"Art Without Borders"

upcoming Winter 2008  exhibition

Alchemy of Art Results

Interview with our Juror - Peter Frank

Lark: What principles or criteria did you use to choose the best artists in this competition?

Peter: "What I am always looking for, while judging art exhibitions - beside the element of surprise, which is the bonus - is art that fulfills its goals technically and spiritually - the realization or communication of vision.

L: Do you have any preference of styles?

P: No. For me it is more important how an artist has managed to express his/ her idea, how interesting and unique is the artist's creative language, how skillfully he/she uses this language, and finally, what depth of experience and sensation his/her art conveys to me.

Technically speaking, it is also important how well art occupies space and time, but it is not just the right combination of colors and lines that the artist may have stumbled upon, but how masterful the artist is in unlocking this right combination within him - or herself. You cannot make what is not within you

L: Can you, please say a few words about our winners and why their artworks attracted your attention? Lets start with Rachael McCampbell.

P: For me what is really interesting is what Rachael is going for in her art. Let’s talk for example about her painting “Direction of Cranes". The image of the subject in this work is not presented simply as a picture, but as a recurring motif. Her sense of space is very complex, it doubles back on itself, giving this artwork an element of surrealism. Rachael also has a strong drawing technique - always a plus in representational painting – and interesting clear surface texture.

L: A few words about our second place winner, Rick LaFleur

P: Rick is working out of a minimalist aesthetic, but making it far more intricate, far more complex, giving a visual texture to what could be a pure field of color. It's clearly a meditative process, and he is manifesting this meditation.
Colors are very important in Rick’s artworks - the sensation, - the condition of contemplation, equanimity and neutrality. All together, the visual and intellectual complexity of his art produces the impression of mental and spiritual depth.

L: And finally we have two third place winners, Sheila Elias and Lisa Bahouth.

P: Sheila works in photomontage style, much like an old-time Dadaist, to shake us out of our expectations. But she deliberately doesn't make entirely clear what she is making us pay attention to. She doesn't tell us what to think or what to think about. The angelic figure silhouetted against a modern building in her picture “Courage Of An Angel” - gives us some feeling of distress but also many more emotional and narrative possibilities. The image itself is powerful enough to provoke multiple interpretations.

Lisa Bahouth’s abstract-expressionistic art work shows, that she has talent for line, movement, dynamics and color relationships. Her paintings are – gestural and ordered at the same time, which produces an interesting contrast between her brush strokes and her drawing, depth and surface composition, freedom and control. All that allows her to create an unexpected image.

L: Peter, many art critics even in the 20th century thought that art came to a dead end. Are you personally disappointed with what's going on in the early 21st century, considering all the new technologies used in art?

P: Not at all. Digital technology provides very important tools, it makes possible so many things, making more art even more interesting. It also makes possible, by contrast, a renewed appreciation of work in traditional art forms.

THE BUNKER GROUP: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE

By Peter Frank

Art Show In H.Kazan Gallery

One of the notable avant garde artists’ collaboratives from the Non-Conformist era of Soviet art, the Bunker group is one of the very few not to have faded into history – and to have spread to other countries. Coalescing in Yerevan, capital of Armenia, as the Third Floor Group in the early 1980s, the artist team, devoted to non-objectivity as forceful as that produced in Russia a century ago, could be said to have made its way downstairs, from the obscure upper reaches (the “third floor”) of the exhibition space to its equally hidden cellar; but from the bunker, the artists can access the street more easily.

The Bunker artists have accessed not only the street, but the world. Even before the fall of the Soviet Union, Bunker artists were emigrating, internally – to Moscow and Leningrad – and externally – to Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. They now constitute a global network of like-minded, if very different, artists, all working off a fluid concept of abstraction that embraces expansive composition, coarse materials, unexpected formal juxtapositions, and a dramatic sense of gesture. They respond to their new-found cultural environments; Paris-based painters such as Rotch and Achot Achot create chromatic meditations in patterned structures, for example, while Los Angeles-based artists such as Kiki, Sev, Lark and Narine conjure industrial transmutation and painterly gesture.

Not all artists who show with Bunker are in the group; abstract symbolist painter Alina and photo-constructionist Harout Kazan currently share wallspace with Narine, Kiki, Lark and Sev at Kazan’s West Los Angeles gallery. Bunker has never been an exclusive club, only a way of coordinating and presenting an artistic state of mind. And it has never been the expression of a people – it is not an Armenian movement, but a universal movement begun by Armenians, the country’s first contribution to the international art scene since gaining independence. It is a kind of neo-informel movement, enamored of texture and material but equally enamored of image and movement. Post-modern in its catholicity of style and practice, Bunker, finally, is very modern – and neo-modern – in its cultivation of community.

This article was also published
in the Russian Magazine "Afisha" ("Russian Billboard").
If you can read Russian, please, click on the image to enlarge it.

Silent Auction and Exhibition in Municipal Art Gallery

to benefit MAG’s exhibition and educational programs

Lark and Mari Fix conduct workshop "From Trash to Treasure" with children at Manhattan Beach Ecological Festival

EMERITUS COLLEGE GALLERY PRESENTS

COLORS, COLORS, COLORS

October 9 - November 7, 2008
MAA Members Juried Exhibition
1227 Second Street
Santa Monica CA 90401
Opening Reception
Thursday, October 9, 2008
5:00-7:00 pm
(free parking garage next door)
Sandra Cooper
www.ArtForYou.com

ART SHOWS WE PARTICIPATE IN