Month: March 2017

Matthieu Bourel

Matthieu Bourel, “Education / Formatting”, 2016, Animated Version

Matthieu Bourel is a German collage and digital artist whose work veers uneasily from nostalgia to technological dystopia. Bourel combines traditional cut and paste collage techniques with digital editing, digital animation, and even sound design to create a body of work that blurs the distinction between illustration, graphic design and art installation.

Bourel describes his work as “data-ism” and the reference to the original Dada movement of the early twentieth century is more than a play on words. Like his Dadaist precursors, Bourel delights in creating shocking juxtapositions, ironic distance and high-brow/low-brow mash-ups.

Vilhelm Tetens

Vilhelm Tetens, “Evening, Bathing Boys”, 1905, Oil on Canvas, Regional Psychiatric Center, Viborg, Denmark

Born on November 21, 1871 in Copenhagen, Vilhelm Tetens was a Dutch painter of still-life, architectural forms, and figurative works. He was a student of painter Malthe Odin Engelsted and studied at the Kunstnernes Frie Studieskoler,  Artists; Free Study School, under painter Kristian Zahrtmann.  While at the school, Tetens developed friendships with painter and draftsman Christian Kongstad Petersen and the Norwegian painters Thorvald Erichsen and Oluf Wold-Torne.

In 1896, Vilhelm Tetens had his first exhibition in the city of Charlottenborg. Two years later he took a trip to Norway to visit his friend Oluf Wold-Torne. Despite the close friendship, Tetens work did not show the boldness of form and color that was present in the work of Wold-Torne. However, even at a young age, his portrait work showed an understanding of the medium and an empathy for the sitter. Tetens painted portraits of his friends Wold-Torne and Petersen in the 1890s which were done in the popular symbolist style.

In addition to his painting, Vilhelm Tetens was also a costume designer; his first assignment was in 1902 to design the costumes for Danish composer Carl Nielsen’s opera “Saul and David”. For a number of years after that, Tetens was the costume designer for the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen. 

Between 1903 and 1919, Tetens produced several major works which include “The Family in the Green” executed in 1903; “Evening, Bathing Boys” in 1905; the “Young Man” in 1909, “Portrait of My Mother” in 1907; and the 1919 “Portrait of Professor Folberg”  which was awarded an Exhibition Medal.  

Vilhelm Tetens died in Hillerød, Denmark, on the 13th of January in  1957. His work is in the collections of  the Museum at Koldinghus, the Statens Museum for Kunst, the Horsens Art Museum, and the Sorø Art Museum.

Brian Kelly

Brian Kelly, “Social Injustice”, 2014, Silkscreen, 40.6 x 60.1 cm, Private Collection

Professor Kelly is currently Chairman of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette where he also serves as the Area Head of the printmaking program and Coordinator of Marais Press. Kelly is a full professor, holds the University’s Coca-Cola/BORSF Endowed Professorship in Art, and is a University of Louisiana at Lafayette Distinguished Professor.

Brian Kelly’s work takes the viewer on a journey into the unseen and the unknown. His work draws on influences from environments in Louisiana, Utah, New Mexico, Montana and Colorado. These representational narratives talk about specific experiences and places that are both social, personal and political in nature. Kelly adopts and personifies animal forms as specific characters within these narrative events to speak metaphorically about personal and social issues.

Wendell Berry: “He Will Grow to be Native-Born”

Photographer Unknown, (He Will Grow to be Native-Born)

“Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch. And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest – the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways – and re-enter the woods. For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence. Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world’s longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it.

Perhaps then, having heard that silence and seen that darkness, he will grow humble before the place and begin to take it in – to learn from it what it is. As its sounds come into his hearing, and its lights and colors come into his vision, and its odors come into his nostrils, then he may come into its presence as he never has before, and he will arrive in his place and will want to remain.

His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them – neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them – and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again.”

–Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, “A Native Hill”, Page 27

Valin Mattheis

Valin Mattheis, “Into the Woods, Bound by the Moon”, Date Unknown, Ink, Gold Leaf, Silver Leaf on Paper, Dimensions Unknown, Private Collection

The world of Valin Mattheis is filled with otherworldly creatures, skeletal priests, and moments of transcendental awe. He draws inspiration from a variety of sources, including the symbolist artists, existentialism, Jungian psychology, and religions and mythologies the world over.

The two-dimensional compositions and skeletal archetypes seem somewhat reminiscent of medieval art referencing the Black Death, but while his work does explore that ageless desire to instil faith into the mystery of death, not all of it is darkness and despair. He says that more than anything, he “attempt[s] to convey a sense of wonder or reverence or curiosity.”

By recombining ancient symbols and reinvesting them with obscure, contemporary meaning, “blasphemous sorceries and foul rites” are performed, producing a humbling sense of power and magic. “That’s pretty over-wrought,” he said, “I also just really like painting monsters.”