Sergio Gomez installation

The Bleeding Border

The Beeding Border – detail

The Bleeding Border detail

The Bleeding Border
Border text around the painting reads as follows:
Illusion and deception. One door opens, another one closes before their eyes. In the silence of the night, “mojaditos” crying as they cross the line. The “coyote” is on the run. They don’t understand why. 
Dream and reality is their wonderland in disguise. Someone’s children, anonymous shadows to the rest of us. Thousands of 
unspoken and ignored inconveniences. One bleeding border, one more night.

This installation raises awareness and gives voice to the thousands of unknown children that have lost their lives trying to cross the US/Mexican border.  The New York Times wrote about this issue in 2003. Read it here:

www.nytimes.com/2003/11/03/world/crossing-with-strangers-children-border-littlest-immigrants-left-hands-smugglers.html

To contact this artist: sergio@33contemporary.com

Tulika Ladsariya Installation: “Work-Life Balance”

Tulika Ladsariya: “Work-Life Balance”

Tulika Ladsariya: “Hammering”

Work-Life Balance

Tulika Ladsariya’s work is a social commentary on  the issues of labor and literacy faced in India. The hand-drawn cart, an often seen vehicle on the streets of Mumbai, fluidly converts itself into a home. It explores the life lived outside and the dreams in the heart of young children forced to grow up too soon.

Work Life Balance is 75” x 22” x 25” and has been constructed almost exclusively of appropriated/ found objects. The term ‘jugaad’– which literally means low cost motor vehicle and colloquially means a creative idea, or a quick workaround which has to be used because of lack of resources–  is being explored by the artist.

Other works by Tulika Ladsariya can be viewed at: http://tulika.ladsariya.com

Peterson, Ng & Sell installing

Nebulous Connections

Nebulous Connections – detail

Stacy Peterson, Pei San Ng & Amie Sell: Nebulous Connections

During the month of April, ART ON ARMITAGE window gallery will present an installation by former Chicago Art Department artists-in-residence Stacy Peterson, Pei San Ng and Amie Sell. This collaboration explores the Golden Age, the era that we are just waking up to. It is a time of unity, harmony and prosperity.

This concept evolved from a trip to Creative Reuse Warehouse with the aim of constructing an art installation made of recycled materials. Using leftover industrial hardware and metal wires, the parts were woven together to create connections, building something bigger than the single item. The nebulous cloud shapes are a visual representation of how people work together to create communities and social networks as well as how molecular structures build. It is also a play on cloud computing which relies on the sharing of resources rather than storing information on local servers. A wholeness or oneness is created out of the individual pieces. And in the words of Aristotle, “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”.

Other works by the artists can be viewed at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stacypeterson/collections/

http://peisanng.com/

www.amiesell.com

Ginny Sykes sculpture

Ginny Sykes mixed media assemblage

Ginny Sykes mixed media painting

Ginny Sykes explores memory and dreams in new mixed media sculptures. She uses recycled materials such as bones, wood, metal, and fabric collected through the years, adding paint to the surfaces. Sykes mixes abstraction and anthropomorphic form in a visceral aesthetic that cultivates a deliberate dissonance between beauty and ugliness. Informed by feminism and Jung’s theories of alchemy and transformation, these works are poetic “storytellers”, contemporary artifacts that speak of, and to the body; about its losses, pain, and survival.

to contact this artist: www.ginnysykes.com

San Francisco Street

Brandy Kraft paintings

Rush, Tcentralen, Stockholm

Come by for the artist’s closing reception on Thursday Feb 28 from 5 -8 pm!

Brandy Kraft began painting in 2009 and focuses on a slightly distorted photo-realistic style. Her most recent series of oil paintings are about light and movement.

Kraft recently relocated from Stockholm, Sweden, where she spent one year refining her technique in the painting/drawing program at Atelier Stockholm (Swedish Academy for Realist Art).

She is drawn to the sense of mystery that is transposed when trying to grasp the image of an object in motion. This feeling of ambiguity leaves the viewer with seemingly timeless or time suspended in air impression.
Light, the fastest thing known to man, takes on a lethargic personality as it is portrayed listlessly wandering to the viewer’s eye.

Her dynamic and colorful canvases are easily relatable as they capture just a split second of busy city life. Images of riding the subway, crossing the street, and bustling through a crowded subway station strike a connection in the heart of every metropolitan traveler.

To contact this artist:

www.brandykraft.com

Body1

Body 2

Body 3

As humans we desire to reach an unattainable perfection. One way we have fulfilled our desire for perfection is by creating surrogates for ourselves, representations such as mannequins and sculptures. Art historians tell us that in ancient Greek sculpture formations standards were created for the ideal male body. This ideal that has been placed on stone and metal, also has been superimposed onto the real human body in contemporary culture. In this group of images, I have been exploring the idea that men in society today have been pressured to appear as the ideal male physique.

The problems associated with body image problems are more commonly accepted as a women’s issue, but men today have been placed on an equal playing field. Practices such as plastic surgery and steroid use for men have become common.

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, in 2003, men underwent 13 percent of all procedures. The ASPS reports that cosmetic plastic surgery procedures in men rose 2 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. (ASPS)  The ideal is unobtainable when the body is not capable of achieving into the proportions that are considered perfect.

This body of work has evolved over the semesters. I began creating a catalog of bodies of men and comparing the difference between them. I focused on the body parts that men concentrated on the most when working out. Eventually I began to project photographs of the normal torso onto the stylized ideal shape of a mannequin. Projecting the photographs of the normal bodies creates a juxtaposition that raises interesting questions about this ideal/real dialectic. I found that by using the virtual projection on the solid object I was able to express these cultural issues of men with body issues in a visual representation.

To contact this artist:

derrickhawkins9@gmail.com

Kristin Abhalter’s ‘glitter soldier’ installed

1.030,000,000,000 – 1,415,000,000,000

detail

One Trillion Thirty Billion to One Trillion Four Hundred and Fifteen Billion

Glitter, with its dazzling reflective light, is uniquely compelling. I associate glitter with joy, optimism, and illumination.  My sculpture practice began by coating found-object plaster animals with glitter and has evolved into designing and constructing new forms.  Observance of the 10-year anniversary of the war in Afghanistan provoked the idea of connecting this irresistible material with an object of strong symbolic meaning.

The sculpture is over 6’ tall, made of carved foam, acrylic, plaster, resin, and over 10 lbs. of glitter.

I would like my work to raise awareness about organizations working toward peace.

Peace Action peace-action.org
Iraq Veterans Against the War ivaw.org

To contact this artist:

www.kristinabhalter.com

Recovering Consciousness, 54″ x 54″ x 18″

Recovering Consciousness detail

detail 2

“Recovering Consciousness” is a sculpture made from clay and repurposed salvaged objects, exploring his own interpretation of the return of Quetzalcoatl as the return of our consciousness.

Alfonso’s sculptural pieces are compelling social commentary on the human condition in the 21st century, referencing and blending with Mexican cultural mythologies.

To see more of his work or to contact this artist:

www.anrstudios.com

Installation – John E. Bannon

Dimentia #8

See Level – detail

John Bannon’s work can properly be called “light paintings.”

The Dimentia series consists of 10 pieces that incorporate heavily saturated hues generated from like-colored pigment and neon light, separated by walls to keep the colors from bleeding.

Viewed from directly in front, the composition flattens, and appears to be a two-dimensional image in three-dimensional space, creating an illusion of a three-dimensional composition in a two-dimensional space.

See Level is painted directly on glass and illuminated from behind.

To contact this artist: www.johnebannon.com

Re:Morse installation

Re:Morse detail

Re:Morse

Re:Morse

The forms and placement of fungi and lichens often suggest languages to me, perhaps messages conveyed by coexistent species that humans are unable, unwilling, or too intellectually arrogant to decipher; messages concerning our beleaguered planet.

Re:Morse combines several species of cup fungi, which often grow in burnt, wasted environments.

My medium of choice is paper made from fibers I process and sometimes harvest myself.  I work with handmade paper specifically for its minimal environmental impact.

These pieces are made of kozo, the inner bark of the mulberry tree, and abaca, a fiber derived from the stems of banana leaves.

To contact this artist: www.melissajaycraig.com