Soufiane Ababri

Drawings by Soufiane Ababri

Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1985, Soufiane Ababri is a multi-media artist who works in the fields of drawing, sculpture, film, and performance art. He graduated from the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 2010 and earned his Masters of Arts at Paris’s École Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in 2014. Ababri divides his life and work between the cities of Paris, France, and Tangier, Morocco.

Although he works in many medias, Soufiane Ababri is best known for his homoerotic drawings of men portrayed in settings which depict a flourishing queer subculture. His scenes, either humorous or infused with emotion, are drawn from his life as a gay Moroccan immigrant in Europe. Ababri’s most acclaimed series, “Bed Works”, was initiated in 2016 and is still continuing today. These pencil portraits of men, drawn while lying down in bed, are conveyed in bold, energetic colors and explore Ababri’s interest in the nuances of masculinity and male intimacy.

Having a strong interest in sociology, Ababri’s oeuvre also deals with the idea of visual experience as an exercise in introspection, that is the artist sees the world as the world sees him. Ababri’s work, built from layers of personal and intimate events, also uses literary works, such as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s 1943 “Little Prince” and poet Frank O’Hara’s “A True Account of Talking to the Sun”, to examine the tensions, stigmas, and ambivalences in present day society.

Soufiane Ababri’s 2020 “Tanned But Still Angry” series consisted of seventeen colored pencil on paper drawings that Ababri developed over several years in reaction to police violence. These drawings depicted real scenes and situations experienced by Ababri himself and fellow members of the LGBT and POC communities. Fueled by the deaths of Adama Traoré in 2016 and George Floyd in May, the series not only powerfully displays injustice, but also, often poetically, emphasizes the need for equality.

Soufiane Ababri’s most recent solo show, the 2021 “Bunch of Queequeg”, named after the “Moby Dick” character, included all works from the continuing “Bed Work” series and was held at Praz-Delavallade in Los Angeles.The triptych drawing from that exhibition, seen in the above images, shows Ababri as Queequeg in the middle panel, with Ishmael in tight-fitting shorts on the right panel and three skewered severed heads on the left panel. In this work, Ababri considers not only the literature of colonialism and its lasting effects on daily life and culture, but also its presence in our most intimate relationships.

Ababri’s installation / performance pieces include the 2017 “Moving Frontiers: Do and Undo” at the Espace Doual’Art in Doula, CM; the 2018 “Humes l’Ordeur des Fleurs Pendant Qu’il en est Encore Temps” held at the Marathon des Mots in Toulouse, France; the 2018 “Here is a Strange and Bitter Crop” at Space in London; the 2019 “Tropical Concrete Gym Park” at the Glassbox in Paris; the 2019 “Memories of a Solitary Cruise” held at The Pill in Istanbul; and the 2020 “Something New Under the Little Prince’s Body” at the Dittrich & Schlechtriem in Berlin.

Soufiane Ababri has exhibited in Berlin, Brussels, and Istanbul. His work is in the collections of Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Pointou-Charente and Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne, and Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, Pays de la Loire. In 2021 Ababri’s work was included in the Glasgow International Festival for Contemporary Art.

Note: Photos of Soufiane Ababri’s performance and artwork, as well as contact information, can be found at: https://soufianeababri.com

An interesting article, written by Joey Levenson, on Soufiane Ababri’s newest book and his use of intimacy as a means of social construct analysis can be found at: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/soufiane-ababri-art-100821

Lucy Glendinning

Lucy Glendinning, “Feather Child 4″, Date Unknown, Feathers on Form

Lucy Glendinning is a sculptor and installation artist, who works in a contemporary British sculpture tradition. Her different aesthetic expressions are brought together under one central entry point: the human body as a semiotic medium. For Glendinning, art is the primary tool for investigating psychological and philosophical themes. Her work is thus permeated by a conceptual content, superior to the value of aesthetics.

Glendinning seduces the observing eye by emphasing subtle expressions and presenting stunning craftsmanship. Her way of cleverly combining paradoxical qualities are revealed in the twisted combinations of tenderness and brutality, empathety and ignorance, stillness and movement.

The suite “Feather Child” series originates from Glendinning’s fascination with visions of a future society. The feathered children are embodied questions, where the artist is asking us if we, in a world where our genetics could be freely manipulated, will be able to resist altering our physical abilities. Will necessity or vanity be the ruling power? The fragility of the feathers is simultaneously mirroring the perhaps most classic tale of human hubris: the fate of Icarus in Greek mythology.

James Brunt

Land Art by James Brunt, Stones, Trees, Leaves

James Brunt creates elaborate ephemeral artworks using the natural materials he finds in forests, parks, and beaches near his home in Yorkshire, England. This form of land art, popularized and often associated with fellow Brit Andy Goldsworthy, involves detailed patterns, textures, and shapes formed using multiples of one kind of material.

Brunt collects twigs, rocks, and leaves and arranges them in mandala-like spirals and concentric circles. He photographs his finished work to document it before nature once again takes hold of his materials. Brunt offers prints of his photographed artworks on his website.

Thanks to https://skogshaxa.tumblr.com

Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota, “Traces of Memory”, 2013 Installation at the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh

When Shiota visited the Mattress Factory in 2011, she was inspired by the old Victorian rowhouse at 516 Sampsonia and curious about the previous inhabitants and their lives. “I work always with someone’s memory because it is strong and it exists but I cannot touch the memory,” says Shiota about her work in an interview with Felice and Shannon of the Mattress Factory Education Department.

She describes her use of black yarn as a 3D drawing material that she weaves through the air to create space, and sees the act of weaving the yarn in these spaces as a way to give form to memory and create a new world. For Shiota, the yarn gives form to unsent feelings, memories, and history. Once the installation is cut down, the memory of the installation is what remains.

Human relationships are complex, and she describes the yarn as analogous to human connections: “The string makes tension or is tangled or is loose. The string is like feeling or relationship to people, and the relationship is connected, or loose or tight. I feel like this is just like a mirror of my feelings.”

Note: Chiharu Shiota is one of my favorite sculptors/installers. There are three more posts on this blog of other installations.

Juan Munoz

Sculptures by Juan Munoz

Juan Munoz was a Spanish sculptor, working primarily in paper mache, resin and bronze. He was also interested int he auditory arts and created compositions for the radio. In 2000, Muñoz was awarded Spain’s major Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes in recognition of his work; he died shortly after, in 2001.

His first exhibition was in 1984 in the Fernando Vijande Gallery of Madrid. Since then, his works have been frequently exhibited in Europe and other parts of the world. At the beginning of the 1990s, Juan Muñoz began breaking the rules of traditional sculpture by sculpting works in a “narrative” manner which consisted of creating smaller than life-size figures in an atmosphere of mutual interaction.

Muñoz’s sculptures often invite the spectator to relate to them, making the viewer feel as if they have discreetly become a part of the work of art. His slate-gray or wax-colored monochrome figures create a sort of discreetness due to their lack of individuality, but that absence of individuality questions the viewer, perhaps even so much as to make the viewer uncomfortable. When asked his occupation, Muñoz would respond simply that he was a “storyteller.”

Yayoi Kusama

The Art work of Yayoi Kusama

Yayoi Kusama is a Japanese artist and writer. Throughout her career she has worked in a wide variety of media, including painting, collage, scat sculpture, performance art, and environmental installations, most of which exhibit her thematic interest in psychedelic colors, repetition and pattern. A precursor of the pop art, minimalist and feminist art movements, Kusama influenced contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg] Although largely forgotten after departing the New York art scene in the early 1970s, Kusama is now acknowledged as one of the most important living artists to come out of Japan, and an important voice of the avant-garde.

Kusama’s work is based in conceptual art and shows some attributes of feminism, minimalism, surrealism, Art Brut, pop art, and abstract expressionism, and is infused with autobiographical, psychological, and sexual content. Kusama is also a published novelist and poet, and has created notable work in film and fashion design.

Major retrospectives of her work have been held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1998, the Whitney Museum in 2012, and Tate Modern in 2012. In 2006, she received a Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2008, Christie’s New York sold a work by her for $5.1 million, then a record for a living female artist.

Alexandra Kehayoglou

Alexandra Kehayoglou, Landscape Carpets and Rugs

Using scraps leftover thread from her family’s carpet factory in Buenos Aires, artist Alexandra Kehayoglou embarks on a laborious hand-tufting process to fabricate wool carpets and rugs that mimic natural textures like moss, water, trees, and pastures. The carpets balance form and function and can powerfully transform an entire room into a lush meadow dotted with pools of water and tufts of grass. Many of her works even function as part tapestry and flow from walls to floor, or work as covers for chairs or stools.

Reblogged with thanks to http://www.thisiscolossal.com

Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer, “Margarette”, Oil and Straw on Canvas, 1981, 280 x 380 cm, Tate Museum, London, England

Anselm Kiefer was born 1945 in Donauschingen, Germany, at the close of World War II. He studied art formally under Joseph Beuys at the Düsseldorf Academy in the early 1970s where history and myth became central themes in his work.

In 1971 Kiefer produced his first large-scale landscape paintings and from 1973 he began to experiment with wooden interiors on a monumental scale. His preoccupation with recent German history is seen throughout his work and his use of recurring motifs, such as an artist’s palette symbolises his emotional journey relating to this period. Kiefer has made increasing use of materials such as sand, straw, wood, dirt and photographs, as well as sewn materials and lead model soldiers. By adding found materials to the painted surface Kiefer invented a compelling third space between painting and sculpture. Recent work has broadened his range yet further: in 2006 he showed a series of paintings based around the little-known work of the modernist Russian poet Velimir Chlebnikov.

Julien Salaud

Sculptures and Installations by Julien Salaud

In Julien Salaud’s work there is a whole pantheon filled with animals depicted in different ways, such as drawing, etching and sculpture. It is generally accepted that his work examines the connections between man and animal. That is indeed one side of his work, but transformation is really the core of it: wood animals skins or insects turning into something else with additional beads, nails, feathers or rhinestone.

Over the last year, French artist Julien Salaud has installed several new works as part of his “Stellar Cave” series involving elaborate thread drawings illuminated by ultraviolet light. The polygonal depictions of people, animals, and zoomorphic figures are meant to evoke the idea of star constellations with allusions to mythology and mysticism. Salaud works with cotton thread coated in ultraviolet paint wrapped around precisely placed nails on ceilings or gallery walls. One of his largest installations, Stellar Cave IV, was recently on view at the Hezliya Museum of Contemporary Art.

Julien Salaud lives and works in Orléans – France. He is represented by Suzanne Tarasiève art gallery in Paris.

Pablo Valbuena: Lighting Projects

Pablo Valbuena: Lighting Projects

Born in 1978 in Spain and currently based in the south of France, Pablo Valbuena is known for art installations focused on space, time and perception.

His art explores the overlap of the ‘actual’ and the ‘virtual’, the creation of intellectual spaces by the observer, and the dissolution of boundaries between real and perceived. Pablo’s research examines the bonds connecting space and time and the use of light and sound as prime matter.The strobing light installations creates a harsh contrast of their physical space and provides an illusion of infinity depth. Created by Pablo Valbuena.

The Artist’s site: http://www.pablovalbuena.com/index/

Jim Sanborn

Sculptures by Jim Sanborn

Jim Sanborn (born Herbert James Sanborn Jr.) is an American sculptor. He is best known for creating the encrypted Kryptos sculpture at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. surroundings. Sanborn designed Indian Run Park located adjacent to the U.S. Federal Courthouse in Beltsville, Maryland with inspiration from the Iroquois Nations that inhabited the area nearly 900 years ago. On this site, hundreds of artifacts by the Iroquois have been discovered, and it is estimated that thousands still remain.

Jim Sanborn himself has also “seeded” 10,000 arrowheads within the grounds, allowing visitors the possibility to take a piece of this work of art with them. The park, named after the original Indian Run River that once existed here, includes a waterfall and walkway resembling the snaking waterway. Also, located within the park is a bronze cylindrical sculpture written in Onondaga language and “transcribed from the ancient oral tradition of the five Iroquois nations.” At night it is illuminated with a pinpoint light that emits its text upon the surrounding environment.

Ernesto Neto

Fabric Sculptures by Ernesto Neto

Ernesto Neto began exhibiting in Scotland in 1988 and has had solo exhibitions abroad since 1995. He represented with Vik Muniz their country in 2001 Venice Biennale, his installations were featured in Brazil’s national pavilion and in the international group exhibition at the Arsenale.

Neto’s work has been described as “beyond abstract minimalism”. His installations are large, soft, biomorphic sculptures that fill an exhibition space that viewers can touch, poke, and walk on or through. They are made of white, stretchy material – amorphous forms stuffed with Styrofoam pellets or, on occasion, aromatic spices. In some installations, he has also used this material to create translucent scrims that transform the space’s walls and floor. His sculptures can be regarded as expression of traditional abstract form, but in their interaction with the viewer, they work on another level as well.

Chiharu Shiota

Sculpture Installations by Chiharu Shiota

Chiharu Shiota (塩田千春 Shiota Chiharu?) is a Japanese installation artist born in 1972 in Osaka. She has been living and working in Berlin since 1996. Shiota studied at the Seika University in Kyoto and at various schools in Germany and is represented by ARNDT in Berlin and Galerie Daniel Templon in Paris.

Shiota’s oeuvre contains various art performances and installations, in which she uses various everyday objects such as beds, windows, dresses, shoes and suitcases. She explores the relationships between past and present, living and dying, and memories of people implanted into objects. To these Shiota adds intricate, web-like threads of black and red.

Andy Goldsworthy

Sculptures by Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy, OBE, born in July of 1956, is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland.

Photography plays a crucial role in Goldsworthy’s art due to its often ephemeral and transient state. According to Goldsworthy, “Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit.”

Cai Guo-Qiang

Cai Guo-Qiang: Installations

Cai Guo-Qiang was born in 1957 in Quanzhou, China. He was trained in stage design at the Shanghai Theatre Academy from 1981 to 1985, and his work has since crossed multiple mediums within art including drawing, installation, video, and performance.

Cai began to experiment with gunpowder in his hometown Quanzhou, and continued exploring its properties while living in Japan from 1986 to 1995. This inquiry eventually led to the development of his signature outdoor explosion events.

Drawing upon Eastern philosophy and contemporary social issues as a conceptual basis, his artworks respond to culture and history and establish an exchange between viewers and the larger universe around them. His explosion art and installations are imbued with a force that transcends the two-dimensional plane to engage with society and nature.