Adrian Villar Rojas, Artist

https://www.dezeen.com/2017/04/13/adrian-villar-rojas-metropolitan-museum-art-banquet-hybrid-sculptures-new-york-met-rooftop/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iALhdzlnQQU

Lin Tianmiao, Artist, Chinese

Peer in the window of Galerie Lelong in New York and you’ll see visitors standing reluctantly near the entrance, unsure of how to proceed and afraid to touch the art that lies at their feet. But Lin Tianmiao’s Protruding Patterns, now on view at the gallery, is meant to be touched—in fact, it’s designed to be walked all over.

The Chinese artist has created a gallery-filling installation made entirely of antique carpets. Stitched together, they are embroidered with dozens of words about women in Chinese, English, French, and other tongues—a selection of some 2,000 phrases the artist has collected over more than five years.

“The negative words are obviously more pronounced,” Lin admits to artnet News of the often-sexist lexicon, which ranges from obscure sexual slang (“hamburger”) to terms of endearment (“goddess”).

Each word is embroidered in chunky bubble letters—a specially designed font—that jut out from the surface of the surrounding rugs, making the piece somewhat awkward to traverse. Lin previously showed Protruding Patterns at the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing and the Long Museum in Shanghai. She claims the letters were even more voluminous before being trod upon by museumgoers.

When Lin set out to turn her collection of words—culled from novels, newspapers, the internet, pop culture, and everyday conversations—into an artwork, antique Chinese carpets seemed a natural backdrop. She appreciated the cultural importance of carpets in her native country, and wanted to imbue the work with a sense of history—a nod to the way in which language evolves over time.

Even though women are still often referred to in derogatory ways, “I like to focus on how much progress society has made,” Lin says, pointing out that life would have been very different for the women who wove the 100-year-old rugs that make up the work’s foundation. She hopes Protruding Patternswill help highlight how women’s roles in society are changing, even in countries as different as China and the US.

Just don’t call Protruding Patterns a feminist work. “The label feminism restricts the interpretation of my work, and how I think about it,” she says.

One of China’s leading contemporary artists, Lin’s work is also included in “Art and China After 1989: Theater of the World,” the massive survey of Chinese art currently on view at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. Her work at the Guggenheim, Sewing (1997), also embraces traditionally feminine practices such as embroidery. It is made from a child-size Maoist-era sewing machine, wrapped in white thread with a video of a pair of hands guiding fabric through the machine projected under the needle.

A carpet aficionado and collector, Lin assembled the rugs in Protruding Patterns, like the words in the installation, over a period of years. “They each have their own story,” she says, and no two feature the same pattern, she says.

The oldest and most expensive carpet is from the Forbidden City in Beijing, which Lin purchased at auction. It dates back some two centuries and features dye made from crushed coral. “It’s the type of carpet only the Empress would have been able to use!” Lin says.

The words in the installation have their own, more recent histories. Lin found that some were very specific to their language of origin, while others appeared in multiple countries, sometimes with the same meaning.

The phrase “tiger mom” has been adopted by English speakers from China, for instance, while “Bossy” has become such a well-known adjective in China that young people will insert the English word into their everyday conversations. “There’s no equivalent Chinese word for bossy,” said Lin. “The cultures are more mixed and intertwined than we think!”

Though such globalization may seem a fairly recent development, aided by the instant dissemination of information online, Lin sees a longer history. She points out Western-inspired motifs visible in some of the antique carpets. “Globalization has actually been a continuing force,” she says. “It’s not recent.”

“Lin Tianmiao: Protruding Patterns” is on view at Galerie Lelong, 528, West 26th Street, New York, September 7–October 21, 2017.

Images and text source artnet.com

Sarah Cascone, October 16, 2017

Naomi J. Falk, Artist, United States

Field, 2003

Field continued the extension of self. Through the repetitive gesture and obsessive task of throwing large blocks of clay, I outlined the circumference of the area under my influence.

Swallow(ed) | 20' diameter | Porcelain, saltwater, reclaimed wood | 2006 - 2013 | Installation view | The Gallery at the Macomb Center for the Arts | Macomb Community College | Macomb, MI | Mar 2006 

Swallow(ed) began as a tribute to the individuals affected by 2004's tsunami in Southeast Asia. In 2005, while continuing to build the piece, Katrina, and several others hurricanes, hit the Gulf Coast of the United States. Since then, other coastal areas of the U.S. and the world have been dramatically impacted by natural and man-made disasters. Suffering ongoing effects from Hurricane Sandy (2012), for instance, and the earthquakes in Haiti (2010) and Japan (2011), the work remains relevant and timely. Much remains to be done. 



In Swallow(ed), each palm-sized porcelain bowl is filled with saltwater, representing the ocean, as well as tears. In the wake of the ocean's force, much was damaged or lost. Purposefully built with reclaimed wood, the tables represent, among other things, the man-made structures we create and inhabit. 

Recall(ed) Quilt | 2 1/2" x 1 1/2" x 1" each, 40" wide x var. overall | Porcelain, flannel, batting, organza, thread | | 2010 - ongoing | 

Continuing with the work I did in Recall(ed), the installation/performance involves quilting hand-made porcelain pieces under sheer organza, laying to rest those who have lost their lives in the Iraq war. The remaining porcelain pieces are piled in a 'nest' next to the rocking chair I work in, with the quilt trailing across my lap and off onto the floor.

naomijfalk.com

Phoebe Cummings, Artist

Phoebe Cummings uses unfired clay to make poetic and performative sculptures and installations that emphasize material, fragility, time, creation, and decay. Working across art, design, and ceramics, she has had a number of residencies in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Greenland, including three months as a Kohler Arts/Industry Resident (2008) and six months as the Ceramics Artist-in-Residence at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2010). She was also awarded a ceramics fellowship at London’s Camden Arts Centre (2012–13).

After the Death of the Bear, 2013; clay, cement, steel, wire and polythene, 7 x 5 x 3.5 meters. Installation at British Ceramics Biennial, Stoke-on-Trent, 2013.

Images and text source cfileonline.org

Daisy Gallery, Artist

source daizygallery.wordpress

Melissa Vandenberg, Artist, American

Braided Rapunzel 
US flags, steel, flag pole base & mannequin head 
2016, variable dimensions

Snake Handler 
gloves, polyester, thread, buttons, bell, mirror & wood 
2016, 31 x 74 x 28 inches

Sink or Swim: Family Style 
US Flags, Kapok life vests, wood & hardware 
2012, 12 x 36 x 27 inches

melissavandenberg.com

Forget Me (k)Not 
handkerchiefs, sewing notions, sewing machine & hardware 
2014, variable dimensions, Lexington Art League (interior)

Forget Me (k)Not 
handkerchiefs, sewing notions, sewing machine & hardware 
2014, variable dimensions, Lexington Art League (exterior)

melissavandenberg.com

Nicole Gugliotti, Artist, United States

awe/agency

Porcelain, Stoneware, wood, paint, video projection, audio, monofilament. 

10 ft. x 25 ft. x 14 ft. area installed

Images of the gallery exhibition can be seen here.  You can also see and hear the video and audio that was included in the installation.

Despite being legal in the united states, portrayals of abortion in pop culture and politics would have us believe that the choice is only acceptable when the alternative is self-destruction or worse. Rarely is abortion portrayed as a smart, brave decision. People who have had abortions are cast as villains or, more benevolently, victims and rarely as heroes of their own story. AWE/AGENCY seeks to combine formal beauty and wonder with pointed, direct content with the intent of offering an alternative model to the dominant narrative surrounding abortion in the U.S. 

Nicole Gugliotti is an artist and abortion services worker.  

Organic shapes  made of clay serve as speakers that cradle the head when participants lean in to hear recorded personal stories. 

nicolegugliotti.com

Miroslaw Balka, Artist, b. 1958, Poland

Fire Place is an installation consisting of an overturned carpet on which rests a crude hearth-like structure made from bricks and concrete. Within the opening of the fireplace sits a single naked light bulb, which fills the void with heat and light from a tungsten filament. Pasted to the outer surface of the bricks are torn and layered newspaper clippings of recent obituaries that are collected by the artist at the time and place of the work’s exhibition. A hollow mound-like cement torso with round apertures at the neck and shoulders rests on the brick foundations, and a relatively naturalistic cement head sits unsupported and partially sunken into the neck-void. Plaster has been smoothed over the surface of some of the cement, lessening the coarse texture of the underlying material. The overturned carpet is stained with grease and dirt and on its left side are stock or inventory numbers stencilled in red ink, remnants of manufacture that would ordinarily be obscured. The carpet establishes a boundary to the installation, a domestic threshold that is reinforced by the carefully placed pair of cement shoes that sit at its edge.

This work was made in 1986 by the Polish artist Miroslaw Balka, when he was living and working in his studio and former childhood home in Otwock, Poland. The work is designed to be situated on the floor and without a barrier, yet due to the fragility of the constitutive elements it is generally exhibited on a low platform to allow people to circulate around the installation. A reproduction of Fire Place printed in the catalogue to a solo exhibition of Balka’s work held at the Van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven in 1993 shows a slightly different arrangement of the sculpture’s components: the fireplace is positioned off-centre on the carpet, and the left shoe is placed marginally further forward than the right, turning the edge of the carpet down on itself (reproduced in Van Abbemuseum 1993, p.64).

Much of Balka’s work is concerned with the environments that humans construct for themselves and the materials and objects to which we give meaning. He is best known for the austere formalism of his work in which he combines minimal and seemingly neutral forms with highly evocative raw materials, including found items. This can be seen in another of Balka’s works in Tate’s collection, Oasis (C.D.F.) 1989 (Tate T07499), in which the abstracted silhouette of a house is formed from wood that was found around Balka’s home and studio in Otwock. This is accompanied by wooden containers filled with leaves and pine needles that were also discovered in the area, and all of the installation’s elements retain the residue of their previous use, with traces of plaster, cement and paint visible on the surface of the wood.

Fire Place was made at a transitional point in Balka’s career in which the artist began to move away from figurative representation towards more symbolic practice. Since the early 1990s Balka’s sculptures have been non-figurative, comprised of unadorned materials and simple forms, although often incorporating personally significant items. In a 1993 interview the artist stated that his move to non-figurative installation was part of his attempt to achieve greater allusiveness in his work:

In my earlier works I employed the body in the very literal way … After some time I satisfied my hunger for the form of the human body. I took interest in the forms that accompany the body and in the traces the body leaves: a bed, a coffin, a funeral urn.
(Balka in Van Abbemuseum 1993, p.64.)

In this installation, the carpet and shoes suggest some personal, yet ambiguous, significance as traces of the physical body. Balka has said of such objects that ‘I choose them because they carry a history which I connect with when I touch them. It is like kissing the hand of history.’ (Quoted in Institute of Contemporary Arts and Serpentine Gallery 1990, p.16.)

Further reading
Possible Worlds: Sculpture from Europe, exhibition catalogue, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, and Serpentine Gallery, London 1990.
Miroslaw Balka, exhibition catalogue, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven 1993.
Helen Sainsbury (ed.), Miroslaw Balka: How It Is, exhibition catalogue, Tate Modern, London 2009.

Thomas Scutt
August 2014

Supported by Christie’s.

tateorg.uk

Yoko One, Artist

Emily Ward Bivens, Artist

Embed - object, live feed video, projection.

Semblance I - object and live video feed.

Foot - objects and video projection. 

emilywardbivens.com

Installation Artists

Installation view of work by Gabriel de la Mora (floor), Koki Tanka (screen), Farrah Karapetian (wall),California-Pacific Triennial, Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, Image courtesy of Orange County Museum of Art

artweek.la

farrahkarapetian.com

Alexis Boucle, Artist

alexisboucle.com

Mia Westerlund Roosen. b. 1942, American

Cotton and Polymer

Cotton and Resin

miawesterlundroosen.com