Steven Russell Black is an American artist living in San Rafael, CA who “champions the odd, fringe, or otherwise unappreciated”. I’m totally down with that, especially since he does such a stellar job. I ran across his work for the first time fairly recently and was pretty much blown away. Of course his subject matter speaks to me (tentacles? teeth? floating bodies? SOLD), but regardless of subject matter he has an undeniable virtuosity that is nothing short of awe-inspiring. He does some (excellent) painting, but is incredibly prolific with pencil crayon and graphite on coloured paper… not to dis his painting, of course, but his drawing is a thing of wonder – and he does a hell of a lot of it. So yeah, focusing on the drawing, here.
Wild Spirit – 2012
I mean, really. That’s a beautiful drawing. Of course I’m all about figurative drawing and H.P. Lovecraft-esque stuff but wow. Then there’s this series – a drawing-a-day run that I can pretty much gaurantee is above and beyond any other drawing-a-day series you’ve seen.
010 of 365 – Bite
Seriously, it would take me a week to render something in that detail, and to be frank, it would be nowhere near that good. Sigh. Here’s another:
005 – the Fire Inside
Now, I don’t know if you, dear reader, are the kind of person who likes to own original art, but take my word for it – it’s a heady thrill. The lovely thing about these amazing drawings that Black apparently knocks off like it ain’t no thing is that they are indeed for sale, usually through eBay auction. Talking to Black, he told me that he mostly updates his Facebook page and that’s the best place to see his newest work. He’s been on Juxtapoz and is starting to pick up some real steam on the various image-sharing networks, so if you’re into his work (and why wouldn’t you be unless you’re a bad person), my advice is get in while the getting’s good because this guy’s too talented not to be going places.
As mentioned, Black’s most recent work can be seen on the Book of Faces, but for those weirdos & haters among you that don’t have a Facebook account, his work can also be seen on DeviantArt.
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I got contacted recently by an assistant to Petro Wodkins, a Russian artist who recently repurposed the classic kitsch 15th-century fountain in Brussels, Manneken Pis.
I saw Manneken Pis many, many times in people’s basement bars as a humour piece long before I knew it as an actual piece of art. So really, we’ve got art that has become a self-mockery of itself in many ways – Wodkins just took it to an obvious extreme, and I salute him for calling out this “objet d’art” for what it is and subverting it – a cute little boy pissing all over the place replaced with a further mockery in the form of a self-portrait of the artist as a Golden God and yet a further mockery in recording tourists not even noticing the replacement. Well, except for that first guy.
Yes, it’s an over-the top “look how little the world knows or cares about art as long as it’s famous” routine but hey, it’s funny. Shades of Duchamp as R. Mutt when he thumbed his nose at the pretensions of fine art. You could also interpret the piece as a highbrow geurilla art piss-take (pun intended) à la Banksy infiltrating his own art into several museums in the UK. In any case, I find it funny and clever on many levels.
more of Wodkins’ work can be seen on his site – some work is NSFW, so be forewarned.
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I received an email a few days ago from Paolo Cirio about his project, Street Ghosts. It’s a pretty nifty idea – he describes it thusly:
“Life-sized pictures of people found on Google’s Street View are printed and posted without authorization at the same spot where they were taken.”
1242 Saint-Laurent, Montreal
Nifty idea is one thing, but in terms of execution it’s truly impressive – so far he has done this in Manhattan NYC, Brooklyn NYC, Denver, Buffalo, Montreal, London, Berlin, Stuttgart, Brussels, Lyon, Marseille, Bilbao, Barcelona, & Sydney.
16 Rue de la bibliotheque, Marseilles
While Cirio’s work is definitely a novel take on street art, there’s a political edge to the work, too.
In this project, I exposed the specters of Google’s eternal realm of private, misappropriated data: the bodies of people captured by Google’s Street View cameras, whose ghostly, virtual presence I marked in Street Art fashion at the precise spot in the real world where they were photographed.
Street Ghosts hit some of the most important international Street Art “halls of fame” with low-resolution, human scale posters of people taken from Google Street View. These images do not offer details, but the blurred colors and lines on the posters give a gauzy, spectral aspect to the human figures, unveiling their presence like a digital shadow haunting the real world.
This ready-made artwork simply takes the information amassed by Google as material to be used for art, despite its copyrighted status and private source.
As the publicly accessible pictures are of individuals taken without their permission, I reversed the act: I took the pictures of individuals without Google’s permission and posted them on public walls. In doing so, I highlight the viability of this sort of medium as an artistic material ready to comment and shake our society.
The collections of data that Google and similar corporations have become the material of everyday life, yet their source is the personal information of private individuals. By remixing and reusing this material, I artistically explore the boundaries of ownership and exposure of this publicly displayed, privately-held information about our personal lives.– From the artist’s statement on streetghosts.net
I like the idea of playing with the metanarrative of the overlap of the real and the virtual world – it’s very layered. The whole idea of copyright and ownership in the context of a map of the world made up of street level photos adds yet another layer. I’m not so certain that Google’s copyright is meant as anything more than laying claim to the use of the images within the context of mapping and wayfinding, but it is certainly food for thought. I would love to hear an official response from Google. Does Street Ghosts count as deriviative work in the sense of copyright law since it is only using this material to directly comment on Google Street, making it okay under fair use? Or since it’s only a very small portion of Google Street View that’s being reproduced, does it qualify as fair use under the de minimus concept? I’m not a lawyer so this is pure speculation, but I’m intrigued. In any case, given the siginificant amount of press attention this project has generated, it seems to be giving a lot of other people food for thought, too.
45 Wadsworth St., Buffalo
A quite extensive gallery of Street Ghosts can be seen here.
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If you’re going to be in Montréal May 17 (this Friday) you should seriously consider checking out the Beauty of Tragedy at Conseil des Arts de Montréal at 1210 Rue Sherbrooke Est, at the corner or Montcalm & Sherbrooke. It’s worth noting that this Friday is not an opening or vernissage per se – the party, a finissage in this case, will be held from 6 pm-10 pm June 16 (same location) coinciding with the closure of the MURAL festival.
It’s a group show with an excellent roster of well-known artists including some I’ve written about on ye olde blogge – Peter Ferguson & Omen will be there, along with Jason Botkin, WIA, Labrona, Scaner and Alan Ganev (who is also the curator). This promises to be a truly excellent show.
The Beauty of Tragedy, explores the phenomenon that occurs when tragic events lead to the expression beauty. The works presented were inspired by a variety of tragedies, either conceptual or emotional, which touched the selected artists in unique ways. Focusing on personal, social, political or cultural subjects, their artistic expression was used as a tool of awareness and/or personal healing, and the execution of their ideas honour the concept for this exhibition. Combining the contrasting notions of tragedy and beauty has led to a series of powerful and visually stimulating artworks.
The exhibition focuses on a selection of artists strongly influenced by graffiti, lowbrow, and street culture, but all have a candid curiosity and willingness to practice beyond the boundaries of their artistic niches. It is precisely this urge for innovation which makes their work authentic and worth celebrating, for their artistic expression contributes to Montréal’s visual culture.
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Stephanie Buer is an artist living in Portland, Oregon. Her work consists of drawings and paintings of abandoned industrial spaces. Before I go into that more, some backstory:
Wandering through the wilds of the internet, I found a grainy black-and-white photograph of a car ramp in an abandoned parking garage. But wait…. not a photo, but a drawing. A very accurate, detailed charcoal drawing. For all its accuracy, though, what captivates me most about this piece is its sense of place, and the timelessness of abandoned spaces. Not timeless in the sense of being an old standby, or clichéd in any way, but being outside of time.
The Car Ramp (2011)
So yeah, timelessness. It’s kind of the same idea as the “pure objects” Yuki Saiga describes when talking about his photos of Gunkanjima:
Order and value that only prevailed through human existence had long been disrupted. Items were scattered here and there with no context, no ranking. Everything had equal value. The sight I saw spoke of the relationship of the master and servant that had vanished at the time these items were discarded, which liberated them from human reign. To be abandoned meant freedom from all. The items left behind on the island lost their names, their given tasks, even the meaning of their existence. The laid there as mere “objects”. Books and clocks and empty bottles were no longer books and clocks and empty bottles. Things that had been domesticated by humans no longer existed on the island. Just as the inhabitants started their new lives by leaving the island, these things too, left behind on the island, shed their identity once forced on by humans, to start their lives as “pure objects”.
All this to say that there is a quiet poetry to be found in abandoned spaces. Enough with backstory, back to Stephanie Buer:
Stephanie Buer began pursing a career in art at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan where she fell in love with the city and urban exploration. She spent the next ten years living in Detroit and developing as an artist.
– Juxtapoz Magazine Back Talk: A Conversation with Stephanie Buer April 23, 2012
Buer’s appreciation for these spaces shines through in her work. Although they are firmly within the traditions of representational realism, her drawings and paintings don’t lack in emotive qualities. The interplay of light and texture in her work lends an almost post- romantic quality in the art history sense to the rigidity of industrial architecture. As these urban landscapes are quietly disassembled by plant life and exposure to the elements, you could read it as Buer’s postmodern riff on Victorian paintings of overgrown ruins.
Trees on the roof of the Packard Plant (2006)
Buer recognizes these art historical influences (as a realist painter-in-oils it’s kind of inescapable) but also acknowledges the contemporary aspect of her subject matter and the influences those bring to her.
I love the way that Manet and Sargent use oil paint, every time I see one of their pieces in real life I can’t pull myself away. I also really love the work of Franz Kline, Kevin Cyr, Josh Keyes and any and all street art; Kid Acne is one of my favorites right now.
– Juxtapoz Magazine Back Talk: A Conversation with Stephanie Buer April 23, 2012
I’ve written about Kevin Cyr‘s sculptures and modifed prints of NYC delivery vans and I can see the commonality – I’m also reminded of the graffiti-rich urban landscapes of Jessica Hess or the abandoned industrial building paintings of Morgan Craig. I think Buer’s paintings have a unique quality, though, in how she handles paint. When she references Manet and Sargent it’s easy to see the influence – I was reminded of Waterhouse, too, and the skies and light in Turner‘s late works.
Sunrise from the Roof of the Packard Pant (2011)
There’s a meticulousness to realist representationalism that sometimes ends up being too much about the accurate details and carefully rendered surfaces to the detriment of mood. This is where Buer’s nod to art history pays off ; her work evokes mood – in spades.
While Buer’s paintings are breathtaking, her drawings are equally worthy of notice. Despite the stark rigidity of industrial architecture, they have a lushness to them. Her drawings are not only an accurate representation of an abandoned space, but of the meditative stillness, and the timelessnes I mentioned earlier. I can almost smell the rotting concrete and hear the water dripping when I look at them.
Savy (2012)
Her urban landscapes explore the many layers of history found in the marginal areas of cities. From the imprints of industry and production to its eventual decay, each subject has a historical context, an original purpose that is now lost. She is fascinated by how these places change as they succumb to the manipulation of vandals, artists and the resilience of nature ever slowly growing alongside. Through her art Stephanie seeks to find beauty and peace in these forgotten and unloved areas of cities.
– stephaniebuer.com
More of Buer’s work can be seen on her portfolio website. She also has a charming Tumblr blog where you can see her work in progress, keep up with show dates, and more.
