Jannis Kounellis - Arte Povera

Jannis Kounellis ( 23 March 1936 – 16 February 2017) was a Greek Italian contemporary artist based in Rome. A key figure associated with Arte Povera, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome.n 1967, Kounellis became associated with Arte Povera, a movement theorized by curator Germano Celant as a major shift from work on flat surfaces to installations. Kounellis participated in the exhibition 'Arte Povera – e IM Spazio' at the La Bertesca Gallery in Genoa curated by Celant, which brought together artists whose work was concerned with the space between art and life, and nature and culture. Examples of artists who substantiated this basis of Arte Povera as a movement include Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali and Emilio Prini. To solidify the movement, Celant curated yet another group show, 'Arte Povera', which was exhibited at the De' Foscherari gallery in Bologna in 1968 with similar artists. In the same year Kounellis exhibited 'Senza titolo (Untitled)', which consisted of raw wool, rope and a wooden structure all leaning against a wall. Finally, Kounellis was also included in 'RA3 Arte Povera + Azioni povere' which was organized by Marcello Rumma and curated by Celant.In 1967, Kounellis installed "live birds in cages along with rose-shaped, cloth cut-outs pinned to canvas" alongside his painting. Through this shift in his work, "Kounellis was more interested in anarchical freedom from linguistic norms and conventional materials. The space of the gallery and the exhibition site in general were transformed into a stage where real life and fiction could join in a suspension of disbelief." The viewers became part of the scene of these living natural sources of energy within the gallery space. He continued his involvement with live animals later in 1969, when he exhibited twelve living horses, as if they were cars, in the Galleria l'Attico's new location in an old garage in Via Beccaria. Gradually, Kounellis introduced new materials, such as propane torches, smoke, coal, meat, ground coffee, lead, and found wooden objects into his installations. He also looked beyond the gallery environment to historical (mostly industrial) sites. In 1997, Kounellis installed thirteen wardrobes and two doors that were sealed in lead along a scaffolding ledge that blocked the entry to a central hall. In 1968, in an interview by Marisa Volpi, Kounellis stated that incidental adjustments are certain as aspects that can indicate the human liberty of life.Wikipedia

Robert W. Mallary - Neo-Dada Art

Robert W. Mallary (Dec. 2, 1917-Feb. 10, 1997) was an American sculptor and pioneer in computer art. He was renowned for his Neo-Dada or "junk art" sculpture in the 1950s and '60s, created from found materials and urban detritus, using liquid plastics and resins. In 1968 he created one of the world's first computer-generated sculptures.Mallary was born in Toledo, Ohio, and grew up in Berkeley, California. He was interested in art from his youth, and went to Mexico City to study at the Escuela de Las Artes Del Libro (now the Escuela Nacional de Artes Gráficas) in 1938-39, and then at the Academy of San Carlos in 1942-43, where he was inspired by José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He also studied at the Painter's Workshop School in Boston, Massachusetts in 1941.He worked as an advertising Art Director in California from 1945-48, and as a freelance commercial artist until 1954, as he continued to pursue his fine arts career. Mallary's paintings (made with liquid polyester) were shown at the Urban Gallery in New York City in 1954, where he had four other exhibits until 1959. He also exhibited at Gump's Gallery in San Francisco (1953) and the Santa Fe Museum in Arizona (1958).Mallary arranged found objects — discarded cardboard or fabrics — which he covered with polyester resin to create abstract relief sculptures and assemblages. He also produced works using sand and straw hardened with polyester resin. A prominent example of Mallary's "junk art" style was his monumental "Cliffhangers" sculpture, exhibited outside the New York State Pavilion at the 1964 World's Fair in Flushing, NY. Other pieces of Mallary's work were included in the "Sculpture U.S.A." and "Sixteen Americans" exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in 1959, and then at its "Art of Assemblage" exhibition in 1961. He was selected for a $1,000 preliminary award in the U.S. National section of the Guggenheim International Award in 1960, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1964. Wikipedia

 

Exposition Art Blog - Art For Sale

On my blog Exposition you can now also sell your art work . Please send me some pictures of your work with short description, details for example :painting, sculpture, size etc. Do not forget to add expected price( Euro or USD only), your contact details: email address, telephone number and link to your website if you have got one. Below I have included my email:  milenaolesinska@wp.pl
All art work will be published on the blog free of charge.......Milena Olesinska

Drager Meurtant

Drager Meurtant (1951, The Netherlands) has been active as “composer” and creative writer since 1980. In the more than three decades since his training as as veterinarian-biomedical researcher these creations were in the shape of scientific publications and – in free time – as poems. In more recent years (and learning rapidly) creations took form as sculptures (in particular assemblages), collages, paintings and graphical works. As autodidact and experienced carpenter, the circle saw, the jig-saw, chisel, gouge, hammer is used to handle natural materials (wood, stone) in addition to manufactured (paper, cloth) and construction material (metal, glass, etcetera). Much of the basic elements are from demolition- / remnant materials ("recycling art"). Walking in civilized areas as well as in nature, making photographs is considered complementary in the attempt to catch the world we live in.
Writing: “Assemblages: the entrails explained” in Axon Journal, Issue 9 (Assemblage): http://www.axonjournal.com.au/issue-9/assemblages
Other essays with views or reviews on art: www.dragermeurtant.wordpress.com. and on http://kdoutsiderart.tumblr.com/dragermeurtant
Memberhip:  The International Society of Assemblage and Collage Artists (US), Artlyst (UK)
Supporter of  Platform Free Fossil Fund: to make culture free from sponsoring by fossil fuel industries (www.fossilfundsfree.org).
The artist has exhibited work in The Netherlands, Germany, The USA; one related publication by Walter van Teeffelen, World artists and their story – 23 – Drager Meurtant, October 8, 2016, 

Fragments
text to artwork:
"Upon sorting / the fragments are assembled. // Even then / does the whole relief / breath the air of separate parts."
(2015, assemblage – collage, wood, board, cement, paint), 33 x 44 x 5 cm

ensemble de metaphores
text to artwork:
"These two halves / taken together / are at greater distance / from one another / than if left apart."
(2015, assemblage (wall-sculpture), wood, metal, paper, paint. recycling material) 48 x 55 x 11 cm

 movement from within
text to artwork:
"When the pieces were seen fit / and fixed in their proper position / the movement was undeniable / as it arose from within."
(2016, assemblage, relief, wood, paper, paint, sand) 50x50x7 cm

Surface
"The surface of no image / can beat the depth / below the reality. // The raw nucleus of nature / does not reveal."
(2017, photograph)

when the going gets tough
text to artwork:
"When the going gets tough, the tough get going" / is what they say. // We'll see / where I stand."
(2017, assemblage, recycling material with wood, iron filings, and resin, sand and paint) 31 x 21 x 4 cm.

Jetzt Tout
text to artwork:
"Wir treuen falsche Freunde um mehr Kultur”
(we trust false friends for more culture)

A certain aim
text to artwork:
A movement, / if not circular / is supposed to serve / a particular aim. //
But what, / if a stand still / under the circumstances / is the optimal / condition?
(2017, monoprint, mixed media) size of paper 32x24 cm

Mixed-Media

Barton Lidicé Benes - Conceptual art

Barton Lidicé Beneš (1942-2012) was born in Westwood, New Jersey on November 16, 1942. Beneš first came to prominence during the 1980s with his whimsical constructions of shredded currency and later with his signature “museums,” gridded arrangements of relics from Ancient Egypt to Hollywood. He transformed fragments of our throwaway culture into art that sometimes addressed taboo subjects and often used unconventional materials including cremation ashes, shells, bodily fluids, currency and shredded money, relics, celebrity artifacts and found objects. Beneš was a first-generation veteran of the AIDS crisis and chronicled his own HIV+ status in Lethal Weapons, a series of works created with his own blood. This exhibit toured Europe in the 1990s and traveled to Lund, Sweden, where authorities intervened and demeaned installation be heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit in a hospital oven to make it “safe” for public viewing. These provocative pieces confront HIV/AIDS head-on, blending political activism, visual poetry and a wicked sense of humor, forcing viewers to face their fears of death and transmission. His work continues to serve as a symbol of resistance, engaging a new generation in the evolving conversation about art and AIDS.
At the forefront of New York’s burgeoning gay scene in the post-Stonewall era, Beneš was also featured in numerous documentaries about art, AIDS and gay history, including Lovett Productions’ Gay Sex in the 70s. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at The Cleveland Museum of Art; North Dakota Museum of Art; The Katonah Museum of Art; The New York Public Library; and Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as Centre Pompidou, Paris; Boras Konstmuseum, Sweden; and Old Town Hall, Prague. His work is in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, The Smithsonian, The U.S. Mint and North Dakota Museum of Art. Beneš is represented by Pavel Zoubok Gallery in New York.(visualaids.org)

Minimalist objects Donald Judd

Donald Judd (June 3, 1928 – February 12, 1994) was an American artist associated with minimalism (a term he nonetheless stridently disavowed).In his work, Judd sought autonomy and clarity for the constructed object and the space created by it, ultimately achieving a rigorously democratic presentation without compositional hierarchy. It created an outpouring of seemingly effervescent works that defied the term "minimalism". Nevertheless, he is generally considered the leading international exponent of "minimalism," and its most important theoretician through such seminal writings as "Specific Objects
In the late 1940s, Donald Judd began to practice as a painter. His first solo exhibition, of expressionist paintings, opened in New York in 1957. From the mid-1950s to 1961, as he explored the medium of the woodcut, Judd progressively moved from figurative to increasingly abstract imagery, first carving organic rounded shapes, then moving on to the painstaking craftsmanship of straight lines and angles. His artistic style soon moved away from illusory media and embraced constructions in which materiality was central to the work. He would not have another one person show until the Green Gallery in 1963, an exhibition of works that he finally thought worthy of showing.

By 1963 Judd had established an essential vocabulary of forms — ‘stacks’, ‘boxes’ and ‘progressions’ — which preoccupied him for the next thirty years. Most of his output was in freestanding "specific objects" (the name of his seminal essay of 1965 published in Arts Yearbook 8, 1965), that used simple, often repeated forms to explore space and the use of space. Humble materials such as metals, industrial plywood, concrete and color-impregnated Plexiglas became staples of his career. Judd's first floor box structure was made in 1964, and his first floor box using Plexiglas followed one year later. Also by 1964, he began work on wall-mounted sculptures, and first developed the curved progression format of these works in 1964 as a development from his work on an untitled floor piece that set a hollow pipe into a solid wooden block. While Judd executed early works himself (in collaboration with his father, Roy Judd), in 1964 he began delegating fabrication to professional artisans and manufacturers (such as the industrial manufacturers Bernstein Brothers) based on his drawings. In 1965, Judd created his first stack, an arrangement of identical iron units stretching from floor to ceiling.

As he abandoned painting for sculpture in the early 1960s, he wrote the manifesto-like essay “Specific Objects” in 1964. In his essay, Judd found a starting point for a new territory for American art, and a simultaneous rejection of residual inherited European artistic values, these values being illusion and represented space, as opposed to real space. He pointed to evidence of this development in the works of an array of artists active in New York at the time, including H.C. Westermann, Lucas Samaras, John Chamberlain, Jasper Johns, Dan Flavin, George Earl Ortman and Lee Bontecou. The works that Judd had fabricated inhabited a space not then comfortably classifiable as either painting or sculpture and in fact he refused to call them sculpture, pointing out that they were not sculpted but made by small fabricators using industrial processes. That the categorical identity of such objects was itself in question, and that they avoided easy association with well-worn and over-familiar conventions, was a part of their value for Judd. He displayed two pieces in the seminal 1966 exhibit, "Primary Structures" at the Jewish Museum in New York where, during a panel discussion of the work, he challenged Mark di Suvero's assertion that real artists make their own art. He replied that methods should not matter as long as the results create art; a groundbreaking concept in the accepted creation process. In 1968, the Whitney Museum of American Art staged a retrospective of his work which included none of his early paintings.
In 1968, Judd bought a five-story building in New York that allowed him to start placing his work in a more permanent manner than was possible in gallery or museum shows. This would later lead him to push for permanent installations for his work and that of others, as he believed that temporary exhibitions, being designed by curators for the public, placed the art itself in the background, ultimately degrading it due to incompetency or incomprehension. This would become a major preoccupation as the idea of permanent installation grew in importance and his distaste for the art world grew in equal proportion.Wikipedia