Sergei Isupov II

A few months ago, I wrote a post about seeing some of Sergei Isupov’s work at a gallery in Chelsea. Well lucky for me, he just happens to live and work about ten minutes away from me, in the same building as my Visual studies teacher. Taking advantage of this incredible connection, last week we got to visit his studio and see him in action.

The first thing that struck me about Isupov was his amazingly refreshing attitude towards art. Instead of hopping on the post-post-modern train and insisting that there is deep artistic value and meaning in a toilet seat cover, he enjoys the relative meaningless of his work, talking more about how it is an expression of his own creative ideas than anything supernatural.

Isupov is also incredibly unique in the way he structures his life. He a very utilitarian minimalist sensibility, with an impeccably clean studio that is empty of the dust, mountains of old art and tools of most places I visit. All of his paints and tools are 0n a roll out cart that he stores neatly away in a closet with his kiln, leaving his work space distractions and conducive to hard, focused work. And, unlike the traditional ideas of the scatterbrained artist, that is what he does. He works all day in his methodical, creative way, stopping only to run (once in the morning and once in the afternoon–I’m so jealous). The commercial part of his art is streamlined as well, with his dealer (my teacher) living right down stairs. Because of the simple, organized external life that he leads, the true imagination and creativity in Sergei’s work can shine beautifully.

 

 

Zea Mays and Red Trillium Press

Firstly, I want to apologies for my absence of late, but i have been having some rather serious technical difficulties (I couldn’t get pictures off of my camera). Secondly, a few weeks ago I visited two amazing spaces in a beautiful old building. The first was Zea Mays Printmaking: a large open studio where member printmakers can come, work, and share equipment. The second was Red Trillium Press, the home of the incredibly unique and innovative bookmaker Stephen Daiber.

At Zea Mays, we got to watch a demonstration of the etching style of printmaking, wherein a sheet of copper is chemically etched with a picture or design, covered in an impossibly thin layer of ink that sinks its way into the etching, and smooshed against a piece of paper that picks up the ink–creating an image.

The process is painstaking and complex, and the plate needs to be inked fully for every individual print. An artist in the studio has been working on a series of these depicting the work that goes on at Zea Mays, which is what we got to see.

Another amazing thing that Zea Mays does is archive its artists’ work. We looked through a sampling of these, and got to see the amazing diversity of printing techniques that go on here.

All of these prints are archived in an incredibly huge and well organized filing cabinet that gallery owners and curators all across the area can have access to if they want pieces for shows or exhibits. This allows the artists have the opportunity to have their work seen and exhibited–an amazing thing for a co-op like this.

 

The work at Red Trillium was amazing. Daiber makes these totally weird books–ones that fold out, a cigar box of dead butterflies, a scroll–that are significantly more like interactive art than a traditional book. Many of them are hand made and only have one copy, and the art is incredible. Perhaps the most interesting part about this work, however, is that Daiber collaborates with artists in Cuba to make much of it, lending a certain rustic, improvisational feeling to much of what he does. To catch you up to speed, Cuba doesn’t have much of anything: no good paper, no ink, not even rulers. The artists he works with make their own lightbulbs and work in dilapidated movie theaters–a stunning contrast to what we had just seen at Zea Mays. This work shows the anguish of the cuban people in a form unfamiliar to most people.

Some examples:

A fold-up book made by a couple.

The cover of a rarity in this studio–a mass produced book. El Muro is a collection of photographs of the gay underbelly of Havana interspersed with bits of spanish poetry.

A “page” from one of his books: a collection of vintage butterflies wrapped in newspaper and put in a cigar box. The butterflies are from India, and the paper clippings provide a glimpse of the world from decades ago.

On a different note, the building these two studios were housed in was beautiful. I think it deserves some attention of its own, so I will be doing a post about it soon–hopefully later this week.

Quick Update

I know I haven’t been around much lately, but what with applying to college and finals coming up, there hasn’t been much time for blogging. Still, that is no excuse for keeping you out of the loop.

I do have a secondary problem, it being that my camera has been commandeered by my father.

So here, quickly, is a synopsis of the past month.

Right before vacation, we went to the Williams College art museum to look at their rare prints collection. It was an amazing tour with the head curator at the museum, focusing on photographic manipulation. We started with a film piece, created by cutting and printing a bunch of negatives in a long and arduous  process that resulted in an amazingly realistic looking photograph. We then moved on to digital manipulation, looking at some amazingly well done early stuff that was made when computers still had blue screens. After the rare prints, the curator took us on a museum tour, focusing on manipulated images. We saw a lot of amazing stuff, but my favorite by far were the images from the Hubble space telescope. They have to pick colors to represent each element in the pictures, and they create the most beutiful, peaceful images of outer space. Also, fun fact, because the telescope was paid for with taxpayer dollars, we all own these images. I don’t know where to get them, but they are free and wicked high quality.

This past week, we traveled to Easthapton to see the “Mayor of Marquetry”. Marquetry is this insane art form than involves cutting and layering impossibly thin slivers of wood to create amazingly realistic and detailed pictures. It is an incredibly painstaking process–he did a very simple demonstration with three pieces, and it look about twenty minutes. He works with a cabinet-maker, and together they make these beautiful pieces of furniture. He has even done several Steinway pianos. In addition to being an artist, this man was a large part of the movement to revitalize the hilltowns. When he moved here, this area was very run-down and rampant with poverty. He and many others bought old factories and turned them into art spaces, brought artists here, and worked with the towns to create a new image. Now, this area is one of the most cultured and arts-y places on the east coast, aside from the big cities.

James Cohen Gallery

Distill: a crazy sculpture, once created on the roof of the Met by Roxy Paine. It now lives in the James Cohen Gallery, and winds it’s ways through the rooms, like a combination of living plumbing and a metal tree.

As a whole, this gallery was amazing. While this piece is currently taking up all of their exhibit space, it wound its way back into the offices, which were open and also full of art. One office contained a Sol Lewitt painting, and another had an enormous wall sculpture of  a tangled no 2 pencil.

The waiting area had several pieces scattered about and integrated into the design, as well as a very well stocked bookcase. 

And then there were the mushrooms. A wall of them, to be exact. Also created by Roxy Paine, these fungi were not only beautiful, but also extremely anatomically correct, which made them even more stunning. Arranged in a spiral (a form found almost everywhere in nature) on a huge, blank wall, they beautifully juxtapose natural decay with modern permanence.

Magnan Metz Gallery

The first exhibit we saw in this next gallery called “Perfect From Now On” by Amelia Bienald. It was… interesting. I don’t know if I have mentioned before my relative distain for this type of contemporary, conceptual, found object stuff, but that’s what this was and I’m just not a big fan. Still, for those of you who are into that, this baby had everything! A deer head decorated with lace, a chandler made out of chandlers and tied together with wigs, stalactites hanging from the ceiling, rotating animal carcasses and even more. case in point:

The really sad part about this exhibit is that she is a gifted painter, but the paintings get lost behind all of the other stuff. Still, I have to admit that it was fabulously curated, really giving the room a fantastical, cave-like feeling that reflected the work.

Raul Cordero’s “Make It Plain”, the second exhibit we saw, was amazing.If you have ever seen a double-exposure photograph, his work is somewhat like that, only painted. He uses bright, natural colors and creates surrealistic landscapes that integrate both pictures–blurring the lines between them, as well as those between his world and reality.

He also integrates dots into his paintings, supposedly spelling out the title. They float ethereally on top of the canvas, adding a new dimension that bring the works out of the abstract and into our space.

This one piece was huge. It took up an entire wall, and really could only be viewed in small portions. Unlike the other two, it has a much more industrial feel and it is a lot harder to distinguish the two images.  The amount of detail he uses is incredible, especially for someone working with such an abstract medium.

Much of his work incorporate industrial aspects, especially modern architecture. To see more of his images, or some of Amelia Bienald’s exhibit, visit http://magnanmetz.com/

Barry Freidman Part Two

The second artist we saw was Takahiro Kondo. His work also centered around sculptures of heads, but could not be more different. He made a cast of his head, and decorated copies of it. He has a background in clay sculpture and has invented many techniques, the most famous of which is his “mist” technique that imitates mist by mixing glaze with either silver, gold or both and literally misting it onto the surface of his sculptures before firing.

His exhibition was designed with these ornate heads lining the walls, delicately and almost gaudily painted with both geometric and nature-inspired designs. These heads are meant to represent what humans are doing to the planet: decorating it beyond recognition and practicality–essentially destroying its essence.

In the center of the room, there lay five more heads, designed to directly contrast those on the perimeter. These heads were fired in the ground, letting the minerals and fire create their own designs on the surface.

These heads symbolize the beauty of a simple earth, one without all the artificial decorations humans add. As a whole, this exhibit captures what many people have been saying about human influence on the planet–while still being beautiful. In addition, placing the earth-made heads in the center with the others rotating around reminds us that everything we do is based upon earth in this natural state and that is the state it will come back to eventually.

Barry Friedman Part One

The first (substantial) stop on our journey through the wilds of the Chelsea art scene was at the Barry Friedman Gallery on west 26th St. This was of particular interest to our group because one of the main Exhibitions had been created here in the hilltowns–in the studio of Leslie Ferrin (one of our teachers’) home.

Sergei Ispuv’s exhibit is called HE+SHE and is a collection of both large, intricate, surreal stoneware heads, smaller, equally intricate and surreal sculptures and some large-scale pencil drawings in the same vein.

I was captured most by the heads, which at one time managed to hold a lifelike, human essence and a ridiculously contorted, surreal alternate reality. They seem to speak to the inner selves we all have: the truest form of humanity that often remains hidden to the world. To drive this point home, Ispuv paints a scene on the underside of each head: a scene that, due to the true heft of his work, can only be exhibited through use of a mirror.

Ispuv’s smaller sculptures make a similar point, but in a slightly more disturbing way. Words don’t quite do them justice.

The sculptures are incredible: they contort the human image to include aspects of the fantastical and the terrifying, while still maintaining artistic integrity. For more photos, check out my facebook or the Barry Friedman website. Or better yet, see them in person at 515 West 26th St (#2) New York, NY.

Incidentaly, the gallery also had a lot of contemporary furniture (all of which looked very comfortable after the train, but was not to be sat upon). That wasn’t what we were there to see, but I couldn’t resist.