Month: February 2017

The Thinker in the Tub

Photographer Unknown, (The Thinker in the Tub)

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

Gottfied Rheinwein

Gottfried Heinwein, “Mouse 1″, 1995, Mixed Media (Oil and Acrylic on Canvas), 210 x 310 cm, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

In ‘The Darker Side of Playland’ show at the SFMOMA, the endearing cuteness of beloved toys and cartoon characters turns menacing and monstrous. Much of the work has the quality of childhood nightmares. In those dreams, long before any adult understanding of the specific pains and evils that live holds, the familiar and comforting objects and images of a child’s world are rent with something untoward.

For children, not understanding what really to be afraid of, these dreams portend some pain and disturbance lurking into the landscape. Perhaps nothing in the exhibition exemplifies this better than Gottfried Helnwein’s ‘Mickey’. His portrait of Disney’s favorite mouse occupies an entire wall of the gallery; rendered from an oblique angle, his jaunty, ingenuous visage looks somehow sneaky and suspicious. His broad smile, encasing a row of gleaming teeth, seems more a snarl or leer.

This is Mickey as Mr. Hyde, his hidden other self now disturbingly revealed. Helnwein’s Mickey is painted in shades of gray, as if pictured on an old black-and-white TV set. We are meant to be transported to the flickering edges of our own childhood memories in a time imaginably more blameless, crime-less and guiltless.

Alexia Casale: “Stories That Spread and Twisted Through Other Worlds”

Photographer Unknown, (Room of Tomes)

“Where books had been a comfort before, they became a necessity, old books best of all: thick heavy tomes with stories that spread and twisted through other worlds, where he could walk like a ghost in the footsteps of other lives.”

― Alexia Casale, House of Windows

Alyssa Monks

Paintings by Alyssa Monks

Alyssa Monks’s paintings are of a representational narrative genre. She portrays a specific place and time with simultaneous empathy and detachment.

Monks is part of the Continuing Education Faculty at the New York Academy of Art, where she teaches Flesh Painting. She currently is also an instructor at the Montclair State University.

She earned her BA from Boston College and an MFA in painting from the New York Academy of Art, Graduate School of Figurative Art. At the New York Academy of Art, Alyssa studied with Vincent Desiderio, Jenny Saville, Wade Schuman, Brenda Zlamany, John Jacobsmeyer, Harvey Citron, Deane Keller, Edward Schmidt, Steven Assael, and Lisa Bartolozzi. She additionally studied at Montclair State College, the New School, and Lorenzo de’Medici in Florence. She completed an artist in residency at Fullerton College.

Hermann Hesse: “There is No Such Thing as Time”

Artists Unknown, Computer Graphics, Animated Photo Gifs

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?“ That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”

—Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Conrad Marca-Relli

Conrad Marca-Relli, Untitled, Collage and Mixed Media on Canvas, 1960, 138 x 172 cm

Marca-Relli is considered one of the main exponents of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism, and he was involved in the movement from its conception as he organized the first Abstract Expressionist show at the Ninth Street Show in 1951, with the artist Franz Kline and the gallerist Leo Castelli.

This important exhibition marked the beginning of the new uniquely American artistic movement, which is based on revolutionary painting methods, notably, Action Painting.  Artists that participated in this exhibition included: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Barnet Newman, Hans Hoffman, Franz Klien and Conrad Marca-Relli.

The Invisible, “Surrender”

The Invisible, “Surrender”

The Invisible began in 2006 with Okumu, who – encouraged by Matthew Herbert to record solo material – soon realised he required the input of friends Leo Taylor (formerly of Gramme and Zongamin) and Tom Herbert (a member of Polar Bear (British band) and Acoustic Ladyland) to make real the sounds inside his head. Herbert’s Accidental Records spawned the production of the band’s first official release, the one-track 7 inch vinyl “Constant” in early 2008.

The name arrived after the three began writing. The moniker is a nod to the writing of Irish philosopher and poet John O’Donohue, who articulated the notion that humans exist in parallel worlds – the visible and the invisible; one physical, one spiritual.

The Invisible’s second album, Rispah was released on Ninja Tune in August 2012, having been recorded in Brighton – with producer Richard File. The album’s first single “Protection” was premiered through online music magazine, The Quietus] Rispah was named after frontman Dave Okumu’s mother, Rispah Achieng Okumu, who died during the making of the second album. Rispah is, in the words of singer-guitarist Dave Okumu, “a love letter to grief.”

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Tom Lane

Tom Lane “Gypsy Tonic Number 29″

Tom Lane, otherwise known as Ginger Monkey is a graphic designer and lettering artist with 11 years of experience in the industry. He has worked for an eclectic range of clients, from global commercial corporations to design studios and advertising agencies to small start-ups and individuals. He works closely with clients to produce high quality crafted artwork, packaging designs and branding.

Tom currently lives and works in North Devon, UK.