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Interview

Ruscha Bookworks Roar @ New York Public Library : “Ed Ruscha Books & Co.” @ Gagosian Gallery

by Gabriella Radujko on March 12th, 2013

Photo:  Gabriella Radujko; reproduction of content on retired Edward Ruscha business card

There is no School of Edward Ruscha, but if there were, prerequisites would include an embrace of ambiguity and the spirit world–its students paraphrasing quotes such as these from his recent talk with Paul Holdengräber at the New York Public Library on March 6, 2013:

I have a deep need to make a book.

It doesn’t matter what it is about.

The idea for a book comes first.

As book artist, Ruscha challenged his interviewer and the audience.  There was puzzlement among the literati, perhaps, because as book readers, according to  Walter J. Ong, we humans are so literate that it is “difficult for us to conceive of an oral universe of communication or thought except as a variant of a literate universe”. Continue Reading More »

Interview with Claudia Altman-Siegel (of Altman Siegel Gallery, SF)

by Aaron Harbour on June 15th, 2012

For the first in a random series of interviews with galleries in the Bay Area, Aaron Harbour interviewed Claudia Altman-Siegel of  Altman Siegel in San Francisco. They show a wide ranging roster of artists, including Matt Keegan, Emily Wardill, Trevor Paglen and Will Rogan. Their current exhibition of Nate Boyce, ‘Knockdown Texture’, closes this week.  Their next show features guest curator David Berezin with work by Nicolas Ceccaldi, Kate Owens, Jonathan Horowitz, Eric Sidner and Kirsten Pieroth. It opens June 28th. The conversation began with a particular exhibition and then expanded to examine her practice, both as an aesthetic/conceptual enterprise and as business.
AH: Curating has been something that I stumbled into within the last couple of years. I curate with my partner – who was in the Curatorial Practice program at CCA.  We don’t really see ourselves as dealers,  [so] I don’t really know much about that end of the profession. I see this interview as helping me learn something but also to create a sort of dialogue and shed some light on what gallerists do.
I have been coming here for a while now and I’ve liked a lot of the exhibitions here. A while back I wrote a review on the Fran Herndon show
CAS: Yeah, I saw that. Thank you.
AH: I was curious as to how that show came about.
CAS: I was approached to do that exhibition by Lee Plested and Kevin Killian. Kevin and Fran have been friends for many, many years. He’s a poet and she’s been involved in the poetry scene in the Bay Area for a long time – they had gotten to know each other through a Jack Spicer biography that Kevin had written, which Fran had a big part in. Both Lee and Kevin know that Fran has a huge archive of works from the ‘60s all the way to now and were looking for a place to exhibit them. They had put together a proposal and asked me if I was interested in her work. Continue Reading More »

Interviews with Ryan Zoghlin, Marc Fichou, and Odette England–Photo Review 2011 Competition Winners

by Gabriella Radujko on March 23rd, 2012


Aerotone #7 © Ryan Zoghlin; all photos courtesy Photo Review

The complete portfolio of competition winner images can be viewed at: http://www.photoreview.org/competition/portfolio.php/38/1

Ryan Zoghlin is the First Prize winner of the 27th annual Photo Review International Photography Competition juried by Robert Mann.

Gabriella Radujko: Thematically, your portfolios explore being “on an edge” or “on the edge” (as opposed being edgy). These include:

  • Surf-o-glyphs: where surfers are on the edges of water
  • NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) where industrial power encroaches on the periphery of modest single family homes
  • Aerotones and Airshow which capture airplanes performing aerobatic maneuvers at the Chicago Air and Water Show

Why does this theme appeal to you?

Ryan Zoghlin: I am glad you ran a thread through these works. Maybe it’s just that things are more interesting where worlds intersect. Whether this is where the water’s edge meets the land or when the circus rolls into a small town. On the edge is where relationships and juxtaposition can be complicated and hopefully more visually interesting. Continue Reading More »

Artcards talks to David van der Leer

by Cielo Lutino on January 16th, 2012

BMW Guggenheim Lab exterior view from East 1st Street, NYC (Photo: Paul Warchol)

Last winter I stood on a cold subway platform and told Y about my new crush: David van der Leer. “Who is he?” she asked, distracted. She was peering down the dark tunnel, hoping to see train lights headed our way. It was one of those very snowy late nights in New York, and we had fallen victim to the slow timetable of weekend trains. I don’t know, I said. Some curator at the Guggenheim. Y turned her gaze on me. “You don’t even know who this dude is?” she asked. I shrugged and told her I liked what he’d been curating. She shook her head. Who falls for someone’s curation? Continue Reading More »

Featured Gallery: ART BLOG ART BLOG

by Amanda Schmitt on July 14th, 2011

Installation, Can I Get a Witness, 2011

Installation, Can I Get a Witness, 2011

Joshua Abelow set out to create a personal, visual archive through his blog, “ART BLOG ART BLOG,” but within a year he was getting up to 900 hits a day from over 125 countries. Less than two years later, the blog has materialized into a physical, artist-run gallery space, ART BLOG ART BLOG, with nine independently curated exhibitions, open through October 29, in a donated space located in Chelsea at 508 West 26th St, Floor 11.

“ART BLOG ART BLOG” (the blog) emerged in early 2010 as an important way for Abelow to build a community over the web and engage with artists in other cities. Now back in New York, Abelow maintains his blog as a diaristic visual journal, with daily posts including other artists’ work, book and album covers, posters, personal work and photographs, poems and quips, and more. I had a chance to sit down with Abelow, and the curators of the upcoming exhibition, “Can I Get a Witness?” to find out more about the project. Continue Reading More »

Featured Artist: Ryan Wallace

by Howard Hurst on June 5th, 2011

Courtesy of the Artist

Ryan Wallace is a painter and mixed media artist who lives and works in Brooklyn.  His body of work spans a range of influences, re-purposing a variety of art historical and popular references into a fluid vocabulary of rough, playful abstraction. His paintings vary in size and medium but are united by their alternating notions of fragmentation and unity and by a moody, often diffuse tone. His compositions reflect the payload of modernism viewed through the dust covered lens of a gritty, sun bleached kaleidoscope. His interest in the way information is presented, transmitted and stored results in a sensibility that is equal parts science, mysticism and high fives. I had a chance to stop by the artists Greenpoint studio recently to talk with the artist.

Continue Reading More »

Featured Artist: Tim Knowles

by Helen Homan Wu on May 24th, 2011

E3-HS9, 2011

Tree Drawings, Nightwalks, Insect Flight Paths, Restorative Device, For the Baron, Postal Works, and his latest Recorded Delivery.  Those are the work titles of UK based artist Tim Knowles. You can pick up on the artist’s sensibility simply from those titles – simplified to bare bones – no more, no less. When I first experienced one of Knowles’ Nightwalks photographs at Bitforms Gallery, I was indeed speechless. One could easily muse at Knowles’ Nightwalks images and be inspired to write. Understanding the process behind this creation though, shows us a slightly different story. The artist uses all the natural elements as his materials, which forms a spontaneous and performative act. No, this has nothing to do with performance art, more like behavioral studies. Looking at Knowles’ body of work all together leaves me at this comfortable space that is somewhat ambiguous yet extremely familiar. Who would have the guts (or time) to wire-tap the inside of a package with audio/visual recording devices and send it off on a 902 mile journey?  I wouldn’t. It must’ve also required a period of trial-and-error before the package is ready to set off. The result, “an artwork which captures the topsy-turvy world of a parcel in the post.”  Recorded Delivery, created with permission from the Royal Mail, is currently on view at the Bitforms Gallery, NYC, until the 27th of May. Continue Reading More »