public access star would be proud.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Conor Backman lives and works in Richmond VA. Backman is also co-owner of REFERENCE Art Gallery, a newly formed artist-run space in downtown Richmond that focuses on exhibiting young emerging artists from around the world that are working in new media.

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In Our Masthead: Robert Garcia

by Paddy Johnson on March 24, 2010

art fag city, robert garcia, assembly line
Robert Garcia, Assembly Line, 2009, Oil on wood panel, 36 x 72 inches

San Francisco based artist Robert Garcia‘s touchingly detailed paintings are born from his upbringing. Raised in a lower class Hispanic community that prided itself with its Chicano attitude, Garcia first drew inspiration from the drawings on letters his uncles sent home from prison and the gang graffiti painted on the walls of his neighborhood. The harsh living conditions suffered by this community continue to inform his painting and all other work.

robert garcia, art fag city, we are who we are
Robert Garcia, We Are Who We Are, 2009, Oil on wood panel, 12 X 24 inches

BIOGRAPHY
Within the last year, Robert Garcia has exhibited at Wonderland, Stillwell and Gallery 1D/Throwbacks NW. Robert Garcia will receive his MFA from San Francisco State in 2011. He lives and works in San Francisco.

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In Our Masthead: Haute Romantics Artist Sebastian Mlynarski

by Paddy Johnson on February 8, 2010
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POST BY PADDY JOHNSON
Sebastian Mlynarski, art fag city
Sebastian Mlynarski, Would This Be The Time, 2009, 32 x 40 inches, C-Print

Masthead artist Sebastian Mlynarski is one of twelve New York and Miami based artists participating in Haute Romantics, an Art Fag City curated exhibition at Verge Gallery and Studio Project. Opening in Sacramento this Thursday, the exhibition includes work by Katherine Bernhardt, The Delusional Downtown Divas, Naomi Fisher, Paul Gabrielli, K8 Hardy, Cian McConn with Kristen Jensen, Ryan McGinley, Sebastian Mlynarski, Asher Penn, Maximillian Schubert, Peter Sutherland, and Sara VanDerBeek.

Haute Romantics examines a growing subsection of artists creating work that maps the ideals of late 18th century Romanticism. Untamed landscape, aesthetic beauty, escapism, youth — these themes not only permeate the exhibition, but build upon a period three hundred years passed, in which emotion was seen as a crucial authentic source of aesthetic experience. While the geography and living conditions specific to New York may, at least in part, inform this renewed sensitivity, it clearly extends beyond the city’s borders.

Showcased in our masthead this week, Haute Romantics artist Sebastian Mlynarski uses in-camera, multiple exposures to create images that challenge the notion of stable perceptions. Layered and spontaneous, these pictures mirror an unpredictable landscape, often evolving just as much through chance as by a willful change.

A full press release for the show after the jump.

Sebastian Mlynarski, art fag city
Sebastian Mlynarski, When I Ask For You, 2009, 32×40, C-Print

Sebastian Mlynarski, art fag city
Sebastian Mlynarski, And You Come And Stay, 2009, 32 x 40 inches, C-Print

HAUTE ROMANTICS

February 11th — March 20th, 2010

Verge Gallery and Art Fag City are pleased to announce their collaboration on Haute Romantics, a group show highlighting the work of twelve artists and collaboratives exhibiting in New York. The exhibition includes work by Katherine Bernhardt, The Delusional Downtown Divas, Naomi Fisher, Paul Gabrielli, K8 Hardy, Cian McConn with Kristen Jensen, Ryan McGinley, Sebastian Mlynarski, Asher Penn, Maximillian Schubert, Peter Sutherland, and Sara VanDerBeek.

Haute Romantics examines a growing subsection of artists creating work that maps the ideals of late 18th century Romanticism. Untamed landscape, aesthetic beauty, escapism, youth — these themes not only permeate the exhibition, but build upon a period three hundred years passed, in which emotion was seen as a crucial authentic source of aesthetic experience. While the geography and living conditions specific to New York may, at least in part, inform this renewed sensitivity, it clearly extends beyond the city’s borders.

Notably, much of the work included in the exhibition capitalizes on fashion as subject matter, an industry similarly influenced by Romanticism. Ryan McGinley, well-known for his commercial photography work, presents a figurative collage put together while working at Vice Magazine. Also working in collage, Sara VanDerBeek and Asher Penn respectively create and source manipulated fashion photography; each taking a somber tone while alluding to a confused, distorted memory. Katherine Bernhardt's giant expressionistic paintings of swatches, by contrast, seem almost celebratory.

Rather than using pre-existing fashion magazines and ads as material or inspiration, K8 Hardy creates a gender-renegade fashion identity of her own. The exhibition of Hardy's magazine spreads coincides with the launch of her new clothing line J'APPROVE. Cian McConn and Kristen Jensen's melancholic performance project “Vacation from Mine” is an improvisational response to their surroundings. Naomi Fisher and Sebastian Mlynarski's photography contrasts our connection with nature against the order of contemporary culture. Fisher also showcases like-minded drawings in the show.

Like Mlynarski, some artists address the subject of fashion tangentially, or even not at all. Taking a very quiet approach to his art making practice, Paul Gabrielli, employs beauty in light and form to express the poignancy of a single thought. Peter Sutherland's documental photography meditates on beauty with a focus on the banal while the wax trompe l’oeil vanitas sculptures of Maximilian Schubert suggest a similarly quiet Romanticism within the everyday.

The exhibition isn't without its own form of meta-textual introspection; The Delusional Downtown Divas offer a satirical look at the intersection of beauty, the ideals of late 18th century Romanticism, and fashion. Haute Romantics highlights four episodes from their self-titled video series, each focused on the attempts of three privileged young artists' to enter the New York art world. If this show (in addition to hosting Rob Pruitt's Art Awards at the Guggenheim) is any indication, they appear to have done just that.

Haute Romantics runs from February 11th through March 20th. An opening reception will take place at the gallery on February 11th and again on the 13th as part of a larger circuit of openings occurring across the city. Art Fag City Editor-in-Chief Paddy Johnson will deliver a lecture about the show on the 18th of February at the Gallery.

This exhibition was originally conceived by Karen Archey for Art Fag City.

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