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Karen archey

Finally, a Semi-Definitive Definition of Post-Internet Art

by Paddy Johnson on October 14, 2014
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Those in search of a definitive text on post-internet artmaking now have a source book to download. Curators Karen Archey and Robin Peckham have released Art Post-Internet, a catalogue to accompany their show Art Post-Internet at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing China. More than that, it’s full of primary source research and information about post-internet art from dozens of critics, curators and museum professionals. These include Christiane Paul, Ben Davis, Domenico Quaranta and myself to name a few. Each catalog receives its own unique unique download number, as well as a weather report for the day and place where it was downloaded.

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Tuesday Links: Writers Explain Why Everyone Else is Wrong

by Whitney Kimball on January 15, 2013
  • Ben Davis doesn’t want to write another piece about the poisonous art market, but he believes it’s his responsibility, so he’s doing it. We’re glad he did. He singles out the big three that are ruining art for everybody: unsustainable contradictions (often, artists making wink art about money) inequality, and terrible people. “…personally, I feel that art is too important to become PR for tycoons,” he writes, “no matter how much they want to pay to make it so.” Amen, brother. [ARTinfo]
  • That Davis quote reminds us of a Bob Nickas quote tweeted by Karen Archey over the weekend. “Wealthy and powerful people—and boring people, and famous people—use art and artists to legitimize themselves.” [VICE]
  • 18 human heads found in box at the airport, only Gawker seems to notice that that’s weird. [Gawker]
  • Painting needs some categories in order to go anywhere, so writer Richard Kalina has made some. Basically, they are “mimetic” and “abstract.” [Brooklyn Rail]
  •  Remember when the Armory show was a shocking event? Neither do we, but this WNYC episode describes how the art there once helped the plunge into “absolute chaos and nightmare.” [WNYC]
  •  Erin Kissane does a good job of explaining why the Atlantic was wrong to run a sponsored article for Scientology. [Incisive.nu]
  •  Facebook just announced the new “graph search” feature that answers Facebook-specific questions like “restaurants my friends have been to” and “photos I’ve liked.” [CBS]
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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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In Our Masthead: Daniel G. Baird

by Karen Archey on September 28, 2009

POST BY KAREN ARCHEY

Daniel G. Baird and Robert Andrade, A Moon of Saturn Resting on a Doric Foundation, 2007. Wood, Polystyrene, Hydrocal. Image via Daniel G. Baird

Daniel G. Baird considers ideas endemic to Western society about culture and technology, often subverting ideas of technological progress with juxtapositions of their primitive translations. Baird, a Master of Fine Arts candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago, predominantly works through sculpture using found objects and those of his own creation.

The artist frequently makes use of CNC cut models, as evidenced by his 2007 collaboration with fellow graduate Robert Andrade. Titled “A Moon of Saturn Resting on a Doric Foundation,” the sculpture pairs the landscape of Titan—the terrain believed by scientists to closest resemble the environmental conditions of the Earth—with the Parthenon, an ancient representation of advanced human civilization. Here, Baird and Andrade collapse numerous centuries, subtly highlighting the innumerable, sometimes prodigal events accounting for our currently screwed up civilization, and consequent desire to inhabit an untapped alien world.


Daniel G. Baird Homo Habilis Hand Axe, 2007. Image courtesy the artist.

Baird similarly packages time in his 2007 piece Homo Habilis Hand Axe. Accredited with creating the most primitive of tools, the hand axe, the Homo habilis is an early ancestor of the Homo sapien. The artist acquired a batch of flint, transforming it into his own Homo habilis-style hand axe, which looks like a dagger made of rock. The tool was then sent to a 3D modeling company to be scanned into a computer. The company, who usually recreates artifacts for museums, manufactures (supposedly) exact replicas of much lesser value, allowing institution visitors a tactile experience with the “artifact.” The effect is a little like the French government's recreation of Lascaux' Paleolithic cave paintings: It was discovered that only fifteen years worth of human contact with the caves noticeably damaged their paintings—in response the French government created Lascaux II, an exact reproduction of select cave halls only 200 meters from the original. Similarly, Baird created an exact replica of his own artifact, although for a different purpose. In effect, the artist recreated the hand axe to test the efficacy of the computer in reproducing the most primitive version of itself—the tool. Reticent to spell out exactly what may be lost in the process, the artist simply offers the original and its computed progeny side-by-side, allowing the viewer to contemplate the technological progress of eons.

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So Long

by Whitney Kimball on February 13, 2015
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Dear readers,

After four years, and with a heavy heart, I’m moving on from Art F City and probably the art world at large.

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Bringing Back the Nerdocracy

by Paddy Johnson and Corinna Kirsch on January 9, 2015

love-blogrollChapter One: The Definitive Art F City Blogroll. Who you should read. Who you might have missed.

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