Issue 7 by artmazemag

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Art Maze Magazine is an independent artist-run international publication which showcases experimental and progressive contemporary art, reflecting modern society and its environment, provoking conversation and action; fostering innovation and diversity of mediums which make today’s art scene so intriguing and versatile.

SUBMIT FOR PRINT AND DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS

SUBMIT FOR ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

We invite guest curators from internationally renowned galleries as well as independent art professionals to help us select works for each issue. We try to give spotlight to artists and engage with our readers and followers everyday through our social media, website and print and digital issues.

If you wish to submit to our online blog, you are welcome to send us a few images of your work and a written bio and statement to blog@artmazemag.com for consideration. For more details on blog submissions please visit our website: artmazemag.com/submit-for-blog-feature/

Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital etc. Artists or any art organisations on behalf of artists from all countries are welcome to submit. Please visit our website for more details on how to apply for print publications: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art/ or see p. 10. Artists are welcome to submit works to our online blog. This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues.

Please visit our website to find out where to purchase print and digital copies of ArtMaze Mag: www.artmazemag.com/shop

www.artmazemag.com

Howard Fonda ‘Untitled’, oil and colored pencil on canvas 48 x 36 inches

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GENERAL ENQUIRIES:

Matt Kleberg ‘Sanctionary Sanctuary‘ oil stick on canvas 96 x 72 inches

blog@artmazemag.com

BACK COVER:

SUBMIT TO ONLINE BLOG:

ArtMaze Magazine is printed in the UK, London, five times a year by Park Communications Ltd.

more on p. 136-137

ArtMaze Magazine Ltd. G06, Binnacle House 10 Cobblestone Square E1W 3AR, London United Kingdom ® ArtMaze Magazine company number: 10441765

from the editor Anyone who travels for work or for pleasure will know the great feeling of meeting the people you’ve been working closely with in collaborations or keeping in touch for quite a while and how breathtaking the inspiration is that comes with those moments. ArtMaze tells about many young and/or emerging artists and curators from all over the world. New age technologies gave us social media, email, phone and Skype, which make international collaborations so easy and so insightful. But let’s admit - nothing will ever replace the delight of real human interaction. A great place for an international art community meet up could be art fairs. Travel to buzzing global art destinations enables us to grasp so much more than just visiting shows. Whilst in New York this March, we enjoyed exploring the local art scene as well as art fairs, the biggest highlights were meeting ArtMaze’s featured artists who showed their work in various places during the Armory week and of course our recent curators: Jacob Rhodes from Field Projects Gallery, Benjamin Sutton from Hyperallergic, and Sara Maria Salamone and Tyler Lafreniere, Founders and Head Curators of Mrs. Gallery, NYC. Living in London is an incredible privilege: having places such as Tate Museums, Royal Academy and other international art institutions on your doorstep is quite mind blowing, yet not enough to really understand the international art scene on a grand scale. It is a real honour that ArtMaze has so many international collaborations and we hope to continue our global advancements in the future to make great art accessible for all. The blossoming 2018 season has led us to the release of this new Edition, the seventh a lucky number and I have no doubt that this issue will be as lucky because we have so much to share with you this Spring. Take a look at the groundbreaking works of twenty seven artists carefully picked from the submissions we receive by the independent curator, art critic and news editor at Hyperallergic - Benjamin Sutton (p.64-113). We also had the pleasure of interviewing Benjamin which turned out to be one of the most exciting conversations as Benjamin shares his experience of interviewing many famous artists and all the lows and highs which come with his work. We thank Benjamin for his generous contribution to the ArtMaze community and for his kind words in the short write-up about choices of artworks for this issue (p.62). Our editorial selection displays highlights from the submissions we receive for our online blog and print issues. We are flattered to receive so many kind messages through submissions. It is a great privilege to look at artworks and explore online portfolios. Thank you for your interest in ArtMaze’s opportunities – we hope to bring more of them in the coming years! We give special attention to our ‘interviewed’ section which gives a candid insight into several artists’ careers. Read about their inspiring journeys and creative visions: cover artist Howard Fonda explores the “big questions” in life: What is love? Why are we here? through his lively and colourful paintings; mesmerizing and energetic landscapes where trees with violet leaves grow by Brooklyn-based artist Shara Hughes; the magic coming through the fantastical ceramic characters by Bruce M.Sherman; Evgeniya Baras’ fascinating textural pieces inspired by ancient history and Polish artist Mateusz Sarzynsky’s works where main characters are wrestlers, religious warriors, action figures, weapons and dangerous animals, along with blood, gore and violence. Check out our new call for art (p.10) for the next Summer Edition, which will be led by Sara Maria Salamone and Tyler Lafreniere, Founders and Head Curators of Mrs. Gallery, NYC. Sara and Tyler founded Mrs. Gallery in 2016 but have already gained a great reputation for their hard work in offering a new platform for emerging and under represented artists. Check out their gallery if you are in NYC’s Queens area to experience a wonderfully curated vibrant array of shows they are putting together! To conclude, this Spring Edition counts fifty three incredible artists’ features – now see for yourself how exciting this issue is! Yours truly, Editor and Founder Maria Zemtsova

Featured image: Paloma Jimenez When the Dust Settles sawdust, wood glue, celluclay, wire 36.5 x 22 x 20.5 inches more on p. 84-85

114

INTERVIEWED

CALL FOR ART

CURATED SELECTION OF WORKS

EDITORIAL SELECTION OF WORKS

I nter v iew w it h t he G U ES T C URATOR Ben j ami n Su t ton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................................... ......14

SUMMER Edition, issue 8 .............................................................................................................. 10

COV ER A RT I S T Howard Fonda: “Wh at i s love? Why are we he re? Wh at doe s it all me an?” ..............22 “Where tre e s w it h violet le ave s g row...” S h ara Hughe s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................................................................34 Oh- so m alle able clay ! I n stud io w it h Bruc e S he rm an ..................................................... ......42 Co mpo sition s rich w it h a p alp able physicalit y by Evgen iya Bara s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......................................................... ......48 M ateusz S ar z yn sky : “I treat paint i ng ve r y s e r iou sly” .................................................. ......54

Contents

by guest curator Benjamin Sutton

Esteb an Oc amp o-G i raldo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 4 Li z Moore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 6 Kat i a Ly ub avskaya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 8 Jac queli ne Su rdell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Kat ie B ar r ie . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 I sa ac M an n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Ivana de Vivanc o . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 6 Sessa Englu nd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 9 B radley B i anc ard i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 Cat ali na Viejo Lop ez de Roda . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Palom a J i menez . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 B randon Li p chi k. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Xi uchi ng Tsay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 A n n ie Hémond Hot te . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1 G ui m i You . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2 Sier ra Montoya B arela . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4 Joeu n Aatchi m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6 D an n i O’B r ien . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8 Li na Puer t a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Jon D u ff . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Er i k Niem i nen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Roger A llan Cleaves . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Sed r ick Chi som . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 G rac e Fechner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Kar i na Yanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Ti m M a gent a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 10 Kevi n Soli s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2

M a j a Ru z n ic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 7 M aï a Régi s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 8 Cat her i ne Ha ggar t y . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 20 D u st i n London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 22 Lau r y n Welch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 Jessic a Wi lli am s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 26 Karoli na Pt a sz kowska . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 29 Loren B u r ke . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 30 Ti mot hy Hoy t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 32 B r u no D i Lec c e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 34 M at t Kleb erg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 37 Wi ll Hu t n ick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 39 Jam ie Rom anet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 A ks M i sy u t a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Eli sa Car u t t i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 A nt hony Paloc c i J r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 M i nhye Choi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 I gor Mor it z . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146 Au st i n Moule . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 B ever ly Ach a . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 Phi li p G erald . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 0

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INTERVIEWED

CALL FOR ART

CURATED SELECTION OF WORKS

EDITORIAL SELECTION OF WORKS

I nter v iew w it h t he G U ES T C URATOR Ben j ami n Su t ton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........................................................... ......14

SUMMER Edition, issue 8 .............................................................................................................. 10

Contents

by guest curator Benjamin Sutton

featured artists p.62 - 151

editorial selection

curated selection by BENJAMIN SUTTON

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curated selection by BENJAMIN SUTTON

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Summer Edition: Issue 8

call for art Deadline: May 24, 2018 Guest curators: Sara Maria Salamone and Tyler Lafreniere, Founders and Head Curators of Mrs. Gallery, NYC.

Submit your work for a chance to be published in print and digital issues bimonthly, as well as online on our website and social media. ELIGIBILITY: The competition is open to all artists, both national and international, working in all mediums. Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital, film etc. DISTRIBUTION: ArtMaze Magazine is an independent international publication which is distributed both nationally and internationally via book shops, galleries and museums, art events and via the online store: http://artmazemag.com/shop/ HOW TO APPLY: please visit our website for more details and fill in the online form via the following link: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art OTHER OPPORTUNITIES: Artists are welcome to submit their works to our online blog. This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues. Please visit our website for more information: www.artmazemag.com or contact us at info@artmazemag.com

featured artwork by Timothy Hoyt Rain oil on canvas 31 x 27 inches more on p. 132-133

Summer Edition: Issue 8

call for art Deadline: May 24, 2018 Guest curators: Sara Maria Salamone and Tyler Lafreniere, Founders and Head Curators of Mrs. Gallery, NYC.

featured artwork by Timothy Hoyt Rain oil on canvas 31 x 27 inches more on p. 132-133

interviewed: Benjamin Sutton Howard Fonda Shara Hughes Bruce M.Sherman Yevgeniya Baras Mateusz Sarzynsky

I N T E RV I E W W I T H T H E G U E S T C U R ATO R

Meet this issue’s guest curator Benjamin Sutton who, along with curating exhibitions in various galleries around his current Brooklyn neighborhood, works as the news editor for the online art and culture publication Hyperallergic. Having written for a variety of publications over the years, including artnet News and Brooklyn Magazine, Sutton has delved deep into each weird and wonderful corner of the art world. Whether he’s examining a protest at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, investigating the latest art theft, or covering activism at the Louvre, Sutton’s articles shine a light into the dark corners of the art world, giving his readers a much needed transparent look into current issues in the arts. Sutton, who has interviewed such artists as Jeff Koons and Takashi Murakami, gives us a glimpse into his experiences conversing with these artists about their current projects and artistic process.

Benjamin Sutton

As Sutton writes on almost every aspect of the art world, he not only reviews exhibitions, but curates them as well. The journalist has applied what he calls his “curator brain muscles” on compelling exhibitions around NYC and Brooklyn at spaces such as Field Projects, where he curated Drunk-Tank Pink, a show with all works emphasizing the color pink. With such projects being as thought provoking as his writing, Sutton explains the crossover relationship of digesting artwork as a critic and as a curator. Join us as we dive into his career as an art journalist, critic and curator as he discusses the challenges of working in today’s fast paced news sector and shares with us his personal tips on how to conquer even the most overwhelming art fair.

AMM: As an art critic and journalist, we would assume that you have a background in art and in writing. Did you study these subjects academically? What attracted to you to this career path? BS: I did study art history as an undergraduate at McGill, though it was only my minor. My major was cultural studies, which essentially involved applying many of the same concepts and theories to popular culture instead of fine art. My journalism training has come entirely from experience, first as a writer and editor at the school newspaper, the McGill Daily, and subsequently as an editor at a string of art and culture publications in New York. Though I started out writing about many different art forms, including theater, film, dance, and music, there was always something especially challenging and satisfying for me about art writing. I think it’s partly because art is so conceptual, even when it takes the form of a painting or photograph, and there’s so much of an individual’s vision and psyche in each piece, it can be a very rich kind of conversation to engage with those ideas. AMM: The collection of artists you have interviewed over the years is impressive to say the least, including the famous Takashi Murakami. Which was the most pleasantly surprising interview you have conducted? Which was the strangest? BS: The most pleasantly surprising interview I’ve done was probably the one with Takashi Murakami. I think because he’s so famous, has been interviewed so many times, and has so many projects going on at any one time, I expected him to give me really generic answers or resort to a kind of script. But after each question I asked him was relayed to him in Japanese by his translator, he would close his eyes for five seconds, lean back, then give a very thoughtful and earnest answer — often without opening his eyes again until he’d finished. He was very concentrated and serious about his answers in a way that felt very generous and thoughtful. One of the strangest interviews I’ve done was with Jeff Koons, though not for any particularly interesting reason. He speaks like a New Age guru who makes his exceedingly expensive middlebrow artworks sound like utopian gifts to humanity. My favorite strange interview was in 2015, with an artist from Texas whom I’d met a couple of years earlier, Christie Blizard—though it was mostly strange because of the brilliant and bizarre project we were discussing. Christie was making regular trips from San Antonio to New York City so she could brandish her text paintings in the backgrounds of major TV networks’ morning shows, Good Morning America and the Today Show. Plenty of people show up to the places where these shows are filmed every morning with signs — typically things along the lines of “I Love You Mom” — and Christie saw in this practice an opportunity to show her art to an enormous and attentive

www.bhsutton.tumblr.com

audience. On the face of it, it’s a very strange idea, but there’s also a very sensible logic to it: Christie was simply looking for a new way to put contemporary paintings in front of millions of people. AMM: Having worked in the field for several years, what notable changes have you seen in regards to news consumption or journalistic approach? BS: The most striking change has been the shift toward a more news-driven industry. For a long time, art writing was primarily dominated by reviews of exhibitions, interviews with artists and curators, and art history essays, and while I think those things still make up a lot of the writing about art, news has really taken the forefront, especially online. This can take many forms, from reports on record-setting auctions and forgery scandals, to more gossipy stories about celebrities trying to make art or disputes over copyright infringement and fair use. I think this has been a very interesting shift because it has opened up the art world — which is rooted in interpersonal relationships, hierarchies of connoisseurship, and opaque power systems — to the mechanisms of journalism, which are all about truth and transparency. It’s an interesting clash of priorities. AMM: Has there ever been a time when a story you wrote became controversial or drew negative attention? What was your reaction to this experience? BS: More times than I’d like. One particular story comes to mind because it’s fairly uncharacteristic for me. I mentioned offhandedly in a meeting with my fellow editors at Hyperallergic that an artist whose work I think is really terrible — and whom I’ve never met — had sent me a friend request on Facebook. They encouraged me to write a short article about this weird social interaction where an artist I don’t know or respect wanted to be my Facebook “friend”, for whatever reason, and how I might handle it. The resulting article, “12 Reasons Why I Can’t Be Facebook Friends with This Artist”, touched off a lot of conversation, some of it very critical, partly because I think it spoke earnestly about a kind of social media hustle that we all participate in to one degree or another to promote our work. AMM: There is so much happening in the art world right now, or rather, the world at large. News travels at a moment’s notice, thanks to Twitter, Buzzfeed, and Instagram. Being an art critic and journalist, how do you keep up with the pace? BS: I’m not sure I’d call it keeping up with the pace; it feels more like constantly trying to catch up. In any case, for me it’s a mix of social networks — Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, in that order of importance — emails, an RSS reader, and conversations in our office. This multi-pronged approach definitely helps me to keep an eye on lots of different scenes and stories, though it also wreaks havoc on my attention span.

text and interview by Christina Nafziger Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Benjamin Sutton

I N T E RV I E W W I T H T H E G U E S T C U R ATO R

Benjamin Sutton

www.bhsutton.tumblr.com

text and interview by Christina Nafziger Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Benjamin Sutton

AMM: You’ve written several articles bringing to light recent issues concerning censorship in the arts, specifically on online platforms such as Facebook. As many artists often face challenges with censorship on social media, can you give us your thoughts on online nudity policies?

“Christie was making regular trips from San Antonio to New York City so she could brandish her text paintings in the backgrounds of major TV networks’ morning shows, Good Morning America and the Today Show. Plenty of people show up to the places where these shows are filmed every morning with signs — typically things along the lines of “I Love You Mom” — and Christie saw in this practice an opportunity to show her art to an enormous and attentive audience. On the face of it, it’s a very strange idea, but there’s also a very sensible logic to it: Christie was simply looking for a new way to put contemporary paintings in front of millions of people.”

BS: I don’t think this issue needs to be as complicated as it’s become, but because Facebook controls the two networks where this is most often an issue — Facebook and Instagram — and it has a “censor first, ask questions later” attitude, it frequently creates situations where artists’ work gets censored or people who are simply posting artworks they love suddenly get censored. Part of the problem is that there’s very little oversight to how social networks censor images; if you disagree with the removal of one of your images, you can appeal it and exchange messages with someone from the company, but you have no power. In a perfect world, social networks’ nudity policies would allow for nudity in art — a blurry category, I admit — and there would be some kind of nudity division or committee that could make decisions and hear appeals. AMM: The ever-popular art fair can be an overwhelming and complex beast to conquer. What are some of your tips for navigating fairs like the Armory Show or Art Basel, which have an insurmountable number of things to see? BS: I think as a social phenomenon, art fairs are kind of fascinating, but as occasions for looking at art, I loathe them. Trying to write smartly about art fairs is one of the least gratifying things I have to do, but it is a nice way to discover new artists and glean what’s happening in other cities, based on what the galleries from there are showing at a major fair like Art Basel Miami Beach, the Armory Show, or Frieze New York. My three art fair survival tips are: always bring water and snacks because it’s an endurance test and you need to stay hydrated and energized; take lots of photos of artworks, labels, and checklists, because you’re not going to remember everything you see, but having photographic notes will be very helpful later; and lastly, when your eyes start to glaze over and your legs turn to jelly, try to find the video art section or screening area — art fairs are especially inhospitable for video art, but sitting in front of a projection for just ten minutes can help your eyes and brain recalibrate, and give your feet a rest. AMM: When did you begin your curatorial endeavors? Tell us about the ups and downs of the first exhibition you curated. BS: My curatorial endeavors began in the summer of 2012, when I was invited to co-curate Creative Nonfiction, the first anniversary exhibition of Kunsthalle Galapagos, a gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn. It was a really fun and challenging exhibition to work on because there were so many curators involved — we were seven in all — but it was a very gratifying experience that got me interested in doing more curating.

Oldham in Chelsea, Field Projects. That was very fun, but also extremely challenging because I had to go through more than 100 submissions and not only pick the work that I found the most compelling, but then also refine that selection to a group of works that would hang well together, and then pare it down to a reasonable number of works to hang in a very small gallery. The resulting show, Drunk-Tank Pink, was an incredible learning experience and very validating. AMM: How has your curatorial practice influenced your writing? Would you say curating has changed the way you navigate an artist’s body of work as an art critic? BS: Working as a curator has made me appreciate the many different approaches one can take to curating an exhibition or a selection of one artist’s work, which I had thought about previously in my writing, but I think having been on the other side of that relationship has given me a different appreciation of the curator’s role. The way I like to think of the distinction is that being a critic and a curator involve many of the same brain muscles, but for different purposes. As a curator, you’re trying to develop and highlight certain ideas and concepts through framing and juxtaposition, but you don’t necessarily have to follow those ideas through to their conclusions; it’s more about provoking the viewer to consider certain ideas or draw certain connections. As a critic, ideally, you’re examining the connections the curator has foregrounded (and maybe some they haven’t), following those ideas wherever they lead, and then asking how compelling or well-rounded they are. AMM: Do you feel that, in order to work in art journalism, it is essential to live in a larger city like NYC, LA, or London? How important is it for you to be able to meet with artists in person or to see their artwork in the flesh? BS: I think it depends what you mean by “work”. If you mean have a full-time job that you can live off, then yes. I think the world’s major art capitals are the only places that have big enough concentrations of artists, galleries, museums, art schools, collectors, and auction houses to sustain full-time work in arts journalism. That said, I think there are plenty of ways to work as an art journalist in more nimble part-time, non-profit, or volunteer ways in smaller cities where there isn’t as big of a community but there are still lots of interesting things happening. There are plenty of excellent sites in the US doing that, especially Pelican Bomb in New Orleans, BmoreArt in Baltimore, and Glasstire in Texas. As for being able to meet artists in person or see their art in person, I think it depends why you’re writing about their work. If it’s for a review, it’s absolutely essential to be able to see the work in person. For more in-depth interviews, being able to meet in person and do a studio visit is nice, but I’ve done very thorough and rewarding interviews over the phone and via email, too. I find studio visits incredibly stimulating and rewarding, although I think they exercise my curator brain muscles more than my critic muscles.

My first solo curatorial project actually came out of the Kunsthalle Galapagos show, when one of the co-curators of Creative Nonfiction, Jacob Rhodes, asked me if I’d like to curate the annual open call exhibition at the gallery he co-founded with Keri

- Benjamin Sutton

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Benjamin Sutton

- Benjamin Sutton

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Benjamin Sutton

AMM: Give us a taste of the art scene in Brooklyn. What is happening in the creative community there that isn’t happening anywhere else? BS: That’s a tricky one, because the dominant issues for artists in Brooklyn — affordable studio space and gentrification, the competition for getting gallery representation, and essentially how to sustain an art practice in a hypercapitalist society — are common to artists in most major cities and certainly other parts of New York. I think something fairly unique here is that there really is a sense of it being a community or a scene: artists in Brooklyn know that they have thousands of peers right here, and that if they want to organize something — a protest, a benefit auction, a big open studios event, etc. — they have the numbers to make it happen. I don’t think they mobilize that power as often as they could and it’s certainly not as unified and monolithic a scene as I’m making it sound, but it’s there.

AMM: What are you reading right now? BS: Because so much of my day is spent reading about art and the news, my non-work reading tends to be fiction or nonfiction that has nothing to do with art. I’m currently reading Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, which isn’t as canonical in Canada, where I went through high school and college, as it is in the US. I have been wanting to read it for years because it’s always been a blind spot in my education and it comes up so often — it’s such a cornerstone of the shared cultural foundation in the US. In fact, just yesterday I visited an exhibition of Gordon Parks’ photographs at Jack Shainman Gallery, and there were two images based on scenes from Invisible Man. I’m about a third of the way through the book and completely hooked.

AMM: When it comes to truly inspiring art, what part of NYC never lets you down? BS: Most weekends I spend one day in one of three neighborhoods with a big concentration of galleries: Chelsea, Bushwick, or the Lower East Side. My favorite gallery days are the ones I spend on the Lower East Side; there’s such a nice mix of spaces there — from shoeboxsized artist-run spaces to young galleries with adventurous programming and enormous bluechip galleries — and because there’s enough distance and other types of businesses between them, you don’t reach visual saturation as quickly as in Chelsea and you can eat and drink lots of delicious things as you go. AMM: Have you been to any exhibitions recently that you found particularly thought provoking?

Image p.18: Installation view, “The Monstrous Self,” with Sigrid Sarda’s “Rule 34: Charm” in the center, curated by Benjamin Sutton (2014, Spring Break Art Show) Images p.19: Field Projects Gallery‘s Show 17: ‘Drunk-Tank Pink’ (2013-14), curated by Benjamin Sutton. Features selected artists: Xinyi Cheng, Hai-Hsin Huang, Heather McPherson, Christopher Moss, Maria Pithara, Rob Raphael, Christopher Rodriguez, Kelli Thompson, and Jessica Weiss.

BS: The best exhibition I’ve seen recently actually involved a day trip to a very strange and somewhat tacky sculpture park in suburban New Jersey. Grounds for Sculpture, which is a museum and outdoor art space created by the artist Seward Johnson (infamous for his giant Marilyn Monroe sculpture), currently has a major retrospective of Joyce J. Scott, a sculptor from Baltimore who works primarily with glass beads and other materials historically looked down on for being decorative or feminine. Her work is incredibly powerful, dark, and funny, much of it dealing with difficult issues of racism and misogyny. It was a delight to see so much of her work, but also made me want to see a major New York museum give her an even bigger show. AMM: Do you have any projects coming up that you would like to share with us? BS: Beyond my day-to-day writing and editing, I don’t have any immediately upcoming projects. I’ve been on a curating hiatus for the last two years, but I would like to get back into it in the coming year — though I’m not sure exactly what form that will take.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Benjamin Sutton

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Benjamin Sutton

Spring 2018

First annual ‘CURRENT: Gowanus’ art exhibition and fundraiser curated by Benjamin Sutton (2014, Gowanus Loft, Brooklyn) Over 40 artworks presented, including pieces by: Kat Chamberlin, James Ewart, Tony Geiger, Erik Hougen, Sarah Hummel Jones, Shura Skaya, Andrew Smenos, Caroline Wells Chandler and others.

What is love? Why are we here? What does it all mean? - Howard Fonda

As a painter, Howard Fonda focuses on the “big questions” in life: What is love? Why are we here? Though he draws from myriad influences, including the emotion of Romanticism and the material and form of Modernism, he works with a high degree of introspection as well. Fonda has a varied body of work that ranges from portraits, to musings on nature, to pattern-based paintings. Ultimately, he says, he’s trying to come to a point of understanding, allowing intuition to guide him. Highly influenced by literature and music, Fonda draws from a range of sound bites, snippets, quotes, and historical references, which he then weaves into a work of art. Fonda joined ArtMaze Magazine to discuss his many sources of influence and his painterly quest to find meaning and understanding.

www.howardfonda.com text and interview by Maya Chung Featured image: Howard Fonda Untitled (another secret) oil and colored pencil on canvas 56 x 44 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

What is love? Why are we here? What does it all mean? - Howard Fonda

www.howardfonda.com text and interview by Maya Chung Featured image: Howard Fonda Untitled (another secret) oil and colored pencil on canvas 56 x 44 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

AMM: What kind of traditions in painting influence you today? How does your work converse with the past?

AMM: Who are the figures in your work? Are there specific influences, people or otherwise, that come through in your paintings?

HF: I have a real attachment to Romanticism, its themes and genres. I dig on the unapologetic interest in real emotion, our interconnection with nature, and a sense of individualism that seeks community. Though, when it comes to the act of painting I tend towards the unfinished business of Modernism as it relates to mark, material and form. If you can strip away the Greenbergian dogma and exhausting whitemale bullshit, a poignant conversation remains.

HF: Ha. I get asked that one a lot. I have been very fortunate to have had strong, inspiring women influence my life. So women, or female figures feature naturally. They’re often based on my amazing partner, Remy, but also simply “her”: a stand in for power, beauty, intelligence, life… Sometimes I’ll paint my idols, but more often I’m making some esoteric reference that adds context or points to a larger intent in the work.

AMM: Tell us a bit about what characterizes your work. What do you hope viewers take away from it? HF: I guess the above sets the tone for a broad point of entry to my work on a philosophical level. Introspective, nuanced color, direct with a penchant for contradiction could well characterize things, too. I’m a painting dork. I’ve been told more than once, I’m an odd brand of painter’s painter. I like the “big questions” - What is love? Why are we here? What does it all mean? I say this a lot, but my studio really is a little philosophical sanctuary. A safe and reliable place to find meaning and understand the world. As far as viewers go… I’m afraid I gave up on that years ago. I’m just grateful when people take any interest! AMM: You have written about the differences between abstraction and representation, and your work varies between the two. Can you elaborate on your thoughts on this? What exactly characterizes the debate between abstraction and representation? HF: I just don’t see that much difference or hierarchy between the two. Both methodologies are adept at describing the human condition and I try to employ each appropriately - sometimes simultaneously. What’s that great Picasso story? The wealthy Texas oil tycoon visits Picasso’s studio and after seeing a number of works asks him if he can paint something real. Amused, Picasso says he doesn’t understand the question. The tycoon pulls a picture of his wife from his wallet and says, “like this!” Picasso promptly replies, “Your wife is rather small and flat isn’t she.” AMM: You have a number of written and musical works listed on your website under the title “Why.” How do literature and music play into your art? HF: Music and literature play a big role in my practice. Of course I look at loads of visual art, but much of my inspiration and sustenance comes from reading (and, honestly, misreading) and listening. I first began to understand freedom through poetry and sincerity through music. It’s not particularly au courant, but are core tenets of my practice.

I grew up in a little farm town in upstate New York and am still influenced by this history. The Underground Railroad, the Haudenosaunee and the birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement all intersected for me there. And I’m still inspired nearly 40 years later. AMM: Your work is prolific and quite varied works on paper, paintings, images of animals, nature, people etc. Where do you draw these ideas from? HF: Though a shitty marketing strategy, it makes for a fulfilling art practice. My interests are carried and I’m willing to follow them wherever they lead me. I’m very fortunate to get the opportunity to spend a lot of time in the studio. I work hard. I fail a lot. Sometimes I end up with art. AMM: I’m interested in your thoughts on creating vs. finding meaning. You said you’re interested in finding meaning. Can you tell us a bit about this? HF: Sure. I’m fascinated by the complexity and connectedness of the world. I’m entranced by its contradictions, its nuance, its synergy. There is so much to find and discover. On the other hand, the notion of creating has an air of hubris to me. As if one could be god-like, or worse, privileged creation over intention. Everything I need is already here!

performative. Presence is key. AMM: Are there specific artists or artistic movements that you count as influences? HF: Wow. So many. I’m a big Jazz fan. I have a pretty extensive collection and am always looking for parallels there. I really like the idea of a loose structure that can be improvised upon to define a specific moment. I suppose that’s why I’m a Deadhead, too.

“I work hard. I fail a lot. Sometimes I end up with art...”

I was a history major in undergrad, concentrating on American social history. I dork out on all the historical references found within Jazz in the 20th century and the counterculture that took hold in the 60s. We could use a healthy dose of this militant love now, no?

- Howard Fonda

I wanna paint like Thelonious Monk plays piano and e e cummings writes. Manet is omnipresent and Twombly is why I started painting in college. Mari Eastman, Maureen Gallace, Karen Kilimnik, Rebecca Morris, Laura Owens and Sue Williams are idols. Straight OG’s. Katy Cowan, Austin Eddy, Alicia Gibson, Shara Hughes, Adrianne Rubenstein, Emily Mae Smith, Michael Stamm, Tricia Treib, Cody Tumblin and William J O’Brien all continually astound me. Always humbled when I see any of their stuff. Rock stars. All of ’em. AMM: Would you be able to share with us any upcoming plans or projects in your career? HF: Lots of good things to come! But perhaps more importantly, it’s the continual attempt to make a painting good enough to keep and to steal a glimpse at understanding.

AMM: Can you walk us through your creative process? HF: When it comes to content and subject, I have a large collection of notes, sketches, quotes (misquotes), and half-baked ideas snippets of conversations, a chord progression, an overlooked moment from a photo, an oblique historical reference… This is all fodder for understanding a moment. I revisit these thoughts and replay them in my mind, often for weeks, before I actually paint. I really privilege the act of painting and try not to sketch or conclude my thoughts too much. I wade through thoughts and try to connect distant narratives, articulate formal relationships and show respect for the historical references I’m attracted to. I hold these things loosely until I sit down to paint and enact my flimsy plan. I work hard to allow intuition and the moment to take over. The act of painting almost becomes

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Howard Fonda

Spring 2018

AMM: What kind of traditions in painting influence you today? How does your work converse with the past?

AMM: Who are the figures in your work? Are there specific influences, people or otherwise, that come through in your paintings?

“I work hard. I fail a lot. Sometimes I end up with art...”

- Howard Fonda

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Howard Fonda

Spring 2018

Images courtesy of Howard Fonda

Howard Fonda Untitled (étouffement de la vérité) oil and colored pencil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (same story, same story) oil and colored pencil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (étouffement de la vérité) oil and colored pencil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (same story, same story) oil and colored pencil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled oil and colored pencil on canvas 48 x 36 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (chagrin partagé chagrin diminué; plaisir partagé plaisir doublé) oil and colored pencil on canvas 48 x 36 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (créateur éternal) oil and colored pencil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (chagrin partagé chagrin diminué; plaisir partagé plaisir doublé) oil and colored pencil on canvas 48 x 36 inches

Howard Fonda Untitled (créateur éternal) oil and colored pencil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

where trees with violet leaves grow...

Shara Hughes Come explore the magenta jungles, neon mountains, and peachy skies that make up the brilliant work of artist Shara Hughes. Fantastical hues loosely construct unique and lush scenes of nature, which offer a sharp contrast to the more traditional scene that you might be expecting when you hear the word ‘landscape’. Instead, Hughes’ paintings depict mesmerizing and energetic landscapes, creating kaleidoscope dreams that evoke the wild compositions of Fauvist painters like Henri Matisse and André Derain. Each painting is a swarm of color, bold and bright, transforming the familiar forest or river into a scene of alienlike plant life where trees with violet leaves grow. Inspired by the endless complexity found in nature, the artist beautifully abstracts and reimagines our environment until she invents a world of her own. Originally from Atlanta, Hughes is currently based out of Brooklyn, NY. She has studied art at Rhode Island School of Design as well as the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Join us as Hughes shares with us her experience working in different cities and environments, the evolution and development of subject matter in her work, and the freedom she finds in painting nature.

www.sharahughesart.blogspot.co.uk

text and interview by Christina Nafziger

where trees with violet leaves grow...

www.sharahughesart.blogspot.co.uk

text and interview by Christina Nafziger

SH: I don’t know how long it took. I’ve been out of college since 2004, so I guess maybe around then is when I felt like I was really starting to make paintings that reflected my specific voice. I was making interiors for about 10 years and then had a brief few years of using abstracted figures in the interiors. So really, I had been making interiors way longer than the landscapes. At the same time, I do still see the landscapes as interiors. The work is all still connected, I think I just found more freedom in the landscapes, but who knows; that all may change at any point. I try not to control anything too much. AMM: As many of your compositions are of lavish, abstracted landscapes, what role does nature play in your work? Shara Hughes Calm Before The Storm oil on canvas 68 x 60 inches

SH: I’m really interested in nature because we will never see the same thing twice. It’s always changing whether it’s time of day, mood, temperature, new life or death. Because it’s alive and moving, it gives me the freedom to really play around. I also think it’s kind of silly to try and compete with the beauty of nature, so in some ways, the paintings are very much also about painting and the history of painting; it allows me to talk about a few different subjects other than just beautiful landscapes. AMM: Are the scenes displayed in your paintings places you’ve been to, or are they depictions of another world, in between the familiar and the unknown? SH: My work is completely made up on the spot when I’m making the paintings. They aren’t places I’ve been to at all, nor are they dreams. I think of them as very abstract when I start each one and then they kind of just emerge from color, shape and textures. It keeps them fresh and challenging to me.

AMM: When did you first consider yourself to be an artist? Was there a specific moment in which you felt a certain validation, or did you always feel that this was what you were meant to do? SH: I feel like my mom would be better at answering that! I don’t know if there was a specific day that I felt like I could really declare myself an artist. I think I wanted to be an actor when I was little, which is hilarious because I’m really camera shy. I think maybe when I went to art school — maybe that meant I was an artist — or maybe when I had my first show in a NYC gallery in 2005. That seemed pretty solid.

Shara Hughes One Last Step oil on canvas 69 x 61 inches

AMM: Your work has a specific expression that is both unique and refreshing. How long did it take you to develop your distinct aesthetic voice? Did you ever experiment with other painting styles?

Spring 2018

AMM: The wild colors and flattened yet dynamic compositions bring to mind the art of the Fauve movement. Do you find a connection with any artists or movements from the past? SH: Sure. Of course, I’m always looking at artists from the past. How can we not? I’ve watched myself love and hate the same artist over and over which I think is super interesting. The way we see things is always changing, and I’m always interested in that kind of aliveness in the way we process images. It can change just by the way we allow them into our lives at different times in our lives. I could see an amazing Alex Katz or Milton Avery in college and completely pass it by, whereas now, I can’t get enough of it. AMM: Your sculptures are very different from your paintings and drawings. Can you tell us about your process creating these complex structures? SH: The sculptures really just seem like 3D versions of my paintings. I haven’t made many sculptures. The last time was in 2013 — I had

a separate studio for making sculptures and a separate studio for painting. I don’t think I could make both in the same space. The sculptures at that point were made all at the same time over the course of several months. I saw the entire studio as if it were one big painting and I was organizing and moving the textures and colors all around until they found their right spots. I’d like to get back into making more sculptures — I just need more space. AMM: What is your ideal working environment? Do you find the most inspiring moments happen while working in your studio or out in the world? SH: My ideal working environment changes. I love being in New York; I live very close to my studio so that is pretty ideal for me. I do like to go to residencies, so the idea of working near a beach, or in another city, or somewhere in a beautiful landscape in a big barn would also be amazing. The most inspiring moments happen in my studio. Because I work so intuitively, I really can’t think too much about it when I’m outside of my studio. When I am out looking at shows and going to museums I get very inspired—it really just gives me the instant urge to get back to my own space to work almost immediately. I guess I have a mix of inspiration in the world and in the studio. AMM: You currently live in Brooklyn, New York. Have you always lived in NYC? How has working in this environment affected your artwork or process, or perhaps who you are as a person? SH: I grew up in Atlanta and have been moving all around since graduating from RISD. I’ve just lived in Brooklyn since 2014. Actually the environment doesn’t totally affect my process of working. Because I moved around doing residencies after college and changing studios, I taught myself to rely on the only constant thing in any place I’m at, which is myself. I feel like I adapt pretty well to different environments when I have a studio to work in. As much as I fear change, I like it because it’s challenging. Living in New York is always challenging. AMM: What would you consider to be your favorite moment as an artist? What has been your proudest accomplishment? SH: The 2017 Whitney Biennial was pretty exciting for me. I was really honored to be a part of that show and couldn’t be more grateful to the curators for including me. AMM: If you were not creating art, what would you be doing? SH: I want to say breeding dogs, but I think that is probably more complicated than playing with puppies. I really don’t know. I’m pretty stubborn, so I think ever since I wanted to be an artist I never really gave myself space to consider anything else.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Shara Hughes

Shara Hughes One Last Step oil on canvas 69 x 61 inches

AMM: Your work has a specific expression that is both unique and refreshing. How long did it take you to develop your distinct aesthetic voice? Did you ever experiment with other painting styles?

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Shara Hughes

Shara Hughes Glow in The Dark oil on canvas 68 x 60 inches

Shara Hughes Spins From Swiss oil on canvas 78 x 70 inches

Shara Hughes Glow in The Dark oil on canvas 68 x 60 inches

Shara Hughes Spins From Swiss oil on canvas 78 x 70 inches

Shara Hughes Star Gazing oil on canvas 54 x 48 inches

Shara Hughes Going Clear oil on canvas 68 x 60 inches

Shara Hughes Star Gazing oil on canvas 54 x 48 inches

Shara Hughes Going Clear oil on canvas 68 x 60 inches

Oh-so malleable clay! In studio with Bruce Sherman If you’ve read the Tom Robbins’ classic Skinny Legs and All you’ll no doubt recall a certain group of animated inanimate objects which move and talk their way through the tale. The same fantastical magic that breathes life into these objects, and whispers through all of Tom Robbins’ fiction, inhabits the work of New York City based artist, Bruce Sherman. Working primarily in ceramics, his compositions are mystical and mysterious, playful and wry, and whimsical. They’re also just down right beautiful. Vibrantly colorful, his sculptures are composed of handrolled and shaped slabs that are joined together into totemic arrangements. Flat planes, cylinders and thrown forms are embellished with stylized features and faces, resembling spirit forms from another dimension. Hands, eyes and eggs, symbols of rebirth, renewal and consciousness, are common motifs in his work. Describing his compositions as a “cast of characters”, Bruce’s sculptures are at once endearing and appealing, but also a little bit strange. Who are these creatures and where do they come from? His figurative constructions make us wonder as we try and piece together the narrative that imbues them with life. Bruce has exhibited in solo shows at White Columns in New York, South Willard in Los Angeles and Kaufmann Repetto in Milan. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions across the United States. We visited him in studio to find out about his approach to art, life and more.

www.brucemsherman.com text and interview by Layla Leiman Featured image: Bruce M. Sherman Seeking Myself glazed ceramic 18 x 8 x 5 inches

AMM: You’ve mentioned, and it is apparent, that your work explores spirituality and a connection to the natural world. Living and working in New York City, do you find it possible to connect with these ideas in your daily life and creative practice? BS: Spirituality is a tricky word for it can connote so many different ideas and points of view. It does point to the impression that there are finer and coarser energies. It’s a worthwhile search to approach how to open up to more vibrant energies which are apparently always available to one whether in a busy metropolis or the countryside. It’s somewhat a question of wishing to be open. Certainly, it’s almost automatic by the ocean at sunrise or sunset. But it is possible to connect anywhere; so not truly subject to place or time. I had a teacher who said it’s a good place to be “in the center of the cyclone”. AMM: You’ve exhibited widely in the USA as well as in Europe. What have been some of the turning points or milestones in your career thus far? BS: I’ve been so appreciative of the many exhibition opportunities these last few years.

Bruce M. Sherman The Reader ceramic and glaze 19 x 12 x 8 inches

Having Matthew Higgs show my work at White Columns at their space and at Independent Fair a few years ago was a turning point for a much wider exposure.

AMM: Color is a prominent feature in your work. What appeals to you about this and how do you develop your palettes for each work?

BS: I haven’t read “Skinny Legs and All”; I just ordered a copy. The idea of magical forces does attract me. There are hidden forces that do enliven us.

BS: I would surmise that the cave painters would have used many colors if they were available! Certainly the ancient Egyptian artists and the Mayan artists did. In my work the large palette of colors and surface/texture from gloss to matte create effects that influence color. It’s an effort to find the colors that seem right. I have no set formula, but work intuitively. I do re-fire certain pieces many times. A teacher long ago said “to ask the pot what color(glaze) it would like to be”.

AMM: Your compositions are really playful and imaginative. What is your process? Is there much experimentation in the way you work?

AMM: What’s the relationship between your drawings and your ceramics in your artistic practice?

BS: It’s both satisfying and challenging to be playful. Our imaginations are waiting to be explored. Visual artists, musicians, writers and many others in the creative realm are fortunate to have a vehicle for expressing the inner child in each one of us. Even Christ said “be as little children”.

BS: Drawing is a way to focus and augment focusing. It’s a time to be still and follow the line and see where it goes. It is or can be very intuitive, filled with unexpected surprises. It’s an interesting unknowable journey. And so is the work with the oh-so malleable clay; especially in hand building and shaped slabs.

AMM: Your sculptures remind me of the troop of inanimate objects that feature in Tom Robbins’ novel Skinny Legs and All, alive with a magical life-force that propels them into our world and blurs the line between fantasy and so-called reality.

Bruce M. Sherman Matisse glazed ceramic 10 x 7 ½ x 9 inches

AMM: Conceptually, what are some of the ideas you’re currently exploring in your work? BS: Some ideas being explored: To listen fully Being open Vanity Prayer Searching for finer energies (often through humor) Searching for my true Self Quietness Our animal nature New birth/ newness (eggs) AMM: Do you have a motto or philosophy that you work by? What is it? BS: I don’t have a set philosophy but I usually don’t want to know the final result. I hope to find a hidden potential and assist in it being seen and realized. AMM: Ceramics as a medium has an inherent dualism between functionalism and non-functionalism. Your work seems to playfully respond to this. Can you tell us more about working in this medium?

Bruce M. Sherman Woman with Fish ceramic and glaze 22 ½ x 11 x 18 inches

BS: Ceramics has been used for useful objects through the centuries: bowls, plates, tiles, vases (also plumbing pipes, toilets and space rocket materials and more). Many useful objects are sculpture too. I like the range of being able to make “art” and return to the useful object like a bowl. There’s satisfaction in making a bowl that serves a purpose. This making serves others and the world. Lately I’ve been making bowls and vases with narrative threads that depict “ideas” and stories. In my mind, a great bowl is as valid as a work of art as a great painting. AMM: One can clearly see the influence of Cubism in your work. What else influences and inspires you artistically? BS: What appears as a reference to Cubism is an interest in a children’s toy called PlayPlax, which is a set of interlocking colorful plastic shapes. I’ve co-opted this idea into clay slabs, putting them together then cutting and carving. I’m very lucky to be exposed to a great deal of art. One learns new ideas and points of view through looking at both contemporary and ancient art. I try to bring together the two histories through my work and hope it can be

sincere, humble and maybe profound. Japanese aesthetics and their relationship to clay are also on my mind. AMM: What does your studio look and feel like? Does your environment influence you creatively? BS: My studio is fairly tidy with lots of shelves. There’s a wheel area, a slab roller area and work tables. Though in the middle of Manhattan, there’s a modest backyard. A frog (named Bisque) has lived in the yard for three years now. Amazing! Usually there’s music playing of a wide range. It’s very comfortable and relaxing and never a stressful environment. AMM: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions or projects to share? What’s next for you? BS: Yes, I have works being shown with my New York gallery Nicelle Beauchene at the Dallas Art Fair in April 2018. I’m one of many artists contributing to a show of tabletop works at the Aldrich Museum in Connecticut in May 2018 curated by Amy Smith Stewart and David Adamo. A solo show is planned with Nicelle Beauchene for 2019.

Bruce M. Sherman Quiet Figure With Plant glazed ceramic 17 x 16 ½ x 7 inches

Bruce M. Sherman The Reader ceramic and glaze 19 x 12 x 8 inches

Having Matthew Higgs show my work at White Columns at their space and at Independent Fair a few years ago was a turning point for a much wider exposure.

AMM: Color is a prominent feature in your work. What appeals to you about this and how do you develop your palettes for each work?

BS: I haven’t read “Skinny Legs and All”; I just ordered a copy. The idea of magical forces does attract me. There are hidden forces that do enliven us.

AMM: Your compositions are really playful and imaginative. What is your process? Is there much experimentation in the way you work?

AMM: What’s the relationship between your drawings and your ceramics in your artistic practice?

Bruce M. Sherman Matisse glazed ceramic 10 x 7 ½ x 9 inches

Bruce M. Sherman Woman with Fish ceramic and glaze 22 ½ x 11 x 18 inches

Bruce M. Sherman Quiet Figure With Plant glazed ceramic 17 x 16 ½ x 7 inches

Image (top, left): Bruce M. Sherman Large Bowl (White) glazed ceramic 14 ¼ x 14 ½ x 4 inches

Image (center, right): Bruce M. Sherman Open vertically and horizontally glazed ceramic 15 ½ x 11 ½ x 7 inches

Image (top):

All images in this feature are courtesy of the Bruce M. Sherman and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

Bruce M. Sherman Large Vase glazed ceramic 15 ¾ x 11 x 11 inches

Image (bottom): Bruce M. Sherman Searching for True Central Self glazed ceramic 26 x 16 x 16 inches

Image (top, left): Bruce M. Sherman Large Bowl (White) glazed ceramic 14 ¼ x 14 ½ x 4 inches

Image (center, right): Bruce M. Sherman Open vertically and horizontally glazed ceramic 15 ½ x 11 ½ x 7 inches

Image (top):

All images in this feature are courtesy of the Bruce M. Sherman and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

Bruce M. Sherman Large Vase glazed ceramic 15 ¾ x 11 x 11 inches

Image (bottom): Bruce M. Sherman Searching for True Central Self glazed ceramic 26 x 16 x 16 inches

Yevgeniya Baras: “I have travelled to many ancient places out of the sheer desire to see them with my own eyes, but also so that I could experience that feeling of awe and humbleness as a dot on that long trajectory. Of course, that had an imprint on my work.”

www.yevgeniyabaras.com text and interview by Christina Nafziger

Featured image: Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

www.yevgeniyabaras.com text and interview by Christina Nafziger

Featured image: Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on burlap 20 x 16 inches

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 25 x 19 inches

Each painting created by artist Yevgeniya Baras is an exploration in meaning, material, and depth formed through her strong visual language. The materiality of each piece is an essential element of the artist’s practice, which becomes evident upon inspection of her paintings’ multifaceted surfaces. They are not just textured, but layered with a plethora of fascinating materials, not lacking in diversity or uniqueness. In this, a roughness is created that further traces the lines and forms that live within her work, leaving the compositions rich with a palpable physicality.

AMM: Where did your journey in artistic investigation begin?

Baras rightfully refers to her work as a kind of “invocation”, as each piece’s symbol-like aesthetic conjures a thought, a message we are compelled to decipher. Influenced by ancient art history—which she of no coincidence teaches—her work often brings to mind the motifs and materials that perhaps might have been found on the wall of a cave. Baras explains that her most recent exhibition at the Landing gallery in LA, titled Towards Something Standing Open, draws influence from poetry. Join us as the artist shares with us her roots in art making, her experience after graduate school, and the way her practice reflects back on history and time.

However, I think the most concentrated learning happened in the years after graduate school in New York when I did not have an artist community yet. I was encountering the city, with its plethora of culture and art to see; yet the only dialogue necessary to understand the information was occurring within me. I was still hearing the voices of my graduate professors in my head and was discerning which voices were valid and which voices needed to be silenced. I was trying to hear my own work and its needs by spending a lot of time alone in my studio. That is the time I began to recognize what it means to be an artist—the routes in the studio as well as what it means to lead a life as an artist, the fuller picture.

YB: I began learning to paint when I was six. That is when I became wired for becoming an artist. Not just by the formal lessons I was taking, but by learning the pleasure of being with the work. For hours I listened to records at home and painted. Storytelling is very important to me, maybe because I was read to from the beginning of my life. As a child, I preferred to narrate what was in my head on paper with painting and in gouache.

AMM: Congratulations on your recent solo show at the Landing gallery in Los Angeles! I love the exhibition title, “Towards Something Standing Open.” What does this title reference?

short bilingual poems as well as notes occur on their surface. There are fringes that function as frames, hairs, macramé siblings and rug relatives. Some of these paintings I’ve worked on for years; they are each a kind of tightly wound universe. It is interesting to have an exhibition in a city in which you do not live because the paintings are out in the world humming somewhere and you cannot visit them. Also, the architecture of Los Angeles provides new issues for installation. I think the way my work is hugged by the vast space around it is quite lyrical. So much light and space there—my paintings are used to caves.

YB: “For a poem is not timeless. Certainly it lays claim to infinity. It seeks to reach through time. Through it, not above and beyond it. A poem is a manifestation of language and thus essentially dialogue, can be a message in a bottle, sent out in the - not always greatly hopeful - belief that somewhere and some time it can wash up on land on heartland perhaps. Poems in this sense too are underway: they are making toward something. Toward what? Toward something standing open, occupiable, perhaps toward an addressable. Through, toward an addressable reality.”

AMM: Many of your paintings appear to have an aesthetic that harks back to prehistoric art or symbols found in ancient artifacts. Was this intentional?

This is a quote from a speech given by one of my favorite poets, Paul Celan. When I read it I thought about paintings and poems as a kind of invocation. They are porous creatures looking for someone to receive, to interpret, but they are also concerned with carrying the weight. AMM: Can you tell us about the work included in this show?

Then, five years ago I began teaching ancient art history. I had to look at and speak about prehistoric art on a regular basis. The ancient lens

YB: At the Landing there are 21 paintings, which are considering text,

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Yevgeniya Baras

Spring 2018

YB: There is a way one’s life leads them back to their core concerns over and over again. I am interested in history, remembering, and lineage. I have travelled to many ancient places out of the sheer desire to see them with my own eyes, but also so that I could experience that feeling of awe and humbleness as a dot on that long trajectory. Of course, that had an imprint on my work.

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on burlap 20 x 16 inches

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 25 x 19 inches

AMM: Where did your journey in artistic investigation begin?

AMM: Congratulations on your recent solo show at the Landing gallery in Los Angeles! I love the exhibition title, “Towards Something Standing Open.” What does this title reference?

AMM: Many of your paintings appear to have an aesthetic that harks back to prehistoric art or symbols found in ancient artifacts. Was this intentional?

Then, five years ago I began teaching ancient art history. I had to look at and speak about prehistoric art on a regular basis. The ancient lens

YB: At the Landing there are 21 paintings, which are considering text,

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Yevgeniya Baras

Spring 2018

helps me think about time, reaffirmed and erased narratives, layers, the need to speak, cycles. It is one of the lenses through which I peek. AMM: You have a highly developed style that has a very textural aesthetic. What materials do you use in your work? Does your creative process happen directly on the canvas? YB: Some of my materials are found, some are inherited, and some are simply bought at an art store. Sometimes people close to me bring me materials as offerings. Sometimes I encounter a material that I have not touched before and the physical newness of the encounter gives me an opportunity to diverge in my process, serving as a fork in the road; a new problem to solve in as far as how that material can live in the painting. The physicality is important to my process. Touching materials and the process of transforming them leads me to understanding the image, which needs to occur on the surface of the paintings. I draw as well, but mostly directly on canvas. AMM: The surfaces of your paintings appear layered—almost sculptural. Has your work ever advanced into a three-dimensional form? YB: I do think of my objects as paintings in relief. There was a very brief moment eight years ago when I made ceramics. But otherwise no, I have not made sculptures. My paintings are often in low relief, maybe a bit like the bison at the Altamira cave, part protruding from the surface, part additive mark making: 12, 500 BCE. AMM: In some of your work, the canvas is exposed, becoming integrated into the composition of the painting. Do you consider the canvas to be another material used to create the piece itself, rather than just a surface in which the materials are applied? YB: Yes, since canvas can have different characters and levels of resistance. It can present various sorts of battles depending on the type of weave. I pay attention to that and I take interest in the way a material can play different roles, dress up in new costumes. AMM: Was there ever a time in your career as an artist when your artwork diverged paths dramatically, or perhaps you decided to go in a different direction artistically? YB: I think of building slowly. What may seem like a large leap to me for sure will not seem so to others. The biggest mental shift had to do with the switch from illustrating an idea to having the object embody the idea through process. This meant trusting my hands and my body more. AMM: What or who are your historical influences? YB: Chavela Vargas, Florine Stettheimer, Lin Jaldati, Anna Akhmatova, Elizabeth Murray, just to name a few. AMM: Do you have any upcoming projects that you would like to share with us? Image (top):

Image (bottom):

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Yevgeniya Baras

YB: I am excited to spend part of the upcoming summer at the Chinati Foundation making work and exploring Marfa. I am thinking about waking up very early and walking around vast empty spaces, the town, and nature.

Spring 2018

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Image (bottom):

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Yevgeniya Baras

Spring 2018

Yevgeniya Baras Untitled oil on canvas 20 x 16 inches

Mateusz Sarzynsky: “I treat painting very seriously” Mateusz Sarzynsky’s Instagram handle is bad paint. Wrestlers, religious warriors, action figures, weapons and dangerous animals are popular subject matter in his work, along with blood, gore and violence. Brand names and consumer culture references also permeate his work alongside scenes borrowed from art history. In Mateusz’s work, brand names and religious iconography also exist side-by-side, interchangeably, both seemingly a part of the ubiquitous macro-narrative messaging that shapes contemporary culture. Mateusz’s child-like style of painting is deceptive. So is the seeming nihilism. Underpinning the images is an inherently formalist approach. “The main principle of my work is the work itself”, Mateusz explains, and says that the violent subject matter is merely a means to an end for resolving formalist challenges of color and composition. He is interested in the materiality of painting and in the process of working within the confines of the medium. We caught up with Mateusz to find out more about his work and the art scene in Kraków, Poland.

www.instagram.com/mateusz.sarzynski text and interview by Layla Leiman Featured image: Mateusz Sarzynsky Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 70 x 50 cm

AMM: Hi Mateusz! To start us off, please tell us a little about the Kraków art scene right now, and where you fit in. MS: I know a few painters in Kraków, but I find it difficult to refer to them in my own practice. The name Sasnal echoes in Kraków continually. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow (where I am now finishing my MFA) and shortly after graduating became internationally famous. Many young artists from Poland are still inspired by his work. There are also some young abstractionists/minimalists who are said to be promising. Minimalism itself has always bored me, I’ve been dealing with it for a long time during my architecture studies (I received a master’s in architecture in 2014). I’ve always liked more brutalism as a style in architecture. For my diploma I designed the Museum of Contemporary Art constructed completely in raw concrete. Maybe this is why my paintings look so raw? AMM: Are there opportunities for young artists to exhibit and sell their work in Poland? How do you get your work out there? MS: There are not many of them or I just lack knowledge about that. From time to time I will sell a painting or two, but these are very random situations. A lot of Polish artists agree that the art market in Poland does

AMM: Are you influenced by your surroundings? In what ways does your art relate to your environment and experiences? MS: I was born in a small town in the east of Poland with about 25,000 inhabitants. I moved to Kraków to study in 2009. In 2014, I completed a master’s degree in architecture and shortly after I started studying at the Academy of Fine Arts. Everything I do affects my paintings. AMM: Can you tell us a little about your style of painting and how this has evolved over time? What are some of the influences that have informed your work stylistically? MS: Polish painters such as Andrzej Wróblewski and Artur NachtSamborski had a big influence on my work. These were some of the first inspirations. I probably started painting because of those guys. At that time I did not even know the history of art at all. Later, I caught up with it. Now I like William L Hawkins very much (somehow I have always been drawn to primitive painters), Jonathan Meese, Tal R, Daniel Richter and many more. I respect Louis Kahn. He is my favorite architect and also a great artist. I also admire many contemporary artists, whom I know from social media. I would have to write a very long list here, haha.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Mateusz Sarzynsky

not exist at all. There are some auctions of young artists’ work, but the quality on such events is very low. From my perspective I only invest money into painting but I do not have any problem with that. I do various activities to support my painting. I do architecture, I work in a tattoo studio, sometimes I design small things. I treat painting very seriously, but making money out of that is still surreal for me. AMM: What are you listening to, watching and reading right now? MS: Currently I am reading William Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men and I am listening to many things, from death metal to classical music. AMM: How do popular culture and media influence you as an artist and relate to your work? MS: Probably more than I would have wanted. Visual information is everywhere, especially in a big city. I used to hate popular culture, but now I think it should not be overlooked. Of course, it is largely exaggerated but I think that you can learn a lot by approaching this topic in a proper way.

AMM: Where do you look for daily inspiration? MS: Mainly in everyday life. Television, internet, books, everything influences me. AMM: Is your art a form of social commentary and critique? Please tell us about the motifs and subject matter in your work. MS: It’s hard to tell, every behavior is some form of comment. I live in the 21st century, I watch TV, browse the internet, read, visit the world... It all somehow influences me as a human being. I do not try to explain everything. I understand that the image has its own life and it’s often drastically different from the artist’s intention. That is why I very seldom talk about my motivations. I would not like to dictate the interpretation. There is always a story behind every piece but I would prefer not to reveal all of it. AMM: Death and religion have been key subjects for artists since antiquity. In your work you give these themes a very contemporary and graphic expression. Please tell us about these themes in your work. MS: I really like traditional painting. It may sound ridiculous, but I really

Spring 2018

“When I start a new painting I often feel a bit like playing a strategic game. Each move determines the next step. Painting can never answer all questions. You always have to give up something and every step forward also closes some paths. It sounds very analytical, but it’s mostly very simple intuition.” - Mateusz Sarzynsky

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Mateusz Sarzynsky

Spring 2018

like Rogier van der Weyden, the Bellini brothers, Delacroix and other old masters. For example I really like the painting of Delacroix “The Execution of the Doge Marino Faliero”. The whole 3rd plan in this painting is in my opinion, very avant-garde and very modern in form. Regarding religious topics, it was always common within European culture. Some think that it was even the main purpose of painting for a long time. I am not a very religious person, but I use this iconography in a natural way. Sometimes I am just trying to give it a more contemporary look. AMM: As an artist, do you aim to provoke people? What’s your intention for your work? MS: As an artist, I am trying to satisfy myself first and foremost. Maybe it sounds terribly arrogant, but I’m the first one to see the painting. I paint until I cannot find any problems to solve or I’m starting to appreciate something. I certainly do not plan to provoke anyone, I do not even try to provoke myself. Often, the brutal scene is just an illustration of the problem that the picture itself creates. For example, recently I painted a blue background so it was natural for me to use bright red over that. Those two colors pop next to one another. This is the struggle with the materiality of painting. The main principle of my work is the work itself. This is the main criterion, all the rest can be interpreted in different ways. AMM: What’s your process of painting? Do you sketch and plan each composition, or follow a more intuitive approach? MS: My process has evolved over time. However, the continuous coherent feature of my work is the lack of a detailed plan. Of course, I have some idea in my pocket when I start painting, but it is so loose that during work I can always go in a different direction. I used to try to draw a composition in a sketchbook, even set up colors on small samples, but it never worked out for me later in a larger scale. I like working on a larger scale, not huge but in which I am able to relate the size of the canvas to the dimensions of my own body. Typically, the longer side of canvas is about 2m. I am an architect by profession and maybe this is why my own dimensions are very important in my process. Currently, when I start work the image I have in my head is only a very general outline of what I want to achieve on the canvas. Usually these are mainly formal solutions. I like painting over older paintings (as well as over newer ones to be fair) to change their meaning a bit. When I start a new painting I often feel a bit like playing a strategic game. Each move determines the next step. Painting can never answer all questions. You always have to give up something and every step forward also closes some paths. It sounds very analytical, but it’s mostly very simple intuition. AMM: What appeals to you about the medium of painting?

Mateusz Sarzynsky Featured images:

MS: Paradoxically its limitations. According to me painting has its limits and I like that. There are certain rules that determine this game and not everything is possible. Of course, it shows that my understanding of the painting process is very traditional. A painting is for me just a juxtaposition of colors on a flat surface. I know that this may sound like a very archaic approach, but it does not bother me at all.

p. 58 Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 60 cm top, p. 59 Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 60 cm

AMM: Do you have any daily rituals?

bottom, p. 59 Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 100 x 140 cm

MS: Probably not many. I try to work every day, seven days a week, also on holidays. Even when I do not have to come to the studio, I try to imagine what I can paint in my head. Painting might be my daily ritual.

left, p. 56: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 80 cm

AMM: What keeps you awake at night and why? MS: Nothing, I keep others awake at night, haha.

middle, p. 56: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 120 x 100 cm

AMM: Any exciting projects coming up? What’s next for you? MS: I am currently setting up a few small exhibitions, nothing to brag about. The most important thing for me is systematic work on paintings. I hope that this is what awaits me in the near future. The grind is real; I still have a lot to learn.

right, p. 56: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 120 x 100 cm

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Mateusz Sarzynsky

Mateusz Sarzynsky Featured images:

p. 58 Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 60 cm top, p. 59 Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 60 cm

AMM: Do you have any daily rituals?

bottom, p. 59 Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 100 x 140 cm

left, p. 56: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 80 cm

AMM: What keeps you awake at night and why? MS: Nothing, I keep others awake at night, haha.

middle, p. 56: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 120 x 100 cm

right, p. 56: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 120 x 100 cm

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7, interviewed: Mateusz Sarzynsky

Mateusz Sarzynsky images: top left, p. 60: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 70 x 60 cm top right, p. 60: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 80 x 80 cm bottom left, p. 60: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 120 x 180 cm middle, bottom, p. 60-61: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 100 x 70 cm 100 x 70 cm top right, p. 61: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 230 x 170 cm bottom right, p. 61: Untitiled acrylic spray and oil paint on canvas 180 x 120 cm 140 x 100 cm

curated selection by BENJAMIN SUTTON

The Allure of Excess “Anyone who has spent time on the blog “Things Neatly Organized” knows that there’s a great deal of pleasure to be taken from order and neatness. An elegantly arrayed group of chemical receptors in our brains gets off on these visions of structure. Another daunting challenge, with just as much enjoyment at stake, is to neatly organize chaos, excess, and dysfunction. This idea didn’t directly inform my selection of artists for this issue of ArtMaze, but it seems to undergird my aesthetic sensibilities at all times. Though I am also prone to excess and didn’t strictly select artists who adeptly depict disarray and decadence (see: Katie Barrie’s exquisite geometric paintings), much of the work here could be said to cannily choreograph catastrophe. Xiutching Tsay’s paintings of grimacing figures and cascading, steaming, neon liquids, all rendered in a vaguely radioactive palette, are among my favorite examples of alluring excess, as are Liz Moore’s dazzling, dyed, and distended faux fur compositions, which resemble the pelts of hallucinatory beasts. This push-and-pull between chaos and control can take many forms, like the practically geological ceramic creations of Karina Yanes or the ornately ruined paper tapestries of Lina Puerta. In each instance, there’s something extremely gratifying in beholding unwieldy or unpleasant subjects and materials wrangled into seductive forms.” — Benjamin Sutton

Featured image: Liz Moore Inside Out acrylic on faux fur, dyed wool, thread, screen print and netting 33 x 92 inches more on p. 66-67

curated selection by BENJAMIN SUTTON

Featured image: Liz Moore Inside Out acrylic on faux fur, dyed wool, thread, screen print and netting 33 x 92 inches more on p. 66-67

E s t e b a n O c a m p o - G i r a l d o

Born in Manizales Colombia in 1987. Studied Visual Arts in Bogota and graduated in 2012. Started MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art, graduated in 2015 as Chubb Fellow. Represented by ZieherSmith Gallery and Gitler &___ Gallery, both in NYC. Works and lives in New York City.

www.estebanocampo.com

How many times have I played soccer in my life? Seen my parents lying in bed on a Sunday morning? Played ping-pong during school recess? Partied with friends at someone’s beach house? I paint an idea: the feeling of repeated experiences, which are always different in their own way, condensed into one image. Combining visual references from life and photographs, and using my imagination, I recreate my memories and everyday experiences as they feel and look inside my head. My paintings can’t be placed in a particular day, month or year of my life, nor can they be understood as a literal, recognizable moment. As a Colombian raised in the digital age, I was constantly exposed to American culture visually, musically, and historically through the internet and television. My upbringing as an artist has also always been colored by Western art history and imagery. My work is an amalgam of those influences and my Colombian lifestyle and personal experiences. It looks nothing at all like typical ‘Colombian-looking’ paintings, but instead strongly reflects this cross-cultural influence. Since I moved to New York in 2013, I have come to deeply appreciate my South American and Colombian upbringing. Through painting, I integrate memory, experience and imagination into work that recognizes the humor, connection and loss in everyday life.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Image (left):

Image (right):

Netflix and Chill oil on canvas 40 x 50 inches

Spring 2018

Mi Primer Beso. Villa Beatriz oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches

E s t e b a n O c a m p o - G i r a l d o

www.estebanocampo.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Image (left):

Image (right):

Netflix and Chill oil on canvas 40 x 50 inches

Spring 2018

Mi Primer Beso. Villa Beatriz oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches

L i z

M o o r e

www.lizmoore.work

Born and raised in Atlanta, Ga, Liz has habitually delved into painting practices, which currently involve the grotesque and regenerated body. She generates imagery by reconstructing and convoluting fiber, such as shag rugs and wool, with acrylic paints and embroidery, in order to visually represent complications within human anatomy and social constructs concerning behavior expectations. Liz’s work is a collaboration of the arts and sciences; she references particular diseases and bodily fluids, and intuitively responds to these effects visually, which drives the work’s development to be continuously familiar and grotesque. Liz cherishes this biological connection, with an awareness that these two worlds are not often intertwined. She feels that the artistic exchange between the flesh as an indicator of one’s health, and art as a tangible representation of humanity, opens up many opportunities for exploration. Liz has exhibited and received recognition for her work in a number of national venues. She was selected to be featured at NCUR (2018), a National Annual Research Conference, where she will give an artist talk and her work will be exhibited in The Melton Gallery. In 2017, she was the winning finalist for the Carey Ellis Exhibition (Lexington, KY) and Undergraduate Research Grant at the University of Kentucky. Her painting called ‘Fluids’ has been exhibited at ArtsPlace Gallery in Lexington as well as Site:Brooklyn Gallery in New York, and her upcoming BFA solo show will be exhibited in Lexington, Kentucky in April 2018.

My work explores biological, mental and emotional states of the body and how it relates to the sublime. In exploring these ideas, I utilize the language of painting, printmaking, fiber and collage, to explore issues relating to health and the mechanics of the human body. Because of my ongoing interest in these languages, my work uses both tools of abstraction and a heavy engagement with process based sensibilities. By choosing to utilize unconventional materials, I’m engaging with the history of painting and materiality in contemporary art practice. I’m interested in thinking about our experiences as either self-induced or consented, and how the disruption of those choices can have long term effects on social progression. Synthetic material bases provide allowance for unfamiliar manipulation to the surface to speak towards the narrative of unconsented violence done to the body. My current series of work utilizes reconstructed faux fur whose anatomical-like forms reference inflicted bodies. The colors are chosen to represent experiences to and in the body such as: bodily fluids such as bile and bruises. While the forms depict bodily landscapes within their shag familiarity, the tactility and deconstruction happens intuitively. Critically, the work alludes to the range of biological processes that occur in and around us, and serves to question the possibility of wholeness amidst an array of hurtful experiences, and how one can triumph among them.

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Leaks, Ooze acrylic and fabric dye on faux fur, silicone, netting and ceiling foam 42 x 34 x 15 inches

Spring 2018

Percolating acrylic on faux fur and silver pole 48 in x 118 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

L i z

M o o r e

www.lizmoore.work

Image (left):

Image (right):

Leaks, Ooze acrylic and fabric dye on faux fur, silicone, netting and ceiling foam 42 x 34 x 15 inches

Spring 2018

Percolating acrylic on faux fur and silver pole 48 in x 118 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

K a t i a

L y u b a v s k a y a

www.katialyubavskaya.com

The world of post-truth is not just a simulative copy of the real world, but a hyper-saturated version that seeks to surpass it. This is about media and politics, where the facts have lost power and turned reality into fake, which is accepted as true. Let us imagine that the perception of the objective world exists by the same rules. While alteration of elements and scales is a lie, the image remains recognizable and gives a delusive sense of truth - the victory of emotions over facts. The reality here is physically distorted, almost surreal, filled with anxiety and frustration. Synthetic hair - a material, that unites all objects, symbolizes the femininity, its strength and magic. The same way as the power of words is used to distort facts in media, I use the power of hair, archetype, lying deep in the subconscious, to manipulate the perception. This literally soft, anti-monumental material revives objects so you want to touch them. In the era of cyberspace the subject of tangibility is more relevant than ever.

Baby cream gypsum, acrylic, lacquer, lamb wool 240 x 30 mm

Bubble gum matte glass ball, pink synthetic hair 600 x 200 mm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

K a t i a

L y u b a v s k a y a

www.katialyubavskaya.com

Baby cream gypsum, acrylic, lacquer, lamb wool 240 x 30 mm

Bubble gum matte glass ball, pink synthetic hair 600 x 200 mm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

www.jacquelinesurdell.com

J a c q u e l i n e S u r d e l l Jacqueline Surdell was born in Chicago, IL. Growing up in a family of athletes, Surdell spent ten years of her life playing year-round competitive volleyball. Recruited to play at Occidental College in Los Angeles, CA, Surdell played on the varsity squad until leaving the court in favor of the studio. She earned her BFA, cum laude, at Occidental College where she focused on sculpture and installation. Surdell earned her MFA in 2017 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the field of Fiber and Material Studies where she focused on a blend of sculptural and new-media installations. Surdell lives and works in Chicago, IL. My work interrogates coordinated uses of the body. Through performance, video, sculpture, and photography, I question the boundary between artist and athlete, challenging the internalized and gendered rules we use to give each meaning. My comfort with expression through exertion and prowess calls into association other binary distinctions such as rigid and collapsed, construction techniques considered masculine or feminine, and spaces between body and sculpture. The necessary intensity of athletic coordination and training prompts an energetic and materially grounded practice, bringing to attention the tools, environments, and actions, that contain and display performances of labor, power, hierarchy, and endurance.

Ah Pussy of the Sands No.4 Video Installation: Ah, Pussy, of the Sands No.4, double monitor, color video, sound, 29:00 minute loop; How High is too High?; Untitled Body Size: An All Relative Colorfield (Pink over Blue), Assisted Vertec, steel, plastic; gym court plank, maple wood, enamel, epoxy, dye; Limbo Suspension, archival inkjet print, gold nails. Dimensions variable 180 × 60 × 60 in 16 × 20 3/8 in

I Will Not Go Quietly Back to the 1950s Braided cotton cord of various size, bronze, steel, paint 120 x 108 in

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

www.jacquelinesurdell.com

I Will Not Go Quietly Back to the 1950s Braided cotton cord of various size, bronze, steel, paint 120 x 108 in

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

K a t i e B a r r i e www.katiebarrie.com

I’m an artist born and raised in the Midwest and Hong Kong, and have adopted a somewhat nomadic adult life, living in locations as vastly different as bustling Los Angeles and quaint, rural Vermont. I have a BFA from the Stamps School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan, and am currently pursuing my MFA in Painting & Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. I spent the spring and summer of 2017 immersed in artistic residencies, including the Golden Foundation in Upstate New York, 100 West Corsicana in Texas, and the Creative Center of Stödvarfjördur in the Eastern Fjords of Iceland. I’m intrigued by how one’s sense of place can influence one’s sense of self, and have been investigating those notions through my travels, writing, and studio practice. My practice is centered in color psychology, the role of design in influencing culture, and geometric abstraction as a form for utopia. Channeling hard edge abstraction, design archetypes, and subjective perception, my method of working is a way for me to process what color can come to represent for an individual. Each piece contains highly controlled, planned compositions that function as a personal Morse code. The physical process of making a painting is very important to me: there is always evidence of the hand at work; lines are precise in theory, but not in execution; asymmetry is a natural result of freehanded shapes. Rooted in systematic methods of working, my paintings explore the evolution of memories, and how we stage those memories for our own sense of identity.

Kink/Whim highload acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 inches

This Year Sweaters Are Being Worn as Jackets highload acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

K a t i e B a r r i e www.katiebarrie.com

Kink/Whim highload acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 inches

This Year Sweaters Are Being Worn as Jackets highload acrylic on canvas 24 x 36 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

I s a a c

M a n n

guilt and anxiety. It’s a list of stuff I can’t make sense of in real life, that’s my content. In the paintings I try to balance everything out, the comic and the tragic, and sometimes I find resolution. Other times, the subject remains stubborn and unresolved, no matter how many times I paint it; my dealings with the US Border Patrol, for example. I first ran into these lunatics in the summer of 2015, and many times since. Their first appearance in the large narrative paintings came a year later, having tried unsuccessfully to make sense of the experience any other way. On the one hand, their presence in the painting was a predictable method of dealing with trauma, but more specifically, I think that I was trying to deal with something beyond my understanding. When reality loses balance, you make up the rest until you can even the keel. Paint a solution where there was none to find. How do you rationalize cruelty? Privately, I think this is why sex became such an important theme in my work at this time: The great equalizer. The absurdity of the contradiction seemed the only way to balance all the fear and dread my subject matter evoked in me.

Isaac Mann (b. Saint Paul, MN, 1986) received his BFA in 2009 from the University of Wisconsin, where he studied printmaking and art history, and his MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art in 2017. Mann is the recipient of the Eva & Michael Chow Scholarship, the Ruth Katzman Scholarship, the Lois G. Roberts Scholarship and, most recently, was awarded the 2017 New York Academy Chubb Fellowship. Mann currently lives and works in New York City. Certain things stick in my mind and I don’t have much say in the matter. If I did, it’s the pleasant stuff I’d keep. It’s like an inventory. Nothing highbrow or specific, just half-memories of situations or feelings I can’t help but dwell on. And if I can’t shake it, I’ll paint it. I’ll reframe it or rewrite it if necessary, until whatever’s so illogical starts making sense. It’s all unflatteringly personal, but the paintings themselves are more than that. When I’m lucky they become familiar. My subject matter is chaotic: booze, drugs, sex, cops, orgies, poetry, violence, emasculation, politics, homo/heterosexuality, relationships, absurdity, humor, love, remorse, shame,

The Artist’s Studio oil on canvas 74 x 148 inches

www.isaacmann.com

The Kiss oil on panel 30 x 24 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

I s a a c

M a n n

The Artist’s Studio oil on canvas 74 x 148 inches

www.isaacmann.com

The Kiss oil on panel 30 x 24 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

I v a n a

d e

V i v a n c o

the book “Imagines” by Philostratus, reconstructing the lost paintings he described in Greece in the 2nd century. My goal was to study these descriptions, to dissect and restructure them and to invent a pictorial form that accounts for a very old tradition, but simultaneously speaking of the here and now. Many theorists such as R Barthes, A Danto and G Agamben have described the contemporary age as an epoch ill at ease with itself and needing to turn its face towards the past in order to discover the origins of its consolidation. I am convinced that through analysis, reinterpretation and critique of ancient thematics, one may be able to somehow represent the displaced condition of the contemporary individuum. With this belief I have been focused on new projects since 2014 in which I am re-examining possible connections between word and image. Currently I am working on paintings inspired by fragments from the Bible and studying classical representations of art history in an attempt to create a new form, in the way a director constructs theatrical scenes. Through the aesthetic of the stage, I seek to achieve a critical distance to these challenging themes in order to in actual fact intimately approach them. The canvas’ large format and the depicted life-size figures transform the painted space endowing it with the character of an authentic stage. It is precisely by the mise-en-scène and the use of the stage through its theatrical lighting that I strive to reflect on the artificiality of pictorial construction.

Ivana is a Chilean-Peruvian artist born in 1989 in Lisbon and based in Germany. She has been awarded the MarionErmer-Prize for young art in Germany, with a grant from the Heinrich Böll Foundation and from the German State (DAAD). She has held numerous solo exhibitions in Chile, Spain and Germany and many group shows in Switzerland, Poland, Belgium, Spain, Chile, Germany and England. Her work has been featured in several publications, including the books “100 Painters of Tomorrow” published by Thames & Hudson and “Sub30: Pintura en Chile” (that showcases the young Chilean painting scene) published by Ediciones C. Some of her recent exhibitions have been at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Santiago, Chile; Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig, Germany; Museum Joaquín Peinado in Ronda, Spain; Grassi Museum in Leipzig, Germany; Gallery D21 in Santiago; Gallery Isabel Hurley in Málaga and Centre d’Art de L’Hospitalet in Barcelona, Spain; Kunstverein in Duisburg and Kunsthalle der Sparkasse in Leipzig, Germany; Cultural Centre Browar Mieszczański in Wrocław, Poland; BEERS London (UK), the Gallery NUNC Contemporary in Antwerp, Belgium etc. When various disciplines such as painting, poetry, history or music establish connections and exchange codes of representation, the resulting enrichment is undeniable. I am particularly interested in investigating how painting is transformed in the contemporary context when confronted with other means of expression, such as those of a literary nature. From 2011 until 2013 I worked with

Portrait of a Man with Superposed Smile and English Porcelain oil on canvas 85 x 110 cm

www.ivanadevivanco.com

Venus and Adonis oil on canvas 240 x 260 cm

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

I v a n a

d e

V i v a n c o

Portrait of a Man with Superposed Smile and English Porcelain oil on canvas 85 x 110 cm

www.ivanadevivanco.com

Venus and Adonis oil on canvas 240 x 260 cm

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

S e s s a E n g l u n d www.sessa.website

Sessa Englund (b.1989) is an artist working in NYC. Englund was born in Stamford, CT but spent most of her formative years in Gothenburg, Sweden. She graduated with a BFA from SUNY Purchase NY, in 2013. Englund has since worked and exhibited both nationally and internationally, and her work has been featured in Art Viewer, Hyperallergic, New York Times, i-D, Interview Magazine and more. This summer she will be exhibiting as part of the AIR fellowship at East of Elsewhere Gallery in Berlin, Germany. Her work draws on objects from personal experience to create menacing yet seductive sculptural work. Utilizing the initial lead of an autobiographical experience, a person at a point in time, Sessa taps into and activates the innate socio-political framework of a material. Her interests lie in the interplay of perceived hierarchy and status of various types of memories, as applied to gender and aggression. Through collapsing the space between objects and materials that do not naturally join, Englund is hoping to provoke a sense of unfamiliar familiarity, an emotional deja vu which gives animation to inanimate objects. Much of Englund’s work surrounds the idea of a shared, communal memory through the advancement of “craft” and “skill”. The work encompasses glass, ceramics, performance, textile and film. Much of the inspiration comes from studying works from the past which lay outside of the common narrative, medieval female authors such as Christine di Pizan, traditional “mourning art” by Swedish Protestant fishing villages (1680-1700), as well as contemporary socio-political sources, such as MRA forums on the subject of “male beauty”, Recoveredmemory therapy (RMT), Queer-identity politics and gender studies to name a few. By cannibalizing these crafts and components into bastardized, engulfing versions of themselves, Englund speaks towards the failure of effort, and ultimately the humanizing process in the downfall from grace.

Bloom marsipan, cast iron, chain 90 x 40 x 30 cm

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

S e s s a E n g l u n d www.sessa.website

Bloom marsipan, cast iron, chain 90 x 40 x 30 cm

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

B r a d l e y

B i a n c a r d i

www.bradleybiancardi.com

space), and the inherent awkwardness in communication. In all of my work the act of drawing is the most essential element. The work reflects my interest in intimate pictorial spaces, how they are affected by the figures within, and how as viewers we can feel physically and emotionally projected into these spaces. I love stories and admire story-tellers, so I strive to build an intriguingly readable visual story, while maintaining an element of ambiguity regarding the narrative subject matter. I try to create a balance between humor, seriousness, and strangeness; and intend for my narratives to speak of a sense of ritual, illustrated as a staged event. Some issues with which I am currently concerned: absurdity within our contemporary culture; deskilling as a result of a dependence on technology; baseball; the inevitable collapse of cultures and political structures; the evolving definition of masculinity in relation to feminism and our shared social experiences, among others. Though my paintings become very abstract at times, there is always a figurative element present to ground the work. I work from my imagination and the elements in my narratives manifest as more or less abstract depending on the particular painting. The imagery ranges from illustrative to realistic, and observational to symbolic. I intend to continue this idiosyncratic search within this area between abstraction and figuration, with the hope of better understanding and further articulating this world that I am creating within my work.

Bradley Biancardi (b.1977, Chicago) has recently exhibited his work at Flatfile.net (Drawer.nyc); Field Projects Gallery, Thierry Goldberg Gallery, and BravinLee Programs in NY; Johalla Projects, Devening Projects+Editions, Roots & Culture Contemporary Art Center, and the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago; Galleri Urbane in Dallas, Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston, and in Seattle at The LAWRIMORE Project, Platform Gallery, the Hedreen Gallery, and the Henry Art Gallery. He has participated in artist residencies at The Religare Arts Initiative in New Delhi, the Vermont Studio Center, the Atlantic Center for the Arts with artist Dana Schutz, and the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in NY as a 2017 SIP Fellow. He has lectured as a visiting artist at several institutions throughout the US including Columbia University, Indiana University, the University of Chicago, the University of South Florida, the University of South Dakota, Monserrat College of Art, Harold Washington College, and the Hyde Park Art Center. His work has been noted in several publications including New American Paintings, Wall Street Journal, MW Capacity, Bad At Sports, Newcity, and INSIDE, among others. Biancardi lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. I create artwork using figuration, and I am interested in composing theatrical narratives concerning human relationships, interactions of bodies in space (both physical and psychological

USS Entropy / Ship is Wrecked mixed paint media on canvas 66 x 60 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Fishbone Allusion mixed paint media on canvas 72 x 64 inches

Spring 2018

B r a d l e y

B i a n c a r d i

www.bradleybiancardi.com

USS Entropy / Ship is Wrecked mixed paint media on canvas 66 x 60 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Fishbone Allusion mixed paint media on canvas 72 x 64 inches

Spring 2018

C a t a l i n a V i e j o L o p e z d e R o d a www.catalinaviejo.com

distant voyeur and engaged participant? I think of my paintings not as images presenting a static moment but as depictions of an evolving series of events, a moving image which the viewer brings to life.

My multi-paneled paintings are based on images taken from my memories, dreams and experiences of female intimacy. I examine voyeuristic impulses and the ambiguities present in self-perception and human relationships. The women in my paintings are strong yet vulnerable, physically together yet mentally alone. The female figures embrace their inner feline: the sensual, feminine, curious — their wild, independent spirits. The viewer is a key component in allowing the narratives in the paintings to unfold. The opening and closing of the hinged panels, built right into the painting’s surface, increases the complexity and layers of the images and enables a deeper sense of involvement with the work. The individual’s experience and engagement with the painting induces an awareness of his or her own body, movements, and behaviors. The viewer opens, closes, pushes and pulls various moving parts of the paintings, mirroring the figures depicted in the scenes who are themselves looking, touching and probing the body parts of other figures. I place the figures depicted in the paintings in an environment where the feelings range from pleasure to pain, power to vulnerability, love to loss, shifting from one to the other, never allowing the narrative or the viewer to stay fixated on a singular meaning. Are the figures depicted in the paintings getting touched, pulled and squeezed by choice or by force? At what point does the viewer cross the boundary between

Catalina Viejo Lopez de Roda was born in Malaga, but raised in the Canary Islands, Spain. Viejo Lopez de Roda currently lives and works in Hudson, New York. She holds an MFA from Hunter College, New York (2014) and a BFA from Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, Massachusetts (2005). Recent exhibitions include the solo exhibition Letters at Mimi Gallery in Manchester by the Sea, MA (2017) and Flat File Program at Tiger Strikes Asteroid, Brooklyn, NY (2017). Other exhibitions include Line at the Attleboro Arts Museum in Attleboro, MA (2017); Representing Rainbows, curated by Lisa Corinne Davis at GP Presents, New York, NY (2016) and Double Visions, curated by Craig Bloodgood at the Art Complex Museum in Duxbury, MA (2016). In 2017 she was interviewed by On Art and Aesthetics and in 2015 she participated in the exhibition Wide Open 6 in BWAC, Brooklyn, NY in which she was awarded Best in Show Gold by Rujeko Hockley. Her work has been covered by publications including The Boston Globe, Hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, The Brooklyn Paper and Vanity Fair Italia.

Image (left):

Image (right):

The Light Collectors DETAIL acrylic, silicone, plaster, thread, paper and wire on hinged wooden multi-panels 36 x 48 inches closed / 36 x 78 inches open

Spring 2018

Red Whispers CLOSED acrylic on hinged wooden multi-panels 10 x 22 inches closed / 10 x 38 inches open

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

C a t a l i n a V i e j o L o p e z d e R o d a www.catalinaviejo.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

The Light Collectors DETAIL acrylic, silicone, plaster, thread, paper and wire on hinged wooden multi-panels 36 x 48 inches closed / 36 x 78 inches open

Spring 2018

Red Whispers CLOSED acrylic on hinged wooden multi-panels 10 x 22 inches closed / 10 x 38 inches open

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

P a l o m a

J i m e n e z

www.palomajimenez.com

Paloma Jimenez was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. She graduated from Vassar College in 2014 with a BA in Studio Art. She is currently pursuing her MFA Fine Arts at Parsons in New York City. She was a 2017 recipient of the International Sculpture Center’s Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture award. Using wood, concrete, ceramics, and other common materials, I build sculptures that consider humans’ relationships with everyday objects. Through humor and the relational logic of poetry, my sculptures scramble the perceptual and physical structures of daily life. Self-assured in their nonfunctional existence, they become subject to the social dialect of production. The gestural aspects in my work reaffirm the tactile narratives and history held within recognizable objects; materials summon memories. The exploration of these material routines is an anthropological and philosophical pursuit to uncover the logic and illogic of American ways of living.

Image (p.84): Squeeze mop head, latex paint, sawdust, wood glue, plaster, plywood, shellac, three yellow wheels, one teal wheel. 37.75 x 31 x 25 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Image (p.85): My Interior Designer Moved to Las Vegas ceramic, glaze, wood, joint compound, acrylic paint, latex paint. 45.5 x 16 x 16 inches

Spring 2018

P a l o m a

J i m e n e z

www.palomajimenez.com

Image (p.84): Squeeze mop head, latex paint, sawdust, wood glue, plaster, plywood, shellac, three yellow wheels, one teal wheel. 37.75 x 31 x 25 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Image (p.85): My Interior Designer Moved to Las Vegas ceramic, glaze, wood, joint compound, acrylic paint, latex paint. 45.5 x 16 x 16 inches

Spring 2018

B r a n d o n

L i p c h i k

www.brandonlipchik.com

Brandon Lipchik investigates the male-on-male gaze, exploring sexuality and intimacy in an exhibition of hand painted works in the language of digital-media. Lipchik creates sexually charged scenes which retain an innocent lens, rather similarly to a Rococo wilderness depicting lovers at play. Each piece expresses an idyllic, intimate space in which the viewer becomes the voyeur. A garden setting threads the work together and features an overlap of the natural and man-made (with relative but limited privacy). The Garden serves to be a locational metaphor for personal growth and development, using private and public images to contrast the body and nature with digitality. Lipchik’s method of figural abstraction functions as a means to create a varying level of entry, hiding the more intimate moments while bringing others to the forefront. The range of Lipchik’s work follows emotive sequencing which draws from the socially complex and emotionally raw acceptance of his identity as a queer man, stemming from his origins in a small town. The successive layering he presents juxtaposes ideas of flesh and body with that of digital immateriality. Lipchik’s paintings draw heavily from digital sketches he creates; replicating their constituent parts to near-exactitude. Intriguingly, these works go beyond what his computer sketches can produce within their program of origin (or the screen they are made on), through the addition of analogue painting (paint). Lipchik’s application of multiple techniques in his painting displays his facility when manipulating physical matter, all the while allowing the poetics of digital language to be informative. Lipchik accepts in a similar vein post-impressionism; what the camera cannot do, the artist will. It is the screen and the employed software which are used as a foundation for Lipchik’s interventions and physical investigations into the act of painting. This search continues against the backdrop of rural Pennsylvania’s landscape within Lipchik’s figurative garden.

Untitled acrylic and mixed media on canvas 30 x 40 inches

Sock acrylic and mixed media on canvas 24 x 24 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

B r a n d o n

L i p c h i k

www.brandonlipchik.com

Untitled acrylic and mixed media on canvas 30 x 40 inches

Sock acrylic and mixed media on canvas 24 x 24 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

X i u c h i n g Ts a y www.xiuchingtsay.com

I am 24 and originally from Thailand; currently, living in London and attending a Master’s Degree in painting at the Royal College of Art. All my work may give a sense of absurdity and sometimes nonsense. However, 30% of my work is based on my experiences in the reality, 70% from my fantasy. Also, my work is involved with something watery, I would like to feel fluidity in my work as I believe that water imagery can reflect myself, yet the better version. Sometimes I feel like there are two parallel worlds, the first is the so called reality, the second is a delight world that I have been imagining. In the paintings, the objects are portrayed in metamorphosis forms, so it enables me or the viewers to see the objects differently as I try to avoid the force of language of this objective world. Briefly, my painting is a reproduction of my experiences. If those experiences were remarkably bad, instead of remembering them and being struck by depression, I rather recreate them into something enjoyable for myself to look at.

An Awkward posh dining oil and acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

I am looking at the waterfall from outside the house oil and acrylic on linen 180 x 160 cm

Spring 2018

X i u c h i n g Ts a y www.xiuchingtsay.com

An Awkward posh dining oil and acrylic on canvas 60 x 60 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

I am looking at the waterfall from outside the house oil and acrylic on linen 180 x 160 cm

Spring 2018

A n n i e H é m o n d H o t t e

www.anniehemondhotte.com

Originally from Montreal, Annie Hémond Hotte lives and works in Brooklyn NY. She received a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from Goldsmiths University, London. In 2014, she attended the Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency (hosted by Dana Schutz). Selected for New American Paintings vol. #125, she was featured as the cover artist. Her work has been exhibited in several solo and group shows in Canada, the US, Korea, Europe and around the UK, including Panic Myth, (a solo exhibition at the Centre Clark, Montreal, 2017); Spirit of The Dead Watching, (Devening Projects + Editions, Chicago, IL, 2015); I’m a Painting (Kumu Art Museum of Estonia, Tallinn, 2014) and Two Positions (Thomas Rehbein Galerie, Cologne, Germany, 2009). My paintings are sites of potential dialogue between a human satire and a paintinglaboratory. They assemble all sorts of information and become dense scenarios embracing a certain ironic tone. Featuring a cast of comical, monstrous, yet pathetic characters, the work emphasizes the interaction between these folks and their chaotic environment. Playing around with the notion of social parody, the anecdotes presented in my paintings are surreal mirrors of modern life (slapstick politics, social media narcissism, a desire to escape, feminist conflicts, identity crises, self-criticism, jealousy, etc.). The paintings are also encoded and punctuated by symbolic objects (money, food, artefacts, teeth, hearts, voodoo dolls, Band-Aids…) that act as hieroglyphs, suggesting there is a narrative to be deciphered. Employing a certain laissez-faire approach, the surfaces are saturated, busy, loose and nostalgic. Storytelling becomes an ally to research new techniques and mix different kinds of mark making – it encourages compositions, shapes, colours and serendipity to happen. In the end, each painting ends up being a puzzle, attaching a narrative to an image that embraces being a “painting”.

Image (left): Broken Heart Through the Mirror (Jealous Cat Lady) oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 78 x 72 inches

Still Life (offerings for the idols) oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 60 x 47 inches

Spring 2018

Image (middle): Choosing Heads /La table des décisions oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 80 x 68 inches

Image (right): Face Off (the narcissist) oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 34 x 26 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

A n n i e H é m o n d H o t t e

www.anniehemondhotte.com

Image (left): Broken Heart Through the Mirror (Jealous Cat Lady) oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 78 x 72 inches

Still Life (offerings for the idols) oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 60 x 47 inches

Spring 2018

Image (middle): Choosing Heads /La table des décisions oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 80 x 68 inches

Image (right): Face Off (the narcissist) oil paint, oil sticks and vinyl colours on canvas 34 x 26 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

G u i m i

Y o u

www.guimiyou.com

Guimi You was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1985. She holds a Master’s degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London, and Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University. Upon the completion of her MA in the United Kingdom in 2014, Guimi subsequently moved to New Haven, CT, where she continued her artwork for two and a half years. She has been living and working in New York with her husband and 2-year-old son, Dali, since early 2017. Guimi You is recognized for her painting that brings personal narratives and fantasy together. She has featured in the article, “8 Artists to Watch from Bushwick Open Studios 2017” by Hyperallergic, and will have a solo exhibition at Monya Rowe Gallery in New York in 2018. Her works have been exhibited in UK and Korea, including Paper Cuts, Kristian Day, London (2017); Terraformers, Bonington Gallery, UK (2016); Creekside Open selected by Lisa Milroy, A.P.T. Gallery, London (2015); HOT-ONE-HUNDRED, Schwartz Gallery, London (2013); Creekside Open Selected by Paul Noble, A.P.T. Gallery, London (2013). Guimi has received several awards and grants and taken part in artist-in-residency programs. She was the winner of the Creekside Open selected by Paul Noble (2013), shortlisted for the Contemporary Visions VI, BEERS London (2015), and received the Dean of the Graduate School Award and Grant in Seoul National University in Korea (2011). She participated in the artist-in-residence program at MASS/Moca (2017) and Vermont Studio Center with a merit-based grant (2016). Her works are included in the collection of the Seoul National University Museum of Art (SNUMoA) and College of Fine Art in Seoul National University. I sometimes feel that I lose myself when I play with my son. He is strongly absorbed in his imaginary world, and I myself confuse the real world with his imagination. For example, his imaginary shark in our living room made him act as if he were in the ocean, and aroused my consequent imagination. Some paintings were created by recombining those scenes where imagination and real world were mingled. In this way, recent works are mostly inspired by parenting experience from everyday life and they sometimes reveal fatigue and tiredness. Parenting requires extensive sacrifice in both physical and psychological aspects. The sudden transition from a self-centered life into a life of selfless caring occasionally confused me, and triggered an inner conflict. Joyful moments from baby’s laugh, sleepless nights, and the pressure from pursuing art making were all mixed up and alternately encouraged and discouraged me as a mother and as an artist.

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Drain Drain Drain oil and oil pastel on canvas 47 x 62.5 inches

I can’t see you oil on canvas 48 x 42 inches

Safety First oil on canvas 40 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

G u i m i

Y o u

www.guimiyou.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Drain Drain Drain oil and oil pastel on canvas 47 x 62.5 inches

I can’t see you oil on canvas 48 x 42 inches

Safety First oil on canvas 40 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

S i e r r a M o n t o y a B a r e l a

www.sierrabarela.com

Sierra Montoya Barela is an artist living and working in Denver, Colorado. Barela earned a BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2015 and was an Artist-In-Residence at the Vermont Studio Center and the Horned Dorset Colony in the months that followed. She has since shown in various group and solo exhibitions, most recently at Yes Ma’am Projects, Gildar Gallery and the Open Shelf Library at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. My practice combines painting, sculpture, collage and printmaking. In my work I explore the figure as an unidentified subject. At times, my work is diagrammatic and instructional in nature and has origins in collage.

Exuberance, wealth (health) you name it oil and acrylic on canvas 44 x 62 inches

The Simple Life oil and acrylic on canvas 42 x 58 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

S i e r r a M o n t o y a B a r e l a

www.sierrabarela.com

Exuberance, wealth (health) you name it oil and acrylic on canvas 44 x 62 inches

The Simple Life oil and acrylic on canvas 42 x 58 inches

Spring 2018

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

J o e u n A a t c h i m

The relationship between me and my work is quite complicated, like that between a ventriloquist and his/her dummy. I am a multidisciplinary artist who creates visual literature by layering voices and using whimsical hierarchies. I work with voices — including ventriloquism, dubbing, artists’ lectures, and installations — which combine the languages of crafts, mosaics, fresco painting, ceramics, drawings, and printmaking. As an artist and metaphorical ventriloquist, I treat my artwork as my “dummy”. However, my dummy has a voice of its own and can speak for itself, and thus it no longer needs to be ventriloquized by the artist. I whimsically play with the expectations and gaze of the audience. I deploy a form of live performance and illustrated lecture, which I script and direct. To mimic the traditional artist’s lecture, where artists are expected to speak about their “voices” in their artwork, I collaborate with voice actors and ventriloquists to speak on my behalf. Many of my projects started out as written works that were either my own or those that I found, and they were prominently based on research and literary diction and translation. My passion stemmed from transforming these writings into visual literature through multimedia installations. For example, Austrian philosophical writer Robert Musil’s “Essayism” became the inspiration for my installation approach to Draft: Sans Self project. I employed the term “draft”, avoided a linear narrative thread, paid attention to the details of anecdotes, and compared my use of metaphor to the process of publication, including draft, proof, and illustration. Likewise, the fragments of Sappho’s poems became my inspiration for the Σmail project, the Email project, a fictional email service named after Sappho (the ΣE should be the Greek S or Sigma) that celebrated drafts, the inability to finish one’s writing, and unfound fragments. I employed the term “fragments” not only in its literal forms, such as mosaics and paper fragments, but also as conceptual momentum by highlighting ventriloquized voices in old literatures. I remain deeply fascinated by the notion of “fragments” and by the “draft” stage, as I believe in the unfolding possibilities of the future. I believe that each of my works has a unique biorhythm. Thus, to keep the symbiotic relationship between me and my works healthy, I try to be the partner, not the master, of my works. However, it is difficult for an artist to avoid claiming “authorship” on a work that he/she has spent a long time creating. Therefore, in my studio, each time I create visual objects, I work as my own “fabricator” who is employed by my own “future self”. In this way, my present self can be fully immersed in the “creation” process without being distracted by the issue of what I am saying through my work. The responsibility of analyzing the work’s voice falls to my future self. This metaphorical division of labor allows my symbiotic relationship with my work to grow.

www.joeun-aatchim.com A Passionate ‘Female’ Poet Who Committed Suicide with a Broken Heart/ Her Real Life Remains in Haze... Highlighted as a Victory of Love by Alphonse Daudet site specific installation with carved painted concrete floor, traffic sign neon spray paint installation size variable, floor carving 6 ft x 10 ft

Sappho off the Cliff tumbled marble, smalti glass, unglazed earthenware, foam, cement, resin, grout, sand, fiberglass 15 X 24 Inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

J o e u n A a t c h i m

Sappho off the Cliff tumbled marble, smalti glass, unglazed earthenware, foam, cement, resin, grout, sand, fiberglass 15 X 24 Inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Spring 2018

D a n n i O ’ B r i e n www.danielleobrienart.com

Danni O’Brien is a queer womyn maker currently based in the Washington, DC metro area. As a public art educator, she balances her passion for art advocacy and experimental art education with an active interdisciplinary studio practice. Her making is rooted in playing, collecting, compiling, and constructing. Often reflecting memories of parties and childhood landscapes, her work is playful and slightly off kilter. O’Brien has recently attended artist residencies at Azule in Hot Springs, North Carolina; Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska, and Proyecto Ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work has been shown at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago, IL; University of Cincinnati in Ohio; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Little Berlin in Philadelphia, PA and recently published in Hiss Mag and Slag Mag. My current work revolves around notions of nostalgia, play, and puberty. Evolving from a series I call the Slumber Parties, miniature scapes reminiscent of cardboard dioramas I composed in my youth, my newest work borrows iconography from set design and grows in scale. Nostalgic for the hands-on, accessible, and cheap materials I employed as a child, I manipulate cardboard, paper pulp, paint, yarn, plastics, and hand built ceramics to create sculptures ripe with texture and oozing sensuality. I marry wood working skills learned while working construction with feminized systems such as stitching, beading, and rug making to assemble these cheeky constructions.

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Pillow Pile latch hooked yarn and plastic rope, wood 28 x 30 x 2 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Play Date rubber tube, glitter, glazed ceramics, latch hooked yarn and plastic rope, wood, paper pulp, found object 66 x 48 x 24 inches

Spring 2018

D a n n i O ’ B r i e n www.danielleobrienart.com

Image (p.98):

Image (p.99):

Pillow Pile latch hooked yarn and plastic rope, wood 28 x 30 x 2 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

Play Date rubber tube, glitter, glazed ceramics, latch hooked yarn and plastic rope, wood, paper pulp, found object 66 x 48 x 24 inches

Spring 2018

L i n a P u e r t a

www.linapuerta.net

Lina Puerta examines the relationship between nature and the body. She utilizes a wide variety of materials in her work — concrete, clay, artificial plants, paper pulp, craft and recycled items. With these materials she creates textural forms and compositions that blend the human-made world with the natural, exploring notions of control, consumerism and life’s fragility. Her artistic process is in great part guided by the physical qualities of the materials, their textures, forms and colors; and informed by concepts of femininity, fashion, sexuality and artificiality. In her Tapestries Series, Puerta’s paper and mixed-media works are inspired by Renaissance tapestries, investigating the trappings of the ruling elite of 15th and 16th century Europe but reworking this decorative tradition to speak to the excesses of contemporary culture. During a residency at Dieu Donné in 2016, the artist worked with master papermaker Amy Jacobs, utilizing an experimental process of controlled manipulation of paper pulp. In this series, Puerta embraces the organic and spontaneous qualities of paper, while layering and embedding it with recycled materials, including plastic, fabric, artificial plants, beads, sequins, faux fur, lace, velvet ribbon, leather scraps, costume jewelry, butterfly wings, and dried snakes. However, this seemingly endless abundance is merely a facade that hides the detrimental effects of human activity on our environment. Portrayed in a state of decay and disintegration, this work explores the capacity of nature to reclaim the land and resources that are being consumed by our society. — Excerpt from Lina Puerta: Tapestries exhibition statement by Gabriel de Guzman, Curator & Director of Exhibitions, Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY. Lina Puerta was born in NJ, raised in Colombia and lives and works in New York City. She earned an MS in Art Education from Queens College and is the recipient of several residencies and grants including: the 2017 NYFA Fellowship; 2016 Dieu Donné Workspace Residency; Artprize-8 Sustainability Award; 2015 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant; 2015 Kohler Arts/Industry Residency (WI); 2013-14 Smack Mellon Art Studio Program; 2014 Materials for the Arts; 2013 Wave Hill Winter Workspace and the 2010 Emerging Artist Fellowship at Socrates Sculpture Park in New York. Exhibition venues include: 21C Museum Hotels, Bentonville AR; Richmond Center for Visual Arts, Kalamazoo, MI; Museum of Biblical Art; El Museo del Barrio; Socrates Sculpture Park; Wave Hill; Geary Contemporary, NYC; Pi-Artworks, London and H-Gallery, Paris. Puerta’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Wilder Quarterly, Sculpture Magazine and Artnet News among others.

Untitled (Turquoise/Tapestries Series) cotton, linen and abaca pulp, lace, sequins, appliqués, velvet ribbon, appliqués, fake fur, feathers, and found insect wings 49 x 38 inches

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Image (left): Untitled (Snakes/Tapestries Series) cotton and linen pulp, lace, velvet, ribbon, sequins, trims, appliqués, fake fur, found dead snakes and chains 35 x 23 inches

Spring 2018

Image (middle): Untitled (Blue + Red/Tapestries Series) cotton, linen and abaca pulp, lace, sequins, velvet ribbon, fake fur, feathers, and found insect wings 49 x 36 inches

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Image (right): Untitled (Pink + Gold/Tapestries Series) cotton, linen and abaca pulp, lace, sequins, appliqués, velvet ribbon, appliqués, fake fur, feathers, and found insect wings 54 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

L i n a P u e r t a

www.linapuerta.net

Untitled (Turquoise/Tapestries Series) cotton, linen and abaca pulp, lace, sequins, appliqués, velvet ribbon, appliqués, fake fur, feathers, and found insect wings 49 x 38 inches

100

Image (left): Untitled (Snakes/Tapestries Series) cotton and linen pulp, lace, velvet, ribbon, sequins, trims, appliqués, fake fur, found dead snakes and chains 35 x 23 inches

Spring 2018

Image (middle): Untitled (Blue + Red/Tapestries Series) cotton, linen and abaca pulp, lace, sequins, velvet ribbon, fake fur, feathers, and found insect wings 49 x 36 inches

101

Image (right): Untitled (Pink + Gold/Tapestries Series) cotton, linen and abaca pulp, lace, sequins, appliqués, velvet ribbon, appliqués, fake fur, feathers, and found insect wings 54 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

J o n

D u f f

E r i k N i e m i n e n

www.jonduff.com

www.eriknieminen.com

Erik Nieminen is a Finnish-Canadian artist born in Ottawa in 1985. He achieved a BFA from the University of Ottawa in 2007 and an MFA from Concordia University in Montreal in 2010. He has exhibited in both Europe and North America including solo shows in London, Ottawa, Montreal and will be showing a new body of work, “Paradise Not Lost”, in Montreal and Berlin in 2018. He currently lives and works in Montreal and is represented by the Magic Beans Gallery in Berlin. My paintings present an independent reality, a world that is dependent on our real world yet is separate from it. I seek to deconstruct the reality that we inhabit in order to remake reality according the logic inherent in the painting process. With that in mind my works cannot be identified as Realist, Photorealist, or Representational, just as they cannot be identified as Abstract, or Non-Objective. I am predominantly interested in the dissolution of space, perspective, light, and time through varying degrees of figuration and abstraction. Form is created through a responsive and adaptive process over a length of time, reworking the colours and shapes until an ideal solution is found. Thus the process itself mirrors the way time works – gradually shifting reality until what is familiar evolves into something transformed and reintroduced.

Jon Duff (b. 1986, Oconomowoc, WI) received his MFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2012, and his BFA from the University of Minnesota in 2008. He is a 2011 alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and he attended the Triangle Artists’ Workshop in 2012. After graduating from MICA, Duff was a finalist for the Janet and Walter Sondheim Award in 2012. He has exhibited his work along the east coast in Georgia, Virginia, Baltimore, Delaware and New York. His work was published in New American Paintings in 2013. Duff moved to New York in 2014 and was named as one of “8 artists to watch from the 2015 Bushwick Open Studios” by Hyperallergic. In 2016 he presented a solo exhibition at Current Space called Panspermia on Amazon Prime, which drew parallels between science fiction and our current consumerist experience. Science fiction, humor and evolutionary psychology all greatly influence my work. I poke fun at the human experience through sculpture, painting and digital prints which express a disorderliness that is both humorous and apocalyptic. Through my works I consider and act out the contemporary struggle between our individual humanist and our collective posthumanist values. I am drawing absurd comparisons between our biological drives and contemporary culture. I am communicating a humorous cynicism of our anthropocentric perspective. I am using the abilities I have as a crazy ape in a disordered world to act out and make discoveries. Abstract Paradise oil on linen 130 x 170cm

Warrior’s Hanky acrylic and epoxy on vinyl 36 x 31 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

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J o n

D u f f

E r i k N i e m i n e n

www.jonduff.com

www.eriknieminen.com

Warrior’s Hanky acrylic and epoxy on vinyl 36 x 31 inches

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www.rogerallancleaves.com

R o g e r A l l a n C l e a v e s

My studio practice investigates social issues using contemporary narratives through the use of symbols, icons, and the language of abstract figuration. I feel that there is a lack of epic stories told by minorities that focus on the culture of contemporary life and that artists have a responsibility to document history while exploring aesthetics. Currently I am writing a tale about an adventurer named Bookie that is investigating invented worlds that exist in the realm of abstraction. I allow the writing and the art making process to inform and expand each other’s existence in my studio practice. My research studies include classic American literature, American History, graphic novels, and indigenous cultures. Cleaves has a Masters of Fine Art - University of Wisconsin at Madison and Bachelors of Fine Art - University of Memphis.

Dynamite Tears oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

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You Can’t Drown a Shark oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

Spring 2018

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www.rogerallancleaves.com

R o g e r A l l a n C l e a v e s

Dynamite Tears oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

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You Can’t Drown a Shark oil on canvas 48 x 60 inches

Spring 2018

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S e d r i c k C h i s o m www.sedrickchisom.com

My practice is an intersection between painting and playwriting. I tell an Afrofuturist story in which people of color have left the planet earth to explore the cosmos beyond the Milky Way, the United States has reverted into two civil war era nations, and every white person has been infected with a genetic disease that causes them to develop skin pigmentation. I use long descriptive titles to cue the viewer into the extensive saga that my plays and overall body of work describe. My paintings use the romantic landscape as a site where the apocalyptic narratives of white supremacy, Christianity, and climate change intersect — a scenario in which most of the built environment has been obliterated and transformed into a toxic, hallucinatory wasteland. I am concerned with the historical construction of whiteness in fiction as an antagonism between notions of civility and barbarism, the built environment versus the “natural” landscape — the civic human subject in relation to the monstrous absolute Other. I position the romantic landscape as disturbed by the traces of Western imperialism and structural violence through a process that involves layering, spraying, or scraping away. For me, painting is a process of agitating a sealed-away past as a means to reconstitute itself in the present. I reference contemporary Black Lives Matter imagery, medieval Christian iconography, figures from western mythology/history, as well as details from my own idiosyncratic life story.

Image (left): Medusa’s petrification of a Confederate Hero woil, acrylic, and spraypaint on tiled sheets of paper glued to canvas 60 x 66 inches

The discombobulation of three Alt-rightland reconnaissance men on thin ice in the arctic caps of Monument Valley, several hours before the wrath of Medusa oil, acrylic, and spraypaint on tiled sheets of paper glued to canvas 84 x 90 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

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Image (right):

Spring 2018

The anguished nativity of a Confederate Diver under the Juniper Trees of Monument Valley acrylic on tiled sheets of paper glued to strips of canvas 60 x 90 inches

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S e d r i c k C h i s o m www.sedrickchisom.com

Image (left): Medusa’s petrification of a Confederate Hero woil, acrylic, and spraypaint on tiled sheets of paper glued to canvas 60 x 66 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: curated selection

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Image (right):

Spring 2018

The anguished nativity of a Confederate Diver under the Juniper Trees of Monument Valley acrylic on tiled sheets of paper glued to strips of canvas 60 x 90 inches

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G r a c e F e c h n e r

K a r i n a

Y a n e s

www.karinayanesceramics.squarespace.com www.gracefechner.net Karina Yanes is a ceramic sculptor from Dayton, OH. She is a graduate from the Studio Art Program at Denison University with a concentration in ceramics. She has exhibited work at the Ateneo de Madrid during The First International Spanish and Latin American Art Exhibit and the 2017 EVAs Reception at Capital University’s Schumacher gallery. Karina is currently apprenticing studio artist Corinne D Peterson at Lillstreet Art Center. In my current work I am experimenting with the extent to which clay can hold up to various external factors. Clay possesses an eternal element of surprise: while I am able to direct its surface and shape to move in certain ways, it is constantly pushing back and moving in different directions than I anticipate. I am drawn to this material because of the relationship of my body to the pieces and the physicality of shaping the clay. There is a tension between the slow moments of smoothing the clay, and the rapid act of reacting to the force of gravity on the clay. I am interested in the transition from fast to slow and the contrasting relationship that exists between pieces that I have treated differently. The final product exists as an artifact that results from the long struggle between the material and me. Similar to many of my peers, I derive inspiration from my own personal experiences. My work initially emerged from my own personal struggle with anxiety. The repetitive, sometimes obsessive, process of smoothing the clay is a therapeutic act for me. I am interested in the metaphorical significance of these sculptures as bodies or masses containing baggage that is oftentimes hidden and not easily seen by the outside world. I am constantly trying to create sculptures with strong, smooth exteriors, but at times, the clay can no longer withstand certain stressors, and moments of tension cause breaks and imperfections.

Grace Fechner received her BFA in Illustration from University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 2013. Since graduating, she has exhibited regionally and nationally, and has participated in artist residencies nationally and internationally. Grace makes mixed media works exploring the human condition and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Grace Fechner’s work is at once playful and refined, employing a sense of naiveté but with a considered hand. There are familiar elements that are heightened and pushed to a surreal sphere using a keen sense of color, cartoon-like simplification of shape, sensitive lines, expressive brushstrokes, and layers that leave the viewer with the impression that none of it is exactly what it seems. She works two-dimensionally in mixed media, incorporating drawing, painting, and assemblage.

Deserted acrylic, graphite, india ink pen 16 x 22 inches Overslept porcelain, glaze, glass, wire 5 x 15 x 7 inches

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G r a c e F e c h n e r

K a r i n a

Y a n e s

Deserted acrylic, graphite, india ink pen 16 x 22 inches Overslept porcelain, glaze, glass, wire 5 x 15 x 7 inches

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T i m M a g e n t a

timmagenta.com

between the virtual immersion into an intangible space and the disconnect from physical reality. The light created by screen devices works not only as a compositional element but as a narrative indicator, signifying this splitting of attention, a simultaneous presence and absence. In the paintings, the light becomes personified and forms a partnership with its user. In current culture, the user spends the most time with this light: during meals, car rides, bathroom activities, and the last moments before sleep. It is a union paralleled by the complexities of the human relationships within the work that creates a tension the viewer must confront. A dialogue is created among the spaces within the painting and the physical space inhabited by the painting and the viewer. The installation and proximity of multiple canvas works acknowledge reality while the application of the paint denounces it. This contradiction corresponds to the physical versus virtual dynamic explored within the paintings. Magenta challenges the static nature of an image by allowing the narratives to pose endless questions. As a result, they live in a state of evolution with the presence of each viewer. This engagement with the work aligns with the viscerality of voyeurism.

Tim Magenta (b. 1992) is from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and is currently based in North Bethesda, Maryland. He is an MFA candidate at American University in Washington DC. He attended Chautauqua School of Art in Chautauqua, NY and will be attending the American University Residency in Berlin, Germany in the Summer of 2018. Recent selected group exhibition venues include Katzen Art Museum, Washington DC; First Street Gallery, NY; Blue Mountain Gallery, NY, and Red Raven Art Company, PA. Tim Magenta creates representational paintings that are a collection of observations, invented spaces, and art historical references. Through these scenes, he sorts and codifies present and past events, navigates social interactions and depicts memories with the clarity of hindsight. Young adult life and the contemporary relationship become the subject in his work. He navigates this time of adulthood as a pursuit to further understand the complexities of this period in life, his environment, and his broader relationship to the surrounding culture. Ordinary life is mined for moments that exemplify moral ambiguity or alienation, which he uses as a vehicle to explore the intersections of current culture and technology. Social technology becomes a character in his work. The prevalent relationship to smartphones, tablets, laptops, and televisions is an area explored, observed, and questioned. Magenta navigates the moments

House Palm oil on canvas 42 x 48 inches

Friday Night in Night oil on canvas 48 x 72 inches

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T i m M a g e n t a

timmagenta.com

House Palm oil on canvas 42 x 48 inches

Friday Night in Night oil on canvas 48 x 72 inches

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Spring 2018

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K e v i n

S o l i s

www.kevinsolis.com

Kevin Solis is an Ecuadorian artist, currently living in Chicago, finishing his BFA degree at SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). His work fluctuates mostly within the realm of sculpture, focusing on ceramics as the main medium. With a recent exploration in the fabrication of neon lighting, Solis is bringing his skill of object-making to a conversation of design and the fine art functional object. Throughout this late body of work, I’m interested in the creation of objects capable of holding a narrative about themselves, with almost no suggestions from what the objects are inspired, but enough to create a dynamic and mysterious atmosphere around them. My work explores ideas of concealing and revealing, potentially suggesting that there are objects being trapped or information being kept. I focus a lot on the process of making and material exploration and try to use the seductiveness of the contrasting surfaces, from very sleek, bright, and precise forms, to rough, dark, and confined spaces.

Pool Object 3 ceramic, multiple firings 9 x 7 x 5 inches

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Pool Object 6 ceramic, gold luster, multiple firings 6 x 5 x 5 inches

Spring 2018

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K e v i n

S o l i s

www.kevinsolis.com

Pool Object 3 ceramic, multiple firings 9 x 7 x 5 inches

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Pool Object 6 ceramic, gold luster, multiple firings 6 x 5 x 5 inches

Spring 2018

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e d i tor i a l se lection

Featured image: Jamie Romanet Night Kiss watercolor and ink on arches paper 8 x 8 inches more on p. 140

e d i tor i a l se lection

Featured image: Jamie Romanet Night Kiss watercolor and ink on arches paper 8 x 8 inches more on p. 140

M a j a

R u z n i c

www.ontheedgeofreason.com

The figures in this work are festive and look as if they have returned from some unknown ritual. The celebrations they take part in are to shake their bones and bring out stories hiding in them. I think of their limbs as shareable — one arm belongs to two or three bodies and two sets of feet carry them all. They are all engaged in a love-and-hate affair while they laugh and sob in unison to mourn and curse the dead. The island on which they live provides all that they need to survive. The plants shower them with rejuvenating star dust which heals eczema and other skin conditions, while swimming in the lake soothes menstrual cramps. The caves are where only the oldest go. Maja Ruznic is primarily a painter, a storyteller who conjures form and narrative from ground up mineral, smeared oil, and stained canvas. Born in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1983, Ruznic immigrated to the United States with her family in 1995, settling on the West Coast where she eventually went on to study at the University of California, Berkeley, later earning an MFA from the California College of Arts. Ruznic’s often-quoted personal history – a refugee who escaped the Bosnian War – is only the beginning of her journey. Ruznic has recently shown work in Sarajevo, Denver, Istanbul, Austin, Vienna, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Ruznic’s work has been written about extensively, most notably in Juxtapoz, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Studio Visit Magazine, and twice in New American Paintings, including the cover as selected by curator Anne Ellegood. Ruznic was a finalist for the Richard Diebenkorn Teaching Fellowship, awarded in partnership with the San Francisco Art Institute and the Headlands Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA. In the summer of 2017 Ruznic was artist in residence in Brittany, France with MICA’s Klots International Program for Artists.

Arrival oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

The Help oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches

The Waltz oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

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M a j a

R u z n i c

www.ontheedgeofreason.com

Arrival oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

The Help oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches

The Waltz oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

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R é g i s

I am currently studying an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, after finishing my BA in Fine Art at Chelsea College of Art. Some exhibitions I have done this year include: Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2017 in BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead; BALTIC 39, Newcastle upon Tyne and currently at Block 336 in London; Griffin Art Prize 2018 at Griffin Gallery and FBA Futures 2018 at Mall Galleries. My paintings are the result of intense periods of work realized in parking lots and abandoned buildings in Sicily, and in the South of France and the work I have achieved during my academic percourse in London. My intention is to transform the canvases into visceral surfaces, into living beings. They have to be informed by chance, traces of work, dirt, cuts and seams. I used paper glued on canvas, coffee bags, old hessian postbags, ancient moth eaten French embroideries, Sicilian embroidered white tablecloths… An unconventional and irregular canvas link to smells, noises, dialogues... It adds a cinematic feeling to it and the matter is for tactile sensations. In a reversal of values, the surface becomes almost more important than the motifs. The abstract motifs are associated with ostensibly figurative subjects. These are drawings scribbled on a used wall, ex-votos, profiles drawn from posters of African barbershops. Envy of unfinished works, saturations, and also of empty surfaces. Powder bottles with labels stating “PEACE” or “RUN DEVIL RUN”. Carefully packed dried leaves bouquets. Sliced potatoes, roots covered in mud, decaying fish heads. Shouts of a strawberry seller mixed with the smell of rotten meat. I lived the endless food markets of Palermo; I also lived near Electric Avenue, the popular street market of Brixton: my work comes from these popular atmospheres. Recently my work has been introducing characters sitting on a chair in a poetic contemporary environment: a kitchen, a bird market, a butchery… The narratives in my work look like a scene that could inspire a film. What I’m looking for in my work is for it to be the most full of life possible. I need to work on a large scale, so that painting becomes a physical act. That’s where I feel the more confident, the freer. I like to navigate in troubled waters, between the real and the imaginary; between dramatic criminality and joyful optimism. Ambiguity and rhythm for me are the key to a lively work. My work is at the crossroads of the “real world”, which is for me a lively, popular and spontaneous world, and a pictorial language far from all sophistications or mannerisms, in which I try to recreate the codes to make it essential.

Run Devil Run embroidered tablecloth, acrylic, pigments 250 x 230 cm

www.maiaregis.tumblr.com Wasp in The Box, Fast Money pigments, acrylic, embroidered tablecloth 262 x 221 cm

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R é g i s

Run Devil Run embroidered tablecloth, acrylic, pigments 250 x 230 cm

www.maiaregis.tumblr.com Wasp in The Box, Fast Money pigments, acrylic, embroidered tablecloth 262 x 221 cm

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C a t h e r i n e

H a g g a r t y

www.catherinehaggarty.com

Catherine Haggarty, b. 1984, is an artist and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. Haggarty received her MFA from Mason Gross, Rutgers University in 2011 and is currently the co-director of Ortega y Gasset in Brooklyn and a contributing writer for the Curator & Art Savvy. Haggarty’s paintings and curatorial work have been reviewed and featured in Hyperallergic, Two Coats of Paint, Brooklyn Magazine, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Maake Magazine, the Black and White Project, Sound and Vision Podcast and Young Space. My paintings hedge between abstraction and representation, between memory and willed conjuring. This dissonance between representation and memory seems to occupy the bulk of my interest in painting. Forms reoccur and change over time, but the mainstay of my visual vocabulary is autobiographical and observational. Athleticism, prose, the human form, landscape, and a sense of humor all live within my paintings in some capacity. I want my paintings to connect synapses, build bridges and to live between brazen self-assuredness and a sort of quietude that asks rather than demands your attention.

Dinosaur Days fluid acrylic on canvas 11 x 14 inches

La Rue fluid acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 inches

Lemongrass fluid acrylic on panel 9 x 12 inches

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OX-XO fluid acrylic on panel 12 x 18 inches

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C a t h e r i n e

H a g g a r t y

www.catherinehaggarty.com

Dinosaur Days fluid acrylic on canvas 11 x 14 inches

La Rue fluid acrylic on canvas 16 x 20 inches

Lemongrass fluid acrylic on panel 9 x 12 inches

Image (left):

OX-XO fluid acrylic on panel 12 x 18 inches

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D u s t i n

L o n d o n

www.dustinlondon.com

In Dustin London’s paintings pictorial space is something malleable, shifting, and subversive. Finely calibrated balances of idiosyncratic elements create paradoxical spatial propositions. Space is not the stage for an event; it is the event itself. Paintings begin as digital drawings that require long periods of time in front of a monitor, which induces a disembodied state; a total immersion where a sense of the tangible world is lost in a digital space that is weightless, without surface, consisting only of light. As visual relationships develop on the screen, they suggest possibilities for translation into the tactile reality of paint. The painting process is then one of testing, trying to find a specific, though sometimes antagonistic, marriage between insistent surfaces and indefinable depths. Multiple underlayers of contrasting color amplify and complicate chromatic relationships on the surface, and create an internal luminosity reminiscent of the screen, as painting chases the digital aura of the original image. Dustin London’s work has been exhibited at venues including NURTUREart in Brooklyn, Heskin Contemporary in New York City, Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, the Untitled Art Fair in Miami Beach, and TSA Gallery in Brooklyn. He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo, Millay Colony, Willapa Bay AiR, Jentel, Vermont Studio Center, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. London is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and his work has been featured in New American Paintings, Fresh Paint Magazine, Paint Pulse Magazine, and The New York Times. He received a BFA from Michigan State University and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. He currently lives and works in Ann Arbor, MI and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art & Design at Eastern Michigan University.

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Palindrome oil on canvas 52 x 62 inches

When Feelings Meet Science (The Doppler Effect) Detail oil on canvas 70 x 58 inches When Feelings Meet Science (The Doppler Effect) oil on canvas 70 x 58 inches

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D u s t i n

L o n d o n

www.dustinlondon.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Palindrome oil on canvas 52 x 62 inches

When Feelings Meet Science (The Doppler Effect) Detail oil on canvas 70 x 58 inches When Feelings Meet Science (The Doppler Effect) oil on canvas 70 x 58 inches

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L a u r y n

W e l c h

www.laurynwelch.com

Much of my life as a maker has been split between contrasting worlds. I studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, and finished my BFA at Purchase College. Since then, I’ve spent my time commuting between rural New Hampshire and New York City. I keep up with the buzz, but sink into the quiet. I’ve been a teacher and a learner, often in the same spaces, and while I may be trained as a painter, I started as a performance artist. In my work, colors and patterns broadcast social signals. As an avid birdwatcher, I have studied how animals use appearances to attract mates, accumulate social status, and hide from predators. Likewise, I’ve noticed that people also used visual cues to signal their social preferences. This has led to my fascination with performed identity, and the way that identity is expressed with fashion trends, textiles, body modification, uniforms, and living space. I take inspiration from painters who use textiles and patterns to express identity and abstract the body, such as Domenico Gnoli and Pierre Bonnard. I see the world through interlocking layers of colors and patterns, which are prominent in my work. These attributes act as masks or skins, creating the syntax positioning a person within an environment. I use markers and acrylic paint to record libraries of patterns, gestures, and color combinations in the natural world. These drawings are references for larger projects. My work is rooted in painting, though I have explored time-based media to capture transformations from one state to another. I make paintings on canvas and I paint the body to camouflage into handmade sets. Though the resulting optical illusion is often the spectacle of focus, I want to emphasize the critical point of transformation when personhood becomes abstracted, and the sitter merges with the set, like putting on a second skin.

Dress Socks acrylic on canvas 9 x 12 inches

Navel Gazing acrylic on canvas 10 x 8 inches

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L a u r y n

W e l c h

www.laurynwelch.com

Dress Socks acrylic on canvas 9 x 12 inches

Navel Gazing acrylic on canvas 10 x 8 inches

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J e s s i c a W i l l i a m s

www.jessica-williams.com

Jessica Williams (b.1983) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. Recent solo shows include SADE, Los Angeles; Galeria La Esperanza, Mexico City; and Young Art, Los Angeles. Recent group shows include The Annex at M+B; The Diogenes Club; Sargent’s Daughters; Rainbow in Spanish, and Del Vaz Projects. Her work has been reviewed and featured in Contemporary Art Review LA, i-D, Art Viewer, Terremoto, Flash Art, Sex Magazine, and Art Practical, among others. In my paintings, I explore how atmospheres and architectures resonate emotionally. My palette, a phantasmagorical display of muted light and gem-tones, echoes the smog and the glittering reflections on display throughout Los Angeles. I paint landscapes and portraits capturing moments of introspection. My female subjects oscillate between dream and reality, reverie and surrender, stillness and expectation.

Twilight of the Idols oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

Young Carrie Fisher oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches

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J e s s i c a W i l l i a m s

www.jessica-williams.com

Twilight of the Idols oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

Young Carrie Fisher oil on canvas 16 x 20 inches

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K a r o l i n a P t a s z k o w s k a

www.karolinaptaszkowska.com

Karolina lives and works in Bristol. She gained her MA from The Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (Poland) in 2010 and was enrolled in the Turps Art School Correspondence Course in 2017. Her works have been shown in the UK and Europe. Selected group shows include: ‘Paper Cuts’ curated by Kristian Day, Tripp Gallery, London, UK – 2017; ‘Ebc015’, East Bristol Contemporary, Bristol, UK – 2017; ‘We Are The Ones, Vol 1.’, CGK, Copenhagen, Denmark - 2017; ‘Pay & Display Prize’, Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, UK - 2017; ‘Bath Open Art Prize’, FaB Festival, 44AD Artspace, Bath, UK - 2016; ‘Noc Malarzy’, Praca Gallery, Warsaw, Poland – 2012; ‘Start to Hangart’, Bochenska Gallery, Warsaw, Poland. She was recently shortlisted for the ‘South West Showcase Open Call’ Award, Gallery at Plymouth College of Art, UK. I want my work to be a ground for experimental, formalist abstraction, and I also analyse the illustrative and self-reflective qualities of an image. It results from myriad sources: psychoanalysis, linguistics, magical feminism, the mundane and art history. The enunciation becomes more important than the cold data. I direct myself with the idea of an affect, operating beyond (or before) language, outside the process of signification. I create a temperamental narrator, using it as another medium that leaves traces. My paintings depict spaces that embrace their own logic, which is based on control, transformation, blur and error. I keep my painting process open, trying out different voices and approaches which incorporate plural meaning into my work. I emphasise examining the intellectual structure of an artwork: subjectivism, objectivism and the position of an author, drawing my attention to the subject of philosophy, within which I want to explore the human experience.

Image (left): Follow The Thread flashe, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 125 x 100 cm

Bitter Split acrylic, flashe, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 78 x 62 cm

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Image (middle): What Do You Say acrylic, flashe, pastel, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 100 x 80 cm

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Image (right): Warm Up acrylic, flashe, pastel, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 78 x 62 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: editorial selection

K a r o l i n a P t a s z k o w s k a

www.karolinaptaszkowska.com

Image (left): Follow The Thread flashe, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 125 x 100 cm

Bitter Split acrylic, flashe, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 78 x 62 cm

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Image (middle): What Do You Say acrylic, flashe, pastel, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 100 x 80 cm

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Image (right): Warm Up acrylic, flashe, pastel, coloured pencil, marble dust on canvas 78 x 62 cm

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L o r e n

B u r k e

www.instagram.com/pippysailor

Loren Burke b. 1986, works in oil and acrylic; currently residing in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.

I Dream of Burlap oil on cardboard 24 x 19 inches

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Night Owls oil on paper 15 x 10 inches

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L o r e n

B u r k e

www.instagram.com/pippysailor

Loren Burke b. 1986, works in oil and acrylic; currently residing in Turners Falls, Massachusetts.

I Dream of Burlap oil on cardboard 24 x 19 inches

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Night Owls oil on paper 15 x 10 inches

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Timothy Hoyt uses mythological and fantasy themes in his work as a metaphor for various facets of our current political environment – corruption, denial of scientific fact, constant threat of war – and the emotions and states of mind they bring with them. Anxiety, ominousness, and humor play out in the form of moments of climactic tension between figures, objects, and the spaces they inhabit. Fantasy and surrealist imagery reflect the appeal of escapism while living through tumultuous times, but the penetrating ominous undertones reveal that these issues are both inescapable and universal. Tim lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

www.timothy-hoyt.com

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High Tide oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches

Night Flight oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches

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Image (p.133, bottom): Last Resort oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches

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www.timothy-hoyt.com

T i m o t h y H o y t 132

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High Tide oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches

Night Flight oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches

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Image (p.133, bottom): Last Resort oil on canvas 24 x 28 inches

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B r u n o

D i

L e c c e

www.brunodilecce.com

Bruno Di Lecce was born in Matera in 1980. He completed his architectural studies in 2006 at ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome. Since 2008 he has been living and working in Berlin. His work has been on display in many exhibitions, including the following: ‘Eine Enzyklopädie des Zarten’, Galerie im Körnerpark (Berlin, 2018); ‘Intramonenia’ (Museo Provinciale Archeologico, Potenza, 2017); ‘Cottbusser Tor’ (Vesselroom Project, Berlin, 2014); ‘Ghostbusters, or how to stress photography’ (Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Kopenhagen, 2013); ‘Seven Gates’ (14. Biennale of Young Artists from Europe and the Mediterranean, Skopje, 2009); ‘VEMA La nuova cittá Italia-y-26’ (X Venice Biennale of Architecture, 2006); ‘Identitá e contaminazioni’ (Galleria AAM, Rome, 2006). In 2013, he received the artist in residence stipend of the Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main.

is steered towards fully immersed virtuality which in return becomes a goal in itself. Through this virtuality, humans seek to overcome their own body. The body appears as a playing field on which the world’s contradictory concepts line up against each other. In this context, Bruno Di Lecce’s painterly work is a form of resistance. It seeks to uncover and defy the rules of the game. His work is characterized by a centripetal force that recognizes an imaginary layer of the canvas as a further layer in space, from which one may explore new depths. It is about taking the painting process and with it annulling the initial idea. However, this does not lead to an expressionist gesture or a mere ordinary procedural dimension. Three recurrent themes have crystallized from the artist’s painting process: The first, is the “allegorical” theme which sometimes takes immediate shape on the canvas without further sketching. The second, is the element of the “absurd”; often created by negating the initial idea. His third theme is “synthesis” through which oblivion overcomes the need of expression.

Bruno Di Lecce’s research deals with the body as an inescapable boundary between nature and technology. Human fate perpetuates around these latter two concepts. Modernity tries to produce the utopic notion of an autonomous “human nature” and

The fly oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm

Theorem oil on canvas 90 x 75 cm

The painter oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm

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B r u n o

D i

L e c c e

www.brunodilecce.com

The fly oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm

Theorem oil on canvas 90 x 75 cm

The painter oil on canvas 40 x 50 cm

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M a t t

K l e b e r g

www.mattkleberg.com

Matt Kleberg (b.1985, Kingsville TX) received his BA from the University of Virginia in 2008 and his MFA from the Pratt Institute in 2015. Recent exhibitions include Mulherin New York (NY); Schema Projects (NY); Morgan Lehman Gallery (NY); Johansson Projects (CA); Hiram Butler Gallery (TX); and San Antonio Museum of Art. His work has been written about in The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, WNYC, Painting is Dead, Artsy, Vice, ArtDaily, New American Paintings, and Artillery Magazine. His work is included in public and private collections including the San Antonio Museum of Art, the Williams College Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Kleberg lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. My recent paintings are structures that appear simultaneously empty and full, static and active. The space suggested in the paintings is flimsy - receding one moment and collapsing back flat the next. The compositions often mimic my immediate environment in Brooklyn, buildings along my daily walk from apartment to studio punctuated by quirky embellishments - the Ark of Salvation church with the giant blue door, Navy Yard structures with obsessively bricked archways and boarded up windows, mechanic shops on Clinton Ave. that look like castles. These facades, then, operate like stages for potential but absent actors.

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Hypnobaby oil stick on canvas 96 x 72 inches

Spring 2018

Fire and Brownstone oil stick on canvas 100 x 72 inches

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M a t t

K l e b e r g

www.mattkleberg.com

Image (left):

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Hypnobaby oil stick on canvas 96 x 72 inches

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Fire and Brownstone oil stick on canvas 100 x 72 inches

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W i l l H u t n i c k www.willhutnick.com

Will Hutnick is an artist and curator based in Wassaic, NY. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) and his BA from Providence College (Providence, RI). His work has been exhibited most recently at Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn); Geoffrey Young Gallery (Great Barrington, MA); DEMO Project (Springfield, IL); FJORD Gallery (Philadelphia, PA); VICTORI+MO (Brooklyn); Standard Projects (Hortonville, WI); Providence College Galleries (Providence, solo); the Java Project (Brooklyn, solo) and Pratt Institute. Hutnick has curated numerous exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, the Wassaic Project, Trestle Projects, Pratt Institute (New York and Brooklyn) and Hamiltonian Gallery (Washington, DC). He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), DNA Gallery (Provincetown, MA), the Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and a curator-in-residence at Benaco Arte (Sirmione, Italy) and Trestle Projects (Brooklyn). Hutnick is a 2017 Martha Boschen Porter Fund grant recipient from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. He is the Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Brooklyn, and is currently the Residency Director at the Wassaic Project, a nonprofit organization that uses art and art education to foster positive social change. My work asks questions about impermanence and identity by conjuring up interstitial, queer spaces that exist between reality and perception. I think of queerness as something that exists in the future, brewing with potentiality rather than actuality. I start my work by using personal objects to act as stencils because of their indexical nature and allusions to topography: old milk crates from my late father’s car; torn pieces of used tape from my studio walls. By creating variations of the same form, my work explores how spaces (real, fantasy, queer) are constructed and assigned, and how malleable they actually are.

Remember When acrylic, paint marker and screen print on paper 31.5 x 23.75 inches

I Have Lost a Hero colored pencil, graphite, marker and pastel on paper 27.75 x 19.75 inches

Entrance Stone acrylic, colored pencil, crayon, mica, paint marker, spray paint and tape on canvas 70 x 58 inches

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W i l l H u t n i c k www.willhutnick.com

Remember When acrylic, paint marker and screen print on paper 31.5 x 23.75 inches

I Have Lost a Hero colored pencil, graphite, marker and pastel on paper 27.75 x 19.75 inches

Entrance Stone acrylic, colored pencil, crayon, mica, paint marker, spray paint and tape on canvas 70 x 58 inches

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J a m i e

R o m a n e t

A k s M i s y u t a www.artaksiniya.website

I am a self-taught [unknown] artist depicting ironical fantasies (derived from everyday life) in order to provoke some confusion in a viewer. In a nutshell, I’d like people to feel confused without particular reason looking at my pictures. They are free to interpret what they see, my pictures are an absolute “opera aperta”. The artistic method I work in, which often balances between abstraction and figurative (abstract figuration), has been developing as a reply to the post-internet world, people of which are satiated with a never-ending stream of visual content. The framework of my art is an Adamic view, an attempt to provide a viewer with a sensation of first ever glance, eyes of a newcomer when the brain has no information to rely on and starts the process of cognition. Using stereotypes widely as a tool for gaining knowledge about the world, we are prone to refuse our own ability to consider. In conditions of an excessive informational stream, we willingly superimpose notions, being prejudiced in following fashions. This has led me to a conception of Seeing-Seeming, within which I’m exploring the possibility of perceiving and judging without boundaries of enforced rating. Not a fan of mimesis, following my concept, I tend to depict objects of reality as sets of random forms [rather still lifes] to give a viewer a chance to think of the composition detached. Even when it comes to portraying human beings, I reduce them to “pseudo-flesh”, which on one hand serves esthetical purposes within my method, on the other hand it has a metaphorical meaning to me. The work strives to awake feelings by being unrecognizable, the other ones (created with a nod to figurative tradition) need you to recognize yourself in the characters, depicted in the romantic and humorous manner. I sympathize with both my viewers and my characters, they are echoing each other. The vulnerable human, humans nature, the world of mundane things, feelings and struggles have always inspired me.

www.instagram.com/jme_romanet

Jamie Romanet is an American painter living in Paris, best known for her watercolor portraits. Choosing the intimate small scale of 8 X 8”, Jamie mines her own emotions or that of the reference used, to create daily portraits of the human face. Mainly working wet on wet the works are expressive and vibrant in color. Recently, many works are made and washed away with water and bleach to work with the remaining stain, or ghost image. Reflecting upon attachment, these works also play with the abstract remnants, pulling out line and unexpected forms. Working with a fragile and ghost-like figure the artist explores how our inherited spirits haunt us and move us in different directions while also looking at concepts of attachment and permanence. Often described as haunting and emotional, there is an inherent loneliness in Jamie’s watercolors, while paradoxically, and in particular when presented in a grid they also speak of our common humanity and interconnectedness. Human emotion is at the center of my work. I delve into various anxieties, fears, stored thoughts and experiences by working with the spontaneous and dream-like arena of watercolor and ink. Using a variety of techniques I attempt to pull out the various images and forms. I am reminded of the last four stanzas from the poem All the Hemispheres by the Persian mystic poet Hafiz. “All the hemispheres in existence/ Lie beside an equator/ In your heart./ Greet yourself/ In your thousand other forms/ As you mount the hidden tide and travel/ Back home./ All the hemispheres in the heaven/ Are sitting around a fire/ Chatting/ While stitching themselves together/ Into the Great Circle inside of/ You.” Working in the small format, I am interested in drawing the viewer into an intimate world where they may greet themselves, and their other forms, to examine how we are different, and also the same. How we are pulled to ourselves, and away from ourselves? And what is our individual and collective relationship to one and other?

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Vicious wish acrylic on canvas pannel 18 x 24 cm

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Extant acrylic on canvas pannel 30 x 40 cm

Keep Quiet acrylic, ink and watercolor on arches paper 8 x 8 inches

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J a m i e

R o m a n e t

A k s M i s y u t a www.artaksiniya.website

www.instagram.com/jme_romanet

Image (left):

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Vicious wish acrylic on canvas pannel 18 x 24 cm

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Extant acrylic on canvas pannel 30 x 40 cm

Keep Quiet acrylic, ink and watercolor on arches paper 8 x 8 inches

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E l i s a C a r u t t i

A n t h o n y P a l o c c i J r www.anthonypaloccijr.com

www.elisacarutti.com

Anthony Palocci Jr. is an artist and educator living in Boston, MA. He went to school at Montserrat College of Art where he received a BFA in Painting and earned an MFA from Pratt Institute. Palocci co-operates a gallery space in Boston called CASTLEDRONE with his partner Maggie Cavallo. He teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. He has shown at Seattle Art Fair; VOLTA NY; Taylor University in Putnam, Indiana; SNHU in Manchester, NH; Regina Rex (harbor); et al Projects in NYC; HOW’S HOWARD in Boston and Galerie Eigenheim in Berlin and Weimar, Germany. In 2013 his work was included in the deCordova Biennial. His work is represented by SEASON in Seattle, WA. Anthony Palocci Jr was born in Salem, MA in 1987. My recent paintings explore ideas of masculinity, sexuality and loss through the close observation, isolation and magnification of specific objects. The items depicted are often things made to be handled, grabbed, turned and touched such as doorknobs, belts, straps and tools. The structure in the work is architectural and scale is made monolithic with directional light. These works in oil or gouache and ink may be understood as scenes in a film, one image leading to and informing the next. They are close-ups of actions or inactions, just befores or right afters, characterized by a sense of potential and the presence of someone who is only recognized by their absence in the image.

Elisa Carutti was born in Milan in 1991. She currently lives in London where she is attending the MFA programme in Painting at the Slade School of Fine Art. She took part in various group exhibitions in London, Milan, Greece and Paris where her work is represented by Zeuxis Galerie d’Art. In 2013 she was shortlisted for the prestigious Italian prize called Combat Prize and in 2016 she had her first solo show at the Triennale Design Museum in Milan entitled “5 Windows + 1 Cabbage”. In 2018 she will have her MA Degree show at the Slade School of Fine Art. My work explores the idea of reversing the interior organic parts of the subject into the exterior. In order to do that, I refer to Mannerism in which I see bodies trapped by their own forms and I combine the idea of the Mannerist “tangle” with the brutalism of a geometrical and heavy architectural structure around it. In this way, I paint an intersection between the structure of the space and the sensual shape which moves throughout it, crossing holes and passages. I outline different layers between the organic volumes and the architectural ones attempting an overlapping of the dual components in which we can’t distinguish what is on the back or on the front of the painting. Ultimately, this way of working let my paintings evoke allusive windows to a nowhere space in which forms are caught in the act of “tangling” among each other and where I can’t see anymore the beginning or the end of the tangle.

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Crossing it charcoal and oil colors on linen 180 x 160 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: editorial selection

Tighter still charcoal and oil colors on linen 150 x 120 cm

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Abstract Landscape with Pyramids and Magnet oil on linen 15 x 11 inches

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A n t h o n y P a l o c c i J r www.anthonypaloccijr.com

www.elisacarutti.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Crossing it charcoal and oil colors on linen 180 x 160 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: editorial selection

Tighter still charcoal and oil colors on linen 150 x 120 cm

142

Abstract Landscape with Pyramids and Magnet oil on linen 15 x 11 inches

Spring 2018

143

M i n h y e

C h o i

www.minhyechoi.com

Minhye Choi (Min Choi) was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1993. Choi received a BFA at Cornell University in 2016. She has had numerous group shows in the US and South Korea for young artists. Recently, she was selected as a finalist for the Solo Art Show, Spoon Art Fair 2017, in Korea. Choi works in the medium of painting, specifically in acrylics. Her earlier works were on the notion of duality of Cuteness. Sianne Ngai noted in her article, ‘The Cuteness of the Avant-Garde’, “The value of cuteness seems to expand…from the unequivocally positive (the charming socks) to the ambiguous or potentially negative (the indecent boy)”. She has questioned ideas about the ambivalence of cuteness: powerless vs. cruel or the façade of seemingly cute vs. sensual through daily scenes. She specifically uses cartoonish and playful colors and compositions to practice paintings. For recent paintings, she continues using bright colors and simpler forms of objects that are cartoonish and have ‘Low Art’ qualities. By narrating such ‘Low Art’ languages on top of other aspects of her works, she is questioning a definition of ‘traditional Art’ and viewers’ biased perceptions of ‘Art’ in general.

Image (left): I don’t have an answer acrylic on canvas 65 x 65 cm

Image (right): Exhausted acrylic on canvas 65 x 65 cm

Multiple Desires acrylic on canvas 91 x 116.8 cm

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M i n h y e

C h o i

www.minhyechoi.com

Image (left): I don’t have an answer acrylic on canvas 65 x 65 cm

Image (right): Exhausted acrylic on canvas 65 x 65 cm

Multiple Desires acrylic on canvas 91 x 116.8 cm

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I g o r

M o r i t z

A u s t i n

M o u l e

www.austinmoule.com

www.instagram.com/igor.moritz

Austin Moule was born in Charleston, South Carolina. At the age of four, his family moved to Fernandina Beach, Florida so his father could work at a near by Naval Base. Moule’s initial interest in art was instigated by his involvement with surfing and skateboarding and the visual culture that surrounds it. Moule received his BFA with a concentration in Printmaking at the University of North Florida, and an MFA with a concentration in Painting from University of Wisconsin, Madison. Moule’s current work follows simplified figures through abstract spaces that recall the often vague, shifting scenarios found in dreams. Without digits, faces, or genitalia, these figures/avatars lack the basic tools necessary to effectively navigate the ‘real’ world and are seemingly stuck in a bloated, infantile state.

Igor Moritz explores the relation between the interior and exterior of the human by creating a slightly disturbing child-like realm. Moritz uses coloured pencils as well as oil paints to create works that bleed colour all over the gallery walls. Igor Moritz, [b.1996, Lublin, Poland] is a self-taught painter undergoing a Bachelor’s in Industrial Design at Bournemouth University. Currently working and living in Lisbon, Portugal. Group Exhibitions include: the Palace of Fine Arts in Cracow, Poland (2014); “Half of me is in the past” BUMF gallery, Bournemouth, UK (2016); “75 works on paper” BEERS London, UK (2017); Finalist “Contemporary Visions 8” BEERS London, UK (2018). Solo exhibitions include: “the black tulip” in Lublin, Poland (2015) and “70x100 from G&T” in Salisbury, UK (2015).

Image (left): Cigarette Connoisseur coloured pencil on paper 21 x 28 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: editorial selection

Image (right): Don’t get caught burning flowers at your local park coloured pencil on paper 21 x 28 cm

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Spring 2018

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Two Years In The Making spray-paint, oil on canvas 41 x 37 inches

Tree Run oil on canvas 27 x 22 inches

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I g o r

M o r i t z

A u s t i n

M o u l e

www.austinmoule.com

www.instagram.com/igor.moritz

Image (left): Cigarette Connoisseur coloured pencil on paper 21 x 28 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: editorial selection

Image (right): Don’t get caught burning flowers at your local park coloured pencil on paper 21 x 28 cm

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Spring 2018

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Image (right):

Two Years In The Making spray-paint, oil on canvas 41 x 37 inches

Tree Run oil on canvas 27 x 22 inches

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www.beverlyacha.com

Beverly Acha (b. Miami, FL) holds an MFA from Yale University in Painting and Printmaking and a BA in Studio Art and American Studies from Williams College. Recent solo shows include Warm Form at Underdonk in Brooklyn, NY (2018) and Mutualities at the Roswell Museum and Art Center in Roswell, NM (2016). Recent group exhibitions include, Noonlight at Blackburn 20|20 Gallery; UPROOT! at Smack Mellon; No Regrets at LeRoy Neiman Gallery, and Museum Starter Kit at El Museo del Barrio. Acha is the recipient of awards and residencies including a Lighthouse Works Fellowship, Wassaic Project Residency and Education Fellowship, Roswell Artist-in-Residence Fellowship, and Peyser Prize in Painting. She was interviewed for Maake Magazine Issue 4 (2017) and currently teaches painting and drawing at University of California at Davis.

atoms, energy transferred in waves and particles. Each of these is associated with various types of formal abstractions: lines, grids, concentric circles, etc. In using these visual structures, I create pictorial spaces that are at once shallow and infinite. Grids in my work measure intervals, create rhythm across the surface, and mark time. Gradations of color, intensity, and tone both open and collapse space, pull the eye (and body) in and out. I want my viewer to move through, within, and across the paintings, following their vibrations, wobbles, and breaks. Through subtle asymmetries, inconsistencies, and irregularities in the structures - breaks and errors in the system - I want to encourage a tactile, haptic, and physical experience of light and space, as well as a means of revealing how they are made. By engaging in questions of existence, experience, reality, and structures of space, time, and causality, I want my paintings to give physicality to the intangible. At the core of my practice is an interest in order, the ways in which it manifests in human endeavors, and how we use order to make sense of existence. I am equally interested in how order challenges freedom, how it is used in capitalism, manufacturing, in the culture of consumerism. My interest in order is also an interest in its un-sustainability and in its inconsistencies and errors.

Using a language of abstraction that explores structures of space and perception, I create paintings that respond to shifts in my physical environment with an interest in the ways in which space is psychological. I use light and color to capture the ways in which place changes how we see and move through space. Influenced by my own observations of nature, NASA and old astronomy textbook images, and viewing through telescopes and microscopes, I am interested in systems that shape space and reality, from the forces that propel the earth’s spin and revolution around the sun, to dark matter’s role in the universe, and then back down to the architecture of our built environment, words, numbers,

B e v e r l y A c h a

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Untitled (double time) oil on canvas 50 x 44 inches

Untitled (curves) oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches

Untitled (Fishers Island Fall Sunset) oil on canvas 36 x 42 inches

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www.beverlyacha.com

B e v e r l y A c h a

Image (left):

Image (right):

Untitled (double time) oil on canvas 50 x 44 inches

Untitled (curves) oil on canvas 25 x 30 inches

Untitled (Fishers Island Fall Sunset) oil on canvas 36 x 42 inches

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P h i l i p

G e r a l d

www.instagram.com/philip_geraldo

Philip Gerald was born in 1992 in Dublin, Ireland where he currently resides and works. He studied sculpture at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. His work has been exhibited in group shows both nationally and internationally. Philip is currently represented by Galerie Sebastien Adrien in Paris. Gerald’s paintings attempt to characterise an over-stimulated, post-internet society in the least serious way possible. Pointlessly recreating ‘bad’ digital paintings with analogue techniques, these subtly-painted, bizarrely saccharine images depict aspects of identity in an age where the ‘self’ has become an ambiguous concept. In a society that has become so inexorably linked with the imagery of brands and slogans, Gerald employs these details in his work to open discussions on how people choose to identify themselves and how people are identified by others. Beyond the brightly painted veil of childlike humour and rude jokes there is an intense anxiety where the lines between reality and virtual lives are blurred. The uncertainty of knowing what is serious and what’s just a joke. It’s here where Gerald’s work precariously sits, not attempting to understand, but to explore the appearance of identity in contemporary society.

why work on your problems when you can work on your tan acrylic on canvas 60 x 80 cm

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its not the size that matters acrylic on canvas 60 x 80 cm

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P h i l i p

G e r a l d

www.instagram.com/philip_geraldo

why work on your problems when you can work on your tan acrylic on canvas 60 x 80 cm

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its not the size that matters acrylic on canvas 60 x 80 cm

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ArtMaze Magazine Issue 7: editorial selection

We are looking for more artists to publish and promote

If you would like your work to be featured in our upcoming issues, please find out more details on how to apply to be considered. See p. 10 or visit our website: www.artmazemag.com We have an open call for art for the next print issue which provides publishing opportunities, as well as the ongoing open call for online blog. For any questions, please contact us at info@artmazemag.com

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