Scenes of the apocalypse and disasters both natural and man-made could now be considered New York-based artist Joy Garnett's
signature subjects, yet they retain their capacity to frighten. In her
latest works, which once again incongruously deploy sumptuously applied
paint to render open-source images culled from the Internet, the artist
depicts vistas from around the world taken at ostensibly the same
moment. Although they verge on abstraction, the canvases provoke
memories by drawing on the lingua franca of documentary news
photographs. Garnett's talent is for simultaneously imbuing these
sublime landscapes with a hushed vastness that nearly nullifies their
perilous circumstances.
The smog-filled serenity of the sun rising over a densely packed city and undulating horizon in Morning in China,
2007, is suffused with anticipation. Here Garnett's loose,
impressionistic brushwork and colorful palette underscore the pace of
China's rapid transformations, whether positive or negative--increasing
population, burgeoning economic force, looming environmental concerns.
This sense of bated breath gives way to trepidation in the twilight
ambience of Harbor (2),
2008, in which a blaze of red paint seems to stretch from the land out
into the water, signaling danger in an otherwise romantic seaside
landscape reminiscent of Karen Kilimnik's paintings. Though Garnett's
new work may seem like a departure from her more recent themes of
"strange weather" and global warming, perhaps these landscapes should
be considered through another definition of weather--as an inquiry into how long we can withstand our current conditions. Right now, they seem like a forecast of things to come. -- Lauren O'Neill-Butler
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Night (2007) 60 x 78 inches. Oil on canvas.
March 6-12, 2008 Issue 649
Winkleman Gallery, through Mar 15
Joy Garnett's exhibition consists of four large paintings: an urban
vista in early morning, an explosion caught at midday, a seascape at
dusk and a burning structure at night. Although these scenes look like
they could be representing imaginary places, they are in fact based on
news photos from the Internet. By charging her source material with
Munch-like painterly intensity, the artist transforms impersonal images
that ordinarily warrant a passing glance into scenes that rivet the
eye.
The results throw into sharp relief the vast differences in "speed"
between painting and photography: Between the time it takes to snap a
picture and create a canvas, and the degree of contemplation required
for looking at art as opposed to perusing pictures on the Web.
In Noon, a rainbow of colors explodes from some unnamed
site, and indeed whatever events led to the violence in this image
could have taken place almost anywhere at any time. Similarly, Night
uses a simple palette of red, black and white to depict the smoldering
aftermath of 9/11, but despite Garnett's evocation of glowing flames
and structural remnants, one wouldn't necessarily know that this is the
World Trade Center. In her hands, a pervasively familiar yet traumatic
event becomes strangely anonymous.
Reducing complex events to fleeting impressions can run the risk of
trivializing them. Yet by memorializing images like these, which have
been the focus of global media attention, Garnett makes them symbolic
-- and gives them a history outside of current events.
Winkleman Gallery is pleased to announce their participation in the PULSE Miami art fair, December 5-9, 2007.
_____________________ PULSE Miami
SoHo Studios
2136 NW 1st Ave (Entrance @ NW 21st St. )
Miami, FL 33127
Wynwood District
Wednesday, December 5 - Sunday December 9, 2007
_____________________
FAIR HOURS
Wednesday, December 5, 10pm - 4pm
Thursday, December 6, 10am - 6pm
Friday, December 7, 10am - 6pm
Saturday, December 8, 10am - 6pm
Sunday, December 9, 10am - 5pm
_____________________ Winkleman Gallery will be featuring new work by Ivin Ballen, Cathy
Begien, Jennifer Dalton, Rory Donaldson, Christopher K. Ho, David
Kinast, Joy Garnett, Christopher Lowry Johnson, Carlos Motta, Thomas
Lendvai, Jimbo Blachly and Lytle Shaw, and Sarah Peters.
This summer I have work in several group shows in NY, including this one which opens Aug. 2 (unfortunately I won't be in town for the opening):
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Joy
Garnett studied painting at L'Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris
and received her
MFA from The City College of New York. Her work has been exhibited in
the U.S. and in Europe, and reproduced in numerous publications
including Harper's, Perspecta, and Cabinet
Magazine. In 2004 she received a grant from the Anonymous
Was
a Woman foundation, and she currently serves as Arts
Editor at Cultural
Politics, an internationally refereed journal
published by Berg, Oxford, UK.
Garnett organized the traveling exhibition NIGHT
VISION (2002-03),
which opened in New York City at White Columns. In March 2006, with Joy
Episalla and Amy Lipton, she co-organized OUT
OF THE BLUE, an
exhibition exploring weather as a metaphor for the creative process.
Recently, her work has been included in IMAGE
WAR:
Contested Images of Political Conflict, organized by
the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program (ISP); and
PREVAILING CLIMATE at Sara
Meltzer Gallery, New York
City.
Garnett's
subject is the apocalyptic-sublime
and the intersections of media, politics and culture. Her paintings,
based on documentary photographs she samples from the internet, exploit
the accessibility and malleability of images in the media. She has
written and lectured widely about open source culture, intellectual
property and fair use from an artist's point of view. On the
subject
of painting and appropriating news images, read the February '06 interview with Lyra
Kilston (ArtL!es, Brooklyn Rail) or read her "Image
Junkie" article on NYFA Current (2005).
StrangeWeather.info
art, exhibitions and publications about strange weather and climate
change.
The
Bomb Project
a comprehensive resource of nuclear related links organized for artists.
Collecting
digital images from various news and government sites on the Internet,
Garnett unhinges them from their contextual framework by introducing
them into the traditional artistic genre of oil painting. Her works
illustrate the malleability of media imagery by rendering fleeting
scenes of conflict as permanent visceral effigies produced with a
painterly meditation that erodes the familiarity and acceptance of
remote events delivered ever more rapidly and repetitiously via
evolving communications technology. --- Paul
Brewer, BLASTS 2005
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Recent
Exhibition:
IMAGE
WAR Contesting Images of Political Conflict
CATALOGUE AVAILABLE
Examining recent artistic practices that explore media representations
of war and conflict.
May 19 - June 25, 2006
Organized by the 2005-06 fellows of the Whitney
Independent Study Program:
Benjamin Godsill, Stamatina Gregory,
Katy Rogers, Susanne O. Saether
The Art Gallery of the Graduate Center
The City University of New York
365 Fifth Ave @ 34th Street
gallery hours: Wed-Sun 12-6pm
2-channel DVD installation
or single-channel split-screen
Music by Ben Neill
Produced by Bill Jones
Dominic Sunset is a dual channel DVD installation
about nuclear weapons testing and the apocalyptic sublime landscape.
Both videos are remixes of declassified footage of nuclear tests
conducted by the United States in the Nevada desert and the Pacific
arena during the Cold War.
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CREATIVE
COMMONS: Talks + Conferences
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In April 2006 I took
part in the COMEDIES OF FAIR U$E conference
at the NY Institute for the Humanities at NYU. Panelists, in addition
to organisers Lawrence Lessig.. and Institute
director Lawrence Weschler..
included:
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Here's a blurb for my blog:
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Welcome to
NEWSgrist
NEWSgrist was started in March 2000 as an e-zine devoted to the
politics of art and
culture in
the digital age. For four years it was distributed entirely by
email subscription. In April 2004 it
morphed into a blog. Newsgrist remains dedicated to bridging gaps
between the digital and the
non-technical, art and activism, the diverse blog and non-blog worlds
of readers and subscribers.
You can still subscribe
to the
email newsletter, which consists of a week's worth of blog posts
(images too) arriving in a neat package in your inbox on Sunday or
Monday mornings. Newgrist's
archives
remain open for public consumption at http://newsgrist.net
Video documentation of a performance piece by my friend Nate Kassel who rode around on his bike slapping high-fives to people who were trying to hail taxi cabs in NYC. Enjoy!
As ever if this is your kind of thing, or indeed even if it is not, please give it a listen: the free and easy quick download is there for your use and abuse! The full track listing is available within my profile blog!
Hello! Check out FSTV's new videos. We've uploaded our best documentaries, series and keynotes! .. Cheers, Your Friends at Free Speech TV http://www.freespeech.org
It's been a while since I've had a chance to write a bit o' poetry to post for our friends to peruse. Now that summer is here, It's time to get back to it. Enjoy!
Troy
Chasing Shadows latest release 'Nocturnal Torment' is Available at CD Baby, Amazon, Itunes, and Napster.
Be sure to check out our good friend Melissa. She's the artist/photographer that provided the picture I used this time.
You have surely heard about the tragic death of a brave young woman who was murdered in Iran just for peacefully protesting with her father on the streets of Teheran.
you have to watch the entire series!! SO FUNNY!!! I swear, my whole Saturday went by before I knew it, just watching one show after the other. I'm such a loser, I know, lol. Anyways, got any plans for next weekend? ... cuz i doooooooo! oooh, I think the pizza's here, I'm so freakin hungry right now, but it's all good. and that survey thing i was doing - THAT YOU WAS MAKING FUN OF ME FOR DOING!! - i just got paid! $76 for my first check, and since i got paid, I'm gonna do more of em, but I'm already at $184, so I'm loving it. They're so seriously stupid tho - the one I got last night was about my hair and stuff - like what kind of shampoo do I use, do I normally use conditioner ... for real, so easy. you should do it, i'm tellin yah. i guess you'll have to type the link into internet explorer or whatever, but here it is:
Online Now!
