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Category Archives: Artist Profile

Daniel Newman

October 13, 2011 – 11:59 am

C-TOWN

Daniel Newman’s ongoing twofold project—Cleavages—is a witty and decisive investigation of thoughtful oversized mash-up celebrity portraits paired with heavily layered collages. Intuitive and penetrating, Newman’s work keenly clefts a spattering of Western society’s fixation and neuroses with images and moments connected to personages of interest. Incisive visual splits and fused optical layers blur and mend his carefully curated narrative collections. The work seams emphatic junctures of pop culture past and hearsay, indicating clues and possibilities of deeper significance in the personal linkages of stardom and related stories—truth and dirt collide.

Visually scratching at the constantly fraying edges of stardom and icon, Newman demonstrates and montages the rampant rumors connected with elevated status of legend—the layering, splitting and shape-shifting of facts and individuals. The prestigious few and twisted narratives that he presents, melds into moments that seemingly talk over one-another, thus vibrating and humming like the low mumble of a dense, fanatical crowd. The photo montages and collages successfully maintain a consistent visual white noise, reminiscent of an inside dirty joke you’d love to know.

CLEAVAGE

Newman suggests the hidden back stories of each depiction through the titling of the portraits. For example, the work titled ROSEBUD pairs Marion Davies and Gandhi. The back story suggests that William Randolph Hearst’s pet name for Marion Davies’ clitoris was “rosebud,” or at least, that was a popular rumor in Hollywood at the time of Orson Welles making of Citizen Kane. This led to Hearst doing everything in his power to destroy Welles; it could be argued that he succeeded. Marion Davies also had a pet dog named “Gandhi” (a dachshund). As another example, the work aptly titled CLEAVAGES perceptibly fuses Jayne Mansfield and Sophia Loren. The two starlets are forever linked by the famous photo of Loren gazing Mansfield’s exposed cleavage at Romanoff’s in Beverly Hills in 1957.

ORANGEPICKER

With smaller collages successfully operating similarly to his large-scale portraits—yet, more so as unique book-like objects almost topographic in form—Newman frames them in such a manner that the viewer is unable to do any flipping or exploring beyond what is readily seen. Dozens of papers are stapled together to create narratives of free association. The work is sandwiched inside nostalgic frames so the collaged stack is convex. One is forced to create meaning out of the tiny edges of papers under each frame’s glass, trusting Newman has, in fact, imbedded more to discover than what is given, comparable to a locked diary. Newman skillfully presents glimpses and interpretations of layered importance and depth, proposing strata of hidden meanings—double-take of saga, experience, fetish and intent.

The seductively overlaid portraits and densely collaged works corroborate with ideas of life as a tangled web or knot—especially of life and lore in the limelight. How do these trivial tales and images prolong and linger? Trails of vision, desire and idle talk become readily banded in the collective periphery. Celebrity worship ensues.

ROSEBUD

Newman’s work accomplishes great interest in the re-purposing of iconographic imagery alone. The back story, no matter how big or small, positive or negative, resonates within the work as hypnagogic, beckoning a disturbance and supporting its successes on levels closer to the narrative of the lies that are in fact photography and celebrity… and how they will always be and have always been lies we will continue to believe.

THE CLAIRVOYANT

Daniel Newman was born in 1978 in Jacksonville, Florida. He graduated from The Cooper Union School of Art in New York City in 2002. Recent solo exhibitions include PUENTE/TEXAS FLICKERS at Tomorrowland, Miami and CHA-CHA (HALLOWEEN) AND OTHER RECENT PHOTOGRAPHS for Light and Wire Gallery, Los Angeles. Recent group exhibitions include WIT, curated by Glenn O’Brien, for Paddle8 and COMMERCIAL BREAK, curated by Neville Wakefield, at the 54th Venice Biennale.

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Barry Stone

October 12, 2011 – 10:16 am

Woman on the Cell, Austin, TX

Barry Stone’s various projects speak to the multiplicity of contemporary photography. Stone works in a variety of styles, from the ‘straight photography’ of his personal environment (Highway 71 Revisited), to drawing/sketching upon appropriated imagery (Hum), and manipulated reproductions of Ansel Adams photographs (My Musent Touch It.) This distinctive magpie aesthetic illuminates the decontextualized nature of the artist’s source material. ‘The found’ images, as well Stone’s seemingly-casual original photographs, traffic in the familiar language of the uprooted visual signifier. Personal photographs inform images of cultural icons in delightfully disjointed sequences. An image of Nikki Six from Hum, perhaps culled from a forgotten issue of Cream Magazine, details the minutiae of 1980s hair-metal fashion. Such machismo, infused with both the gender fluidity of early MTV and Reagan-era politics, rebounds throughout the series. An aging, forlorn Camaro, as well as a framed poster for Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, echo cultural notions and redressings of gender identity. Stone’s irreverent sampling from disparate sources both limns the differences and elicits comparisons of various media.

Targets, Texas Parks and Wildlife Expo, Austin, TX

Welcome, Highway 290, Austin, TX

Dickinson Falls, 2010

Stone’s rock-slinging at the conventions of photography is not confined to issues of subject matter. His images are often exhibited in various print sizes, and displayed upon the gallery wall at varying heights and in inconsistent spatial relationships to each other. The viewer is compelled to move back, to physically remove herself from the wall, so that the entirety of the work may be viewed at once. She must then move closer to more fully examine the larger prints, and closer still – right up to the wall – to view the details of the smallest prints. This forced perambulation suggests the singularity of each image (up close), the relationship between adjacent images (farther from the wall), the connection between images placed apart (farther yet), and finally, the images as one distinct patchwork, a mosaic of singularities to be consumed separately or together.

Barry Stone

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John Lehr

October 10, 2011 – 8:00 am

Crumpled Cheeseburger, 2008

With his latest solo exhibition named after a term for type proofreaders and containing photographs with titles such as (sic) and Gibberish the comparison to language in John Lehr’s work is quite apparent. The majority of the work in Stet, Lehr’s former exhibition at Kate Werble Gallery, contained extremely close cropped photographs of advertisements and other commercial signage. Despite the fact that the original intent of these advertisements is to communicate, there is not much discernible information to be found in most of Lehr’s images. Instead, Lehr is much more concentrated on the aesthetic disruption of these signs in our society. Images such as (Sic) depict an advertising sign that has broken down and has become a functionless tool for communication. In this image, as with many of his others, Lehr plays with the implied space of the photograph and creates an incredible amount of surface tension within an image that appears to be almost caving in on itself.

sic, 2009

Marquee, 2010

Although the relationship between humans and the commercial landscape has been a major focus for much of Lehr’s career, his most recent work seems to show less interest on the surrounding environment and more about advertising objects themselves. Lehr’s intensely saturated and slightly over exposed photographs vividly presents the artificiality of both the subject matter and literal construction of these signs. Additionally, with these photographs printed nearly to the same size as the actual objects they depict, and displayed without frames or borders, they create an intriguing play between real life object and representation.

Bread and Graffiti, 2008

Gibberish, 2010

One could read Lehr’s work as an examination on America’s obsession with consumerism and advertising, however his critique never seems to be an overbearingly harsh one. Rather, Lehr’s work often falls into a mature degree of deadpan absurdity. Photographs such as Bread and Graffiti demonstrate the humor of finding such contrasting forms of signage within in the same environment. However, in Lehr’s pristine, but barren landscape, it is hard to decipher what looks more out of place.

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Sasha Rudensky

October 7, 2011 – 6:39 am

Red Square, from the Novij Mir Series, 2010

Sasha Rudensky is a Russian-born photographer who moved to the United States as a young child. In an attempt to maintain the artist’s connection to her heritage, Rudensky’s work explores her native country. Over the past 30 years, the Soviet Union has undergone much social and political change, a subject that serves as a dynamic base for her photographic practice. On a broader level, Rudensky seeks to catch the true identity of a place, defined by its people, culture, politics and history. Her photographs target the intimate details of daily life, which she believes form the heart of a place.

School House, Serpuxov, Russia, from the Remains Series, 2005

Her overall practice is very formal. She selects her subjects for aesthetic and pictorial reasons, while also being color centric and using only natural light. The driving force behind her artwork is the urge to connect with Russia, so much so that the artist has a genuine empathy with her subjects; each one is a part of her. The photographs serve as a mental map of imagined and real memories from a lost childhood. She endows a political theme by photographing most of her work in the former Soviet Union. As her practice evolved, she realized that there was more that she wanted to present than desolate and ruined towns. More importantly, is the link between the past and the present, the young Russian girl and the American photographer.

Bus Station, Sevastopol, Ukraine, from the Remains Series, 2004

Each of her haunting subjects is set against a different backdrop of Eastern Europe, often representing a part of herself that never fully left. While Rudensky stages the photographs and selects her subjects beforehand, the entire process is more casual and natural then her polished photographs appear. In actuality, the setting is loosely staged and the subjects are asked to act themselves. Her most recent series, Novij Mir, which in English translates as “New World,” highlights a new generation of Russians. Rudensky seeks to portray the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, by showing how as a people they are reinventing themselves.

Dressing, from the Novij Mir Series, 2009

This questioning of identity through portraiture also leads to the ongoing discovery of what defines a place. Which raises the larger question: How does place affect the definition of home and what our idea of home is? ‘Red Square’ is an adept example of Rudensky’s artistic practice. The photograph was taken from her friend’s window last winter. The snowy haze over the iconic square gives it an ethereal quality. In the composition the Red Square is perfectly framed – appearing to only be a projection, more fantasy than reality. ‘Red Square,’ like her other photographs, is a visual translation of Rudensky’s memories of home. Her nostalgia-tinged pictures oscillate between present day reality and the illusion of the past.

Art School, from the Novij Mir Series, 2009

Sasha Rudensky was born in Moscow, Russia and began taking pictures in high school. She moved on to study Studio Art and Russian Literature at Wesleyan University where she received a BA, and received her MFA in photography from Yale University in 2008. She is currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Art at Wesleyan University and Lecturer at Yale University.

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Ellen Jong

October 4, 2011 – 9:43 am

Carnal Script, Page 31, 2009 from Getting to Know My Husband's Cock

Ellen Jong is a photographer and multimedia artist who lives and works in New York City. She has authored two books of photographs, Pees on Earth (2006) and Getting to Know my Husband’s Cock (2010). She chooses two of our most intimate and commonly shared experiences—peeing and loving—and explores them fully and completely, the only parameter being her personal experience.

Jong shoots with small format cameras, available light, and often times without the use of a tri-pod or viewfinder. Her images are loose and informal. The use of grain, contrast, blur, glare, and tilt are typical. There is very little control, which is important, especially in Pees on Earth. The images are an event, a thing that happened, was photographed, and will never happen again.

from Pees on Earth

Pees on Earth is essentially a travel diary. It is a collection of photographs that spans several years and continents, bound together by a single subject: the author urinating in public. Jong pees on anything and everything to be found in the public domain. Sidewalks, front stoops, fire escapes, box trucks, front yards, on roofs, under trees, into cups, in the sand and the snow. The images are first and foremost, very pretty. The liquid is alluring, illuminated, an elegant spray, or sparkling droplets. In other images it’s a puddle or a graphic splotch on the pavement, like a Rorscach for passersbys. By virtue of the topic they explore, the images are very easy to relate to.

The process that Jong develops in Pees on Earth is unique, part performance, part landscape, and part self-portrait. The act of peeing becomes possessive, leaving a piece of you behind. The photograph itself becomes memorial, a proof of existence.

Cockatoos, 2009, from Getting to Know My Husband's Cock

Pees on Earth

Getting To Know My Husband’s Cock is similar yet different. Similar in the way that it’s a book comprised of beautiful images and intimate content, and infused with genuine sentiment. But this book has a little more poise. There are many images of Jong’s Husband’s Cock. But there are also images of sex, still lifes made in their home, landscapes, portraits of their cat, and words. Jong punctuates the book with full-page images of handwritten notes she calls Carnal Script. One of the smartest and funniest sets of pages is a full-page image of a handwritten note that reads: “’Til death do us part,” immediately followed by a full-page image of a cemetery. The cemetery is in mottled glow time light, in the center is a tall erect head stone framed by part of a v-shaped tree trunk. It looks like exactly what it sounds like, a dick between two legs. It might be a hokey image if it wasn’t saved by its sincerity.

My favorite image is of Jong’s husband performing oral sex on her (page 60); the photograph is made from her perspective, framed on the sides by each of her legs and on top by her spread hand, which shields his face from the flash of the camera. Her husband’s eyes are gently closed. He is completely consumed, and consumed is the word.

Cum, 2008, from Getting to Know My Husband's Cock

Birthday Flowers, 2006, from Getting to Know My Husband's Cock

Both Pees on Earth and Getting To Know My Husband’s Cock are at once deeply personal and entirely relatable. In a conversation between Jong and Annie Sprinkle—published in Pees on Earth—Sprinkle says, “Body- or sex-oriented media is a mirror that can be held up to people to look at and respond to.” That is true in each of Jong’s books. While looking at these images, we can’t help but think, “I know what this feels like.”

Jong’s pictures are like the conversations that you have on your best friends couch when you share a joint, or a beer, or a bowl of vegetables, or whatever it is you most enjoy sharing with friends. They are about the sensations we all have—physical and emotional—that we admit to our spouses, our friends, and ourselves but rarely ever commit to a public forum. Jong does that and then some.

ellenjong.com

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Category Archives: Artist Profile

Daniel Newman

Barry Stone

John Lehr

Sasha Rudensky

Ellen Jong

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