Entries in Paintings (111)

Saturday
May282022

ARTE: A Studio Visit with Alberry

Let the spirit move you and let the spirit move through you

My dear friend Alberry is a master painter and craftsman. We first met in Leimert Park where he was doing some woodwork for my neighbor Obi at his African Art Imports shop.  I could tell right away how talented Alberry was and I hired him to be our fabricator at the gallery.  He constructed pretty much anything we needed to make an exhibition happen, from walls to pedestals to framing structures and building out exhibition design ideas.  He can build anything with his hands. And he is also an incredible musician.

Tuesday
Jun042019

ARTE: Allison Schulnik

Film by Allison Schulnik * 2019 * 3:15min
Gnossienne No. 1 * written by Erik Satie * Performed by Nedelle Torrisi
**************************************^******************************************
MOTH is a traditionally animated, hand painted, gouache-on-paper film. It is animated mostly straight-ahead, with frames painted on paper almost daily for 14 months. The film seeded and bloomed from the simple act of a moth hitting the artist’s studio window and continues as a wandering through the primal emotions of birth, motherhood, body, nature, metamorphosis and dance.

MOTH Copyright Allison Schulnik 2019

 

Friday
Apr082016

ARTE: BOW DOWN

Lakwena takes over Shoreditch Boxpark with UP IN THE AIR and BIG UP!

UP IN THE AIR

The immersice installation continues Lakwena's expoliration into the use of decoration in worship and myth-making.  Here she juxtaposes a contemporary expression of the sacred with the intrinsically commercial and transient surroundings of BOXPARK re-appropriating a space synonymous with commerce and entertainment to create an intimate place of praise.

In her "box" unit #26 you can read the text "Throw your hands up in the air" painted across the walls and ceiling.  The phrase "bow down" in large silver vinyl letters is on the floor.  In the outdoor upstairs area of Box Park she has an outdoor installation with text that reads "Shout Out"


Wednesday
Jan202016

ARTE: PAPILLION KINGDOM FLOAT BY LAUREN HALSEY

What a weekend, a successful opening for Derek Fordjour & Yashua Klos and an incredible time on the Kingdom Float designed and built by Lauren Halsey for the Martin Luther King Day Parade.

Sunday
May242015

ARTE: FEBRUARY JAMES

February James, an artist from Washington D.C. living in New York City was featured in Brazillion publication, AMARELLO. You can find out where to buy a copy or order on line HERE.

"...In a way my work is an ongoing body of self exploration. Painting all the things I'm running away from and all the things I'm hoping to become."

Wednesday
May062015

ARTE: I Like It Like This

Samuel Levi Jones and Derek Fordjour both have work on view now in NY at Sotheby's S2 Gallery.  I Like It Like This is a collaborative exhibition with musician Drake. Samuel Levi Jones has this piece titled Brutality while Derek Fordjour has a painting titled Concatenation.

"Today, musicians rap about painters and commission artists to design their album covers; in the same vein artists look to music as inspiration for their paintings. Influences flow in both directions to create a fertile creative environment, producing some of the most resonant and profound artistic output in American history.

I Like It Like This, presented by S|2 in collaboration with Drake is a celebration of influential Contemporary black American artists. Grammy winning artist Drake has provided musical curation by selecting songs to accompany highlighted works in the exhibition."

           

Sunday
May032015

ARTE: LISA DIANE WEDGEWORTH X AMERICAN SURVEY PT: I

Intrigued by relationships and mesmerized by storytelling, Wedgeworth’s studio practice is informed by both the personal and the collective memory. By mining these memories, excavating narratives from her own experiences and collecting narratives gathered from gossip, oral history and popular culture, she examines the connections we make, as well as, the internal and external responses or consequences of these connections. It is the intersection where the story-telling and the image-making meet, that she employs painting, sculpture and video to investigate memory and madness.

Lisa Diane Wedgeworth lives and works in Los Angeles.

 

 

 


Thursday
Apr302015

ARTE: FEBRUARY JAMES X AMERICAN SURVEY PT: I

February James

"I’m attracted to the lost people of life.  I come to them rather intuitively and they wash past me in much the same way.  Each of us feeding one another's need.  People collecting people."

      


 

Monday
Apr132015

ARTE: ANDY ROBERT x AMERICAN SURVEY PT: I

Andy Robert works across boundaries, varied source material and found objects to address fragments as states of being. Robert is interested in what happens to things when they come into proximity and/or collide. He sees art as a viable tool, a mode and form of criticism and critical reflection. He is currently in the Whiteny ISP program in New York City.

Canal de la Mona installation in American Survey Pt: I

Friday
Mar132015

ARTE: LAKWENA TALKS TO DAILY METAL

Lakwena was recently interviewed by Daily Metal magazine, a snippet is below, click the photo for the full article.
"You keep mentioning a broader audience being attracted by art.  Is that what you are trying to do?  Get a wider audience to experience art?

Well, I don't think art should be elitist and the idea that only a small group of people would see my work doesn't excite me. It seems boring and narrow. That's why I'm so grateful for every opportunity to paint in a public space. On the other hand, I also like the gallery space. Just before the LA show I kept thinking that it's nice to be able to have complete control over a space. What's  exciting about galleries is how clean and clear they are and how you can completely construct an environment. At the same time, despite a gallery’s infinite possibilities, you have to remember that art is never neutral and always has a context. So, even though the gallery might act as a white box, it's still located on a particular street, in a specific neighbourhood etc. In this particular case, the gallery happened to be in LA, the heart of the film industry. Hollywood is the home of cinema, where all those people who are telling stories that get sent all over the world are. It felt poetic that I was showing these pieces in the same city. I like to respond to what's happening around me and not make art in a bubble. I didn't intentionally set out in the beginning to respond to LA, but it seems like the connection slowly unfolded."

 

Photos by Mafalda Silva

Thursday
Jan292015

ARTE: I Remember Paradise - LA Times Review

The Los Angeles Times review of Lakwena Maciever's I REMEMBER PARADISE solo exhibition.

The sense of adventure in Lakwena Maciver's universe

by Christopher Knight

Seven recent paintings by London-based artist Lakwena Maciver, who often goes by just her first name, fairly shout. They’re homemade street signs, a deft cross between commercial logos and personal emblems.

Lakwena paints in flat colors on wood panels. The hues are as bright as a Technicolor rainbow.

They’re applied as stripes, checkerboards, targets, giraffe-like squiggles, lightning bolts and zigzags. One painting -- the largest, 16 feet wide and composed from six panels that happily overwhelm the small room -- is adorned with big, dangling sequins. Their shimmer and shine are animated by a pair of electric fans that create an artificial breeze.

Each painting carries a text in raised letters. What links them is their future orientation.

“Imagine eternity.” “Build to last.” “The best is yet to come.” “Faded glory.” “Wake me up.” “I repeat.” In Lakwena’s visually excited paintings, the present urges looking toward tomorrow.

“Just passing through,” blares the big sequined painting in trumpeted lettering. Indeed, we are -- both at the gallery and in life.

These big, jaunty paintings couldn’t be happier or more enthusiastic about the prospect. At a time when so much else seems fraught and troubled, Lakwena’s welcome art advocates for an insistent sense of open-eyed adventure. 

Tuesday
Dec232014

ARTE: LAKWENA TALKS WITH DESIGN INDABA

Lakwena Maciver will open her solo exhibition next month, January 17th.  Get to know the artist a little more in this interview done by Design Indaba.

London-based artist Lakwena Maciver’s huge outdoor murals may be influenced by the exuberant scale of neon signs in Las Vegas but her most recent work, commissioned for the Africa Calling exhibition at London’s Southbank, drew on her African heritage.

Maciver visited family’s home in Uganda for the first time as an adult and her installation for the exhibition is bred out of this experience. During her trip she snapped photos of patterned minibus taxis and the intricate grille work on building facades.

For Africa Calling – curated by Kathy Shenoy of ethical online store Shake the Dust and Liezel Strauss of Subject Matter Art and the My Japan photographic project – she presented three small wooden-panel paintings. Emblazoned with the words “karibu” (“welcome” in Swahili) and “paco” (“home” in the Ugandan dialect of Acoli), they are rendered in striking colours and graphic patterns.

“These pieces are a way of processing what I experienced there and the idea of ‘home’. They’re about understanding who I am and where I come from.”

Her body of work centres on signage, language and social phrases. “Language is really important in what I do,” she told Design Indaba in this interview in London. “Words, typography and language – the meaning and the actual visual look of words.”

She creates work in multiple media that lives inside galleries, on the street and sometimes on apparel and products for brands such as Adidas, Converse, Diesel, Palladium Boots, Red Bull and Toms.

Maciver’s street murals are titanic and painted in brilliant colours reminiscent of early Technicolor films. The first one she ever painted, saying “I Remember Paradise” on a wall in Miami, has lettering that is taller than her.

The London-based designer grew up predominantly in England but she is preoccupied with things that reference her African roots.

Her aesthetic is made up of bold graphics, geometric fields, text and bright colours: “This is influenced by what I saw growing up and what appealed to me – which were the things that referenced my African heritage.”

 

 

Monday
May122014

ARTE: LACE - The Happening

I was asked to be a guest curator at this year's THE HAPPENING, LACE's annual benefit gala. Bid on the works now!  And visit welcometolace.org to purchase tickets to the live auction!

paddle8.com/auctions/lace

Andy Robert, 2014 drawing on canvas, Som'em Special

Henry Taylor, oil on canvas, 2012, Dania Sofia is this you: Feeling brown is not blue

Kenturah Davis, ink on paper, 2011, DIFFERENT

 

Wednesday
Dec042013

ARTE: I Remember Paradise

Lakwena's wall in Wynwood Arts District...and the pop up gallery Women on the Walls is up at Wynwood Walls for another month.

Saturday
Nov232013

ARTE: Women on the Walls

LAKWENA makes her Miami debut at Art Basel!  She is working on a huge wall mural as we speak in the Wynwood Arts District.  Jeffrey Deitch curated the group exhibition of women street arists.  We hope you can join us in Miami to see Lakwena's amazing wall and new works in the pop up gallery! 

December 3 - 8, 2013 in the Wynwood Arts District.

The logo for the Women on the Walls group show, designed by Lakwena

Monday
Nov182013

ARTE: Derek Fordjour

Derek Fordjour is a first generation Ghanian American who grew up in Memphis.  He now lives and works in Harlem and is creating some very interesting works.

Artist Bio:

Derek Fordjour is an artist working in variety of media, primarily drawing, painting  and printmaking. He studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Student’s League in New York City. He is a graduate of Morehouse College in Atlanta Georgia, earned a Master’s Degree in Art Education from Harvard University and is currently pursuing an MFA in painting at Hunter College. His work is in several collections throughout the US. 

http://derekfordjour.com/

 


Wednesday
Sep042013

ARTE: Roy Lichtenstein

Had the pleasure of checking out the Roy Lichtenstein retrospect at Centre Pompidou in Paris.  This video from My Art Agenda sums up the exhibition experience perfectly!



Wednesday
Aug282013

ARTE: Samuel Levi Jones

Oakland artist Samuel Levi Jones!

Sunday
May262013

ARTE: LAKWENA'S LETTERS

Letters are hand-painted on A4 sized acid-free 200gsm paper. 

Tuesday
May212013

ARTE: Gary Simmons

Gary Simmons also opened last weekend at Regen Projects ... Its a definite must see!