Month: April 2016

The Theyyam Ritual

The Theyyam Ritual

Theyyam is a popular ritual form of worship of North Malabar in Kerala, India, predominant in the Kolathunadu area (consisting of present-day Kasargod, Kannur Districts, Mananthavady Taluk of Wayanad and Vadakara and Koyilandy Taluks of Kozhikode of Kerala) and also in Kodagu and Tulu nadu of Karnataka as a living cult with several thousand-year-old traditions, rituals and customs.

The performers of Theyyam belong to the lower caste community, and have an important position in Theyyam. People of these districts consider Theyyam itself as a God and they seek blessings from this Theyyam.

There are different patterns of face-painting. Some of these patterns are called vairadelam, kattaram, kozhipuspam, kottumpurikam, and prakkezhuthu. Mostly primary and secondary colours are applied with contrast for face painting. It helps in effecting certain stylization in the dances. Then the dancer comes in front of the shrine and gradually “metamorphoses” into the particular deity of the shrine.

He, after observation of certain rituals places the head-dress on his head and starts dancing. In the background, folk musical instruments like chenda, tudi, kuzhal and veekni are played in a certain rhythm. All the dancers take a shield and kadthala (sword) in their hands as continuation of the cult of weapons. Then the dancer circumambulates the shrine, runs in the courtyard and continues dancing there.

Tierney Gearon

 

Tierney Gearon, “Manhattan Bridge, New York”

Tierney Gearon is an photographer, born in Atlanta, Georgia, who had no formal art training. She was a model for five years, during which time she began taking Polaroid pictures. This developed into full time fashion photography for magazines and Times Square billboards. Her photographic work was included in the “I am a Camea” exhibition at Saatchi Gallery. Gearon also had an exhibition called “The Mother Project” which consisted of photographs of her mother and later a book published called “Daddy, Where Are You?”

A documentary film by Jack Youngelson and Peter Sutherland entitled “Tierney Gearon: The Mother Project” was released in 2007. It follows the artist as she photographs her mother and covers the controversy surrounding the photographs of her children which she included in the “I am a Camera” exhibition.

Francisco de Zubaran

Francisco de Zubaran, “Agnus Dei”, 1635-40, Oil on Canvas, 62 x 38 cm, Museo Nacional del Prado

Francisco de Zurbarán was a Spanish painter. He is known primarily for his religious paintings depicting monks, nuns, and martyrs, and for his still-lifes. Zurbarán gained the nickname Spanish Caravaggio, owing to the forceful, realistic use of chiaroscuro in which he excelled.

It is unknown whether Zurbarán had the opportunity to copy the paintings of Caravaggio; at any rate, he adopted Caravaggio’s realistic use of chiaroscuro and tenebrism. The painter who may have had the greatest influence on his characteristically severe compositions was Juan Sánchez Cotán. Polychrome sculpture—which by the time of Zurbarán’s apprenticeship had reached a level of sophistication in Seville that surpassed that of the local painters—provided another important stylistic model for the young artist

Francisco de Zurbarán created a pure and intense religious visual language. He worked in Seville in the days when the Andalucían city created its renowned Holy Week rituals. In Zubaran’s painting “Agnus Dei”, a trussed lamb, bound for death, symbolises Christ.

Suzanne Moxhay

Interiors: Photography by Suzanne Moxhay

Born in Essex in 1976, Suzanne Moxhay studied painting at Chelsea College of Art before going on to the Royal Academy Schools where she graduated with a Post Graduate Diploma in Fine Art in 2007. She was then selected for a year long residency at the Florence Trust Studios, London where she developed the ‘Borderlands’ series.

Despite their unsettling nature, Moxhay’s dreamlike scenes have a deep narrative that leaves the viewer thinking about what has been and what’s to come. Whether they’re intending to be a metaphor for life and our existence, a comment about the environment and the state of our planet or just images of an imagined world, they speak out, which is what, paired with their excellent execution, validates them as complex and intelligent photographic works. Created by building and photographing miniature scenes and then digitally blending them with found images, printing with a soft edge is one of the processes used to create the all-important sense of distance.

Kris Kuksi

Sculptures by Kris Kuksi

Born March 2, 1973, in Springfield Missouri and growing up in neighboring Kansas, Kris spent his youth in rural seclusion and isolation along with a blue-collar, working mother, two significantly older brothers, and an absent father. Open country, sparse trees, and alcoholic stepfather, all paving the way for an individual saturated in imagination and introversion. His propensity for the unusual has been a constant since childhood, a lifelong fascination that lent itself to his macabre art later in life. The grotesque to him, as it seemed, was beautiful.

“A post-industrial Rococo master, Kris Kuksi obsessively arranges characters and architecture in asymmetric compositions with an exquisite sense of drama. Instead of stones and shells he uses screaming plastic soldiers, miniature engine blocks, towering spires and assorted debris to form his landscapes.

The political, spiritual and material conflict within these shrines is enacted under the calm gaze of remote deities and august statuary. Kuksi manages to evoke, at once, a sanctum and a mausoleum for our suffocated spirit.” – Guillermo del Toro

Mathias Casado Castro

Mathias Casado Castro, “Sailors”

“Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one’s baptism on storm’s promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one’s foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water.”

–Malcolm Lowry,  Ultramarine

 

 

Jim Edwards

Eight Paintings by Jim Edwards

Edwards’ cityscape paintings are not studies from life, nor is he trying to capture a particular viewpoint or moment in time. His paintings have their origin in memory, how he remembers the workings and landmarks of the city, rather than a straightforward representation. The compositions evolve from a combination of imagination and selective memory, which are then altered and exaggerated. Certain buildings are forgotten, or simplified, creating a personal view of the city.

This personal impression of cityscapes often runs into his more abstract work, where the block shapes he paints represent manmade forms, rooms and human spaces. These combine with connecting lines, suggesting marks within a landscape, pathways linking separate constructs.

Chiharu Shiota

Installation Sculpture by Chiharu Shiota

Born in 1972 in Osaka, Japan, Chiharu Shiota lives and works in Berlin where she was a student of Marina Abramović and Rebecca Horn. She will represent Japan at the 56th edition of the Venice Biennale. His artistic creation combines both contemporary inspirations and Japanese heritage. . His drawings to installations and performances, the artist deals with many apprehensions, by a confusing effusion.

The objects she uses are mainly of old suitcases, letters, old pianos, ghostly robes, and all call a flashback. But the peculiarity of his work lies in the recurrent use of woven son, cables, metal rods, which transform the space into a gigantic spider web. Many place the body as the main subject of his work, but indirectly we distinguish being in this web of messages. The shapes become shadows, envelopes are empty and the majority of its installations, objects are searched by this son of entanglement, which we do not distinguish the borders.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah: “Each Year Comes With Its Own Memories”

Photographer Unknown, (Pondering Man and Wooden Cat)

“Each year comes with its own memories! Memories that make us ponder! Memories that shake our nerves and thought to think about things we did, things we could have done, things we should have done, the right time and timing for the yes and no we could have said with courage or humility, the right time and timing of our steps and things we should have never done! When you remember the year, you remember something! Something good or something bad!”

― Ernest Agyemang Yeboah