Visual Art

How a Gray Painting Can Break Your Heart

February 4, 2022 by Trey McIntyre Leave a Comment

Dance writer and historian Alastair Macaulay wrote on his Instagram “Jason Farago’s “New York Times” essay on Jasper Johns is sensationally good criticism: an ideal meeting of rich sensibility and keen scrutiny. And in today’s online edition it’s an ideal meeting of written criticism with highly sophisticated online design – the kind of venture that makes newspaper writing of great aesthetic importance.”

Posts like this demonstrate how the New York Times is conquering the digital realm and providing experiences that are unique to what can be said best in this forum.

Thomas Jackson

January 24, 2022 by Trey McIntyre Leave a Comment

Thomas Jackson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Providence, Rhode Island. After earning a B.A. in History from the College of Wooster, he spent his early career in New York City working in book publishing, then as an editor and writer at Forbes Life magazine. An interest in photography books eventually led him to pick up a camera, shooting Garry Winogrand-inspired street scenes, then landscapes, and finally the installation work he does today. A self-taught artist (with the exception a number of classes at the International Center of Photography in New York), Jackson has pioneered a unique working process that combines landscape photography, sculpture and kinetic art. His work has been shown widely, including at The Photography Show (AIPAD) in New York, the Center for Contemporary Arts in Sante Fe and the Bolinas Museum in Bolinas, CA. Jackson was named one of the Critical Mass Top 50 in 2012, won the “installation/still-life” category of PDN’s The Curator award in 2013 and earned second place in CENTER’s Curator’s Choice Award in 2014. He lives in Pennsylvania.

Iris Van Herpen

January 10, 2022 by Trey McIntyre Leave a Comment

From Dazed:

“You see?” Iris Van Herpen is peering out from behind a ghostly fish skeleton, which she has been dangling in front of her iMac. “It’s what we call a liquid fabric. It’s very refined, slightly translucent, and it’s as soft as silk,” she says, fanning its phosphorescent scales with her thumb so that they pucker and domino into neat little rows. Hand-stitched from thousands of miniature petals, it took the best part of six months to develop the sample, which is a cross section of a dress made entirely from recycled Evian bottles. The final design, a prehistoric, almost bioluminescent sculpture, will be worn by Maria Sharapova at this year’s Fashion Awards.

As she stands at her atelier desk overlooking Amsterdam’s gingerbread canal, Van Herpen speaks poetically about the water which flows through it, often getting lost in its many moods and textures, as she does her own train of thought, which meanders into babbling brooks, creeks, and boggy marshes, before circling back into a clear, steady stream. “If you go back into my archives you will find a lot of pieces that are inspired by water, both in crystalline and chaotic form. It’s the ultimate source of inspiration for a circular system. It’s our liquid state, the clouds, rainfall, crystals, and the snow. It’s never old, only recycled, for thousands and thousands of years.” It can all sound quite nebulous, especially with Van Herpen, whose collections are born from things like magnetic waves, electricity, and nothingness. But, 14 years after starting her label, she remains at the forefront of design, having forged an encyclopaedia of fabrics with the help of master scientists and architects. “I really see couture as a laboratory of fashion, a beautiful place where there’s time and resources to work on new materials.”

You can just imagine the conversations she has with Marina Abramović, Tilda Swinton, and Björk – who Van Herpen counts as close friends – about vibrations, energy, or transcendental meditation, which is something the designer has recently taken to. That’s bound to make her sound Goop-y (and I loath to even make that comparison) but the designer is lofty and cerebral without any of the new, new age insufferability. She has learnt to push back on those who describe her work as “ethereal” or “otherworldly”, vowing that her designs are rooted in reality. In trees, buildings, and water. “My work tries to reflect the world we are in,” she repeats. Led by intuition, she approaches fashion as if it were “a puzzle or a labyrinth to travel through in order to find answers.” It means she values the process over the product and relies on gut feeling to light the way. What’s truly radical about Van Herpen, however, is the way in which these basic instincts harmonise with technology, transcending both man and machine.

Imaginary Beings

December 22, 2021 by Trey McIntyre Leave a Comment

From the Financial Times:

A regular contributor to The New Yorker and Time, among other publications, Johanna Goodman plays with a familiar composition: placing people with tiny faces and feet, and huge voluminous bodies often made from found imagery, in a dramatic setting. The works resemble Victorian fashion plates transplanted to an alternative universe. “I love that the visual structure of my series has become a template for me to explore my personal feelings as well as so many different aspects of the human condition,” Goodman explains from her home in upstate New York. “I’ve used the series as a way to process or reflect culture, fashion, art history, news, politics, my travels and, most importantly, joy.”

Goodman, who began as a painterly illustrator before stumbling upon collage, reaches her eager audience directly, selling from her own website, but has also had life-size prints and originals (from $800) shown in gallery contexts. Her work has the kind of universal appeal that could leap beyond the art world into the mainstream. There are currently 412 pieces in her Catalogue of Imaginary Beings series. She sees no end in sight.