YUSUKE BENDAI | PHOTOS

Photos by Yosuke Bendai.

Yosuke Bendai is represented by Hiromi Yoshii.

DANIEL EDLEN | VINYL ART

 

Wharhol

Zappa

Hendrix

Cash

Davis Jr.

Charles

Cobain

Dylan

David Lynch Foundation

Daniel Edlen at his solo exhibition presented by VH1

About The Artist

Daniel Edlen creates art on the artifacts of creativity. Paying tribute to the object and its creation, 

he paints portraits of musicians on vinyl records and draws authors in their books.

Edlen studied art from an early age at the Brentwood Art Center. He later received his bachelor’s 

degree from UCLA. Combining his education with his love of music, he came up with Vinyl Art, 

hand-painted portraiture on vinyl records. After sharing his art internationally in group shows, 

Edlen was honored to have solo exhibitions presented by VH1 and to create work for the 

David Lynch Foundation. He also has had the amazing opportunity to gift pieces to Lou Reed, 

George Clinton and other musicians whose contributions to our culture he celebrates. 

His artwork continues to be solicited by large corporations that cater to the music 

industry and its audience.

Painted by hand with white acrylic, Edlen uses the unique canvas of the LP to create 

dramatic compositions that spark conversations.

As Vinyl Art is derived from Pointillism, so is Liter(art)ure, rapidograph dot drawings 

inspired by a high school art project. Edlen hopes to create more of these soon, 

portraying his favorite authors.

Daniel Edlen’s Website

FRANZ KLINE | MICHAEL ACCORSI

 Franz Kline in his studio

Franz Kline:  A Seismic Shift to Black

by Michael Accorsi

Born: March 23, 1910, Died, May 13, 1962
From Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania

My work as of late has been an effort to fashion a increased sense of tension and revision in my work.  Allowing the shaping and permutations of the subject study to create depth on the layers of paint.  Perhaps one of the most invigorating components I enjoy the most as an artist is working in a sketchbook or pad.  It feels as if its exercise, calisthenics of transposing life to a surface – molding inanimate, lifeless objects and supplies into life.  In addition, regardless of the field or industry a return to fundamental concepts can be greatly helpful to reexamine your work and tact with craftsmanship.  Working with the monochrome media brings me to this place as an artist.  I love the combination of the blacks/greys: graphite, charcoal Conté Crayon, watercolor against the whites: gouache, acrylic and gesso.  The surface creates the mix and transparency that I create so often in drawings.  The magnificent stark, cutting interaction between rich black color against creamy whites and grays opens a internal fireworks show for me as an artist.  It reconnects and reminds me of studying Hangul (Korean) calligraphy and watercolor during the summer of 2004, in Hawon, South Korea.  Here’s an example of what Hangul looks like:

 Xing An-Ping, Taekwondo

Experimenting with different media can feel like and present risks to an artist.  Working with something unfamiliar but also allowing the stylistic qualities of an unfamiliar media to run free is exciting and tremendously challenging.  Being on the edge of experimenting with something new opens the door to uncertainty and doubt.  As much as I attempt to block out negative thoughts: how will shifting from the pleasantries of color to black and grey be received?  Will working with a monochrome, dark palette convey to collectors the work is somehow unfinished when the intent has been achieved?  Will the work portray depressing, gloomy sentiments when it is in fact exuberant and breathing with life?

Painting No. 2, 1954

It is consoling to research painters who had a shift or variation with in their artistic expression.  The array of drawings of Gustav Klimt,  the mysterious and powerful work of Frank Auerbach (Head of Julia, 1960),  and the powerful gestural abstractions of one of my favorite artists and influences, Franz Kline.

Kline in his studio, 1961.

My fascination with Kline began at first sight seeing Le Gros at MOMA.  I remember staring for so long I looped around, faked seeing again for the first time so I could soak up another 10-15 minutes of studying it, so I didn’t alarm my friends at the gallery I had fallen asleep standing up.

Le Gros, 1961.

I’m captivated and moved by the utilitarian vigor and compression in the frame of Le Gros.  It’s as if a highly skilled iron-worker grabbed a 4″ brush loaded in black paint and gave his interpretation of the movement of shape and form.  There is a harnessed sense of craftsmanship in Kline’s work, unlike the free flow expressionists of his time.  Intense restraint and reworked strokes are evident in his cutting swifts of black enamel.  Walking through the Abstract Expressionist exhibit at MOMA, Kline delivers a primordial, guttural fist to the face to his peers in the collection.  Although equally magnificent in their own way, it’s like listening to a jazz piece and heavy metal song back to back.  There’s so much stated in Kline’s work – messages about his memories and times our left brain can’t decipher.  I wonder how Georges Seurat’s reaction were to be if he were transported through time to see what this Pennsylvania artist was going with two cans of enamel.   Kline evokes a tremendous emotional response for the viewer – which I urge you to take to canvas for yourself (no art experience necessary, more information later.)

Described as the quintessential ‘action painter’, by poet Frank O’Hara , Franz Kline’s expression began to rocket after connecting with Willem de Kooning in New York in 1947.  His work began to abandon his figurative1940′s style and moved into his notorious large gestural abstractions.  Inspired by de Kooning’s black and white abstractions, Kline primarily used black enamel sign paint using a house brush.  This style and limited palette by Kline and de Kooning sparked the interest of Minimalist collectors and enthusiasts.

Monitor, 1956.

Although placed in the abstract expressionism section of MOMA, near Rothko, Johns, and Newman, Kline distanced himself from that style to root his technique in gesture of strokes similar to de Kooning.  A similar Georgia O’Keeffe’s  Drawing X (1959) uncharacteristically displays some of this large stroke monochrome influence in her work.  Another notorious example in Kline’s mold is the work of Robert Motherwell.  Perhaps one of the most well known of Kline’s work is Chief, pictured below.

Chief, 1950.

Although distinctly different than Kline, de Kooning, and the example by O’Keeffe, I have found connections with the brilliant work of Hans Hartung.  His lithographs’s and sketches, such as Artetrama demonstrate the commanding power of the dark values in art.  Hartung’s Ohne Titel, (1977) is a lively and vocal piece.

In the 1950′s, Kline began to experiment with color and created the intensely bold Red Painting in 1961.

                                

Red Painting, 1961.

Had enough history and background information?   Earlier last, I did what I always wanted to do, which iscreate my own Kline inspired work.  With Le Gros in mind I cut up a big sheet of glossy paper into small 3×5 rectangles to experiment with designs.  My “Kline” was to incorporate architectural steel beams in the black strokes, but offset by thinner strokes as I was not going to commit a 8-foot canvas to this experiment.  For more information about this Kline study click here.

Franz Kline study.  ©Accorsi Studios, 2011.

Franz Kline Exhibit

© MICHAEL ACCORSI

http://www.escapeintolife.com/

JEFF KOONS | LISA THATCHER

One Response “Jeff Koons – Art makes something of the Banal.” →Jeff Koons – Art makes something of the Banal.



"Puppy" in Sydney Australia

Jeffrey “Jeff” Koons is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces. He lives and works in New York City and his hometown York, Pennsylvania. This is an exciting contribution for me, because I was lucky enough to see “Puppy” when it was here in Sydney.

Koons’ work has sold for substantial sums of money including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. The largest sum known to be paid for a work by Koons is Balloon flower (Magenta) which was sold for £12,921,250 (US$25,765,204) at Christie’s London on June 30, 2008 (Lot 00012) in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale.


Balloon Flower Magenta

Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch: crass and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works, nor any critiques.


Work

Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era. He gained recognition in the 1980s and subsequently set up a factory-like studio in a SoHo loft on the corner of Houston and Broadway in New York. It was staffed with over 30 assistants, each assigned to a different aspect of producing his work—in a similar mode as Andy Warhol‘s Factory (notable because all of his work is produced using a method known as Art fabrication). Today, he has a 1,500 m2 (16,000 sq ft) factory in Chelsea with 90 regular assistants. Koons developed a color-by-numbers system, so that each of his assistants could execute his canvases and sculptures as if they had been done “by a single hand”.




The New and Equilibrium series

Koons’s early work was in the form of conceptual sculpture, an example of which is a series of vacuum-cleaners, often selected for brand names which appealed to the artist and which he had mounted in Perspex boxes. Another example isThe Equilibrium Series (1985), consisting of one to three basketballs floating in distilled water, a project Koons had researched with the help of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman. The Total Equilibrium Tanks are completely filled with distilled water and a small amount of sodium chloride reagent, to assist the hollow balls in remaining suspended in the centre of the liquid. In a second version, the 50/50 Tanks, only half the tank is filled with distilled water, with the result that the balls float half in and half out of the water.


Statuary series

Koons started creating sculptures using inflatable toys in the 1970s. Taking a readymade inflatable rabbit Koons cast the object in highly polished stainless steel, resulting in Rabbit (1986), one of his most famous artworks. Originally part of the private collection of Ileana Sonnabend, Rabbit is today owned by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. A proof of the sculptur is owned by Eli Broad.

The Rabbit has since returned to its original soft form, and, many times larger at more than 50 feet high, taken to the air. On October 13, 2009, the giant metallic monochrome color rabbit used during the Macy’s Thanksgiving day parade was put on display for Nuit Blanche in the Eaton Centre in Toronto.


Made in Heaven series

In 1989 the Whitney Museum asked Koons to make an artwork about the media on a billboard for the show “Image World: Art and Media Culture”. Koons employed Ilona Staller as a model in the shoot that formed the basis of the resulting work for the Whitney, Made in Heaven (1990–91). The series of paintings, photographs, and sculptures portrayed the Koons and Staller in explicit sexual positions and created considerable controversy. It was first shown at the 1990Venice Biennale. In celebration of the Made in Heaven’s 20th anniversary, Luxembourg & Dayan chose to present a redux edition of the series that ran through January 21, 2011.


Banality series

Koons then moved on to the Banality series that culminated in 1988 with Michael Jackson and Bubbles, a series of three life-size gold-leaf plated porcelain statues of the sitting singer cuddling Bubbles, his pet chimpanzee. Three years later, one of these sold at Sotheby’s New York for $5.6 million. Two of these sculptures are now at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Broad Contemporary Art Museum (BCAM) at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. The statue was included in a 2004 retrospective at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo which traveled a year later to the Helsinki City Art Museum. It also featured in his second retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, in 2008.



Anticipating a less than generous critical response to his 1988 Banality series exhibition, with all of his new objects made in an edition of three, allowing for simultaneous, identical shows at galleries in New York, Cologne, and Chicago, Koons devised the Art Magazine Ads series (1988-89). Placed in Artforum, Art in America, Flash Art, and Art News, the ads were designed as promotions for his own gallery exhibitions. Arts journalist Arifa Akbar reported for The Independent that in “an era when artists were not regarded as ‘stars’, Koons went to great lengths to cultivate his public persona by employing an image consultant.” Featuring photographs by Matt Chedgey, Koons placed “advertisements in international art magazines of himself surrounded by the trappings of success” and gave interviews “referring to himself in the third person.:


Puppy

Koons was not among the 44 American artists selected to exhibit his work in Documenta 9 in 1992, but was commissioned by three art dealers to create a piece for nearby Arolsen Castle in Bad Arolsen, Germany. The result was Puppy, a 43 ft (13 m) tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure. In 1995, the sculpture was dismantled and re-erected at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Sydney Harbour on a new, more permanent, stainless steel armature with an internal irrigation system. The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed on the terrace outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Before the dedication at the museum, anEuskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA) trio disguised as gardeners attempted to plant explosive-filled flowerpots near the sculpture,[22] but was foiled by Basque police officer Jose María Aguirre, who then was shot dead by ETA members. Currently the square in which the statue is placed bears the name of Aguirre. In the summer of 2000, the statue traveled to New York City for a temporary exhibition at Rockefeller Center.



Media mogul Peter Brant and his wife, model Stephanie Seymour, commissioned Koons to create a duplicate of the Bilbao statue Puppy (1993) for their Connecticut estate, the Brant Foundation Art Study Center. In 1998, a miniature version of Puppy was released as a white glazed porcelain vase, in an edition of 3000.


Celebration series

Celebration, a series of large-scale sculptures and paintings of balloon dogs, Valentine hearts and Easter eggs, was conceived in 1994. Some of the pieces are still being fabricated. Each of the 20 different sculptures in the series comes in five differently colored “unique versions”, including the artist’s proof, all in high-chromium stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces. Koons began the series with Balloon Dog in 1994, based on balloons twisted into the shape of a toy dog. He later made ten monumental Easter Eggs with ribbon, each one uniquely colored, between 1994 and 2008; five have a smooth surface (Smooth Egg) and the other eggs seem to be packed in crumpled foil (Baroque Egg). The two-part Cracked Egg sculptures are the only works in the series in which fracture or assault of the shiny surface has taken place.


Cracked Egg Blue

Cracked Egg (Blue) won the 2008 Charles Wollaston Award for the most distinguished work in the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. His later work Tulips (1995–2004) consists of a bouquet of multicolor balloon flowers blown up to gargantuan proportions (more than 2 m (6.6 ft) tall and 5 m (16 ft) across).


Blue Diamond

Koons was pushing to finish the series in time for a 1996 exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, but the show was ultimately canceled because of production delays and cost overruns. The artist convinced his primary collectors Dakis Joannou, Peter Brant, and Eli Broad, along with dealers Jeffrey Deitch, Anthony d’Offay, and Max Hetzler, to invest heavily in the costly fabrication of the Celebration series. The dealers funded the project in part by selling works to collectors before they were fabricated.

In 2006, Koons presented Hanging Heart, a 9 feet tall highly polished, steel heart, one of a series of five differently colored examples, part of his Celebration series. Large sculptures from that series were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2008.


Play Doh




Just saw Jeffs exhibition here in Frankfurt and I was very surprised and glad to see something that made me smile and reflect on historical similarities and differences!
The movie show a very humble and positive person!
It was really good!

© Lisa Thatcher