Symphony in D Minor, Chris Klapper & Patrick Gallagher at Skybox
Read DoN‘s interview with artists Chris Klapper and Patrick Gallagher about the creation of Symphony in D Minor at the new DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog.
Like DoNArTNeWs Philadelphia Art News Blog on FaceBook
Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58
DoNArTNeWS on Tumblr
@donniebeat on Instagram
DoN Brewer, Abstract Photography, Sky Holes, digital photograph, inkjet print
Sky Holes, a photograph of tree shadows on garden gates has been accepted in this year’s Art Ability International Juried Arts Exhibit for People Living with Disabilities at Bryn Mawr Rehab Center in Malvern, PA. The image plays a few optical tricks and color ways that are intriguing – the gray color on the left where the sun hits the black wood is the same tone as the shadow falling on the white door on the right, the green in the middle appears in the shadow but turns white in the light. The illusion of soft focus is the result of light shining through the spaces between the leaves and branches of the trees making sky holes of illumination. The term abstract is appropriate to apply to this landscape photograph because the image modifies the objects in the setting to patterns and colors, separates the elements from a concrete reality and emphasizes generalized shapes.
DoN Brewer, Abstract Photography, light being (Dee), digital photo
This photo appeared in The Plastic Club‘s Members Choice Art Show in August, read my story about light being (Dee) at SideArts.com.
DoN Brewer, Abstract Photography, light being (Frank), digital photograph, 2012
light being (Frank) is for all the departed Franks – Zappa, Sinatra, Anne – but the title is influenced by a favorite dance song called Frank Sinatra by Felix da Housecat – the lyrics go:
every night with my star friends
we eat caviar and drink champagne
sniffing in the v.i.p. area
we talk about frank sinatra
you know frank sinatra?
he’s dead…dead?
ha, ha, ha
The first DoNster who guesses the location where light being (Frank) was shot will get a free print.
Through SideArts.com, DoN is offering online and in-person one-on-one consulting services to visual and craft artists and art businesses. Read all about it here.
Written and Photographed by DoN Brewer
Follow DoN on Twitter @DoNNieBeat58
Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop on-line at Amazon.com and help support DoNArTNeWs.
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery
LiQin Tan explained to DoN the concept behind Primitive Level Signals, the spectacular multi-media exhibit at Dalet Gallery in Old City, “It’s an animation installation, it all uses 3D animation software to create the animations and we also have animation stills. Printed directly on the wood the prints use technology that is new, a new way to print on different materials, ridged materials, normally it must be much softer. Now you can use hard wood or metal, aluminum…”
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery
LiQin Tan explained, “Now I can print on all kinds of materials, not just paper. Also, the concept behind this is Chinese Taoism, what this means is that the Chinese have always dealt with five elements: fire, water, metal, earth and wood. All of the elements consistent with Nature is where the idea came from. Also my idea combines the ideas of the North American Indian people with ideas like the dream-catcher.”
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery
The gallery is filled with fascinating creations from the mind of LiQin Tan, there are prints on animal skin stretched in frames with industrial clamps paired with an abstract video on a glossy monitor mounted on the wall above the dream-catcher. “Using spirit levels as a signal to describe a natural phenomenon in humans, where human brain development is an equalized procedure. The competing concepts of the brain, whether the battle of the brain’s size versus it’s intellectual capacity , or of it’s technological versus spiritual side, are always kept in equalibrium” – Dalet Gallery art card.
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery
The gallery displays five pairings of prints on wood with accompanying video like these three above to represent the five Taoist elements: fire, water, metal, earth and wood. The animation stills printed on the panels of wood are ethereal, with Max Ernst-like abstract images that evoking dreams, mind storms, underwater mysteries and the being lost in the deep forest. The animations are mind-blowing in complexity and creativity. In the front gallery is a series of monitors, tangles all in wires and cables, with an animated lava flow ebbing back and forth using video game technology realness to the point that the piece looks hot from melted stone.
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery
“In this dream-catcher you see here, the animal skins, I made them by myself, is from the North American Indian people as well, they’re used in a way to represent their culture. I stole it from them. In the animation is the biggest stone, the spiritual stone.” said LiQin Tan. In the picture above is a shot, a still if you will, of a large dream-catcher, the animal hide stretched taut in the primitive circular frame using the same cruel clamps, the installation has two of them. From both sides of the darkened gallery four video projectors shined animations onto the stretched skins, the light shining through like when you hold a flashlight to the web on your hand. The animation includes dancing figures, “The Miao people, a small group of people in China, are represented by the dressed dancers…I mixed the cultures, I call it digital primitivism, using digital technology to make it primitive.” The effect is deeply spiritual, connecting with memories, archetypes, cultural resonance and internally rooted thoughts and ideals.
“You can see that in the animation, but I also used the American Indian skills because I made the animal skins by myself. Using primitive skills, using calf skin, this kind of skin the procedure is called primitive, so I used the primitive skills to make them digital. And I used digital skills to make primitive art.”
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery
“It’s a two-way work, digital art with old society and modern society, it’s multi-faceted. I like the North American Indian culture a lot. I did a lot of research in Canada and I made a lot of multimedia pieces about North American Indian culture, so it’s about how during the day I teach digital animation but I have North American Indian culture in my brain. So the idea came very easy, very natural especially when it connected with Chinese Taoism, I did a lot of research, I’m not a religious person but I read a lot of philosophy and a lot of the research is organized in this idea.”
LiQin Tan, Primitive Level Signals at Dalet Gallery through June 23rd.
Written and photographed by DoN
Affiliate Marketing [disclosure page] Shop with confidence on Amazon.com and help support DoNArTNeWs.
Cochlea by W.G. Middleton, James Harmon, Dr. Mindy George Weinstein, glass, acrylic, wire, 22x22x32″, W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery
DoN asked William G. Middleton about the eclectic mix of classical figurative sculptures with the eye-popping abstract mixed media pieces representing microscopic anatomy details? “It’s interesting. I’ve been doing this classical stuff for probably forty years. That’s how I went to art school, because I was doing that.” W.G. Middleton attended PAFA. “I got into it and I never did another classical piece of sculpture. For one thing, I was much older than a lot of the people in sculpture. So, they could afford to take year to do a piece, which is what it takes to do a mold and pour bronze. I said, ‘You know, I really don’t have that kind of time‘.”
W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery
“I turned to abstract sculpture, which was much more fun because you can sit around and think about it and it would evolve. And, so, that’s where I went for a long time but I’ve always liked to do classical pieces, you know?” DoN knows Bill from figure study workshops at The Philadelphia Sketch Club, his drawing skills are formidable. “I got away from doing those, I did one recently but that’s about it. Then, part of the evolution of doing these was in school I was studying how things worked in the body. I just kept going and going until I got to the microscopic level.”
W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery
“In classical works there are portions that are common – there are either seven or eight heads, there’s three heads to the belly button, there’s a direct proportion – well, in the interior stuff, there’s no relation to anything. But, it’s still basically form following function and it’s a totally different beauty involved. But, it all works for the same reason. I realized one day, it’s interesting I’ve gone from classical, totally different stuff, but it’s still in the body, it relates to the body.”
The dramatic sculpture in the window of Twenty-Two Gallery looks like found objects but Middleton explained, “No, it Boorman’s Space and the loop of Henle, so when blood comes in through here, it’s separated out, urine is separated out. It’s not forced, it’s a balance of fluids through a filter and then the blood continues down through the loop of Henle where it is again extracted comes around here and then actually the blood takes back certain things it needs. This is in the kidney, a pretty complex thing.”
W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery, Edy, clay, 19x17x20″
Retina, W.G. Middleton, James Harmon, Dr. Mindy George Weinstein, glass, acrylic, wire, 48x7x20″, W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery
Retina, a dazzling complex sculpture on a dramatic black platform, is a combination of glass, plexiglass and light, “It’s actually a replica of how the cell in the retina works. The colors come in and then they separate out and then they’re separated and sent to the brain through the rods and cones. The primary colors are the rods, and the cones are complementary. It’s interesting, it goes to the brain and is reconstructed but in a different image based on memories, so your experiences aren’t based on what you’re seeing. What you’re seeing and what I’m seeing are totally different. You don’t realize it, but…”
W.G. Middleton, Body Aesthetic at Twenty-Two Gallery through May 6, 2012.
Photographed and written by DoN Brewer
Jessica Hoffman: Forever and After @ 110 Church Street Gallery
Dear Mad, I Really Like Your Hair! Love Johnny, hair strands from Jessica Hoffman‘s head in glassine envelopes.
Jessica Hoffman: Forever and After @ 110 Church Street Gallery
Slideshow, vials of shavings from photographic slides the artist found. Hoffman scraped off bits of each slide, saved the scrapings, then presents the slide show with the bits of image removed. Each vial is labeled with the trip, location and time period the slides were taken.
Jessica Hoffman: Forever and After @ 110 Church Street Gallery
Talent Show, split screen video footage projected on the wall.
DoN saw this show two weeks ago and has thought about it often as he scooted around town seeing art over the Philadelphia Open Studio Tours 2011 festival, leaving little time to report. But Jessica Hoffman‘s show is about memory and the passage of time. Forever and After incorporates three major narrative elements used in ways that look at the passage of time in abstract even obtuse angles. “Slideshow is an investigation of memory, using a collection of found slides from the 1960s and 1970s shot throughout Europe and the United States by the same person. Talent Show is a split screen video piece using footage shot at a school talent show on the left and my own version of the performances on the right. Dear Mad, I really like your hair today! Love, Johnny is an installation inspired by a box of hundreds of love letters found on the street. – HeavyBubble website” Each element of the installation recaptures moments in time that are personal, private, secret presenting them in Dada-ist style – should DoN believe that the love letters were found on the street? Did Jessica really sit and scrape off bits of image from hundreds of slides? The split screen throw back style to the Woodstock movie era of the video could have been shot over the Summer. It doesn’t matter if it’s real or not, making found objects or finding found objects, then arraying them exquisite corpse style creates a strange narrative as the mind tries to grasp the connections. At 110 Church Street Gallery, Jessica Hoffman‘s installation, Forever and After, combines sweet nostalgia, contemporary oblique strategies and pure, clean, simple presentation to take the viewer on a time trip back from the future.
Read more at Philly.SideArts
Photos by DoN.