NY ARTS MAGAZINE | nyartsmagazine 1.5 - Skin - Skin Flowering Femininity Spring 2010 - Skin Ha... | nyartsmagazine 1.5

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Skin

Spring 2010 - Skin

Haizan Shaw’s Red Flower Girl is composed of large, stiff, ellipses of crimson gather round each other, colonizing into bunches, pointing in, at other times proudly growing outwards. Caught in these different stages, these ranging moments of the flowers give the piece a still movement. These crowding clusters of petals orchestrate the photo’s atmosphere, providing the viewer with the sense of a floating and wavering delicacy. Perhaps mimicking the movement and feeling of the surrounding plant life, the nude that takes center stage amongst them translates some of the same notions. Lying, ever so elegantly and modestly over herself, with the same grace of a Renaissance nude, her form sings the similarly smooth melody into the photo’s composition.

Liberty of a Satirist

Spring 2010 - Skin

My work is about how artificially identities are constructed, and how it is possible to undermine the myths of social conventions such as the political borders, languages, religions, and last but not least, art. The tool used is just to take to the extreme the logic contained on them. I put into dialogue drawings, photographs, videos, and installations where myself, other people, or even live animals orchestrate performative acts that confront the symbols, myths, and metaphors of the foundations of Western patriarchal dominance. The use of satire within my practice produces a moral ambivalence, which unsettles any fixation on a historical victimization of women, concerning their social visibility and mobility in the public sphere.

Renditions of Nature

Spring 2010 - Skin

Traveling frequently, Cecilia Paredes is inspired by the many locations and cultures she encounters. Her travels and deep immersion in a variety of cultures has given her a nomadic-like perspective that informs her work. This condition is partly the result of her choice to divide her time between North and Central America as she fully pursues her career as an artist. Her itinerant existence is reflected in her art as she wanders, and in a metaphorical sense, portraying her many selves. She views the concept of origin in a literal and poetic sense. Her art lies in the methodology of investigating possibilities of where her origins lie. From that basis, she uses a blend of sculptural forms and photography to convey a vision of her mutable identity.

The Monstrosity of Splendor

Spring 2010 - Skin

Artist Marilyn Minter studies the pathology of glamour. Since the 80s, she has rendered beauty grotesque and gore beautiful with photos and photo-realistic enamel-on-metal paintings that shimmer like nail polish. Her latest series, which was on display at Salon 94 is more pleasant. She photographed the tongues of models through glass as they sipped and slurped on gelatinous candy and cake decorations. Born in 1948 in Shreveport, Louisiana, Marilyn Minter lives and works in New York City. In 1970 she received a bachelor’s degree in fine art from the University of Florida, and in 1972 a master’s degree in fine art from Syracuse University.

Illustrating Words

Spring 2010 - Skin

My approach to illustration is a combination of mediums that over the years have layered upon each other to create what I hope is a rich visual language. I use photography, painting, drawing, and lately a little model making to create the elements for each image with no part of the process being more important than the next. The mash of elements is perhaps evidence of my broad-based beginnings. I went to university to study illustration and fine art, but was lured into the (to me) alchemy of photography. This was on the cusp of the digital revolution in the medium, and I mainly studied the traditional photographic methods.

Winged Men

Spring 2010 - Skin

With this series, I’m revealing a personal realization about the ANGEL; I’m not a religious person and this work has little to do with religion or even spirituality, but closer to the realms of math and biology. The ANGELS are symbols for the ANGLE. The angle of human DNA. Angels and the Holy Grail are taught to us as things that exist outside of our selves, maybe the angel and the grail belongs to every man, woman, and child. Access to your angel may be achieved through the self-experiencing moments of tremendous bliss aided by the Three Wise Men—the Hypothalamus, the Pituitary, and the Pineal (Orion’s Belt in the brain?). The right angle may possibly imply correct angle (of DNA). When our spiritualists tell us we have all the answers within, are they referring to the DNA?

Mélange and a Female Secret Chamber

Spring 2010 - Skin

Revolutions are sweet as long as discoveries are transformed into work, into days filled with this production of images, with writing, drawing, and collage, which are my three main, parallel techniques. However, ideas are often buried, like annotations jotted down in exercise books that have been put away, relegated to the attic or notes hidden under the mattress or tucked away in the pockets of winter clothes; in other words, they regularly resurface only to be buried again until they are needed.

The Awakening

Spring 2010 - Skin

When eight years of your adult life is consumed with creating something most people around you think outlandish, stupid, wasteful, sinful, desperate, ugly, pointless, or perverse, and this is after floundering so many years prior on what exactly to consume one’s creative energy on, only to hear from your wife, family, and friends once you think you’ve got it all down, finally figured it out, that your sanity (“Who’s paying for it?”), logic (“What for?”), timing (birth of a son) and purpose (no gallery representation, no planned show) are all off.

Dirty Silhouettes

Spring 2010 - Skin

My work is driven by the desire to understand and interpret the human condition, human dynamics/relationships by exploring the “spaces in between.” I find myself constantly needing to defy the canvas edge and envelope the space beyond the boundaries, incorporating into the images elements of truth and fiction such as text, collage, and assemblage in both a serious and playful manner. Through this process I offer psychologically charged explorations of these complex relationships and in doing so, draw the viewer into a provocative world of sexual politics.

Reign of Humor

Spring 2010 - Skin

My drawings, sculptures, and installations serve as visual comedy, or a form of concrete poetry, and can mostly be credited to a failed attempt at mastering the English language. To me, rhyme, homonyms, puns, and euphemisms are more historically vital discoveries than fire. Although I interject social satire and politics into my work at times, my main focus involves stretching language, and utilizing wit as a true medium, alongside graphite, cotton balls, and colored pencil. Originally starting out in journalism, some of my earliest influences were traditional political cartoonists from Honore Daumier, to Thomas Nast, to Paul Conrad, with their ability to poetically quantify daily current events and global issues....

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