Creep Machine Magazine – Contemporary Art & Culture

Author: Samantha Levin

  • Joshua Hagler and His Imagined Chase

    The phrenetic artwork of Joshua Hagler is quite alluring and strange, visceral, grotesque and sensual. Many of his works are confusing blobs of flesh, cloth, blood, light, metal and water, churning and changing in gurgling currents. However scattered that may sound, what forms and figures he uses are bluntly recognizable and intimately disturbing. His works explore ideas born from an “intense personal necessity” to utilize religious content and tear into those psychological trigger-points that confuse and test religious beliefs.

    In his latest exhibition, The Imagined Chase, opening at Frey Norris in San Francisco next week, his paintings feature even more abstract forms that resemble rorschach tests and infer a reflection of sorts. More specifically, they explore the outcome of extensive interviews of four men that he executed and recorded over the past few years. This conceptual exhibition explores and remixes these interviews via new paintings, a 16-foot sculptural installation, and a multi-channel animated video projection that involves 3D models based upon the likenesses of each of the four interviewees. The video is a:

    “…fictive apocrypha of ‘sacred history’ [that enlists] individual and shared feelings about mortality to accelerate experienced history towards myth. When projected externally, imagined scenarios about the mortality of the earth itself are integrated into the cultural evolution of mythology and religion in the present day.”

    Regardless of your level of interest in more conceptual artwork, Joshua’s work is stunning to view. The exhibition will be on view from March 1 – through February 28, 2012 with an opening Reception on March 1, 5-8pm.

    Thanks to artist Jeff Faerber for introducing me to this great artist!

    All images courtesy of the artist and Frey Norris Contemporary and Modern

  • The Art of Yuri Leonov

    Artist Yuri Leonov is an up and coming New Contemporary artist who recently graduated from the School of Visual Arts’ Illustration program.  He’s been painting since he was 13, thus his skills with a brush are exemplary to say the least.  Moody and thoughtful, his work explores his “inner conflicts and fluctuating surroundings” via series of paintings that are heavily planned out.

    About a year ago, Yuri joined forces with some of his peers to put together an artist collective called Artillery, which has been working with galleries and alternative spaces in New York and Brooklyn to put up a group show about once every six months or so.  Artillery is about to put up its latest exhibition, Love and Other Drugs, at a new store on the Lower East Side’s Orchard Street, Grit N Glory.

    Check out Yuri’s site here and, if you’re in New York come to the opening of Love and Other Drugs on February 10th. [edit: The opening has a mandatory RSVP. Please check out Yuri’s website for more info.]


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  • Teetering Bulb Process Workshop

    Last weekend I attended a wonderful illustration workshop with Zelda Devon, one half of the art duo, Teetering Bulb.  This intimate peek behind the curtain of the working processes these two artists employ was a fantastic and helpful eye-opener for the small group of students who attended.

    Teetering Bulb is very prolific with brains packed full of mysterious stories that they like to share.  Besides that and the slew of commissions they are hired to do on a regular basis, they are also in the midst of working on a project for DC Comics.  Teetering Bulb‘s visual style is very unique; many people have asked them how they create their magical works.  With this workshop, Zelda explained their working process from pencil drawing to digital coloring.  She also did a small critique of each attendee’s work and talked about the art business, all in a three hour session that cost only about $75.  Kurt Huggins, Teetering Bulb‘s other half, joined in towards the end of the session.

    If you’re interested in taking part in Zelda’s next workshop, please drop her a line.

    A Stranger’s Encounter. Read the entire Little Fiction here:

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  • The Four Temperament Variations // Thomas Woodruff Solo Exhibition

    The recent opening reception for Thomas Woodruff‘s latest solo exhibition entitled “The Four Temperament Variations” at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York’s Chelsea arts district was a wonderfully crowded affair.  A collection of three years worth of work, the exhibition fills the gallery’s three large rooms with compositions that explore, in Woodruff’s fantastical Neo-Fabulist style, the mythos of the Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic and Sanguinic temperaments.
    Woodruff is a conceptual artist who utilizes kitsch in the most intelligent and enjoyable of ways, playing with the dark imagery of alchemy and magic, sometimes (and most fittingly) on black silk velvet.  The Temperament paintings drip heavy with fanciful color, phallic objects, invented animals, smiling fruit, giant clusters of soft-petalled flowers and a myriad other lush extravagances.  Yet, his cornucopia of visceral delight is both disturbing and grand.  As Vincent Desiderio wrote in the exhibition catalog, “Dark secrets seem to be lurking behind the playful frolic of Woodruff’s neatly compartmentalized Temperaments – a repression, of sorts, of unfinished business too soon expunged from the discourse of modernity.”  Who’s unfinished business remains a mystery, but perhaps we can all relate.

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  • The Soft and Witty Works of Zoe Williams

    I recently met Zoe Williams when she came to my lecture in New York this Fall.  I’d initially discovered her fuzzy-surreal rabbit relief sculptures months prior, and was very excited to meet her in person!  Newly moved to Gotham from Seattle, she has been spending a lot of time meeting all the local characters in the scene as well as finding more spots for her soft and witty artwork. At this very moment, you can catch her work in The Matryoshka Show, curated by Michael Alm at Ghost Gallery in Seattle until January 8, or in Roq La Rue’s Lush Life 3 until January 6th. Coming up in February, her sculpture “Gold Rhino” can be viewed on the other side of the country in Hey Beautiful! at Amos Eno Gallery in Brooklyn from February 1 – February 25 with an opening reception on Feb. 2 6-9pm.

    Gold Rhino

     

    Crane, Egret and Ibis
    Seven Red Eyes
    Genesis/Deconstruction
    Antlers
    Parallax III
  • The Mechanics of Christopher Conte

    The Mechanics of Christopher Conte

    Christopher Conte’s artwork is full of surprises. While many of the elements in his sculptures are machined, cast or carved by him, he also incorporates parts of familiar machinery that, if you’re paying close enough attention, you will recognize. Antique watch movements, sewing machine feet and other old cogs and gears give his sculptures a retro steampunk flavor, while other elements like iPod cameras push his work into the future evoking some of the greatest of scifi stories.

    Dermabot (Skin Crawler) steel, bronze, and brass with working onboard miniature tattoo machine

    Christopher’s sculptures indeed capture the attention of a steampunk audience, but also the Transhumanist movement, which revels in the power of biomechanics for promoting human advancement and explores the dangers that such enhancements might cause, has taken a great liking to his work. Wired Magazine, a publication which has some of its tentacles entwined in the movement, has published multiple interviews and articles on him, and many Maker Faire enthusiasts, scientists and medical professionals who support it collect his work.
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  • The Conjurer: JL Schnabel’s Mystical Collaboration

    The Conjurer: JL Schnabel’s Mystical Collaboration

    Many of you know Ms. JL Schnabel for the writing she does for Hi Fructose Magazine. She has a great eye for art and writes beautifully. In her other life, which you may also be aware of, she creates fascinating jewelry in a line she calls Blood Milk, the elements of which are crystals, claws, feathers, bones, planchets and other mystical symbols and objects.

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    In alchemical fashion, this fall she teamed up with photographer Christina Brown and artist Paul Romano to create Blood Milk‘s first look book. The result, a collection of beautifully designed graphic work and photographs entitled The Conjurer is mysterious and filled with witchery.

    Note that the text in the images below are a bit out of sequence from the narrative in the book. You can see the whole thing (and download it as a pdf) on the new Blood Milk website here. You can also purchase limited edition prints of some of the images and pieces from her jewelry line from the Bloodmilk Etsy shop. And don’t forget to read the wonderful interview about JL Schnabel’s creative spirit on Ghosts in the Garden.

    I’m very excited to have recently purchased one of her Crystal Tomb necklaces! I am convinced that it will have mystical powers.

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  • Calma’s New Asceticism at Jonathan Levine

    There’s not yet been much critical writing published about this century’s newly prevalent Urban Art.  Yet.  The genre has been gaining respect in recent years because its most important artists do much much more than tag walls and cars, and cannot be dismissed as being simplistic mark-makers.  With their work they are tackling social, political and environmental issues in the very backyards of those places that they hope to change, and they are doing it with intelligence and powerful imagery that has always made waves in the arts.

    One such artist is Stephan Doitschinoff (aka Calma) whose work is rife with symbols and text that explore the depths of the human condition in a multitude of ways.   Stephan’s art concepts originate from his explorations of religion and faith, and address sociopolitical issues that are not only prevalent in his home base of Brazil, but in the world-wide.  He indeed paints much of his work on city walls, however his installations in existing or specially-created religious structures transcend the American definition of simple Urban or Street Art by addressing society from its spiritual nodes.

    If you will be in New York this month, his newest works will be on view at Jonathan Levine Gallery starting tonight, December 10th, 2011, in an exhibit entitled Novo Asceticismo (New Asceticsm). To quote the gallery’s press release:

    In Novo Asceticismo (New Asceticsm), [Stephan Doitschinoff] reflects on the sacrifice and deprivation necessary for modern man to live purely, without feeling alienated or falling into vices, mental traps and social conditioning of contemporary society. He explores concepts constituting new forms of practicing austerity in regards to self-discipline in manners of sexuality and the body as well as contemporary Shamanism. The work is permeated by themes of Asceticsm, redefined to reflect political issues of our times.

    While Calma’s art works well in any environment, I’m a little skeptical that its impact will be the same in a commercial white box as on the streets of Brazil.  That’s not to say that I won’t be moved by this exhibition.  Don’t miss it!