ALAS - Atelier & Art Space Posts
R O U N D E L S
July 12 — 24
Pressemitteilung (Deutsch PDF)
These works reflect on the apparent decline of “truth” and the ascendancy of the label “fake” in contemporary Western society, exploring aspects of deception, fakery and mendacity through the visual vocabulary of dazzle camouflage.
Dazzle is a form of geometric, high-contrast patterning, originally developed to protect British and American merchant ships from U-boat attack in the North Atlantic during the First World War. Dazzle camouflage was intended not to hide a ship, but rather to break up its form and outline and obscure its heading and speed. Like all forms of disruptive camouflage, dazzle is founded on the apparently paradoxical idea that concealment can be achieved through a deceptive form of revelation.
While these works might give the initial impression of legibility and openness, a closer look reveals inconsistencies, revisions and distortions. Forms move and float in ambiguous pictorial space, often obscuring other painting layers in a literal “cover up”. Each work therefore asks the viewer to consider not only what is revealed, but also what is concealed. This relationship between the seen and unseen is underlined by the interplay of transparency and opacity, and by ambiguity in spatial representation and the definition of volumes. The application of paint suggests weathering and corrosion, underlining the maritime origin of disruptive dazzle schemes. In places, lines, marks and other compositional elements are left visible in an apparent gesture of “truthfulness”, but in many cases these elements are spurious additions, introduced to undermine any suggestion of pictorial integrity.
Michael Miller, born in Glasgow, Scotland, trained in painting and drawing in Italy, Switzerland and Mozambique. On moving to the USA in 2010, Miller studied abstract painting, drawing and assemblage at the Art Students League of New York. In May 2012, he was awarded the League’s Henri Matisse Estate Merit Scholarship, and in 2014, he was selected as a visiting artist at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In January 2016, Miller moved to Santiago, Chile, where he lived and worked until July 2017, when he returned to New York.
In addition to his regular art practice, Miller has been involved in a range of community-based public art projects in New York, and has supported a number of arts-based not-for-profits as a volunteer artist. From 2012 to 2015, he sat on the board of SONYA – South of the Navy Yards Artists – in Brooklyn. He also sat on the Brooklyn Navy Yard’s exhibit advisory committee.
Michael Miller is trained as a social scientist, and has studied at the Universities of Edinburgh, Leicester and Pennsylvania, as well as the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In 2001, he earned a PhD in contemporary history from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Miller is also a long-standing supporter of human rights, and has published work on a range of issues including violence against children, gender-based violence and the prevention of torture.
www.michaelmillerpaintings.com #michaelmillerart IG: michaelmiller_art
YOON CHO: The Desert Walk Series
Window Display June 8 – July 2
The Desert Walk Series explores the connection with our environments by featuring America’s diverse desert landscapes with superimposed digital drawings of various biological life forms over the image of the artist walking. The project explores the cycle of life and the co-existence of humankind with our surroundings. Cho works with an assistant who presses the shutter after she sets up the precise camera composition in different desert locations. The graphics of biological life forms such as cells, pollen, reproductive organs, embryos, and skeletons in the sky tell a story of interconnection with the earth.
Yoon Cho’s work explores identity by examining the relationships between individuals and their environments though performance, photography, video and digital drawing. The necessity to adapt to new places deeply impacted her to examine the connection with our surroundings. Growing up in Korea and living in many different cities from the metropolis of New York to suburban Texas, Cho has learned about nuances beyond the obvious differences in each location. Through her daily observations of these subtleties, she became increasingly interested in depicting matters that we are aware of, but which may not be physically visible. In Cho’s work, she utilizes the simple silhouette drawings as clues to visualize these invisible themes.
For more information and to see more work by Yoon Cho please visit her website at: www.yooncho.com
About Where has Dodo Gone?
Archival pigment inkjet print, Walk performance by the artist. Photo taken in Eureka Dunes, Death Valley, California, USA
The picture addresses climate change by depicting our survival in the barren sand dunes with drawings of extinct, endangered animals and human fetus over the photograph taken in Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, California. It asks a question. Are we on the verge of human extinction brought by the self-destructive activities or can we turn it around?
Archival pigment inkjet print, Walk performance by the artist. Photo taken in Death Valley, California.
Superimposed digital drawings of elongated umbilical cord over the image of the artist walking during a desert storm in Death Valley. The drawing is based on the photograph of her son’s birth.
The Living Landscape
May 21 — June 4
Opening Reception: Friday May 25th, 19:00-21:00
New York-based Scottish artist Catriona Herd will stage an exhibition of her most recent landscapes from May 21 to June 4, 2018.
The exhibition – The Living Landscape – will be held at ALAS Atelier and Art Space, Mulanskystrasse 6, Frankfurt Am Main 60487.
Herd paints landscapes done from plein air sketching trips in mainland Europe, Scotland, England and North America.
Scottish arts impresario Richard Demarco, a long-time collaborator of Joseph Beuys, wrote in 2008 that Herd’s work “strikes a true celebratory note of joy” and shows “a passionate commitment to plein air oil painting.”
Herd has staged successful exhibitions at the Broome Street Gallery in Manhattan, Clover’s Fine Art in Brooklyn and the Dundas Street Gallery in Edinburgh.
Herd’s painting “Copper Tree, Evora, Portugal” won a Jean Gates Award in New York.
Herd won painting scholarships in recent years to the Marchutz School of Fine Art in Aix-en-Provence, France, and Anderson Ranch Arts Centre in Aspen, Colorado.
Glasgow-born and Linlithgow-raised Herd graduated from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee, Scotland, in the 1980s after five years of study including a postgraduate year and selection to paint at the Hospitalfield House master class.
Herd’s college teachers included veteran Scottish painters James Morrison, Alberto Morocco and Jack Knox, a major influence on Herd’s development.
After working in Edinburgh, Hong Kong and New Zealand, Herd moved to Brooklyn, New York in 2003 – although she makes frequent sketching trips to Scotland, England and mainland Europe.
To see more of Catriona’s work visit:
www.catrionaherd.com
Until May 16 | Bis 16 Mai
Patricia Espinosa
Painted bubble wrap on wood structure
2,10m x 2,20m x 2,10m 2018
Our world is full of noise, constant noise generated by all sorts of events. Disturbing events such as mass killings and gun violence happening not only in war zones but in our own neighborhoods and schools that intensify the roar. We also live among other, unconsciously muted sounds that dwell within ourselves: weeps, laughs, sobs, screams, whispers; our accumulated emotions resulting from past experiences, good and bad.
It was the combination of our world’s roar and my own deep-neglected sounds that led me to open my own Pandora’s Box. And just like in Greek’s mythology, once open, out came ills, wounds, guilt, fears and constrained emotions.
The Pandora´s Box displayed at ALAS – Atelier & Art Space, is the result of that personal experience that begged for peace and quietness.
Come, enter and “open” Pandora´s Box. Uncover and arouse its noises: appease-, break-, touch-, cover them… destroy them. But also take a moment and listen carefully. It is a space to reflect, to contemplate and find the one thing that –according to the legend – was left behind and that can possibly return the harmony and much needed silence back to our lives.
Capturing Gisela’s quiet time inside Pandora’s Box
Patricia Espinosa
438 foam bullets on window
1,60m x 1,40m 2018
The staggering number of school shootings* in the United States is on the rise, and so are the victims, which in recent years have mostly been children. More disturbingly, the majority of school shootings have been carried out by teenagers. The average age of the attacker in school shootings is fifteen. Under current U.S. law, an eighteen-year-old in America can purchase a military-style gun before he can legally buy a beer. Real guns, it seems, are just as easy for kids to get their hands on than toy guns.
Each foam bullet was shot into ALAS (Atelier & Art Space ) gallery’s window using a military-style-modeled toy gun. The 438 foam bullets correspond to the number of children and adults that have been shot during school shootings since 2012. The foam bullets with the names and ages of the victims represent the 138 lives lost.
*A school shooting is defined by the non-for-profit organization Gun Violence Archive as an attack happening on the property of an elementary school, secondary school or college campus within school hours and extracurricular activities. The numbers are based on an analysis of the New York Times based on GVA’s data.
“Unpacking Anxiety” 4.5 ‘ Video, 2018
Patricia Espinosa
The exhibition Rituales de Cenizas by Mexican artist Diego Anaya presents works from his series Ashes + Origins. These works and their process are ceremonies where homage is paid to customs and traditions. Death for Mexicans is not a taboo, on the contrary, it’s a celebration of life itself and this body of work is dedicated to celebrate life and death.
Diego uses ashes to tell stories of those who had passed away. The process of each work is a ritual where the materials have a life of their own, where gestures, words, marks and lines inflect in the surface of the canvas and where objects offer the opportunity to be reborn. This exhibition is anchored in the mystical pre-Hispanic celebration of the day of the dead; offerings, candles, prayers and mezcal are present in a visual dialogue that awaken the conscience.
Diego Anaya is a Mexican born visual artist based in New York. His work includes a wide and diverse range of mediums such as painting, drawing, sculpture and installation. Regardless of the genre they share a common goal, to explore the intricate relationships between soul, mind, love and life from a personal and a social perspective.
Diego was introduced to the art world through an apprenticeship at the studio of artist Guillermo Canseco in Monterrey, Mexico back in 2008. Diego has received numerous awards and residencies worldwide and has exhibited his work in the United States, Mexico, Taiwan, Ghana and Chile. This is his first residency and solo exhibition in Europe.
To see more of Diego’s work please visit:
www.diegoanaya.com
