Author: sterlingsart

abstract painter living in Raleigh, NC- follow my blog to help build my mailing list!

Francesco Igory Deiana

newest, “Desire,” is on Display in Paris and Juxtapoz has words. Deiana’s works are inspired by and profoundly related to language, words, letters and the way they shape our perception and patterns of thinking. Their history, often charged with symbolism and hidden meanings, is deconstructed, appropriated and subtly woven in.

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assume vivid astro focus

Casa Triângulo gallery, which celebrates 35 years of activity in August 2023, is delighted to present amarelo vento azul floral (as cores se acumulam em sua atmosfera tecendo luzes), the fifth solo exhibition by assume vivid astro focus at the gallery. Since 2001, when Eli Sudbrack and Christophe Hamaide-Pierson formed assume vivid astro focus, museums, galleries, and public spaces worldwide have been set aflame with the duo’s image-laden, neon-bright, Carnavalesque installations. Fusing drawing, sculpture, collage, video, music, and performance, assume vivid astro focus creates immersive spaces expressive of a lust for life and a belief in the “freedom to share/spread/absorb/assume/contaminate/inseminate/devour.” Abundant and irresistible, the pair’s work also poses challenges—to restrictions of speech and civil rights and to rigid classifications of identity.
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Papo Colo

An omnipresent figure in New York’s alternative art scene of the 1980s, Colo bridges two worlds, a bifurcated experience reflected in his works: “My paintings are not abstract or figurative,” he says, “they are hybrid, like myself.”Hyperallergic says Papo’s recent at Caldéron was one the shows to see this September in NYC.

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Nevena Prijic

Mrs. (located in Maspeth, Queens) is currently presenting Feral Currents, Serbian painter Nevena’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. Across nine canvases, Prijic describes bold, swirling anti-forms which burst with the energy of the cosmos, reaching toward us, declaring a new way of life.
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Evaluation

Two Coats of Paint recently posted an article on “negative criticism” that was a response to an article of similar name by Sean Tatol in The Point. There are several good takes in the Two Coats article (Laurie goes straight to the point by noting that Galleries aren’t going to advertise in art rags that criticize their stable of talent) and I encourage you all to read (or use the “listen” option) Tatol’s article in The Point. In particular, this bit stood out to me:

“Once we make any judgment at all we are aspiring to be objective, or at least correct, to the best of our knowledge. This objectivity may not be fully achievable, but if we are to think critically, or at all, the attempt is necessary. It is plainly impossible to approach the world without making judgments: anything from choosing friends you can trust to picking out a ripe orange requires a differentiation of qualities we learn to recognize through experience. Art and media are no different. “

Tatol

I prefer the word “evaluation” to judgement, although denotatively they are apparently completely synonymous. For me the latter (culturally) implies an additional step which can be a bit more fraught. Said differently, I’d personally rather be described as “evaluating” than “being judge-y” fwiw.

I’ve since been thinking about the ideas in Mr Tatol’s piece in the context of another, recent article by Adrienne LaFrance, executive editor at the Atlantic. In Defense of Humanity is a short essay (link is a pdf) on the moment in which we find ourselves. Specifically Ms LaFrance points at the thing- a precipice looking onto a future where AI can and will shape an increasing amount of our lives. She points towards the transcendentalist movement as a way of anchoring readers to the idea that there was (is?) a theory of culture that elevates and centers a life of evaluation.

A future in which overconfident machines seem to hold the answers to all of life’s cosmic questions is not only dangerously misguided, but takes away that which makes us human. In an age of anger, and snap reactions, and seemingly all-knowing AI, we should put more emphasis on contemplation as a way of being.

LaFrance

“More emphasis on contemplation” is clearly what caught this author’s eye. And while I sense that Ms LaFrance would probably agree that contemplation of a painting has similar value personally and culturally she’s clearly referring to thinking- the contemplation of a language-based idea.

To finish loosely tying the two articles together here*, I’m seeing two distinct authors pointing, in the same cultural moment, to the relevance and in fact value of contemplation and evaluation. I would go further and say that it sure seems like they would agree that looking at Art has a cultural importance today that perhaps it hasn’t had in some time and for which we should be grateful (*it is for you, the reader of this article, to chose- or chose not to- evaluate this idea on its merits though).