October 19, 2008

Art Review | Piecing Things Together

HOLD IT RIGHT THERE
Jonathan Talbot’s collage titled “The Bachelors Visit New York.

From: The New York Times
Author: Benjamin Genocchio
Published: October 19, 2008


In Newburgh, art galleries are few and far between. Though there is some noticeable upscale development along the river, much of the city, with its blocks of rundown working-class homes and storefronts, remains a far cry from its 19th-century status as “the gem of the Hudson.” The architecture here dates back to the 1600s; this was once a beautiful place.

Ann Street Gallery is the city’s only nonprofit art space. Two years old, it occupies a portion of the basement of a 19th-century hotel recently renovated by a local nonprofit group, Safe Harbors of the Hudson, which is devoted to providing affordable housing for the indigent, veterans and artists. Safe Harbors also sponsors the gallery.

The gallery is small but nicely fitted-out, with polished concrete floors and crisp white walls. There is a main gallery and a back room used for video and sound art. The emphasis is on emerging and midcareer artists from the Hudson River Valley, but works by artists from New York and further afield are also shown here.

The current exhibition at the gallery is “Collage Logic,” a group show of 13 artists from New York and the wider region. It explores “the use of collage techniques and methodologies in contemporary art,” according to Virginia Walsh, the exhibition’s curator and gallery director. This is a rich and fertile area of artistic expression.

What is so interesting about this show is that few of the artists selected by Ms. Walsh make conventional collages. John Morton, for instance, has made an arresting sound installation using appropriated sounds from along the Hudson River. You hear fishermen talking, pipes clanging, water lapping, even a train speeding by.

Joel Carreiro appropriates images from art history and medieval manuscripts to create pastiche paintings. The source material is printed on heat-transfer paper, which he cuts into little strips and squares and then recombines to form interesting patterns. I like these works a lot, as much for their formal ingenuity as for their obvious beauty.

Joel Carreiro, The God of Complexity

Thomas Weaver presents a terrific conceptual collage made of paintings, stencils, drawings, watercolors and writing, mostly on paper, bunched together on a wall. Across them, he has painted the outline of the frame of a house, suggesting a collection of ideas and thoughts gathered together under one roof, a metaphor for the artist’s mind.

Other artists work with found materials. Jackie Shatz fuses together ceramics, paint, cloth and other found materials to make colorful, abstract wall sculptures. Imelda Cajipe Endaya collages together maps, candy wrappers and a variety of textiles to create works that reflect on childhood and, somewhat more obliquely, feminist issues.

Jackie Shatz, Beowulf

The term collage comes from the French word coller, which means to glue. Not surprisingly, the show includes work by some artists who affix paper or other objects to a two-dimensional surface — the traditional form of collage. Among them are Jonathan Talbot and Vivien Collens, both of whom have clearly mastered the technique.

Mr. Talbot appropriates mostly black and white imagery from old books and magazines which he pastes together to create scenes that look like historical photographs. “The Stationmaster” and “The Bachelors Visit New York” depict arrangements of people against hybrid architectural structures. They are about dreams as much as memories.

Pablo Picasso probably produced the first modern collage, “Still Life With Chair Caning” (1912), consisting of a piece of oilcloth printed with a caning pattern and glued onto a canvas. By incorporating real objects into his picture, he blurred the distinction between painting and sculpture and opened up a whole new area for art making.

Pablo Picasso, Still Life With Chair Caning

Collage has been put to many uses since then, as this show testifies. Perhaps the most ambitious use of it is Yeon Jin Kim’s video “Dreams,” which might be described as a travelogue of the subconscious. Much of the imagery was taken with a spy camera inserted inside an elaborate paper model of a city, also on display.

All told, this show contains a remarkably diverse and thoughtful group of works by artists who, though not household names, probably deserve to be better known. Collage may be a century old, but this show suggests that it will be around for a lot longer.


Related Links:
Ann Street Gallery
Joel Carreiro Official Web Site
Jonathan Talbot Official Web Site

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