GRAPHIC /’grafik/ adjective of or relating to visual art
Exhibition: September 18 - October 29, 2014
All images in this catalogue have been reproduced with permission of image owners.
gallery nine5 is pleased to present Graphic, a group show centered around artists grappling with the new visual form of digital media, for its fall season opener. In engaging new and mid-career artists attempting to materialize the impact of the Internet age on their work and audience, Graphic investigates the nuances of digital mediums and influences, providing a wide range of the contemporary landscape of art, from painting to video to installation. Rubin415’s Rubin’s Cube, a six-paneled three-dimensional cube, brings the graphic off the flat plane and into the physical space. His background as a street artist enhances and supplants the work: Rubin415’s monumental cube rests on the line between slick production and raw expression. His perfect circles, spray-painted and drawn entirely by hand, are rendered with undoubtedly graphic content: clean edges, muted colors, precise angles.
Ye Hongxing meticulously creates jewel-like mosaics using a collage of stickers on canvas, inspired by the imagery of the mainstream media. Equal parts playful kitsch and honest critique, Hongxing responds to the chaos of her home country China, seeking to create full pictures from the isolated masses of China’s exponentially expanding urban neighborhoods. Glossy surfaces characterize much of Desire Obtain Cherish’s milieu, clearly evident in the high-finish production of his text bubbles. This latest series moves beyond a simple critique of consumerism and the state of the art market to embody main street’s mode of communication. The artist makes the claim that attainment of value and appeal can transpire within a mobile conversation; the cheeky phrases and hashtags express both disbelief and assessment, all the while perpetuating the familiarity of 21st-century technologies.
With her seminal work, The Locker Plant Projections, Anne Katrine Senstad has fully embraced the effect of videography on her career-long investigation of color. Documenting her site-specific video-installation work, projected on Donald Judd’s Marfa, Texas building, Senstad examines the movement of colors against an archetypal architectural form. Her prior C-print works are engaged alongside the video in new ways, adding to her artistic dictionary. Inspired by the work of classical landscape painters of the early Renaissance, Jessica Lichtenstein brings together the academic and the fantastically with her digitally-rendered cartoon-infested worlds. Using advanced software to vivify her characters and their “natural” environment, Lichtenstein bridges the work of ancient artists with the very new. Jeremy Flick mixes his own color to imitate the tones of blown-up pixels on his computer screen. His work represents a dynamic duo of artistry: the subject is the digital image, executed with meticulous attention to detail. The combination of dissecting a pixelated image with the handiwork of mixing oil paint colors creates a stunning effect, both retinal and mental. Viewers recognize the graphic nature of his canvases immediately, while the craftsmanship of his technique settles in slowly.
Color permeates Oona Ratcliffe’s abstract acrylic works, sourced from digital topographies and palettes. Initiated by the vibrant colors of imagined landscapes, Ratcliffe draws upon the sensation of over-stimulation one feels in the center of vast urbanity. Paint is applied to the canvas in layers, ultimately mimicking the constant erasure and overlap of the function of the environment today. Graphic: of or relating to visual art examines the influence of the digital age on art. Whether through the changing of mediums, as in the prevalence of video art to document concepts, or in the use of new colors that appeared first on a computer screen, artists have responded to the social changes that currently surround us. A new language of shapes and palettes has entered into the artistic dictionary; though their relevance is debatable, their presence is permanent. By presenting this presence without judgment, gallery nine5 continues to manifest its mission to accept and analyze art from all spectrums and angles.
Maureen Chung Exhibitions Manager
RUBIN415 Rubin’s Cube, 2014 Aerosol spray paint on wood panel Each panel: 96 x 96 in | 243.8 x 243.8 cm
RUBIN415 Leaving Day, 2013 Acrylic and resin on wood panel 12 x 12 in | 30.5 x 30.5 cm
YE HONGXING Kaleidoschope No. 6, 2013 Crystal sticker collage on canvas 58 x 78.7 in | 147.3 x 199.9 cm
YE HONGXING Mirage No. 2, 2013 Crystal sticker collage on canvas 58 x 78.7 in | 147.3 x 199.9 cm
DESIRE OBTAIN CHERISH I Keep Up with Art, 2014 Editions of 3 Acrylic 80 x 51 1/4 in | 203.2 x 130.2 cm
DESIRE OBTAIN CHERISH Waste of Wall Space, 2014 Editions of 3 Acrylic 32 x 20.5 in | 81.3 x 52 cm
ANNE KATRINE SENSTAD C-14, C-19, C-3 (triptych), 2003 Photographic C-print, plexiglas, and aluminum Editions of 12 Each: 20 x 20 in | 50.8 x 50.8 cm
ANNE KATRINE SENSTAD Stills from The Locker Plant Projections, 2011 Film 8:21
The Locker Plant Projections by Anne Katrine Senstad
The Locker Plant Projections is part of a site specific projection series of my video-installation piece Colour Kinesthesia. The Projections of the abstract colors and the act of projecting in itself become the vehicle for the merging of colors with the environment and that existential and poetic narrative of enlightening our surroundings. In this piece the known Donald Judd building in Marfa, TX - The Locker Plant, is subject to the projections, as well as the South Western Texas Railroad and local trees. In merging the movement of colors with an archetypal architectural form, passing people and natural life activity during the night, we experience an added level to the notion of spatial relations, time and volume. The music of J G Thirlwell, known from Foetus, Manorexia, Steroid Maximus and Venture Bros - creates a cinematic mood to the minimalist references. The Locker Plant is a former butcher and meat packing plant, one of a group of buildings Donald Judd acquired in Marfa, TX - it is now part of The Chinati foundation.
Excerpts from Eyes Towards the Dove
An interview with Anne Katrine Senstad by Sarah Walko SW: When did you begin to make art? AS: It has been a process and narrative development with no specific beginning. I was always very creative and made art in various forms all through life, I started working with photography when I was given a 35 mm Nikon camera around 16-17 and I started training my eye and printing black and white in the darkroom all night. I didn’t think of it as art though, I was a “photographer” at first, photography wasn’t really considered art at the time. SW: Who were a few very strong individuals or specific influences (people, places, experiences or things) that may have served as thresholds or break through moments in the evolution of your practice? AS: I never had a mentor or major guide, it was always an internal process, life itself, nature and experiences that have served as the main evolutionary drive and influences. The inspiration of light and technical knowledge that strongly affected my vision and creative expression in an almost physical repetitive way, was working as a cinema projectionist in Oslo while studying social sciences and politics at college 2-3 years prior to moving to New York in 1990. I had to take the projectionist license which was a 6-month aspirant course while working with an old school projectionist as my teacher, sort of like in the film Cinema Paradiso. This entailed having to learn all the technical aspects of light bulbs used for projectors, about xenon gas, light and color temperatures, technicalities of film and optical sound, optics and lenses, various projector makes and engines, technical history of film, how sound behaves in spaces, surround sound and so on. The very action of projecting itself, working with the intense light streams from the projector and running the machinery, has clearly created a foundation for my visual language. I was also inspired by the land and light of the American West which I responded to in a pure sense. By not being familiar with the history of land art gave me freedom in that my development was tempered through purity of absorption and the experiential and not through that it’s cool to dig Robert Smithson. I developed my own interpretational language, in responding to the landscape of American west and profundity nature itself. SW: Are any of your pieces self portraits? AS: All work is a self-portrait in a sense, on some abstract level. Or aspects of a part of oneself, even with work that’s social political, because those are subjects we are concerned with as artists and human beings.
JESSICA LICHTENSTEIN FALL, 2013 Editions of 3 + 2 Artist Proofs Inkjet print on acrylic 46 x 84 x 2 in | 116 x 213 x 5 cm
JEREMY FLICK 575015755, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 30 x 30 in | 76.2 x 76.2 cm
JEREMY FLICK 634972032, 2013 Acrylic on wood panel 12 x 12 in | 30.5 x 30.5 cm
GONZALO PAPANTONAKIS House of Geisha, 2014 Acrylic, printed paper and fabric on hardboard 147 x 96 in | 373.4 x 243.8 cm
OONA RATCLIFFE Capacity I, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 26 x 24 in | 66 x 61 cm
OONA RATCLIFFE Capacity II, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 26 x 24 in | 66 x 61 cm
OONA RATCLIFFE Capacity III, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 26 x 24 in | 66 x 61 cm
OONA RATCLIFFE Site, 2013 Acrylic on canvas 60 x 70 in | 152.4 x 177.8 cm
OONA RATCLIFFE Portent, 2014 Acrylic on canvas 40 x 42 in | 101.6 x 106.7 cm
24 spring street new york, ny, 10012 | 212.965.9995 | info@gallerynine5.com