Daily Features

DOROTHEA TANNING

Exhibited:
Dorothea Tanning: On Paper 1948-1986. Kent Fine Art, New York, 1987
(Publication with Donald Kuspit.)
excerpt from Dorothea Tanning's Between Lives p. 7
…we are the product not only of our own choices but of the sounds, sights, and especially the people we have encountered along the way. To accept this concept one must accept chance: the people are not always the most lustrous. But whoever they are, they have marked a life.
Tanning, Dorothea. Birthday. Los Angeles: Lapis Press. c. 1987
Tanning, Dorothea. Between Lives: an Artist and her WorldEvanston: Northwestern University Press c. 2001
Stuckey, Charles and Richard Howard. Dorothea Tanning: Insomnias 1954-1965. New York: Kent Gallery. c. 2005

YULIA PINKUSEVICH

Yulia Pinkusevich is an interdisciplinary visual artist born in Kharkov, Ukraine. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts from Stanford University and Bachelors of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts, graduating both universities with highest honors. Yulia has exhibited nationally and internationally including site-specific projects executed in Paris, France and Buenos Aires, Argentina, her work is represented by Kent Fine Art.

She has been awarded residency grants from Autodesk Pier 9, Facebook HQ, Recology (San Francisco Dump), Cite des Arts International (Paris), Headlands Center for the Arts, Redux in Charleston, South Carolina, Goldwell Open Air Museum Las Vegas and The Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos. She was also the recipient of The San Francisco Foundations 2011 Phelan, Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts as well as Stanford University SiCA’s Spark and ASSU Grants. Yulia has lectured at Stanford University and is currently Assistant Professor at Mills College. She lives and works in Oakland, California.

PAUL LAFFOLEY

Subject: Spooky, The atomic ghost cat, acts at all distances.
Symbol Evocation: The blending of deadness with aliveness.
Comments:
The Cat Paradox demonstrates that the Quantum Theory is not a complete description of reality. It is our knowledge of a cat owned by an Austrian physicist, Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961) which was named Spooky by a German born physicist, Albert Einstein (1879–1955).

During a conversation with Schrödinger about Quantum Mechanics and the Uncertainty Principle, which Einstein would not accept this concept as real saying “God does not play dice with the universe, Schrödinger invoked one of Einstein’s favorite strategies, the Thought Experiment, or [gedankenexperimenten]. Spooky was sealed inside a lead chamber. In the chamber is a bed for the cat, and a device to allow the release of a radioactive cesium atom within the limits of an hour. If the atom decays, a hammer will shatter a glass flacon and release the gas of hydrocyanic acid. The cat will die after jumping in the air trying to catch its breath and turning into “Skelecat”. If the atom does not decay and the flacon is not shattered the cat will live turning into “Frankenpussy”. After one hour the wave function of the cat is a superposition of two states given by the equation (ψ = 1/√2 (ψ Dead + ψ Alive)). The cat is now both dead and alive smeared out in equal parts throughout the entire universe.

The surreal aspect of this Thought Experiment reminds me of two nursery rhymes: 1) “I love little pussy, her coat is so warm, and if I don’t hurt her, she’ll do me no harm.” 2) “Hey diddle, diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon; the little dog laughed to see such sport, and the dish ran away with the spoon.” The “Though Experiment” led directly to “String Theory.” These nursery rhymes were written by Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886) who lived one generation behind Einstein and Schrödinger.

Exhibitions:
Paul Laffoley: Premonitions of the Bauharoque. Henry Art Gallery, Seattle, Washington, 2013

Literature:
Grayson, Richard. Worlds in Collision. Adelaide: Samstag Museum of Art, 2013, ill. p. 70 (color).
Walla, Douglas (ed) with Henderson, Saiber, Moskowitz. The Essential Paul Laffoley. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. c. 2016. Pp.272-273. illus in color p. 273

IRVING PETLIN
(b. 1934 Chicago d. 2018 Martha's Vineyard)

Petlin's paintings & pastels remind us that there are many other visual languages up to the task of addressing global politics. Often cited for his extended dialogue with the work of Odilon Redon, James Ensor and Francis Bacon, Petlin has mastered the suggestive temperament of paint to produce paintings that both delight and disturb.

PAT STEIR

(From the Sea Series) “underscores Steir’s development from depicting waves as if they were large sculptural forms in flux, to attempting to become one with a state of continual dissolution.  Her highly deliberated methods of making gestural arcs, as well as pouring and flicking paint, have resulted in a body of exceptionally beautiful paintings that compel the viewer to contemplate both the irrevocability and splendor of time’s passing.” (In the attempt to reinvent herself,) “ the waves, as Steir conceived their depiction, required her to complete a gestural arc in one continuous movement while standing in such close proximity to the painting’s surface that she could not see what she had done until she had completed it and stood back. . . . the waves are the result of her articulating the limits of her physical gesture.  On the local level, she has shifted from applying paint to making one quick, encompassing motion, from being concerned with tonality to effecting a fluid line.  One could even go so far as to say that the wave paintings enabled Steir to provisionally integrate the body (the decisive act of painting its gestural arc) and the mind (the act of conceiving its existence), thus subverting something more than her previously mastered way of painting (Steir) has methodically subverted one of the most powerful traditions in Western art, that of the sublime.”  
Passages taken from Pat Steir: Dazzling water, dazzling light by John Yau, Seattle: University of Washington Press. 2000.

Current Exhibitions:
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC,  opening October 24, 2019
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, opening January 12, 2019

PABLO HELGUERA

"Pablo Helguera is the art world's Herblock. His work satirized the hypocrisy in the world of galleries, museums, collectors and artists and always goes straight to where it hurts the most. Fueled by attitude and based on an intimate knowledge of the subjects his cartoons are witty, sharp and above all highly subversive." Jens Hoffmann, curator and director of CCA Wattis Institute, San Francisco
"His Artoons highlight Helguera's finest qualities as an artist. I suspect him to be a meticulous observer, who reads and edits the information he collects like a skilled and experienced monteur. [...] Two thumbs up. Way up!” Georgia Kotretsos, Bootprint Magazine
"Pablo Helguera skewers art world species one by one." Artnews "The foibles, ironies, and occasional stupidity of the art world, captured with clarity and economy."

Helguera’s Artoons have appeared in The Art Newspaper, Artsy, in other words by Art Agency Partners with Sotheby’s.

MUNTADAS

Muntadas: Look See Perceive, a selection of eight works by the Spanish artist displayed at Vanguard Gallery in Shanghai. This exhibition examines several perspectives of thinking and artistic proposals as significant examples of different projects and work issues developed by the artist through his career.The works selected for this exhibit are taken from some of Muntadas’ more emblematic projects ­­—«On Translation: Warning», «The Construction of Fear», or «Asian Protocols»— as well as some video installations that attest to his valuable contribution in the medium of video. Every project works as a new pattern of something that didn’t exist before, but dealing with the current socio-political developments by stimulating the critical thinking of the public. In fact the exhibition title points to this deliberately. Look See Perceive (2009), the work that gives name to the show, is an installation that connects with Muntadas’ permanent intention on activating the sensorial skills of the viewer, in order to transform spectator into an active subject in the exhibition space. All the installations, videos, objects and prints showed in this exhibition are art works that, in a challenging way, encourage to the audiences to reflect, think and discuss about the social, political and cultural constructions of the current world.

DENNIS ADAMS

From the metamorphosis of Patricia Hearst to the trial of Klaus Barbie, from the distortions of Joseph McCarthy to the execution of the Rosenbergs, Dennis Adams has singled out controversial figures and events from our not-too-distant past that, if buried underneath layers of silence, still carry an explosive charge. Over the past three decades, Adams has produced site-specific works, often in highly visible locations, such as bus shelters and city streets, that focus on the phenomenon of collective amnesia in the late twentieth century. A survey of ten years of site-specific interventions was published in a monograph entitled Dennis Adams: The Architecture of Amnesia (1989) written by Mary Anne Staniszewski. The publication was followed by two mid-career surveys organized by the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen and the Contemporary Art Museum of Houston.

JOHN HEARTFIELD

Heartfield and Grosz began experimenting with photomontage, a term coined by the Berlin Dadaists, in 1915 or 1916. During the 1920’s and 1930’s Heartfield developed photomontage into a powerful satirical tool he was to use throughout his career. This is the catalogue raisonne for his best known body of work published between 1930 and 1938 in the magazine Arbeiter-Illustrierte Zeitung (Worker’s Illustrated Paper, renamed Volks Illustrierte form 1936 to 1938). Extensive text and plate notes by David Evans. Edited by Anna Lundgren.

PAUL LAFFOLEY

The Seven Chakras (or wheels) are centers of subtle energies, which are activated without physical motion. These energies are often called Prana or Kundalini. They exist within the astral body of a person, and when activated they become the force structure of the mystical experience.

Subject: The Eternal Imperishable Absolute, the supreme Brahman is the dual reality of the Vedanta. It has no equivalent in the religions of dualism, all of which require a personal god. This state of Nirvana does not mean mere annihilation but rather entry into another mode of existence. This is the abode of immortality. It is only accessible by the Mystical Experience. In the East this is called Samadhi.