Month: December 2017

Rick Bartow

Paintings by Rick Bartow

Richard Elmer “Rick” Bartow was a Vietnam Veteran, a life-long musician and song-writer, a widower, an enrolled member of the Wiyot Indians, and is considered one of the most important leaders in contemporary Native American art. His art was subject of over 100 solo exhibitions at museums and galleries, including the retrospective “Things You Know But Can Not Explain”, organized by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at University of Oregon, and accompanied with a fully illustrated monograph.

He created pastel, graphite and mixed media drawings, wood sculpture, acrylic paintings, drypoint etchings, monotypes and a small number of ceramic works.  His passion was working in the studio and engaging with peers in the ancient and current worlds of self expression. As influences, Bartow cited Marc Chagall, Francis Bacon, Odilon Redon and Horst Janssen.in addition to his Native American heritage and his work with the Māori. These artists also worked in the style of expressionism with human and animal forms in their art.

Brian Henry

Brian Henry, “Zach Revisited”. Polaroid Film

Brian Henry is a self taught, experimental art photographer and explorer. His first camera came from money he earned blowing up balloons. While Brian Henry had won a few scholarships to attend art school, he chose to apply his money to his own unscripted, artistic journey. He has traveled up and down the East Coast of the U.S., as well as Europe and the Balkans.

“My work is an ongoing journal documenting architectural decay and my own mortality. I attempt to portray the beauty I see in these structures and occasionally include myself and others within them. Although photographs are made, a large part of my work is the adventure of exploring new territory and experiencing the unknown. It often involves traveling far and constant attention to my surroundings.

When I shoot Polaroid film, I consider it a unique souvenir of my experience. There’s something meaningful in creating something tangible within a space that will soon be destroyed. Other film mediums allow me to bend reality and add additional effects of distress and decay. In some instances, I have used photographic paper and film found in abandoned buildings. Other times, I have buried my images in decaying buildings for effects. It is all part of my attempts of connecting with a space.”

Brian Henry currently resides in Baltimore, Maryland where he co-owns a curiosity shop. His site is: http://www.instantdecay.com

Please credit artist when reblogging. Thanks.

Andom International

“The Rain Room”

Known for their distinctive approach to digital-based contemporary art, Andom International’s experimental artworks come alive through audience interaction. Their largest and most ambitious installation yet, “Rain Room” is a 100 square metre field of falling water for visitors to walk through and experience how it might feel to control the rain.

On entering The Curve the visitor hears the sound of water and feels moisture in the air before discovering the thousands of falling droplets that respond to their presence and movement. Cameras installed around the room detect human movements and send instructions to the rain drops to continually move away from visitors. The water drips through a grid in the floor where it is treated before being sent back up to the ceiling to fall again.

At the cutting edge of digital technology, Rain Room is a carefully choreographed downpour – a monumental installation that encourages people to become performers on an unexpected stage, while creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation. The work also invites us to explore what role science, technology and human ingenuity might play in stabilising our environment by rehearsing the possibilities of human adaptation.

rAndom International said: “Rain Room is the latest in a series of projects that specifically explore the behaviour of the viewer and viewers: pushing people outside their comfort zones, extracting their base auto-responses and playing with intuition. Observing how these unpredictable outcomes will manifest themselves, and the experimentation with this world of often barely perceptible behaviour and its simulation is our main driving force.”

Finding a common purpose as students at the Royal College of Art, rAndom International was founded in 2005 by Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood. Today the studio is based in Chelsea – with an outpost in Berlin – and includes a growing team of diverse talent. With an ethos of experimentation into human behaviour and interaction, they employ new technologies in radical, often unexpected ways to create work which also draws on op art, kinetics and post-minimalism.

A short film by rAndom International: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FslABAyj2OA