Cogan, Uribe and Hoshine

Two artist that I've blogged about before, and among my favorites, are Kim Cogan based out of San Francisco and Nicolás Uribe from Bogota, Colombia.  To my surprise I just discovered that they are showing work together this month at Maxwell Alexander Gallery in L.A. along with another talented artist, new to me, Kenichi Hoshine. The show is called "Abstracted Realities". Here's a few pieces by each with very brief comments.

Kenichi Hoshine was born in Tokyo in 1977 but earned his BFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York, NY.  Although there's limited imagery of his work online it's clear from what is there that he delights in the push and pull between realism and abstraction. He frequently combines the two in ways that suggests the haunting and surreal quality of dreams without ever seeming remotely like a surrealist. It reminds me a little of the way Gerhard Richter moves back and forth between representation and abstraction, but somehow got stuck doing both at once. One might think Gerhard Richter could pull it off. But it doesn't matter because Kenichi Hoshine clearly can.

"Study of J"  oil on wood  18" x 18"

"Untitled 54"  16" x 16"

"Untitled"  Charcoal, Acrylic and wax on Wood  20" x 20"

Kim Cogan is quite versatile, from occasional figures, to skulls, waves and wharfs, but especially the urban landscape. He's a technically deft magician with paint. His images that haunt me the most are the lonely scenes of an San Francisco at night. I posted his work back in April 2013. Here's 2 of his pieces that will be in the show:

"Open Late"  12" x 12"

"Sunset"  60" x 40"

And here's 2 by Nicolas Uribe. He focuses on the figure, especially personal portraits of friends and family, but the personal becomes universal, his models mere studies for observing the human animal in all it's intimate idiosyncratic honesty. You can see one of my earlier reviews from July 2010.
Here's 2 of his that will be in the show:

"Wife (Breakfast)"

"Father (After Lunch)"

The opening is this Saturday so if you happen to be in LA may I suggest that this is not just something to do but a chance to see three artists who are doing some amazing work and helping to define why painting continues to be a powerful and significant medium of personal and artistic expression.

Jackie K. Johnson

"Lures at Mill’s Edge"   2014   oil on canvas   48” x 60”
photo by Aaron Johanson

"Paragraphs Stand in Dance"   2014   oil on canvas   48” x 60”photo by Aaron Johanson

"Stories Off the Hip #2"   2012   oil on canvas   40.75" x 32.75"

"Thinking of Shad"   2010  oil on canvas   48.75" x 60.5"

"Stories Off the Hip #1"   2012  oil on canvas   40.75" x 32.75"

"Hand Work"  1993  clay   12" x 7.5" x 8.5"

Jackie K. Johnson has a new show of work up in May at Laura Russo Gallery in Portland, Oregon, which means I get to actually go see it. I'm not sure if I've ever seen abstract art that suggested a narrative potential to me so strongly. On the face of it, this doesn't make all that much sense. How can abstract art be narrative?

Clearly the abstraction is not complete. There are representational references, not least of which is the three dimensional modeling of the shapes, suggesting that they are not simply shapes, but things, and things have names. The human mind giddily imposes meaning on everything it absorbs. In some of the paintings I see trees and leaves, hills and waterways, and bits of architecture as if they were aerial landscapes or maps.

The reference to landscape is at times unmistakable. But they don't strike me as just any kind of map or scene, mere depictions of a place, but maps as interpretive illustration, depicting journeys or histories. Some even use the imagery of lures and bobbers to accompany the occasional fish like forms that hover cloud-like overhead, lending the pieces even more specificity to their potential interpretation. And yet they remain inscrutably, mysteriously abstract.

Some of her work is organized quite differently, suggesting a kind of arranged presentation, a still life perhaps, but still grounded in a story, like Marsden Hartley's famous "Portrait of a German Officer". The fact that they are titled "Stories off the Hip" gives me hope that my narrative reaction to the work is not so far off base. Some of her older sculptural work is more obviously representational but somehow less narrative and more purely visual. But there is a definite visual consistency between them and the paintings.

I may be way off base about the whole narrative issue but it hardly matters. At any rate, artistic intent isn't everything. Skill and a practiced hand can lead artists to accomplish things beyond their ideas, and preconception can be a restraint on creative potential. At the very least these are a hell of a lot of fun to look at. I'm looking forward to doing so in person very soon.

Ellen Lesperance

My comfort zone generally runs toward representational and narrative art but I try to keep my mind as open as my eyes. Down at Upfor gallery here in Portland there's a display of work by local artist Ellen Lesperance that is worth your time if you happen to be in town. Her process is highly conceptual. Working from sweaters worn by feminist activists as well as the designs worn by Amazons on classical Greek pottery (!) she develops her own abstract pieces on hand drawn grids. Now concepts can be interesting or not, without having much impact on the visual end product. When the end product is as eloquent and captivating as these, it tends to deepen the interest, adding a layer of satisfying back story and possibly piquing the viewer's interest in those of the artist. In this case, that's the role of feminist activists who often sacrificed many other aspects of their lives to bring about necessary and still nascent changes in society. But process and intent should never be what draws you to a work of art in the first place, and they can be safely set aside until you have first taken in the finished product. Aesthetics is still the unavoidable root challenge of all visual art, despite numerous attempts to set it aside during the 20th century. These pieces meet that challenge with a startling synthesis of painstaking meticulous detail and elegant informality. The hand drawn uneven grid gives the structural aspect of the work room to breathe. The individual paintings are hung upon a background of hand-printed silks, and on a small table near the center of the room, small  statuettes of activists and Amazons cavort together across the millennia in common cause. It's as much installation as it is painting and sculpture, and it's a quietly powerful room to spend a little time in if you get the chance.
The show will up through March 30 at Upfor Gallery
You can see more of Ellen Lesperance's work at her website:
www.ellenlesperance.com

Sally Finch

"Dryland Farming 3 Moro"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  18" x 18"  2012

"Dryland Farming 4 Pullman"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  18" x 18"  2012

"Dryland Farming 6 Moscow"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  18" x 18"  2013

"Weather Study 19 New Delhi"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  9" x 9"  2011

"Weather Study 9 Juba"  Graphite, Acrylic ink on paper  9" x 9"  2011

I'm typically attracted to art that has an immediate draw, a visceral impact that sucks you right in and either forces you to linger over the details or to simply stand back and try to imagine how it managed to grab you in the first place. This is why I'm attracted narrative art. The story telling instinct in human beings is a powerful one and narrative images compel us to expand upon them. Sally Finch's abstract work couldn't be more different. It's more analogous to science and mathematics than to any form of representational art. In science there is a truism that a subject cannot be studied if it cannot be measured. For this reason data, raw empirical numbers, measurements of events, objects and durations, form the raw material of all research. Just so, the artist begins her work with data sets that attract or interest her for various reasons, "through beauty, utility... curiosity, or the work it has taken to accumulate." Then she develops a transcription method unique to each piece so that the data is interpreted through color, shape, etc., bit by hand drawn bit. The resulting images are strangely compelling, delicate abstractions that still evoke the technical and computational nature of their source material. Without understanding the key the meaning is completely opaque, even with the context clues provided in their titles. And yet... and yet they so clearly represent something real, information is so clearly imbedded within them that their subtle beauty becomes almost secondary to the mystery of their interpretation. If her work is akin to science it is also akin to music which, like science, is also deeply inter-dependent upon mathematics. I could imagine a composer working in some similar way, creating abstract sound-scapes out of data-sets the same way Sally Finch produces her color grids. I can also imagine listening to such "music" while observing this work in a museum or gallery setting. Hm. Just a thought.  If I could have one nitpick with the artist it would be only this: I wish there were some close-ups shots of the images on her website. Because I've seen some of her work in person, and there's something deeply compelling about the minute detail of the pieces, the hand-drawn aspect to them, and the intimacy of each little tick-mark or circle of color that piles up with others to create the whole. In a data set, individual numbers are rarely interesting. That's part of the magic here. Once translated into visual form every number becomes a thing of beauty.
You can see more work on the artist's website: sallyfinch.com
or in person if you happen to be in Portland, Oregon, at Froelick Gallery

John Grade

La Chasse

Capacitor

Seeps of Winter

Host

Elephant Bed - fabrica

Starting with the suggestion of organic forms, then blowing them up to enormous scales, often inserting them in architectural settings, John Grade creates juxtapositions that catch you off guard, stop you in rapt wonder. And that seems to me to be one of the important tasks of art, to catch you unawares so that you are, for a moment at least, transported outside yourself lost in thoughtless wonder. But ideas matter too or the art is not worth returning to even when it manages to catch you in this fashion. His work is about more than the snapshots you see here. Much of the work has a lifespan. They aren't often meant to last and so often the nature of their destruction or decay also becomes part of the process of the art. In addition to pictures there are short videos on his various installations. They don't always stay in one place either and the simple act of transporting the creations from one environment to another has a way of changing your perception of it. Which is all just to say that this is really fun, really cool stuff, and what more could you want from art anyway?
Go check it all out on his website: www.johngrade.com

And thanks to folks at www.booooooom.com for posting it before me

Jason Borders

"Ram #4"

"Blesbok"

"Blesbok" detail

"Scapula #5" Buffalo

"Tryptich" Harte-beast (center) and Springbok

Skunks

There is something very primal about our response to skulls and skeletons. Drive through any part of American ranch land and you're bound to see cow skulls placed conspicuously here and there on people's property. Walking in arid lands you may happen upon the sun bleached remains of some predator's prey, and if you're like me, you'll almost certainly stop to examine it more closely. If there's a complete skull there's an almost overwhelming desire to DO something with it. Why? Of what use is it? Such a practical consideration cannot get at the answer. Skulls stripped of all flesh and fur are like totemic objects imbued with a curious magic for the human mind. Portland, Oregon artist Jason Borders is drawn into this magic and then draws it out, heightening its effect with meditative scrollwork designs dremeled into the bone which is then stained and polished. The designs remind me of Maori face tattoos and Australian aboriginal art. There was a time in our ancient past when the difficulties of daily life demanded a kind of sequestration of thought. One might labor intensely for hours or days at an important task, not wrestling with the ever present possibilities of death or injury or the gnawing exigency of an empty belly. The task at hand must done with absolute concentration to ward these things off. This same kind of focused yet free-form unselfconscious energy was also brought to their art. Jason Borders has found a way to replicate this kind of creativity and remind us of roots that go very very deep.

His work is currently on display at Antler Gallery in Portland, unfortunately for only one more week. The walls displaying the work have also been subtly painted by the artist with the same style of line work adorning his skulls and bones. If you get a chance you really must drop in and check it out. If you can't make it on the weekend, the gallery is conveniently open until 7pm every day of the week.

You can see more images of the artist's work on his website: www.jasonborders.com (but be warned, the images are large hi-res files which can take take a while to load if your connection is slow). You can also see images online at: www.antlerpdx.com/jason-borders.html

Jeane Myers

"Far South of Dawn"  oil and cold wax on panel  36" x20"

"Her Hand Me Down Idea"  oil and cold wax on panel  24" x24"

"Sitting In The North"  oil and cold wax on panel  16" x 16"

"White moth in the Closet"  oil and wax on panel  24" x 24"

"She Saw The Claustrophobia"  oil and beeswax on panel  12" x 12"

I don't post abstract work all that often. Not because I don't think it's worthwhile but mostly because I myself don't work that way and feel I have less to say about it. But sometimes some work just grabs your attention, and for the very reason that you're not sure why, it demands an attempt to explain it. In these oil and wax paintings Jeane Myers is pursuing a form of abstract expressionism, building up layers of thick encaustic textures, spreading pigment is gestural swathes and scraping and scrawling through it to allow previous layers to emerge. Her relatively monochromatic palette lends the work an earthy, almost archaeological feel, as if these were segments of some ancient stone walls that had been alternately plastered, painted, cracked, scratched, gouged, graffitied, and worn by the elements over countless centuries. Some look like the interior of a cave where you can see indications of geological layers covered over with deposits of lime and guano and subsequently clawed by some errant bear. Perhaps it is this intimation of time that appeals to me. They are truly abstract and make no direct reference to the observable world, but all visual art, even the most purely abstract is still a response to that world. I cannot help but think the artist must build these images with the compression of time in mind, trying to recreate through the creative process, the layers of chance events that accumulate over vast expanses of time in the textures that surround us, mostly unnoticed and unappreciated.

Not all of her work is pure abstraction. "Figures -", she says, "they come all of a sudden and stop just as suddenly". They have made an appearance in her most recent pieces. Who knows how long they will linger. Will they recede into the surface of the work, dissolving back into abstraction gradually or will they simply vanish all at once? Or will they linger and evolve into a new kind of work for the artist? To find out you can follow the artist's blog: www.jeane-artit.blogspot.com

To see many more paintings go to her website www.jeanemyers.com
or better yet check out her Flickr page.

you can see her work in person in Port Townsend WA at Simon Mace Gallery
and also on Bainbridge Island, WA at Bainbridge Arts and Crafts.

Judy Onofrio

"Reveal"  mixed media wall sculpture  40"h x 19"w x 14.5"d  2012

"Twist"  mixed media wall sculpture  43"h x 27"w  x13"d  2012

"Hydrangea"  mixed media  42"h x 28"w x 16"d  2009

"Hydrangea"  detail

"Wrap" mixed media  10"w x 25"l x 13"d  2012

Judy Onofrio's work with bones speak so eloquently for for itself that I'm almost at a loss for words. I will keep my usual micro-review even shorter than usual. Bones are potent reminders of mortality, and her work, undeniably beautiful, even elegant, contrasts with our more usual associations with death and decay. Even in a strictly materialist sense, death is a transformative process upon which life depends. Such ideas inevitably lure us into more philosophical musings that border on edges of religion. But even a non-religious skeptic like myself can easily grasp and appreciate what the artist means when she says, "To me, they feel like prayers".
There is plenty more to look through at her website: www.judyonofrio.com
Her work can be seen in person in Minneapolis at Thomas Barry Fine Art.

Enda O'Donoghue

"Reno" (2011) Oil on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

"even prettier once it got dark" (2012) Oil on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

"Even prettier once it got dark" detail

"Ellipsis" (2012) Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

"artificial light" (2012) Oil on Canvas, 180 x 240 cm (5.9 x 7.9 ft)

O'Donoghue is an Irish artist currently in Germany whose work is a fascinating exercise in reverse engineering. All painting is about seeing, but what happens when seeing is filtered through  pixels and compression formats, erasing details that we barely notice are gone? His work looks in at the missing detail and reinvents it in an extraordinary series of process paintings. You need to do 2 things real quick (if you haven't already): 1. Go back up to look carefully at the detail image of "Even prettier once it got dark" and see where it fits in to the whole of the original. 2. Note the size of these paintings! The paintings are composed of discreet pieces, like pixels, but each pixel is treated like it's own abstract image with the loving attentions of brush and color. We have seen things along these lines before of course. Pixelated images composed of hundreds of other images became almost a cliche in the previous decade, and Chuck Close has been working with similar ideas for much longer. But O'Donoghue brings a unique approach. Tremendous attention and subtlety is brought to bear on the discrete pieces so that they can no longer be seen as mere pixels. He introduces invented and beautiful detail where it was lost. At the same time the overall image is disintegrating, losing it's cohesion as if through signal noise or the slow processing of a moving image. His choices of recent subject matter (culled from the infinite gathering space of the internet) seem to parody this structural contrast. Amusement parks, casinos and the mass experience in general reflect both the rich intensity of human experience and the disintegration of the self into a sometimes meaningless kaleidescope of external stimuli. This work is, in short, a powerful visual commentary on the rewiring of our connections to reality.

Trying to share them like this, as small digital reproductions, is almost a bad joke. I myself have never seen the originals but I can extrapolate in my mind what is going on here and imagine the effect, if imperfectly. I'm hoping you can too. And maybe one of us will get a chance to see the real thing someday.

You can see more work and many more detail images as well on his website: www.endaodonoghue.com
His work is currently on display through the 18th of January in his hometown of Limerick, Ireland at gallery.limerick.ie

And sorry for the delay. I'll have more work up next week.

John Borowicz

"The Tower of Babel"  2010  Graphite on Paper  38" x 50"

"A Continuous Attempt at False Symmetry"  2010  graphite on paper  21" x 21"

"A Plausible Result of Sustained Spontaneity"  2010  Graphite on Paper  50" x 38"

"Model for a Resilient Structure"  2009  graphite on paper  9 1/4 x 7 1/4

"The Next Morning"  2011  Graphite on Paper  6" x 4"

John Borowicz's work varies widely in style and intent, all of it enveloped by a wry sense of humore. But the largest body of it is his series of semi-abstract constructs, masses of stacked objects resembling oddly shaped bricks or buildings. That they are vaguely suggestive of megalopolis cities is certainly no accident. They seem to be a wry commentary on two very different phenomenon; the pure chaos of mankind's constructive frenzy, and the painstaking tedium of building up complex images on paper with little marks from a pencil. The two things are not as unrelated as they may at first sound. Because people build things carefully, piece by piece, like little marks laid down by a meticulous artist. Everything is planned, each step carefully made. But when multiple intentions overlap, where everyone's plan is developing next to everyone else's, you get a city. John Borowicz draws these images like the builders of cities, piece by piece, each with it's own plan next to other pieces with plans of their own. They remind me of "Kowloon" the walled city, which was torn down in 1994. For a while it was the densest concentration of human beings on the planet. Through an accident of history it was built up lawlessly on an area of a mere 6.5 acres and resembled nothing so much as a Borg ship (you know, from Star Trek TNG). Anyway it is that sort of energy and chaos that the artist is mimicking, mocking and channeling all in one go.

You can see more of his mesmerizing work on his website: johnborowicz.com or at his gallery Adam Baumgold gallery in New York, which posts some great detail shots on their website.