Rust__ Rococo

My show this Friday at the Lemon Grove in Downtown Youngstown.

The Lemon Grove Café will be unveiling a new space inside the establishment dedicated to the display of rotating art exhibitions. The Gallery Lemon Grove’s first show, Rust__Rococo, will feature the work of seven local artists who undress a sensual aesthetic from the ruin around us. 

Their work unearths the lush, the curvaceous, the vibrant, the smooth, the solid, and the sexual from apparent barrenness. They indulge. What these artists create is a new aesthetic of abandon. Rejecting the macabre pantomime of aimless nostalgia and refusing to be overcome by the heavy shadow of memory and doubt, these artists invigorate and reconquer how we understand our wasted landscape. By doing so, they expose how our rust can empower, not suffocate, our future.

                                                    Jimmy Hagan and Leslie Cusano

 

Steve Poullas

 

Don Attenberger

 

event poster

jason van hoose at the lemon grove

new job downtown as the manager of a budding art gallery provides intimate access to some truly spectacular stuff.  to me, one of the most sensational artists is jason van hoose.  a self-proclaimed "country boy", jason enjoys the benefits of a cosmic imagination and rustic charm.  his paintings are technically brilliant, yet unpretentious and folksy.  rural life reappears time and again in the form of tornadoes, animals, and fields of grain.  in these implicitly american icons lurks fiery passion and hints of psychosis.  it is pastoral work that avoids the bear traps of norman rockwell and "american gothic" and falls somewhere closer to the dreamscapes of david hockney.  Then, on top of all of this, van hoose introduces us to otherworldly symbols, mystical signs, and the possibility of aliens.  Swirls, eyeballs, creatures and disasters fuse with the hefty simplicity of their "americana" vibe.  Religious in its treatment of its subjects, van hoose's paintings act almost as Byzantine icons. they present us, in flat frontal views, with the gloriously divine and give us reason for veneration.

arriving in istanbul

at about 4 am we crossed the border into turkey.  by 8:30 we were lost in the outskirts.  mysterious and largely undiscussed, the art of turkey has yet to reveal itself.  here are some slices from last year istanbul biennale. more to come on turkish art when i figure some of it out.

the ladies of the night. siberia style

Weird yes. problematic maybe. Interesting for sure.  Despite the confusion here. there is one undeniable fact, elana chernyak confuses us.  Looking at these pictures, my first thought is heavy irony.  but then, strangely enough, her name pulls me away from thinking of them the product of post-millennial malaise.  these pictures are many things, but it seems like they are at least valid interpretations about the complex life of prostitution in the coldest and most depressing area on the planet.  sad and funny, the lives of these women remind us that the slave industry deliverers nether rain nor shine nor sleet nor twelve feet of snow. 

 

alex prager serves up an ice cold glass of delicately poisoned lemon aid

prager's work combines a thrilling and consistent color palette with a spectacular abilityto access the iconic.  she ties me up with nylonstockings and makes me look at what i've been seeing in dreams.  only somehow the images are sabotaged, riddled with landmines that make me sweat and shift in my seat.  perfect for summer, prager serves up an ice cold glass of delicately poisoned lemon aid.

 

excerpt from juxtapoz interview. 

"I’m documenting a world that exists and doesn’t exist at the same time; the world in which these girls live in is made up, but the illusion they’ve created is so constant that it became more real to them than the world they actually live in...

I saw a theme of apathy and impending death running through these pictures -- the death of and dreams."

very rarely do i become so invested in a photographer so quickly, but that seems to be happening to a lot of people.  in just three years she has had three incredibly sucessful gallery shows.  her newest work, "week-end", made her an undisputed darling at pulse in miami this past december.  currenly on display in tokyo, prager's exhibit is due to open in london in june and she has already hit la and new york.  they is something undeniably exciting about her that makes me wonder if we won't all know her name soon enough.  too bad she's good enough to drink.

more excerpts from juxtapoz magazine interview

"Los Angeles is a beautiful place. The magic is still here. Everything is possible, but there is a very dark element here too. I think that’s what makes Los Angeles so inspiring. You can feel it when you’ve been here for a few months at a time. The sky is always blue, the birds are always singing -- it’s a strange picture of perfection -- but there is this eerie monotony that creeps in after a while. I think it can slowly drive people crazy -- that sense of unease under the surface of all this beauty and promise.

I stage my pictures with this place in mind -- a place where dreams die quietly."