May 11, 2016 Look Echo By Dan Piepenbring Miao Xiaochun, Triumph of Death, 2015, acrylic on linen, 13′ x 13′. Miao Xiaochun’s new exhibition, “Echo,” is at Galerie Paris-Beijing from May 12 through June 18. A Chinese digital artist, Xiaochun specializes in what he’s called “algorithmic painting,” recasting work from a religious European tradition—famous canvases from the likes of Bosch or Brueghel—as vibrant, science-fictional virtual worlds. These dreamscapes are “populated,” as the gallery puts it, “by strange cybernetic beings, with no clothes, character, or expression.” See more of his work on Art Radar. Read More
April 25, 2016 Look Time Diptychs, Mirrored Rooms By Dan Piepenbring Eric Green has a new exhibition at Ameringer McEnery Yohe through May 21. Green’s two series, Time Diptych and Mirrored Room, use graphite grisaille layered with colored pencil and varnish to depict the almost imperceptible passage of time in various rooms in his home in Maine. “It is the amalgamation or comparison of the two images that creates the specific emotion, not each individual panel,” he wrote. “Gauging and balancing this convergence is everything.” Eric Green, Time Diptych—Tern, 2014, grisaille, varnish, and colored pencil on board, 16″ x 25″. Read More
April 12, 2016 Look From Peplum By Blutch Blutch’s Peplum, a graphic novel, is out this month from New York Review Comics. A phantasmagoric take on the Satyricon, it was originally serialized in the French magazine À suivre in 1996; this is its first appearance in English. In his new introduction, Blutch’s translator, Edward Gauvin, writes, “Taking as its title the European term for the sword-and-sandal cinematic subgenre, Peplum offers a decidedly different take on the toga epic—one of aporia and ambiguity, a fractured tale of antiquity in all its alien majesty.” Read More
April 11, 2016 Look press++ By Dan Piepenbring Thomas Ruff, press++01.16, 2015, chromogenic print, 72 7/8″ x 91″. The German photographer Thomas Ruff’s “press++,” showing now at David Zwirner Gallery, comprises space-age images culled from the archival clippings of various American newspapers. Ruff scanned both sides of the original documents and layered them in Photoshop, thus presenting both the photos and the context—the smudges, cropping, commentary, and retouching—that surrounded their initial publication. “I think photography is still the most influential medium in the world, and I have to deconstruct these conventions,” he told Aperture in 2013: I try to find out how the image was created and in what context—historical, political, or social—the image belongs … There are a lot of different photographs, and different photographs have different intentions. Fine art, medical, propaganda, and of course the most influential image-production machine is advertisement. This transformation, let’s say, of the scientific photography into the art world, or advertising photography into politics (as seen in the last U.S. election)—this modification of images from one intention to another brings about interferences. The image, and the meaning of the image, changes. “press++” is up through April 30. Read More
March 30, 2016 Look Waiting in the Sky By Dan Piepenbring Barbara Takenaga’s exhibition “Waiting in the Sky” opens tomorrow at DC Moore Gallery. “They still seem to naturally gravitate,” she said in 2013 of her paintings, “or maybe anti-gravitate, to some kind of explosive/implosive situation. I still love the idea itself of the Big Bang … I feel like I am on this really giant ocean liner and I’ve got this little tiny steering wheel, and I’m turning and turning and turning it, and I’m trying to make a different course for the ship, turning and turning the wheel, and nothing happens. Finally, the thing—me, my attitude, the history of the work, the paintings themselves—because its mass is so big, it starts moving, ever so slowly shifting.” Barbara Takenaga, Amber, 2015, acrylic on wood panel, 10″ x 12″. Read More
March 28, 2016 Look Read and Worn By Dan Piepenbring Jeremy May’s book jewelry. Images via My Modern Met. If you’re like me, the walls of your home are obscured by hundreds, nay thousands, of thick, musty, outdated reference texts: The 1903 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. Things to Know About Boll Weevils. Urinalysis and You. A day ago, I would’ve told you the only way to get rid of these books was to burn them. But now I’ve learned that you can turn them into jewelry. It’s easy: Carefully tear out hundreds of pages and laminate them together. Using your hands and the same unalloyed will that led you to hoard these books in the first place, form the laminated paper into a ring, bracelet, pendant, or necklace of your choice. With your safety goggles on, take a power sander to your jewelry and buff it until you achieve a lustrous, glossy finish. Or just call Jeremy May. He does this for a living and is better at it than you are. May, an artist based in London, is showing his book jewelry—created using a vastly refined version of the process above—as part of a group exhibition called “Read and Worn: Jewelry from Books,” at New York’s RR Gallery through April 24. You can see more images below and at My Modern Met. Read More