Anniversary Issue 10

n, t io

Ed i ary

Annivers

e 10 , Issu

20 1 8

Art Maze Magazine is an independent artist-run and ad-free international print and online publication dedicated to showcasing and promoting experimental and progressive contemporary art, which reflects modern society and its environment, provokes conversation and action; and fosters innovation and diversity of mediums which make today’s art scene so intriguing and versatile.

SUBMIT FOR PRINT AND DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS

SUBMIT FOR ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

We invite guest curators from internationally renowned galleries as well as independent art professionals to help us select works for each issue. We try to give spotlight to artists and engage with our readers and followers everyday through our social media, website and print and digital issues.

If you wish to submit to our online blog, you are welcome to fill in the application form on our website.

Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital etc.

Artists or any art organisations on behalf of artists from all countries are welcome to submit.

WRITERS

Please visit our website for more details on how to apply for print publications: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art/ or see p. 13

For more details on blog submissions please visit our website: artmazemag.com/submit-for-blog-feature/

You are welcome to submit an article, review or interview for consideration for online or print publications.

Please send us an email to info@artmazemag.com

Artists are welcome to submit works to our online blog.

This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues.

FIND US ONLINE

twitter.com/@artmazemag

more on p. 54-69

CONTACT

BACK COVER:

GENERAL ENQUIRIES:

more on p. 128-129

FRONT COVER:

instagram.com/artmazemag

facebook.com/artmazemag

Roxanne Jackson Once More With Feeling ceramic, glaze, wig, pearl earrings, snakeskin shirt 15 x 18 x 10 inches

Please visit our website to find out where to purchase print and digital copies of ArtMaze Mag: www.artmazemag.com/shop

Julie Curtiss Witch acrylic and oil on canvas 18 x 14 inches

www.artmazemag.com

Featured image:

ISSUES

info@artmazemag.com SUBMIT TO ONLINE BLOG: blog@artmazemag.com

Michelle Brandemuehl Elevator Hum spray paint, acrylic, molding paste and marble dust on linen 24 x 18 inches more on p. 141

ArtMaze Magazine is printed in London, UK, five times a year

by Park Communications Ltd. © 2018 print ISSN No. 2399-892X online ISSN No. 2399-8938 Registered office address: ArtMaze Magazine Ltd. G06, Binnacle House 10 Cobblestone Square E1W 3AR, London United Kingdom ® ArtMaze Magazine company number: 10441765

Art Maze Magazine is an independent artist-run and ad-free international print and online publication dedicated to showcasing and promoting experimental and progressive contemporary art, which reflects modern society and its environment, provokes conversation and action; and fosters innovation and diversity of mediums which make today’s art scene so intriguing and versatile.

SUBMIT FOR PRINT AND DIGITAL PUBLICATIONS

SUBMIT FOR ONLINE PUBLICATIONS

We invite guest curators from internationally renowned galleries as well as independent art professionals to help us select works for each issue. We try to give spotlight to artists and engage with our readers and followers everyday through our social media, website and print and digital issues.

If you wish to submit to our online blog, you are welcome to fill in the application form on our website.

Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital etc.

Artists or any art organisations on behalf of artists from all countries are welcome to submit.

WRITERS

Please visit our website for more details on how to apply for print publications: www.artmazemag.com/call-for-art/ or see p. 13

For more details on blog submissions please visit our website: artmazemag.com/submit-for-blog-feature/

You are welcome to submit an article, review or interview for consideration for online or print publications.

Please send us an email to info@artmazemag.com

Artists are welcome to submit works to our online blog.

This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues.

FIND US ONLINE

twitter.com/@artmazemag

more on p. 54-69

CONTACT

BACK COVER:

GENERAL ENQUIRIES:

more on p. 128-129

FRONT COVER:

instagram.com/artmazemag

facebook.com/artmazemag

Roxanne Jackson Once More With Feeling ceramic, glaze, wig, pearl earrings, snakeskin shirt 15 x 18 x 10 inches

Please visit our website to find out where to purchase print and digital copies of ArtMaze Mag: www.artmazemag.com/shop

Julie Curtiss Witch acrylic and oil on canvas 18 x 14 inches

www.artmazemag.com

Featured image:

ISSUES

info@artmazemag.com SUBMIT TO ONLINE BLOG: blog@artmazemag.com

Michelle Brandemuehl Elevator Hum spray paint, acrylic, molding paste and marble dust on linen 24 x 18 inches more on p. 141

ArtMaze Magazine is printed in London, UK, five times a year

by Park Communications Ltd. © 2018 print ISSN No. 2399-892X online ISSN No. 2399-8938 Registered office address: ArtMaze Magazine Ltd. G06, Binnacle House 10 Cobblestone Square E1W 3AR, London United Kingdom ® ArtMaze Magazine company number: 10441765

14

13

70

interviewed

call for art

curated selection of works

Inte r view w it h t he E d itor and Fou nde r of Ar t M aze M agazine Mar ia Ze mt s ova . . . . . . . . ........................................................................... 8

Winter E d itio n 11: first issue of 2019 ........................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3

D an Per ki n s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Caleb Hahne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Juli a M ai u r i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Ashley Garrett ..........................................................................76 Lena G u st a fson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 D an Fig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 St u ar t Snoddy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Em i ly M ar ie M i ller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Sarah B ed ford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Ryan Cr udgi ngton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Su nyou ng Hwang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 A m anda B aldwi n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 M a fi a Tab ak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 0 Jessic a Si mor te . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2 Oli Epp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4 G eorge Lit t le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6 Pete Schulte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8 Merel Ellen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 0 Jon M arsh ali k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Em i lie Selden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Len nar t Fopp e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Eli sa Soliven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 A my Plea sant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Trey Ab della . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 M ax i m B rand t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 10 Mark Zubrovich .......................................................................111 D elphi ne Hen nelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2 Su ng Hwa Ki m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 14 A gn iesz ka Kat z B ar low . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 16 Wi ll Hu t n ick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 7 Ronan B owes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 8 Ha ffend i A nu ar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 0 Jamey Har t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 1 D an iel Fleu r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 Sean D owney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 A m anda Chu rch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 6 Roxan ne Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 8 M atea s Pares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 0 Kyle Ly pka and Tyler Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 2 Loui se G resswell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 4 Muzae Sesay ............................................................................136 Sa ski a Flei shm an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 8 Vanya Hor wat h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 39 Et h an Ca f li sch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 0 Michelle Brandemuehl ............................................................141 Vojtěch Kovař í k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2 Caroli ne Way ne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4 Aviv B en n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 6 Esteb an Oc amp o-G i raldo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

A re d bloode d he ar t pulsi ng i n my p ocket : i n c onve rs at ion w it h Faye We i We i ................................................... 16 Utop ian dome st ic wo r lds by Chr i s B ogi a ......................................... 30 B et we e n t he h ard e dge and t he h andm ade with D om in ic Be at t ie ....................................................................... 42 Piec i ng t he pu z z le i n Julie Cu r t i s s ’ p ai nt i ng s .................. ................ 54

24

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38

Contents

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70

interviewed

call for art

curated selection of works

Inte r view w it h t he E d itor and Fou nde r of Ar t M aze M agazine Mar ia Ze mt s ova . . . . . . . . ........................................................................... 8

Winter E d itio n 11: first issue of 2019 ........................ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3

D an Per ki n s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 Caleb Hahne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 Juli a M ai u r i . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Ashley Garrett ..........................................................................76 Lena G u st a fson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 D an Fig . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 St u ar t Snoddy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Em i ly M ar ie M i ller . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Sarah B ed ford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 Ryan Cr udgi ngton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 Su nyou ng Hwang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 A m anda B aldwi n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88 M a fi a Tab ak . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 0 Jessic a Si mor te . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2 Oli Epp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 4 G eorge Lit t le . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 6 Pete Schulte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 8 Merel Ellen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 0 Jon M arsh ali k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Em i lie Selden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 Len nar t Fopp e . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Eli sa Soliven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 A my Plea sant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Trey Ab della . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 M ax i m B rand t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 10 Mark Zubrovich .......................................................................111 D elphi ne Hen nelly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 2 Su ng Hwa Ki m . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 14 A gn iesz ka Kat z B ar low . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 16 Wi ll Hu t n ick . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 7 Ronan B owes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 8 Ha ffend i A nu ar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 0 Jamey Har t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 1 D an iel Fleu r . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 2 Sean D owney . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 24 A m anda Chu rch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 6 Roxan ne Jackson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 2 8 M atea s Pares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 0 Kyle Ly pka and Tyler Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 2 Loui se G resswell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 4 Muzae Sesay ............................................................................136 Sa ski a Flei shm an . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 3 8 Vanya Hor wat h . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 39 Et h an Ca f li sch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 0 Michelle Brandemuehl ............................................................141 Vojtěch Kovař í k . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 2 Caroli ne Way ne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 4 Aviv B en n . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 6 Esteb an Oc amp o-G i raldo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148

A re d bloode d he ar t pulsi ng i n my p ocket : i n c onve rs at ion w it h Faye We i We i ................................................... 16 Utop ian dome st ic wo r lds by Chr i s B ogi a ......................................... 30 B et we e n t he h ard e dge and t he h andm ade with D om in ic Be at t ie ....................................................................... 42 Piec i ng t he pu z z le i n Julie Cu r t i s s ’ p ai nt i ng s .................. ................ 54

24

138

38

Contents

144

from the editor Welcome to Anniversary Issue 10, the closing edition of 2018!

It’s been two years since the start of ArtMaze’s adventure. I have been fortunate to work with a number of highly experienced and established curators over the years to select works for publication in each of our previous nine editions. These fruitful and inspiring collaborations have enabled me, on this one-off occasion, to take the lead curator’s role, and present you with the carefully selected works of forty nine artists (p.72-149). Whilst looking through all submitted art for publication in this edition I felt honoured for the opportunity to immerse myself so deeply within this curatorial experience. I want to thank all participants for their interest in ArtMaze’s opportunities and for submitting their work—selecting the finalists for this special edition has been a long and hard process, but I have enjoyed every bit of it: looking at the portfolios and reading each artist’s statement. I hope to see everyone continue their practices, observe how their work develops and watch the exciting journeys their careers will take. ArtMaze will always do its best to support and promote artists in the future.

On the next page you will find my interview, where I chat with my friend and writer Layla Leiman about my entrepreneurial life and the editorial and curatorial experiences of working within ArtMaze.

We are pleased to have the extraordinary Julie Curtiss’ work on the cover of this issue, titled ‘Witch’. Take a read through our interview with Julie where we discuss the influences that inform the iconography in her work, transformations her style has undergone and what it is like to be a woman painting women. More candid insight into the work of Dominic Beattie, Faye Wei Wei and Chris Bogia can be found in this issue’s ‘Interviewed’ section on p.16-69.

Our next and first edition of the year 2019 is the Winter Issue 11 which will be guestcurated by Anna Gram Sørensen and Kerry Harm Nielsen, Directors and Head Curators of Gallerie Kant in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have been an avid admirer of the art shows and projects Anna and Kerry have developed over recent years; their bold aesthetics and dedication to showing new emerging talents are characteristics that resonate with ArtMaze. I look forward to our collaboration and talking to Anna and Kerry about their experiences and ventures in the next edition.

Happy approaching holiday season everyone!

Yours truly, Editor and Founder Maria Zemtsova

Featured image: Caleb Hahne A Day Like This acrylic and pastel on canvas 18 x 28 inches more on p. 74

from the editor Welcome to Anniversary Issue 10, the closing edition of 2018!

It’s been two years since the start of ArtMaze’s adventure. I have been fortunate to work with a number of highly experienced and established curators over the years to select works for publication in each of our previous nine editions. These fruitful and inspiring collaborations have enabled me, on this one-off occasion, to take the lead curator’s role, and present you with the carefully selected works of forty nine artists (p.72-149). Whilst looking through all submitted art for publication in this edition I felt honoured for the opportunity to immerse myself so deeply within this curatorial experience. I want to thank all participants for their interest in ArtMaze’s opportunities and for submitting their work—selecting the finalists for this special edition has been a long and hard process, but I have enjoyed every bit of it: looking at the portfolios and reading each artist’s statement. I hope to see everyone continue their practices, observe how their work develops and watch the exciting journeys their careers will take. ArtMaze will always do its best to support and promote artists in the future.

On the next page you will find my interview, where I chat with my friend and writer Layla Leiman about my entrepreneurial life and the editorial and curatorial experiences of working within ArtMaze.

We are pleased to have the extraordinary Julie Curtiss’ work on the cover of this issue, titled ‘Witch’. Take a read through our interview with Julie where we discuss the influences that inform the iconography in her work, transformations her style has undergone and what it is like to be a woman painting women. More candid insight into the work of Dominic Beattie, Faye Wei Wei and Chris Bogia can be found in this issue’s ‘Interviewed’ section on p.16-69.

Our next and first edition of the year 2019 is the Winter Issue 11 which will be guestcurated by Anna Gram Sørensen and Kerry Harm Nielsen, Directors and Head Curators of Gallerie Kant in Copenhagen, Denmark. I have been an avid admirer of the art shows and projects Anna and Kerry have developed over recent years; their bold aesthetics and dedication to showing new emerging talents are characteristics that resonate with ArtMaze. I look forward to our collaboration and talking to Anna and Kerry about their experiences and ventures in the next edition.

Happy approaching holiday season everyone!

Yours truly, Editor and Founder Maria Zemtsova

Featured image: Caleb Hahne A Day Like This acrylic and pastel on canvas 18 x 28 inches more on p. 74

my interest in London’s art and design scene as well as on a more international scale. I was fortunate to work a lot across Europe at the Cannes Film festival and other major art related events. But my genuine desire was always to be an artist, making ‘a thing of my own’.

LL: When did you move to the UK? How did this shape your career?

LL: Where did you grow up and when did you become interested in art?

MZ: I grew up in provincial towns of Russia, Novo-Voronezh and Vladimir. During the course of my childhood I had numerous interests and hobbies as well as attending a state art school, which drew me closer to painting, composition, art history, sculpture and other artistic disciplines.

One of the first art-related memories of my childhood was making little quirky drawings on paper and putting them between the pages of some of the books in our family flat, so when someone took a book to read they’d stumble on one of those drawings.

LL: What did you study and what is your working background?

MZ: From six years old when I started school it was all about languages plus art school on the side, whilst in university I studied fine arts and technical design for five years.

Many of my mentors in school questioned my decision to go into a very ‘doubtful’ art world for building a life career, in part because in Russia the art world is quite reserved and is still in its early stages of contemporary development.

interview by Layla Leiman

In regards to my work experience, from around 16 years of age I used to have a lot of jobs here and there, working after university and on weekends. I tried absolutely everything: art decorator, technical editor of a local newspaper, florist, beautician, sales manager, translator etc. When I graduated from university I moved to Moscow almost straight away to find a job that would pay for my design courses so that I could continue with my artistic career in a big city with better chances of success. I worked as a designer for a couple of years before I moved to London. The last company which I worked for in Moscow also had an office in London and a British director, this sparked

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Editorial interview: Maria Zemtsova

8

MZ: I moved to London in 2014. I found working with clients in ‘design’ was good in the first years of my career, but in the long term I have never seen myself doing it because making art/design for clients was a particularly challenging task; I wanted more freedom in my work which would drive more passion towards the projects I chose to work on. I would go out a lot to galleries and shows, talk to artists and explore the city daily. This was the start of my entrepreneurial career in the arts. I joined and co-directed an independent art publication for around two years, which gave me a great first experience of the international art world and people involved in the art industry.

LL: A little info about your own art practice.

MZ: In art school in Russia I would spend most of my annual holidays with my art teacher, making animalistic sculptures. I suppose since then sculpture was always the medium that fascinated me the most. I used to work with sculpture just over a year ago in a ceramic studio in Peckham. My art practice is currently on hold as I cannot yet fully afford all the London studio fees, sell enough work and be comfortable across managing an independent publication and my own art. I hope to resume it soon if opportunity arises.

LL: Let’s start at the beginning. How did ArtMaze Mag come about?

MZ: ArtMaze was founded in October 2016.

Starting my own project was really a natural progression considering the experience I gained through my first years of work in London in publishing and the local and international art scene.

LL: At a time when print media is in crisis, deciding to launch an independent art magazine could be seen as a brave move. What made you feel this was the right thing to do?

MZ: Audible books, news apps, social media and digital magazines are all excellent new sources which definitely took part of our attention away from print media, but yet they cannot deliver the very refreshing experience of reading an actual book or sipping tea with an art mag or a newspaper in hand.

It is definitely evident that news/popular subjects are much preferred by the majority of people to consuming online through their smart devices - it’s easy and quick to access.

But these days we also strive to reduce the

amount of time we stare into our phones and tablets. I think print media plays an important role in our education as well as wellbeing. By sharing the market with digital media, we are trying to create a better and more engaging print media than ever.

Many of our readers consider ArtMaze as more of a periodical art book rather than just a classic magazine. Being totally ad-free, its content doesn’t have an expiry date. I keep many favourite magazines for years and I like revisiting some articles and interviews.

It’s that kind of print media content which never ‘dies’, it ‘reincarnates’ itself through new ideas.

LL: You’ve built the magazine on a no-advertising model. Can you tell us more about your strategy for the publication?

MZ: Many of our readers really appreciate the fact that the magazine doesn’t have ads.

Our aim was to put as much focus as possible on the artworks themselves, a constant flow of precisely curated art, page after page.

Advertising can have its place, but too often it can break up the content and takes away from the reading and visual experience. With such value placed on the content, all the way down to the paper itself, we try hard to make each magazine a unique experience—when you read ArtMaze there are no distractions, the reader is able to immerse completely into the subject.

On the promotional side of things, in only two years ArtMaze quickly gained a lot of popularity, particularly through social media—it’s a great tool in reaching a bigger audience and connecting with your community on a daily basis. I think it’s one of the factors that contributes a lot to our ad-free model.

LL: What guides your editorial vision and choices?

aspects of your various roles as editor and curator and what do you enjoy or conversely find challenging?

MZ: I do not think there is anything extraordinary these days in the ability to perform different roles. I think it is the healthy way to do work. There are no limits to a number of roles you can perform when you are driven. The challenging factor is finding time to do it all, training your patience.

LL: What does it take to do what you do?

MZ: Open-mindedness and good time management.

LL: For each issue you invite a guest curator to select the artist submissions. What appeals to you about collaboration and what does this add to ArtMaze Mag? MZ: Collaboration is key in almost in everything I do. I take immense inspiration and learn a lot from people I work with. They bring their unique vision, share experiences and contribute hard work to make every issue happen. There are many different voices in the art world, which make it so versatile and vibrant. Inviting people with diverse experiences to collaborate is vital in making a quality publication like ArtMaze, full of different stories and artworks, but in line with a curatorial vision, not commercial.

LL: What have been some of the challenges that you’ve had to negotiate?

MZ: Challenge is probably keeping up with the constant growth of the publication and the community around it. I strive to make people’s ArtMaze experince better every day. There is no limit to the amount of things that can be improved in this venture; making those improvements is a relentless job.

MZ: I look for emerging and mid-career talents who work in progressive and innovative ways reflecting our modern era, creating the contemporary dialogue between the present, past and future, referencing global issues and observations of living experiences in a quirky and striking demeanor. I am drawn to captivating visuals, which are not limited by any particular styles and mediums. There is a certain unbeatable and timeless quality to a work which is incredibly intelligent with underlying references to the absurd, humour and other emotions combined with a strong use of medium.

LL: What have been some of the surprise rewards of working on this publication?

In my mind I have just recalled a phrase by Constantin Brancusi: “Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.” I am always looking further for what lies behind the dazzling visuals.

MZ: ArtMaze has shifted to a very simple uncluttered and airy look over the past year.

Developing an easy design look with spacious white pages and simple fonts was challenging but rewarding. This new neat layout really helps to focus one’s whole attention on the artworks and intriguing interviews; together with an ad-free concept it provides the

LL: How do you balance the creative and business

MZ: I get really inspired and encouraged when new people reach out and say good things about the quality of the mag, that they picked up a physical copy, not just read it online. I feel good knowing that this venture helps and inspires others, it is the ultimate goal after all.

LL: ArtMaze Mag has a distinct, fresh look.

How does the design and visual identity of the publication relate to and support the editorial strategy?

9

reader with a continuous contemporary art experience. Less is more.

LL: What was your vision for ArtMaze Mag when you first began? Where do you see the publication in ten years’ time?

MZ: I always wanted to spread the word as far as possible about really great emerging artists which I liaise with every day—I get blown away whenever I meet someone new I haven’t known about and whose work is incredibly smart. A publication can help a lot in connecting the art world with the general audience. Many of the people I know who were not previously connected to the contemporary art world are now feeling more engaged—I like to think that ArtMaze has played a part in this. :) I cannot be exactly sure where we will be in 10 years, life can be very unpredictable, but I hope for the best.

LL: What keeps you awake at night?

MZ: The thought of how quickly life is developing and how fast things change and how often I feel nostalgic because of it.

LL: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

MZ: Longevity and abundance of extraordinary life experinces.

LL: When and where are you most happy?

MZ: Travelling and exploring with my husband with a good camera in hand, looking at breathtaking landscapes and witnessing wildlife within safe distances.

my interest in London’s art and design scene as well as on a more international scale. I was fortunate to work a lot across Europe at the Cannes Film festival and other major art related events. But my genuine desire was always to be an artist, making ‘a thing of my own’.

LL: When did you move to the UK? How did this shape your career?

LL: Where did you grow up and when did you become interested in art?

MZ: I grew up in provincial towns of Russia, Novo-Voronezh and Vladimir. During the course of my childhood I had numerous interests and hobbies as well as attending a state art school, which drew me closer to painting, composition, art history, sculpture and other artistic disciplines.

One of the first art-related memories of my childhood was making little quirky drawings on paper and putting them between the pages of some of the books in our family flat, so when someone took a book to read they’d stumble on one of those drawings.

LL: What did you study and what is your working background?

MZ: From six years old when I started school it was all about languages plus art school on the side, whilst in university I studied fine arts and technical design for five years.

Many of my mentors in school questioned my decision to go into a very ‘doubtful’ art world for building a life career, in part because in Russia the art world is quite reserved and is still in its early stages of contemporary development.

interview by Layla Leiman

In regards to my work experience, from around 16 years of age I used to have a lot of jobs here and there, working after university and on weekends. I tried absolutely everything: art decorator, technical editor of a local newspaper, florist, beautician, sales manager, translator etc. When I graduated from university I moved to Moscow almost straight away to find a job that would pay for my design courses so that I could continue with my artistic career in a big city with better chances of success. I worked as a designer for a couple of years before I moved to London. The last company which I worked for in Moscow also had an office in London and a British director, this sparked

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Editorial interview: Maria Zemtsova

8

MZ: I moved to London in 2014. I found working with clients in ‘design’ was good in the first years of my career, but in the long term I have never seen myself doing it because making art/design for clients was a particularly challenging task; I wanted more freedom in my work which would drive more passion towards the projects I chose to work on. I would go out a lot to galleries and shows, talk to artists and explore the city daily. This was the start of my entrepreneurial career in the arts. I joined and co-directed an independent art publication for around two years, which gave me a great first experience of the international art world and people involved in the art industry.

LL: A little info about your own art practice.

MZ: In art school in Russia I would spend most of my annual holidays with my art teacher, making animalistic sculptures. I suppose since then sculpture was always the medium that fascinated me the most. I used to work with sculpture just over a year ago in a ceramic studio in Peckham. My art practice is currently on hold as I cannot yet fully afford all the London studio fees, sell enough work and be comfortable across managing an independent publication and my own art. I hope to resume it soon if opportunity arises.

LL: Let’s start at the beginning. How did ArtMaze Mag come about?

MZ: ArtMaze was founded in October 2016.

Starting my own project was really a natural progression considering the experience I gained through my first years of work in London in publishing and the local and international art scene.

LL: At a time when print media is in crisis, deciding to launch an independent art magazine could be seen as a brave move. What made you feel this was the right thing to do?

MZ: Audible books, news apps, social media and digital magazines are all excellent new sources which definitely took part of our attention away from print media, but yet they cannot deliver the very refreshing experience of reading an actual book or sipping tea with an art mag or a newspaper in hand.

It is definitely evident that news/popular subjects are much preferred by the majority of people to consuming online through their smart devices - it’s easy and quick to access.

But these days we also strive to reduce the

amount of time we stare into our phones and tablets. I think print media plays an important role in our education as well as wellbeing. By sharing the market with digital media, we are trying to create a better and more engaging print media than ever.

Many of our readers consider ArtMaze as more of a periodical art book rather than just a classic magazine. Being totally ad-free, its content doesn’t have an expiry date. I keep many favourite magazines for years and I like revisiting some articles and interviews.

It’s that kind of print media content which never ‘dies’, it ‘reincarnates’ itself through new ideas.

LL: You’ve built the magazine on a no-advertising model. Can you tell us more about your strategy for the publication?

MZ: Many of our readers really appreciate the fact that the magazine doesn’t have ads.

Our aim was to put as much focus as possible on the artworks themselves, a constant flow of precisely curated art, page after page.

Advertising can have its place, but too often it can break up the content and takes away from the reading and visual experience. With such value placed on the content, all the way down to the paper itself, we try hard to make each magazine a unique experience—when you read ArtMaze there are no distractions, the reader is able to immerse completely into the subject.

On the promotional side of things, in only two years ArtMaze quickly gained a lot of popularity, particularly through social media—it’s a great tool in reaching a bigger audience and connecting with your community on a daily basis. I think it’s one of the factors that contributes a lot to our ad-free model.

LL: What guides your editorial vision and choices?

aspects of your various roles as editor and curator and what do you enjoy or conversely find challenging?

MZ: I do not think there is anything extraordinary these days in the ability to perform different roles. I think it is the healthy way to do work. There are no limits to a number of roles you can perform when you are driven. The challenging factor is finding time to do it all, training your patience.

LL: What does it take to do what you do?

MZ: Open-mindedness and good time management.

LL: For each issue you invite a guest curator to select the artist submissions. What appeals to you about collaboration and what does this add to ArtMaze Mag? MZ: Collaboration is key in almost in everything I do. I take immense inspiration and learn a lot from people I work with. They bring their unique vision, share experiences and contribute hard work to make every issue happen. There are many different voices in the art world, which make it so versatile and vibrant. Inviting people with diverse experiences to collaborate is vital in making a quality publication like ArtMaze, full of different stories and artworks, but in line with a curatorial vision, not commercial.

LL: What have been some of the challenges that you’ve had to negotiate?

MZ: Challenge is probably keeping up with the constant growth of the publication and the community around it. I strive to make people’s ArtMaze experince better every day. There is no limit to the amount of things that can be improved in this venture; making those improvements is a relentless job.

MZ: I look for emerging and mid-career talents who work in progressive and innovative ways reflecting our modern era, creating the contemporary dialogue between the present, past and future, referencing global issues and observations of living experiences in a quirky and striking demeanor. I am drawn to captivating visuals, which are not limited by any particular styles and mediums. There is a certain unbeatable and timeless quality to a work which is incredibly intelligent with underlying references to the absurd, humour and other emotions combined with a strong use of medium.

LL: What have been some of the surprise rewards of working on this publication?

In my mind I have just recalled a phrase by Constantin Brancusi: “Things are not difficult to make; what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.” I am always looking further for what lies behind the dazzling visuals.

MZ: ArtMaze has shifted to a very simple uncluttered and airy look over the past year.

Developing an easy design look with spacious white pages and simple fonts was challenging but rewarding. This new neat layout really helps to focus one’s whole attention on the artworks and intriguing interviews; together with an ad-free concept it provides the

LL: How do you balance the creative and business

MZ: I get really inspired and encouraged when new people reach out and say good things about the quality of the mag, that they picked up a physical copy, not just read it online. I feel good knowing that this venture helps and inspires others, it is the ultimate goal after all.

LL: ArtMaze Mag has a distinct, fresh look.

How does the design and visual identity of the publication relate to and support the editorial strategy?

9

reader with a continuous contemporary art experience. Less is more.

LL: What was your vision for ArtMaze Mag when you first began? Where do you see the publication in ten years’ time?

MZ: I always wanted to spread the word as far as possible about really great emerging artists which I liaise with every day—I get blown away whenever I meet someone new I haven’t known about and whose work is incredibly smart. A publication can help a lot in connecting the art world with the general audience. Many of the people I know who were not previously connected to the contemporary art world are now feeling more engaged—I like to think that ArtMaze has played a part in this. :) I cannot be exactly sure where we will be in 10 years, life can be very unpredictable, but I hope for the best.

LL: What keeps you awake at night?

MZ: The thought of how quickly life is developing and how fast things change and how often I feel nostalgic because of it.

LL: What is your idea of perfect happiness?

MZ: Longevity and abundance of extraordinary life experinces.

LL: When and where are you most happy?

MZ: Travelling and exploring with my husband with a good camera in hand, looking at breathtaking landscapes and witnessing wildlife within safe distances.

curated selection of works p.70 - 149

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curated selection of works p.70 - 149

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Winter Edition 11: first issue of 2019

call for art DEADLINE: December 20th, 2018 Guest Curators: Anna Gram Sørensen and Kerry Harm Nielsen, directors and head curators of Gallerie Kant, Copenhagen, Denmark

Submit your work for a chance to be published in print and digital issues bimonthly, as well as online on our website and social media.

ELIGIBILITY: The competition is open to all artists, both national and international, working in all mediums. Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital, film etc.

DISTRIBUTION: ArtMaze Magazine is an independent international publication which is distributed both nationally and internationally via book shops, galleries and museums, art events and via the online store: artmazemag.com/shop HOW TO APPLY: please visit our website for more details and fill in the online form via the following link: artmazemag.com/call-for-art OTHER OPPORTUNITIES: Artists are welcome to submit their works to our online blog. This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues.

Please visit our website for more information: www.artmazemag.com or contact us at info@artmazemag.com

Featured image: Louise Gresswell Fractured (magenta) oil on board 30 x 24cm more on p. 134-135

Winter Edition 11: first issue of 2019

call for art DEADLINE: December 20th, 2018 Guest Curators: Anna Gram Sørensen and Kerry Harm Nielsen, directors and head curators of Gallerie Kant, Copenhagen, Denmark

Submit your work for a chance to be published in print and digital issues bimonthly, as well as online on our website and social media.

ELIGIBILITY: The competition is open to all artists, both national and international, working in all mediums. Artists are welcome to submit works in any medium: painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, photography, textile, installation, mixed media, digital, film etc.

DISTRIBUTION: ArtMaze Magazine is an independent international publication which is distributed both nationally and internationally via book shops, galleries and museums, art events and via the online store: artmazemag.com/shop HOW TO APPLY: please visit our website for more details and fill in the online form via the following link: artmazemag.com/call-for-art OTHER OPPORTUNITIES: Artists are welcome to submit their works to our online blog. This opportunity also provides a chance to be published in print issues.

Please visit our website for more information: www.artmazemag.com or contact us at info@artmazemag.com

Featured image: Louise Gresswell Fractured (magenta) oil on board 30 x 24cm more on p. 134-135

interviewed:

Faye Wei Wei Chris Bogia Dominic Beattie Julie Curtiss

interviewed:

Faye Wei Wei Chris Bogia Dominic Beattie Julie Curtiss

www.fayeweiwei.com

A red blooded heart pulsing in my pocket: in conversation with Faye Wei Wei British-Chinese artist Faye Wei Wei’s poetic and seductive artwork brings together eclectic fragments of mythologies, folklore, art history and her own idiosyncratic iconography. Her large-scale paintings of figures, animals and more obscure motifs convey a rich interior world of symbolism and narrative. Faye’s style of paintings is tinged with a child-like naivety and surrealism. Her compositions are non-hierarchical with each motif swimming fluidly and alluring above the background, conveying transcendent and illusive narratives that seem to emerge from a deep dreamspace.

For Faye, mark-making is a form of ritual, practiced daily in the sacred space of her private studio. In her art, reality merges seamlessly with personal histories, memory and the dreamlike world of her own creation. “Born from the loneliness of being in a studio, the objects that I have collected find their way onto the canvas, directed by the narrative created from the beautiful words that float around my mind from poems I read that morning,” Faye explains, “the meaning behind the symbolism that the objects hold are endless for me, sometimes they’re secrets, mine to keep.”

Her dreamlike paintings are conceived first in drawings, where Faye tests out and follows the seductive flow and rhythm of a line on paper. Her paintings on canvas evolve the drawings with a subtle interplay of positive and negative space. She describes this as a “way of drawing figuratively with the sensuality of abstract painting and the joyful emotional description of a line.”

A 2016 graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art and recipient of the Cass Art Painting Prize, Faye is a young artist to watch. She has exhibited extensively in the UK and further afield and recent solo exhibitions include Sweet Bitter, Valentine at SADE Gallery in Los Angeles, USA and Anemones and Lovers at Cob Gallery in London.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Faye Wei Wei To Prepare A Face to Meet The Faces That You Meet oil on linen 2500 x 2000 mm

www.fayeweiwei.com

A red blooded heart pulsing in my pocket: in conversation with Faye Wei Wei British-Chinese artist Faye Wei Wei’s poetic and seductive artwork brings together eclectic fragments of mythologies, folklore, art history and her own idiosyncratic iconography. Her large-scale paintings of figures, animals and more obscure motifs convey a rich interior world of symbolism and narrative. Faye’s style of paintings is tinged with a child-like naivety and surrealism. Her compositions are non-hierarchical with each motif swimming fluidly and alluring above the background, conveying transcendent and illusive narratives that seem to emerge from a deep dreamspace.

For Faye, mark-making is a form of ritual, practiced daily in the sacred space of her private studio. In her art, reality merges seamlessly with personal histories, memory and the dreamlike world of her own creation. “Born from the loneliness of being in a studio, the objects that I have collected find their way onto the canvas, directed by the narrative created from the beautiful words that float around my mind from poems I read that morning,” Faye explains, “the meaning behind the symbolism that the objects hold are endless for me, sometimes they’re secrets, mine to keep.”

Her dreamlike paintings are conceived first in drawings, where Faye tests out and follows the seductive flow and rhythm of a line on paper. Her paintings on canvas evolve the drawings with a subtle interplay of positive and negative space. She describes this as a “way of drawing figuratively with the sensuality of abstract painting and the joyful emotional description of a line.”

A 2016 graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art and recipient of the Cass Art Painting Prize, Faye is a young artist to watch. She has exhibited extensively in the UK and further afield and recent solo exhibitions include Sweet Bitter, Valentine at SADE Gallery in Los Angeles, USA and Anemones and Lovers at Cob Gallery in London.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Faye Wei Wei To Prepare A Face to Meet The Faces That You Meet oil on linen 2500 x 2000 mm

AMM: What was your first art-related memory?

FWW: I remember visiting 簡頭圍 the village in Hong Kong where my father grew up to visit my grandmother in the summer time.

I was very young maybe 6 or 7. We burnt Chinese gold spirit money and incense as an offering to Buddha and our ancestors, I remember vividly the smell of the incense 3 sticks at a time, our bodies bowing, our hearts wishing. I remember that day my little brother burning his hand on the flame and my grandmother putting some herbal balm on it then, to ease the pain, we played a game...drawing in the sand. We were each given a stick and we drew portraits of each other in the sand, I’ve always loved the feeling of drawing, the beauty and simplicity of it. A limitless practice of mark making intertwined with memory and ritual—the simplicity of a mark in the sand.

AMM: Were you brought up in a creative environment?

FWW: Not at all, but my father is an antiques dealer and has a beautiful eye. I grew up appreciating Chinese porcelain and jade treasures. That cloudy green stone is so seductive to me.

AMM: The captivating narratives in your compositions hint of romanticism yet the child-like painting demeanor brings a very contemporary feel to your work. Can you tell us more about your visual language and how it developed?

FWW: I remember my tutor Peter Davies at the Slade talking about one of my paintings, a giant painting of a blue pony I think. He said he found that painting striking because of the child-like feeling it has, a trembling blue arch to form the legs of the horse and a big red dripping heart, but the scale creates a tension that feels contemporary because a child wouldn’t paint at such an imposing scale.

I started out doing abstract paintings at the Slade, then one day I was feeling frustrated with it and went for a walk to the British Museum - an infinite precious gem of a museum. I’ve always loved the Egyptian section, all the gold, the decorative inlaid jewels, the ancient glass vases which I can’t quite believe, the incredibly intricate and skilled line work in the drawings, there is such weight in between two thin lines describing a body, something I admire in Picasso’s drawings so much too, the carving on the faces of the sculptures with their piercing eyes—pools of water eyes like planets. I drew one of them with a long head to indicate intelligence. The drawing was simple, quickly formed but it changed everything for me. From that moment things sort of clicked, a way of drawing figuratively with the sensuality of abstract painting and the joyful emotional description of a line.

AMM: Where do you look for inspiration when planning new work? Do you sketch a lot before

Photograph by Vivek Vadoliya

you interpret ideas to large scale or does your process have more of a spontaneous nature?

FWW: I think drawing is such a fluid, stimulating and beautiful thing to do, I draw every single day. At the moment I’m carrying around only red Caran d’Ache pencils and a Moleskine. With the continuity of them being red, it feels as if I have a kind of red blooded heart pulsing in my pocket. Oh red! She’s such a powerful emotive colour, these drawings lately feel piercing, punchy, romantic. Recently I have been producing monoprints, with artist Nicole Wittenberg a dear friend I admire hugely. It has been an incredibly inspiring process, all the accidents and failures and merging of the colours and marks. Each figure kissing into the space around them.

“I’ve always loved the feeling of drawing, the beauty and simplicity of it. A limitless practice of mark making intertwined with memory and ritual—the simplicity of a mark in the sand.”

- Faye Wei Wei

AMM: Your colour palette is relatively limited, you seem to give preference to earthy tones, such as mixes of brown, green, red, yellow etc.

How does colour relate to the narratives and compositions in your works?

FWW: Browns, greens and deep greys are all my favourite colours for describing the human figure—there’s a softness and warmth in them that I am always drawn to. Pale yellow flowers are the most beautiful, blue grey flowers the second most and red should be reserved for flesh, blood, the sun—for love.

AMM: Prominent human figures frequently appear together with animalistic creatures such as horses, snakes and sometimes alligators, birds and wild cats in your compositions. Could you tell us more about how these characters are coexisting coherently in the narratives of your paintings and what do they represent?

19

FWW: There is definitely a merging of my reality and the dreamlike world I have created. Born from the loneliness of being in a studio, the objects that I have collected find their way onto the canvas, directed by the narrative created from the beautiful words that float around my mind from poems I read that morning. The meanings behind the symbolism that the objects hold are endless for me, sometimes they’re secrets, mine to keep.

AMM: Many of your compositions often leave a good amount of space in between the main figures and objects in the paintings. What role does space play within the content of your work?

FWW: I like to leave space around the figures as a way of respect to the hierarchy of them, they stand out more this way. I remember learning about a sculpture of David and Goliath, young David stands against a blank backdrop of a plain unarticulated alcove—the simplicity of the backdrop appears to push him forward emphasising his importance and bravery. The way I work is kind of backwards, the figures and motifs are usually painted first, then the background is flooded with pigments after. The fluidity of the brush marks creates a variation of surface textures that are revealed under different lights and from different angles appearing like feathers or pools of light like the surface of a pond.

AMM: Describe your usual day in the studio.

What are your creative rituals?

FWW: I make breakfast - a little bowl of rice with natto and some strong English Breakfast tea in a mug made by a Japanese artist that I’ve drunk tea out of every morning for maybe a decade. Tea infused ceramics makes the tea taste better I believe. Usually, I will sit on the floor and read poems and finger through all my books. I’ll begin to draw and that will usually develop into a larger scale painting by the end of the day. My studio space is a sacred space to me, it feels very moving to be in there.

AMM: Since graduating in 2016 from Slade School of Fine Art you have had several solo shows across the UK and in the US as well as multiple group shows. Could you tell us more about how your art has evolved after you started working as an independent artist, engaging with national and international galleries?

FWW: I think it’s evolved faster than it did when I was at Slade, just because I’m lucky to be able to work in my own space alone, I like this solitude and I think it feeds into my work well. I’m now much more disciplined, enough to be self motivated and critical in my own space, which is something I’ve had to learn to be these past two years. It’s been an amazing experience to be able to show around the world, one show seems to lead to the next and I’ve met amazing people along the way many of whom have been so encouraging of me to pursue my own work however I want

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Faye Wei Wei

AMM: What was your first art-related memory?

FWW: I remember visiting 簡頭圍 the village in Hong Kong where my father grew up to visit my grandmother in the summer time.

I was very young maybe 6 or 7. We burnt Chinese gold spirit money and incense as an offering to Buddha and our ancestors, I remember vividly the smell of the incense 3 sticks at a time, our bodies bowing, our hearts wishing. I remember that day my little brother burning his hand on the flame and my grandmother putting some herbal balm on it then, to ease the pain, we played a game...drawing in the sand. We were each given a stick and we drew portraits of each other in the sand, I’ve always loved the feeling of drawing, the beauty and simplicity of it. A limitless practice of mark making intertwined with memory and ritual—the simplicity of a mark in the sand.

AMM: Were you brought up in a creative environment?

FWW: Not at all, but my father is an antiques dealer and has a beautiful eye. I grew up appreciating Chinese porcelain and jade treasures. That cloudy green stone is so seductive to me.

AMM: The captivating narratives in your compositions hint of romanticism yet the child-like painting demeanor brings a very contemporary feel to your work. Can you tell us more about your visual language and how it developed?

FWW: I remember my tutor Peter Davies at the Slade talking about one of my paintings, a giant painting of a blue pony I think. He said he found that painting striking because of the child-like feeling it has, a trembling blue arch to form the legs of the horse and a big red dripping heart, but the scale creates a tension that feels contemporary because a child wouldn’t paint at such an imposing scale.

I started out doing abstract paintings at the Slade, then one day I was feeling frustrated with it and went for a walk to the British Museum - an infinite precious gem of a museum. I’ve always loved the Egyptian section, all the gold, the decorative inlaid jewels, the ancient glass vases which I can’t quite believe, the incredibly intricate and skilled line work in the drawings, there is such weight in between two thin lines describing a body, something I admire in Picasso’s drawings so much too, the carving on the faces of the sculptures with their piercing eyes—pools of water eyes like planets. I drew one of them with a long head to indicate intelligence. The drawing was simple, quickly formed but it changed everything for me. From that moment things sort of clicked, a way of drawing figuratively with the sensuality of abstract painting and the joyful emotional description of a line.

AMM: Where do you look for inspiration when planning new work? Do you sketch a lot before

Photograph by Vivek Vadoliya

you interpret ideas to large scale or does your process have more of a spontaneous nature?

FWW: I think drawing is such a fluid, stimulating and beautiful thing to do, I draw every single day. At the moment I’m carrying around only red Caran d’Ache pencils and a Moleskine. With the continuity of them being red, it feels as if I have a kind of red blooded heart pulsing in my pocket. Oh red! She’s such a powerful emotive colour, these drawings lately feel piercing, punchy, romantic. Recently I have been producing monoprints, with artist Nicole Wittenberg a dear friend I admire hugely. It has been an incredibly inspiring process, all the accidents and failures and merging of the colours and marks. Each figure kissing into the space around them.

“I’ve always loved the feeling of drawing, the beauty and simplicity of it. A limitless practice of mark making intertwined with memory and ritual—the simplicity of a mark in the sand.”

- Faye Wei Wei

AMM: Your colour palette is relatively limited, you seem to give preference to earthy tones, such as mixes of brown, green, red, yellow etc.

How does colour relate to the narratives and compositions in your works?

FWW: Browns, greens and deep greys are all my favourite colours for describing the human figure—there’s a softness and warmth in them that I am always drawn to. Pale yellow flowers are the most beautiful, blue grey flowers the second most and red should be reserved for flesh, blood, the sun—for love.

AMM: Prominent human figures frequently appear together with animalistic creatures such as horses, snakes and sometimes alligators, birds and wild cats in your compositions. Could you tell us more about how these characters are coexisting coherently in the narratives of your paintings and what do they represent?

19

FWW: There is definitely a merging of my reality and the dreamlike world I have created. Born from the loneliness of being in a studio, the objects that I have collected find their way onto the canvas, directed by the narrative created from the beautiful words that float around my mind from poems I read that morning. The meanings behind the symbolism that the objects hold are endless for me, sometimes they’re secrets, mine to keep.

AMM: Many of your compositions often leave a good amount of space in between the main figures and objects in the paintings. What role does space play within the content of your work?

FWW: I like to leave space around the figures as a way of respect to the hierarchy of them, they stand out more this way. I remember learning about a sculpture of David and Goliath, young David stands against a blank backdrop of a plain unarticulated alcove—the simplicity of the backdrop appears to push him forward emphasising his importance and bravery. The way I work is kind of backwards, the figures and motifs are usually painted first, then the background is flooded with pigments after. The fluidity of the brush marks creates a variation of surface textures that are revealed under different lights and from different angles appearing like feathers or pools of light like the surface of a pond.

AMM: Describe your usual day in the studio.

What are your creative rituals?

FWW: I make breakfast - a little bowl of rice with natto and some strong English Breakfast tea in a mug made by a Japanese artist that I’ve drunk tea out of every morning for maybe a decade. Tea infused ceramics makes the tea taste better I believe. Usually, I will sit on the floor and read poems and finger through all my books. I’ll begin to draw and that will usually develop into a larger scale painting by the end of the day. My studio space is a sacred space to me, it feels very moving to be in there.

AMM: Since graduating in 2016 from Slade School of Fine Art you have had several solo shows across the UK and in the US as well as multiple group shows. Could you tell us more about how your art has evolved after you started working as an independent artist, engaging with national and international galleries?

FWW: I think it’s evolved faster than it did when I was at Slade, just because I’m lucky to be able to work in my own space alone, I like this solitude and I think it feeds into my work well. I’m now much more disciplined, enough to be self motivated and critical in my own space, which is something I’ve had to learn to be these past two years. It’s been an amazing experience to be able to show around the world, one show seems to lead to the next and I’ve met amazing people along the way many of whom have been so encouraging of me to pursue my own work however I want

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Faye Wei Wei

and who have allowed me to be totally in control of what I’m showing and what I’m making.

AMM: What were the main difficulties of emerging from student art life to being a fully independent artist? Do you have any advice to recent graduates?

FWW: I’ve been lucky, I seemed to have met the right people at the right time, but I suppose I put myself in situations where I’m constantly around other creative friends and people. Go to shows, speak to artists you admire. Also I think just work really hard at art school, don’t be distracted, don’t waste that precious time, then carry on after school, work hard, and be kind and trust people more than you think you should, and when you find your loves hold on to them, support each other, find your spaces... speaking of love I really miss my best friend the amazing artist Jonathan Small just moved back to America, I’m so heart-broken! But he’s making some amazing things for Miami NADA so watch out world.

AMM: You are currently one of the represented artists by Cob Gallery in London with whom you had a solo show this April “Anemones and Lovers” as well as currently having work in a group show “New Work Part III: Subject”. Could you tell us more about your collaboration with the Gallery and how it developed?

FWW: Oh Cassie and Victoria, they are such amazing intelligent kind people who I am so blessed to have in my life, we met at an opening after party, I lit Cassie’s cigarette and the rest is history I guess. Cob has given me the platform to become a full time artist, and they help me out with the paperwork pressy things I’m not so good at! Lots of love to Cob! AMM: How do you think your work translates to the viewer in solo representation vs in a group show with other artists?

FWW: There’s a lot more weight on myself when I do a solo show, I had my first one in America this summer ‘Sweet Bitter, Valentine’ at SADE gallery—it was so much fun, I wore a fairy tale of a dress and I was so scared I wondered if anyone would turn up, but it ended up overflowing onto the streets, crowded with warm and beautiful people. My fairy tale friend Leopold held my hand the whole night and wore a picture of me in his breast pocket, he felt like my lucky charm, everything went amazingly. I think solo shows feel very vulnerable but that intimacy is very stimulating and important, I am so moved by those moments when someone tells me their interpretation of the paintings or why they like them, I love that they make me aware of my own world, the viewers notice things I never would have seen myself.

In group shows it feels more like you’re a part of a family, it feels amazing and always an honour to have shown with so many amazing artists. When they work it’s really magic and

makes me feel a part of something bigger.

AMM: Which artists or art movements have sparked your attention throughout your career?

FWW: I just saw a Foujita exhibition in Kyoto today and it broke my heart the way he describes the folds of fabric that sing around the bodies of the women. There is so much poetry in that fabric, Foujita folds. I think my friends are making such exciting work, Lotte Andersen, Mariann Metsis, Jonathan Small, Lowe Poulter, Matthias Garcia. Matthias just had a solo show at KG cornerprinting gallery in Nakano, Tokyo, I love his work so much these bruised fairy tale drawings with lines that dance atop the stains like they are constantly kissing, mingling, telling love secrets, making love rituals.

AMM: How do you navigate the art world or in particular London’s art scene?

FWW: I have no idea... it’s very fun and overwhelming, the art world in London is very supportive if you need it to be. I think I’m lucky I have my friends around me who are all so hardworking and successful and that’s super inspiring to me. I’m starting to love London again, I was really in love with Berlin and New York and Paris and Tokyo for a while this year, but London will always be my home, I think I always miss her when I’ve been away for such a long time.

AMM: What are some of your interests besides making art?

FWW: Eating food.

AMM: In a recent interview with British Vogue you mentioned you like to rent an apartment in Tokyo whenever you can for at least a few months. Could you tell us more about your travel experiences and how they affect your work?

FWW: It’s always such a pleasure and such a treat to visit Tokyo, I’m currently writing this on the bullet train to Kyoto, I love my friends here, I love the trees here, they sit amongst the houses like they know things we don’t, I love the colours and the tastes, little sun bleached objects in the window of a cafe, I love hot springs and sake and uni sushi. It’s all just so magical to me more than anything the feeling I have of being here that romantic feeling inspired my work endlessly.

AMM: When and where are you most happy?

FWW: When I’m curled up in a ball with Henry in Berlin.

AMM: What is your most precious possession?

FWW: My mother and father’s wedding rings that I wear around my neck.

AMM: What does the future hold for you?

FWW: Red paintings.

21

Image: Faye Wei Wei Adonis And His Snake oil on canvas 460 x 610 mm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Faye Wei Wei

and who have allowed me to be totally in control of what I’m showing and what I’m making.

AMM: What were the main difficulties of emerging from student art life to being a fully independent artist? Do you have any advice to recent graduates?

FWW: I’ve been lucky, I seemed to have met the right people at the right time, but I suppose I put myself in situations where I’m constantly around other creative friends and people. Go to shows, speak to artists you admire. Also I think just work really hard at art school, don’t be distracted, don’t waste that precious time, then carry on after school, work hard, and be kind and trust people more than you think you should, and when you find your loves hold on to them, support each other, find your spaces... speaking of love I really miss my best friend the amazing artist Jonathan Small just moved back to America, I’m so heart-broken! But he’s making some amazing things for Miami NADA so watch out world.

AMM: You are currently one of the represented artists by Cob Gallery in London with whom you had a solo show this April “Anemones and Lovers” as well as currently having work in a group show “New Work Part III: Subject”. Could you tell us more about your collaboration with the Gallery and how it developed?

FWW: Oh Cassie and Victoria, they are such amazing intelligent kind people who I am so blessed to have in my life, we met at an opening after party, I lit Cassie’s cigarette and the rest is history I guess. Cob has given me the platform to become a full time artist, and they help me out with the paperwork pressy things I’m not so good at! Lots of love to Cob! AMM: How do you think your work translates to the viewer in solo representation vs in a group show with other artists?

FWW: There’s a lot more weight on myself when I do a solo show, I had my first one in America this summer ‘Sweet Bitter, Valentine’ at SADE gallery—it was so much fun, I wore a fairy tale of a dress and I was so scared I wondered if anyone would turn up, but it ended up overflowing onto the streets, crowded with warm and beautiful people. My fairy tale friend Leopold held my hand the whole night and wore a picture of me in his breast pocket, he felt like my lucky charm, everything went amazingly. I think solo shows feel very vulnerable but that intimacy is very stimulating and important, I am so moved by those moments when someone tells me their interpretation of the paintings or why they like them, I love that they make me aware of my own world, the viewers notice things I never would have seen myself.

In group shows it feels more like you’re a part of a family, it feels amazing and always an honour to have shown with so many amazing artists. When they work it’s really magic and

makes me feel a part of something bigger.

AMM: Which artists or art movements have sparked your attention throughout your career?

FWW: I just saw a Foujita exhibition in Kyoto today and it broke my heart the way he describes the folds of fabric that sing around the bodies of the women. There is so much poetry in that fabric, Foujita folds. I think my friends are making such exciting work, Lotte Andersen, Mariann Metsis, Jonathan Small, Lowe Poulter, Matthias Garcia. Matthias just had a solo show at KG cornerprinting gallery in Nakano, Tokyo, I love his work so much these bruised fairy tale drawings with lines that dance atop the stains like they are constantly kissing, mingling, telling love secrets, making love rituals.

AMM: How do you navigate the art world or in particular London’s art scene?

FWW: I have no idea... it’s very fun and overwhelming, the art world in London is very supportive if you need it to be. I think I’m lucky I have my friends around me who are all so hardworking and successful and that’s super inspiring to me. I’m starting to love London again, I was really in love with Berlin and New York and Paris and Tokyo for a while this year, but London will always be my home, I think I always miss her when I’ve been away for such a long time.

AMM: What are some of your interests besides making art?

FWW: Eating food.

AMM: In a recent interview with British Vogue you mentioned you like to rent an apartment in Tokyo whenever you can for at least a few months. Could you tell us more about your travel experiences and how they affect your work?

FWW: It’s always such a pleasure and such a treat to visit Tokyo, I’m currently writing this on the bullet train to Kyoto, I love my friends here, I love the trees here, they sit amongst the houses like they know things we don’t, I love the colours and the tastes, little sun bleached objects in the window of a cafe, I love hot springs and sake and uni sushi. It’s all just so magical to me more than anything the feeling I have of being here that romantic feeling inspired my work endlessly.

AMM: When and where are you most happy?

FWW: When I’m curled up in a ball with Henry in Berlin.

AMM: What is your most precious possession?

FWW: My mother and father’s wedding rings that I wear around my neck.

AMM: What does the future hold for you?

FWW: Red paintings.

21

Image: Faye Wei Wei Adonis And His Snake oil on canvas 460 x 610 mm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Faye Wei Wei

Faye Wei Wei Goodbye oil on canvas 1830 x 1270 mm

22

Faye Wei Wei I Want to See the Stars with My Own Handmade Telescope oil on linen 2500 x 2000 mm

23

Faye Wei Wei Goodbye oil on canvas 1830 x 1270 mm

22

Faye Wei Wei I Want to See the Stars with My Own Handmade Telescope oil on linen 2500 x 2000 mm

23

Faye Wei Wei The Effect Of Moon Baths Was Unknown oil on linen 2500 x 2000 mm

24

Faye Wei Wei February 13th oil on canvas 1830 x 1370 mm

25

Faye Wei Wei The Effect Of Moon Baths Was Unknown oil on linen 2500 x 2000 mm

24

Faye Wei Wei February 13th oil on canvas 1830 x 1370 mm

25

Faye Wei Wei Bitter Lake oil on canvas 1050 x 900 mm

26

Faye Wei Wei I Did Not Know You Would Fade So Soon, Oh Flower oil on canvas 1830 x 1370 mm

27

Faye Wei Wei Bitter Lake oil on canvas 1050 x 900 mm

26

Faye Wei Wei I Did Not Know You Would Fade So Soon, Oh Flower oil on canvas 1830 x 1370 mm

27

Faye Wei Wei Anemones And Lovers oil on canvas 1830 x 1370 mm

28

Faye Wei Wei Two Pearls On An Ebony Table (Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes/ Saint Lucy) oil on canvas 1070 x 910 mm

29

Faye Wei Wei Anemones And Lovers oil on canvas 1830 x 1370 mm

28

Faye Wei Wei Two Pearls On An Ebony Table (Those Are Pearls That Were His Eyes/ Saint Lucy) oil on canvas 1070 x 910 mm

29

www.chrisbogia.com

Utopian domestic worlds

by Chris Bogia Color, form and texture are three vital adjectives for New York artist, Chris Bogia. Inspired by the world of interiors, textiles and decorative arts, his artwork explores this material tripartite in considered and in-depth ways. Chris’ sculptures are composed of different materials that create contrasting textures that are reminiscent of domestic spaces. Plush and lacquered surfaces create an element of tactile seduction that is reiterated in the rounded forms of the pieces. His embroidered and watercolor works on paper continue this theme figuratively with snaking limbs that reach out to laden fruit bowls with draping vines and entwined leaves. Chris says that he is captivated by the idea of utopian spaces, but knows that this is always compromised by human presence. “The most potent beauty,” he explains, “is fleeting and vulnerable.”

In addition to making his own art, Chris is the director of the Fire Island Artist Residency which he co-founded in 2011. This platform brings lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identifying emerging artists to Fire Island, a place long-steeped in LGBTQ history, to create, commune, and contribute to the location’s rich artistic history.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Chris Bogia Three Planters yarn on wood 35 x 52 inches

www.chrisbogia.com

Utopian domestic worlds

by Chris Bogia Color, form and texture are three vital adjectives for New York artist, Chris Bogia. Inspired by the world of interiors, textiles and decorative arts, his artwork explores this material tripartite in considered and in-depth ways. Chris’ sculptures are composed of different materials that create contrasting textures that are reminiscent of domestic spaces. Plush and lacquered surfaces create an element of tactile seduction that is reiterated in the rounded forms of the pieces. His embroidered and watercolor works on paper continue this theme figuratively with snaking limbs that reach out to laden fruit bowls with draping vines and entwined leaves. Chris says that he is captivated by the idea of utopian spaces, but knows that this is always compromised by human presence. “The most potent beauty,” he explains, “is fleeting and vulnerable.”

In addition to making his own art, Chris is the director of the Fire Island Artist Residency which he co-founded in 2011. This platform brings lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identifying emerging artists to Fire Island, a place long-steeped in LGBTQ history, to create, commune, and contribute to the location’s rich artistic history.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Chris Bogia Three Planters yarn on wood 35 x 52 inches

AMM: Hi Chris! In the last few years your art has changed direction quite considerably. What inspired this shift from performance/installation to the two and three dimensional pieces you’re making now?

CB: Hi ArtMaze! Great Question. For about 9 years I’d been making these installation type pieces, I called them Shrines—they were mash-ups of domestic objects, forms relating to furniture, store window displays, centerpieces made from yarn tapestry-like panels featuring album covers or mimicking the mandalas found in decorative pillows. I took photos of myself and others “activating” them, and I showed the photos as separate works. These pieces were very hard to make and would take me months to learn new materials just to finish a small element, and I wasn’t moving through my ideas fast enough. I felt a burden to make each work function as a “flagship” carrying every idea about art, my own identity, and decoration that I felt my practice contained. This was partly a reaction to being an emerging artist and only getting a few opportunities a year to show work in public. I needed to give anyone who saw a group show I was in the “full Chris Bogia experience”. I really loved those installations, but I also felt constrained by them. I was most interested in design and decoration, but I was afraid to create simpler works that solely embraced those interests from a fear of being thought of as stupid or shallow. I started getting inspired by peers like Matt Connors and Keltie Ferris who were queer and making abstract works as well as the writings of Chicago art historian David Getsy who was writing about a new kind of queer abstraction. It was a window into a new possibility of making, and then it became a door and I walked through it. I started experimenting with abstraction using the same principles of design and decoration that I had been working with in the previous installations, and the work just flowed out of me. Narrative and illustration has been creeping into the work intuitively since the first abstractions, and I like the direction it’s currently taking me.

AMM: You seem to enjoy experimenting with different media. What inspires this innovation and how do you use the different materials in your practice?

CB: My early material inspirations came from fashion. When I first moved to NYC in the 90s for college I became obsessed with the idea of working at the Todd Oldham Store on Wooster Street in Soho. There was something so inspiring about the way Oldham was using traditional textile embellishments like beading and crewel work that held my attention in ways contemporary art wasn’t at the time. I became a fixture at the shop, and they asked me to work there. It was a very inspiring time for me creatively.

The store was a kaleidoscope of color and texture—and not just the clothes—there was a psychedelic ceramic tile floor, light fixtures of broken glass and thin wooden dowels bent

“The surface of a sculpture gives more meaning than anything.

It’s the skin. Imagine if you saw someone walking down the street and their skin was made of shag carpet instead of flesh. It’s that powerful—especially when working with geometric abstraction which has historically defaulted to raw material expression like marble, metals, wood or painted versions of these materials as the final surface.”

- Chris Bogia

into modernist shapes, silver leaf, tie-dyed velvet fitting room curtains, iron work, Joni Mitchell songs, incense… I was so happy to be in that space for a couple years. The time there helped me understand what was possible for my own work material-wise, and where my interest in personal utopian spaces could intersect art making. Since then I have continued to look to the worlds of interior design, textile design, and decorative art for new material ideas. I recently went to Stockholm to see the Svenskt Tenn flagship store and spend time with (and buy) gorgeous fabric designed by Joseph Frank. It’s pinned up on the wall in the studio now and I look at it whenever I am loafing off to get inspired.

AMM: The composition of your sculptures emphasizes a sense of balance and tension. What does this relationship mean in your work?

CB: When I think of the perfect room, the perfect windowsill, the perfect shag carpet Shangri-La of my dreams, I get inspired to make fragments of those perfect fantasy places in the work. Nesting—to me it’s a blood-sport, lol. I am crystallizing that utopian domestic world in my work, but

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Chris Bogia

32

I am also aware that utopian spaces are totally flawed and extremely fragile. You can construct your perfect room (and you should!), but once you put a person or two in there… whoa folks, things can get really messy! Your perfect domestic jungle of houseplants can’t save you from a fight with your spouse or your own crushing ennui.

The sculptures embody this struggle between balance and tension. The most potent beauty is fleeting and vulnerable. That’s what I want my work to illustrate. Also I’m a Libra ;) AMM: From working with wood to embroidery, can you give us an overview of your process of working?

CB: Everything begins as drawing. I am a planner. If I make a series of drawings, like the ones I call Plants Vs Zombies where a repeated archway is a stage for the interchange of houseplants, furniture and figurative forms, I will put them all up and look at them every day. Favorites emerge.

Once a work on paper is turning me on like that, I begin to think of how it could exist as a tapestry? As a sculpture? “Maybe I will make this part in veneer, and contrast that with this part in yarn. The yarn needs a formal foil and a punch of color, so let me try lacquer on this part” and so on. I like to imagine it’s the way that interior designers work, but without a client or a room I can explore that tool kit in a more personal, indulgent, and limitless way.

AMM: What does your studio look and feel like?

CB: I love my little gay viper nest! Right now I am finishing up a two year residency at the Queens Museum. They gave me 350 pristine square feet in an “L” shape. I kind of love the less boxy set up because it allows me to combine a gallery/work space with a domestic/desk working space in a way that makes sense and is functional. I am kind of funny in that I put just as much effort into how the sitting area looks as I do the working area. Maybe more actually! I have a little children’s book called “Mr. Fussy” that sits on the coffee table in front of the white green and yellow Matisse print vinyl couch from the 60s, and he’s definitely my spirit animal (in the book he combs each blade of grass on his lawn—I love that!). My time at the Museum is almost over and I will (fingers crossed) be building out a new space in Maspeth Queens next month and I am getting SO EXCITED about having even more space to play with in this way. The studio for me needs to be an extension of my urges to decorate, to embellish, and find domestic pleasure and visitors understand the work even more once they see it.

AMM: Do you have a motto that you create by?

What is it?

CB: Whenever I get stuck I just think, “what would I want to hang over the bed”, and I make whatever that is.

Image: Chris Bogia Plants vs Zombies I (detail)

AMM: Hi Chris! In the last few years your art has changed direction quite considerably. What inspired this shift from performance/installation to the two and three dimensional pieces you’re making now?

CB: Hi ArtMaze! Great Question. For about 9 years I’d been making these installation type pieces, I called them Shrines—they were mash-ups of domestic objects, forms relating to furniture, store window displays, centerpieces made from yarn tapestry-like panels featuring album covers or mimicking the mandalas found in decorative pillows. I took photos of myself and others “activating” them, and I showed the photos as separate works. These pieces were very hard to make and would take me months to learn new materials just to finish a small element, and I wasn’t moving through my ideas fast enough. I felt a burden to make each work function as a “flagship” carrying every idea about art, my own identity, and decoration that I felt my practice contained. This was partly a reaction to being an emerging artist and only getting a few opportunities a year to show work in public. I needed to give anyone who saw a group show I was in the “full Chris Bogia experience”. I really loved those installations, but I also felt constrained by them. I was most interested in design and decoration, but I was afraid to create simpler works that solely embraced those interests from a fear of being thought of as stupid or shallow. I started getting inspired by peers like Matt Connors and Keltie Ferris who were queer and making abstract works as well as the writings of Chicago art historian David Getsy who was writing about a new kind of queer abstraction. It was a window into a new possibility of making, and then it became a door and I walked through it. I started experimenting with abstraction using the same principles of design and decoration that I had been working with in the previous installations, and the work just flowed out of me. Narrative and illustration has been creeping into the work intuitively since the first abstractions, and I like the direction it’s currently taking me.

AMM: You seem to enjoy experimenting with different media. What inspires this innovation and how do you use the different materials in your practice?

CB: My early material inspirations came from fashion. When I first moved to NYC in the 90s for college I became obsessed with the idea of working at the Todd Oldham Store on Wooster Street in Soho. There was something so inspiring about the way Oldham was using traditional textile embellishments like beading and crewel work that held my attention in ways contemporary art wasn’t at the time. I became a fixture at the shop, and they asked me to work there. It was a very inspiring time for me creatively.

The store was a kaleidoscope of color and texture—and not just the clothes—there was a psychedelic ceramic tile floor, light fixtures of broken glass and thin wooden dowels bent

“The surface of a sculpture gives more meaning than anything.

It’s the skin. Imagine if you saw someone walking down the street and their skin was made of shag carpet instead of flesh. It’s that powerful—especially when working with geometric abstraction which has historically defaulted to raw material expression like marble, metals, wood or painted versions of these materials as the final surface.”

- Chris Bogia

into modernist shapes, silver leaf, tie-dyed velvet fitting room curtains, iron work, Joni Mitchell songs, incense… I was so happy to be in that space for a couple years. The time there helped me understand what was possible for my own work material-wise, and where my interest in personal utopian spaces could intersect art making. Since then I have continued to look to the worlds of interior design, textile design, and decorative art for new material ideas. I recently went to Stockholm to see the Svenskt Tenn flagship store and spend time with (and buy) gorgeous fabric designed by Joseph Frank. It’s pinned up on the wall in the studio now and I look at it whenever I am loafing off to get inspired.

AMM: The composition of your sculptures emphasizes a sense of balance and tension. What does this relationship mean in your work?

CB: When I think of the perfect room, the perfect windowsill, the perfect shag carpet Shangri-La of my dreams, I get inspired to make fragments of those perfect fantasy places in the work. Nesting—to me it’s a blood-sport, lol. I am crystallizing that utopian domestic world in my work, but

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Chris Bogia

32

I am also aware that utopian spaces are totally flawed and extremely fragile. You can construct your perfect room (and you should!), but once you put a person or two in there… whoa folks, things can get really messy! Your perfect domestic jungle of houseplants can’t save you from a fight with your spouse or your own crushing ennui.

The sculptures embody this struggle between balance and tension. The most potent beauty is fleeting and vulnerable. That’s what I want my work to illustrate. Also I’m a Libra ;) AMM: From working with wood to embroidery, can you give us an overview of your process of working?

CB: Everything begins as drawing. I am a planner. If I make a series of drawings, like the ones I call Plants Vs Zombies where a repeated archway is a stage for the interchange of houseplants, furniture and figurative forms, I will put them all up and look at them every day. Favorites emerge.

Once a work on paper is turning me on like that, I begin to think of how it could exist as a tapestry? As a sculpture? “Maybe I will make this part in veneer, and contrast that with this part in yarn. The yarn needs a formal foil and a punch of color, so let me try lacquer on this part” and so on. I like to imagine it’s the way that interior designers work, but without a client or a room I can explore that tool kit in a more personal, indulgent, and limitless way.

AMM: What does your studio look and feel like?

CB: I love my little gay viper nest! Right now I am finishing up a two year residency at the Queens Museum. They gave me 350 pristine square feet in an “L” shape. I kind of love the less boxy set up because it allows me to combine a gallery/work space with a domestic/desk working space in a way that makes sense and is functional. I am kind of funny in that I put just as much effort into how the sitting area looks as I do the working area. Maybe more actually! I have a little children’s book called “Mr. Fussy” that sits on the coffee table in front of the white green and yellow Matisse print vinyl couch from the 60s, and he’s definitely my spirit animal (in the book he combs each blade of grass on his lawn—I love that!). My time at the Museum is almost over and I will (fingers crossed) be building out a new space in Maspeth Queens next month and I am getting SO EXCITED about having even more space to play with in this way. The studio for me needs to be an extension of my urges to decorate, to embellish, and find domestic pleasure and visitors understand the work even more once they see it.

AMM: Do you have a motto that you create by?

What is it?

CB: Whenever I get stuck I just think, “what would I want to hang over the bed”, and I make whatever that is.

Image: Chris Bogia Plants vs Zombies I (detail)

AMM: Please tell us about form, texture and color in your work.

CB: These adjectives are so important to me!

Surfaces! The surface of a sculpture gives more meaning than anything. It’s the skin.

Imagine if you saw someone walking down the street and their skin was made of shag carpet instead of flesh. It’s that powerful— especially when working with geometric abstraction which has historically defaulted to raw material expression like marble, metals, wood or painted versions of these materials as the final surface. Today in 2018 that feels lazy to me. Form, texture, color: these are the decisions I spend the most time agonizing over, sometimes procrastinating for weeks over the simplest formal consideration because I am so anxious about getting it right. I have painted rooms in my house three times in a weekend (with taping!) because I cannot handle things not being just the right color. Usually I trust my instincts, but with so many colors and surfaces and shapes being combined, I often change my mind. The textures—yarn, veneer, lacquer, ceramics, jute carpet—they play off one another in familiar ways suggesting high-end design, hand-made folksiness, and the surfaces in our homes.

They are a way to anchor the work in the domestic and give the viewer that seductive vibe of something beautiful and familiar—or perhaps aspirational.

AMM: Fruit bowls, snaking limbs and vines are popular motifs in your work. Please tell us more about your visual language.

“For me houseplants represent our urban attempts at clumsily living in harmony with nature—which is maybe the best humans can do in most cases? In my drawings they are the angular balanced foil to the snaking figurative forms—the boneless arms, grabbing hands, and incomplete faces that can only smell or gape. Those forms represent our urge to want and strive—even if they tend to look pretty lazy.

Sometimes they want fruit from a bowl, sometimes they want to caress (or mangle) houseplants, and sometimes they give up and just flop on each other. Together these motifs are a way for me to illustrate domestic psychodramas large and small.”

- Chris Bogia

CB: Fruit bowls in artworks are historically all about giving, abundance, and fertility.

They are an easy way of showing something we universally “want” without getting too specific. I mean I COULD show bowls of hairy chubby men, videogames and weed, but I am more about universal seduction at the moment, lol. Houseplants are another universal symbol, though I also understand them as a millennial domestic design trend as well. For me houseplants represent our urban attempts at clumsily living in harmony with nature—which is maybe the best humans can do in most cases? In my drawings they are the angular balanced foil to the snaking figurative forms—the boneless arms, grabbing hands, and incomplete faces that can only smell or gape. Those forms represent our urge to want and strive—even if they tend to look pretty lazy. Sometimes they want fruit from a bowl, sometimes they want to caress (or mangle) houseplants, and sometimes they give up and just flop on each other. Together these motifs are a way for me to illustrate domestic psychodramas large and small.

AMM: Can you explain the idea of the frame or framing, which we see in almost all your work?

CB: That’s a funny thing. I don’t have a singular explanation, but I can draw comparisons from my tendency to create unique frames when I make a series of works and a very intense personal interest in video

games since their inception (I still play about two hours a night before I go to bed). In early 80s arcade games, you’d have the same framed out level (think pac-man, Q*bert, Dig Dug) and all these graphically-simplified characters and objects placed in or moving in various combinations of goal oriented play. I think that very closely mirrors the way many of my recent compositions have begun. Games are not something I think of consciously, but when I consider the flatness, the limited palette, and everything I just mentioned before the influence is certainly there.

AMM: I’ve read in other interviews that you’re interested in interior decoration and design. How does this translate into your art?

CB: I’ve already touched on this in some of my other answers, but I wanted to share a story that relates: When I was born we moved into my Italian grandmother’s house that was decorated in the 70s and I loved the way it looked. Being a child and low to the ground I spent a lot of time in deep shag carpets of fuchsia, purple, ice blue, and the furniture was sumptuous velvet jewel tones. Wild wide trellis wallpapers punctuated by huge illustrations of rose bouquets and bright stripes of color covered most of the walls that weren’t wood paneling. We had so many knick-knacks and tchotchkes on every surface and even lit up in display cases and those were just as cool as the toys I played with. When I was maybe about 12 years old my mom hired an interior designer to redecorate our home. Now here was this guy whose job it was to pick out new things and remove the old. I couldn’t understand it and I was pissed off. I remember angrily asking my mom “why would you need someone to tell you what your own house should look like, and choose things FOR YOU?” It was confusing to me probably because I had those instincts myself and didn’t understand them as unique or special. I had been redecorating my bedroom on my own every few years since I could remember! This whole decorator incident took place during the darkest earliest years of the AIDS crises.

I couldn’t do the math completely, but I knew this man was gay, and that I was “like him” enough to be very scared of him being around and making me reflect on what it would mean to be a homosexual in the late 80s. Tragically, he would soon vanish shortly after he started working for us—I heard my parents talking about how he died of AIDS one night in the kitchen. It shook me up bad—was that what I was, was that what would happen to me?

I came out in my teens in the mid 90s and generally had a pretty good go with it and moved to New York for college to meet other gay people, find love, and be an artist. I would go on to draw connections to interior design, queerness, and my own creative impulses. The sculpture “The Decorator” was made thinking about those connections.

AMM: What prompted you to co-found the Fire

35

Island Artist Residency program? What’s it all about?

CB: I always balanced a full-time job and my studio work. At the time FIAR was founded, I was working as the academic administrator in NYU’s art department (where I’d studied and where I now teach). It was a great job, the people were like family, but I felt stuck.

I wouldn’t apply to residencies because I couldn’t take the time off to do them. I was becoming scared that my chances of being an artist were slipping away. At the same time I had begun to visit Fire Island, the world’s oldest LGBTQ town according to local author and historian Esther Newton. The first day I was there I had the idea for an LGBTQ artist residency. It was a fantasy—something I wished I could participate in—not found.

There were no other residencies in the world for LGBTQ artists and I’d never had many queer peers in my years of art school (which is pretty strange really because I went to very liberal schools). It took the nudging of my curator friend and FIAR co-founder Evan Garza, as well as my partner (really the unsung “third” co-founder) to really get it going. I took out $6000 of my savings, rented a beach house, and the rest was history. Eight summers of FIAR later the organization is both an officially registered non-profit artist residency that brings LGBTQ artists together for four weeks of intimate art making, idea exchange, and public programming AND a social practice component of my total work as an artist. I didn’t always see the latter, but after Evan moved on and I evaluated the personal financial sacrifices I was making to keep FIAR going during difficult times (our low-cost rental burned down during the off season with all our stuff in it!!!) I came to the realization that both my studio work and FIAR were my combined practice. Since then it’s been an amazing journey, and I can’t wait to make it to ten years of FIAR in 2020!

AMM: What’s next for you?

CB: I just received a very generous grant from the Jackson Pollock—Lee Krasner Foundation.

It came at a crucial time for me when I needed to move from a two-year studio residency at the Queens Museum to a space of my own ($$$) again. I am now able to find and build out a new studio, hopefully staying in Queens close to home and make more art! I just started formally working with my favorite gallery in the city, Mrs., and I am looking forward to future projects with Sara and Tyler and their inspiring Maspeth gallery. I’ve lived in Queens since the 90s, and I’m super psyched to see the art world finally catching up to me here (sorry Brooklyn, lol). I am currently preparing work for shows coming up at the New Museum, Mercer College in New Jersey, Law Warschaw Gallery in Minneapolis, Beers Gallery in London, and maybe more but it’s currently a secret…. It feels like the beginning of the next chapter of my life as an artist, and I am super psyched! Thank you so much ArtMaze for asking so many good questions and letting me ramble!

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Chris Bogia

AMM: Please tell us about form, texture and color in your work.

CB: These adjectives are so important to me!

Surfaces! The surface of a sculpture gives more meaning than anything. It’s the skin.

Imagine if you saw someone walking down the street and their skin was made of shag carpet instead of flesh. It’s that powerful— especially when working with geometric abstraction which has historically defaulted to raw material expression like marble, metals, wood or painted versions of these materials as the final surface. Today in 2018 that feels lazy to me. Form, texture, color: these are the decisions I spend the most time agonizing over, sometimes procrastinating for weeks over the simplest formal consideration because I am so anxious about getting it right. I have painted rooms in my house three times in a weekend (with taping!) because I cannot handle things not being just the right color. Usually I trust my instincts, but with so many colors and surfaces and shapes being combined, I often change my mind. The textures—yarn, veneer, lacquer, ceramics, jute carpet—they play off one another in familiar ways suggesting high-end design, hand-made folksiness, and the surfaces in our homes.

They are a way to anchor the work in the domestic and give the viewer that seductive vibe of something beautiful and familiar—or perhaps aspirational.

AMM: Fruit bowls, snaking limbs and vines are popular motifs in your work. Please tell us more about your visual language.

“For me houseplants represent our urban attempts at clumsily living in harmony with nature—which is maybe the best humans can do in most cases? In my drawings they are the angular balanced foil to the snaking figurative forms—the boneless arms, grabbing hands, and incomplete faces that can only smell or gape. Those forms represent our urge to want and strive—even if they tend to look pretty lazy.

Sometimes they want fruit from a bowl, sometimes they want to caress (or mangle) houseplants, and sometimes they give up and just flop on each other. Together these motifs are a way for me to illustrate domestic psychodramas large and small.”

- Chris Bogia

CB: Fruit bowls in artworks are historically all about giving, abundance, and fertility.

They are an easy way of showing something we universally “want” without getting too specific. I mean I COULD show bowls of hairy chubby men, videogames and weed, but I am more about universal seduction at the moment, lol. Houseplants are another universal symbol, though I also understand them as a millennial domestic design trend as well. For me houseplants represent our urban attempts at clumsily living in harmony with nature—which is maybe the best humans can do in most cases? In my drawings they are the angular balanced foil to the snaking figurative forms—the boneless arms, grabbing hands, and incomplete faces that can only smell or gape. Those forms represent our urge to want and strive—even if they tend to look pretty lazy. Sometimes they want fruit from a bowl, sometimes they want to caress (or mangle) houseplants, and sometimes they give up and just flop on each other. Together these motifs are a way for me to illustrate domestic psychodramas large and small.

AMM: Can you explain the idea of the frame or framing, which we see in almost all your work?

CB: That’s a funny thing. I don’t have a singular explanation, but I can draw comparisons from my tendency to create unique frames when I make a series of works and a very intense personal interest in video

games since their inception (I still play about two hours a night before I go to bed). In early 80s arcade games, you’d have the same framed out level (think pac-man, Q*bert, Dig Dug) and all these graphically-simplified characters and objects placed in or moving in various combinations of goal oriented play. I think that very closely mirrors the way many of my recent compositions have begun. Games are not something I think of consciously, but when I consider the flatness, the limited palette, and everything I just mentioned before the influence is certainly there.

AMM: I’ve read in other interviews that you’re interested in interior decoration and design. How does this translate into your art?

CB: I’ve already touched on this in some of my other answers, but I wanted to share a story that relates: When I was born we moved into my Italian grandmother’s house that was decorated in the 70s and I loved the way it looked. Being a child and low to the ground I spent a lot of time in deep shag carpets of fuchsia, purple, ice blue, and the furniture was sumptuous velvet jewel tones. Wild wide trellis wallpapers punctuated by huge illustrations of rose bouquets and bright stripes of color covered most of the walls that weren’t wood paneling. We had so many knick-knacks and tchotchkes on every surface and even lit up in display cases and those were just as cool as the toys I played with. When I was maybe about 12 years old my mom hired an interior designer to redecorate our home. Now here was this guy whose job it was to pick out new things and remove the old. I couldn’t understand it and I was pissed off. I remember angrily asking my mom “why would you need someone to tell you what your own house should look like, and choose things FOR YOU?” It was confusing to me probably because I had those instincts myself and didn’t understand them as unique or special. I had been redecorating my bedroom on my own every few years since I could remember! This whole decorator incident took place during the darkest earliest years of the AIDS crises.

I couldn’t do the math completely, but I knew this man was gay, and that I was “like him” enough to be very scared of him being around and making me reflect on what it would mean to be a homosexual in the late 80s. Tragically, he would soon vanish shortly after he started working for us—I heard my parents talking about how he died of AIDS one night in the kitchen. It shook me up bad—was that what I was, was that what would happen to me?

I came out in my teens in the mid 90s and generally had a pretty good go with it and moved to New York for college to meet other gay people, find love, and be an artist. I would go on to draw connections to interior design, queerness, and my own creative impulses. The sculpture “The Decorator” was made thinking about those connections.

AMM: What prompted you to co-found the Fire

35

Island Artist Residency program? What’s it all about?

CB: I always balanced a full-time job and my studio work. At the time FIAR was founded, I was working as the academic administrator in NYU’s art department (where I’d studied and where I now teach). It was a great job, the people were like family, but I felt stuck.

I wouldn’t apply to residencies because I couldn’t take the time off to do them. I was becoming scared that my chances of being an artist were slipping away. At the same time I had begun to visit Fire Island, the world’s oldest LGBTQ town according to local author and historian Esther Newton. The first day I was there I had the idea for an LGBTQ artist residency. It was a fantasy—something I wished I could participate in—not found.

There were no other residencies in the world for LGBTQ artists and I’d never had many queer peers in my years of art school (which is pretty strange really because I went to very liberal schools). It took the nudging of my curator friend and FIAR co-founder Evan Garza, as well as my partner (really the unsung “third” co-founder) to really get it going. I took out $6000 of my savings, rented a beach house, and the rest was history. Eight summers of FIAR later the organization is both an officially registered non-profit artist residency that brings LGBTQ artists together for four weeks of intimate art making, idea exchange, and public programming AND a social practice component of my total work as an artist. I didn’t always see the latter, but after Evan moved on and I evaluated the personal financial sacrifices I was making to keep FIAR going during difficult times (our low-cost rental burned down during the off season with all our stuff in it!!!) I came to the realization that both my studio work and FIAR were my combined practice. Since then it’s been an amazing journey, and I can’t wait to make it to ten years of FIAR in 2020!

AMM: What’s next for you?

CB: I just received a very generous grant from the Jackson Pollock—Lee Krasner Foundation.

It came at a crucial time for me when I needed to move from a two-year studio residency at the Queens Museum to a space of my own ($$$) again. I am now able to find and build out a new studio, hopefully staying in Queens close to home and make more art! I just started formally working with my favorite gallery in the city, Mrs., and I am looking forward to future projects with Sara and Tyler and their inspiring Maspeth gallery. I’ve lived in Queens since the 90s, and I’m super psyched to see the art world finally catching up to me here (sorry Brooklyn, lol). I am currently preparing work for shows coming up at the New Museum, Mercer College in New Jersey, Law Warschaw Gallery in Minneapolis, Beers Gallery in London, and maybe more but it’s currently a secret…. It feels like the beginning of the next chapter of my life as an artist, and I am super psyched! Thank you so much ArtMaze for asking so many good questions and letting me ramble!

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Chris Bogia

Chris Bogia The Decorator wood, steel, yarn, veneer, grass cloth wallpaper, house paint, lacquer, jute rug, vases 46 x 70 x 30 inches

Chris Bogia Sun Standers wood, steel, yarn, grass cloth wallpaper, house paint, lacquer, jute rug, vase, flowers 90 x 70 x 30 inches

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Chris Bogia The Decorator wood, steel, yarn, veneer, grass cloth wallpaper, house paint, lacquer, jute rug, vases 46 x 70 x 30 inches

Chris Bogia Sun Standers wood, steel, yarn, grass cloth wallpaper, house paint, lacquer, jute rug, vase, flowers 90 x 70 x 30 inches

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Chris Bogia Bowl with Two Arms yarn on wood 72 x 57 inches

Chris Bogia Head with Two Planters wood, wallpaper, yarn, veneer, lacquer, wire, paint 26 x 39 inches

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Chris Bogia Bowl with Two Arms yarn on wood 72 x 57 inches

Chris Bogia Head with Two Planters wood, wallpaper, yarn, veneer, lacquer, wire, paint 26 x 39 inches

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Chris Bogia Plants vs Zombies I yarn on wood 48 x 71 inches

Chris Bogia Plants vs Zombies II yarn on wood 48 x 71 inches

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Chris Bogia Plants vs Zombies I yarn on wood 48 x 71 inches

Chris Bogia Plants vs Zombies II yarn on wood 48 x 71 inches

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www.dominicbeattie.com

Between the hard edge and the handmade with Dominic Beattie Dominic Beattie’s approach to art making is unconstrained, regularly adapting and developing skills and resources within his possession to try out new disciplines. His ‘ersatz ceramics’ are composed of roughhewn wood, paint and found objects, and his ‘quilts’ replicate textiles in plywood, spray paint and ink. Dominic says that this allows him to explore mediums that interest him without having to learn the specific skills necessary. However, this also has the effect of blurring categories within art: ‘craft’, ‘design’, ‘art’. By changing the medium of familiar objects, Dominic’s work plays with the way familiar objects are read or understood, and similarly, how they might function.

In his exhibition Sweet at Fold Gallery in London earlier this year, Dominic produced a series of furniture pieces that were both functional objects and sculptural forms. In addition, the items provided three-dimensional surfaces to paint on and could therefore also be read as deconstructed paintings. Dominic says that everything he makes is first and foremost something interesting to look at that should enhance its environment.

As such he is less concerned with categories or functionality, instead focusing on colour and pattern design.

Working with primarily non-traditional materials and from a foundation of abstraction, Dominic uses repetition to explore the parameters and mechanics of pattern. His bright and graphic works, simultaneously design objects, artworks and craft pieces, are a visual treat to behold.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Dominic Beattie Rattle snake chair ink and spray paint on birch ply 68cm x 45cm x 56 cm

www.dominicbeattie.com

Between the hard edge and the handmade with Dominic Beattie Dominic Beattie’s approach to art making is unconstrained, regularly adapting and developing skills and resources within his possession to try out new disciplines. His ‘ersatz ceramics’ are composed of roughhewn wood, paint and found objects, and his ‘quilts’ replicate textiles in plywood, spray paint and ink. Dominic says that this allows him to explore mediums that interest him without having to learn the specific skills necessary. However, this also has the effect of blurring categories within art: ‘craft’, ‘design’, ‘art’. By changing the medium of familiar objects, Dominic’s work plays with the way familiar objects are read or understood, and similarly, how they might function.

In his exhibition Sweet at Fold Gallery in London earlier this year, Dominic produced a series of furniture pieces that were both functional objects and sculptural forms. In addition, the items provided three-dimensional surfaces to paint on and could therefore also be read as deconstructed paintings. Dominic says that everything he makes is first and foremost something interesting to look at that should enhance its environment.

As such he is less concerned with categories or functionality, instead focusing on colour and pattern design.

Working with primarily non-traditional materials and from a foundation of abstraction, Dominic uses repetition to explore the parameters and mechanics of pattern. His bright and graphic works, simultaneously design objects, artworks and craft pieces, are a visual treat to behold.

interview by Layla Leiman

Featured image: Dominic Beattie Rattle snake chair ink and spray paint on birch ply 68cm x 45cm x 56 cm

AMM: Hi Dominic! To start us off, do you perhaps have a motto or philosophy that you work by?

DB: My philosophy as pertaining to being an artist, would be to work hard and focus.

AMM: Your art plays with the so-called categories of ‘art’, ‘design’ and ‘craft’. Please tell us more about this and what your interests are in this kind of hybrid practice.

DB: I see each area as equally valuable, no hierarchy. A beautiful chair can please me in the same way as a masterful painting or textile design. I’m very much inspired by dwellings and architecture; I like to make things that can enhance the environments we live in.

AMM: How do colour and pattern figure in your work?

DB: Colour and pattern have been a major area of exploration for me for the past three years, before that I was more interested in formal elements of shape and materiality.

I sort of graduated into pattern making through the repetition of forms. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Pattern is difficult to make new, I’ve been drawing a lot, in an attempt to unlock some revelation about the mechanics of pattern design, but inevitably it’s fairly predictable geometry.

My use of colour is intuitive, primarily I use it to delineate alternate areas of form.

Aesthetics, harmony or deliberate jarring are a secondary consideration.

AMM: What does abstraction hold for you artistically?

DB: A friend told me a while ago that he never thought of me as an abstract artist. I found that really funny and I try to remember it. I think he saw my work as decorative, which it definitely can be. Abstraction as a category of art has always been the most interesting to me, I like to be surprised when I look at something, to be confused about the thought process that created it. I got that feeling when I was first introduced to abstract expressionism in my teens, I still get it from some contemporary abstraction, design and a lot of outsider art.

AMM: Your work focuses on surface detail. How do the various media and methods that you work in relate to this aspect of art-making?

DB: Surface is never really a concern to me, it’s more a by-product of the materials I use. I’ve always chosen materials that were affordable, easy to get hold of and quick to use. Never really ‘fine art’ paints or canvas, mostly marker pens, house paint, found wood, tape etc. When you use these things I guess you get a more unique surface.

AMM: There’s a lo-fi quality to your art where imperfection and irregularity become features.

What is your thinking behind repetitive markmaking in your work?

“The mark making is a means to an end, I enjoy it but it’s the laborious thing you have to do to make the final piece. All the glitches along the way give the piece its character and make it unique.”

- Dominic Beattie

DB: The mark making is a means to an end, I enjoy it but it’s the laborious thing you have to do to make the final piece. All the glitches along the way give the piece its character and make it unique. The lo-fi vibe is a visual preference that was developed from working fast with rudimentary materials, I make slick stuff too, my work hovers between the hard edge and the handmade.

AMM: The furniture pieces and vessels are suggestive of functional objects but are also quite sculptural in their design. In what ways do you toy with expectation and familiarity in your art?

DB: Everything I make is primarily something to look at. The furniture has function too but my interest is in the look of the piece or the collection. The ‘Ersatz Ceramics’ are definitely not functional, they emulate the style and texture of ceramics I enjoy, such as Troika, West German Pottery or Clarice Cliff. But they are dummies, approximations.

I made them from wood and spray paint and found junk, not as a joke or trick but because making real ceramics would require learning a whole new process and a new studio set up.

I thought I could achieve what I wanted with the skills and materials I had.

AMM: Do you consider yourself a painter? Or a sculptor? Or designer? In what terms do you think of yourself as an artist?

and the series will end, then I move onto something else. I’ve built up a library of ideas of what I can do with different materials and I use that knowledge to create new concepts.

AMM: Your wall-mounted paintings are reminiscent of block-printed textiles. Are you influenced by textile design and printing techniques? What else influences your art?

DB: Textiles have inspired me for years, I’ve tried to emulate folk quilts, Welsh blankets and crocheted blankets in my paintings, I find them really pure and striking to look at. I’ve seen examples that are better than a lot of abstract art. If I had the time or skill I would make them myself. My work is influenced by furniture and decoration, especially midcentury design. Comics, electronic music, architecture, ceramics, primitive carvings, lots of other things.

AMM: You’ve recently been prototyping large geometric wall reliefs. How do these build on from your paintings and furniture objects?

DB: They are for a potential commission, they are directly linked to the small ‘Pattern Studies’ I’ve been producing since 2016.

They are scaled up architectural versions of sections of the drawings. Once complete, I imagine them looking like hard edge style wall carvings. Sort of modern and primitive at the same time. The process for making them is the same as making the furniture, it’s two distinct areas of my practice that have been joined to make something new.

AMM: What themes or ideas are you currently exploring in your work?

DB: At the moment I’m trying to work out how to make an object that is part painting part modular floor. It’s complex and it’s been on my mind for a long time but I think I’m almost there. I’m always developing the furniture with the architect Lucia Buceta, we are drawing a lot of new designs and working with new materials.

AMM: What’s next for you?

DB: I’m curating a large group show called ‘Harder Edge’ with Ali Hillman at ‘h CLUB’ in Covent Garden. It’s going to be a survey of recent abstraction with some striking large pieces. I’m also getting ready for a two person show with Olivia Bax next year at Linden Hall Studio in Deal, Kent.

DB: Just as someone who makes things to be looked at.

AMM: What is your creative process?

DB: Lots of material exploration, testing what I can do with certain media. I tend to play with a material until a theme develops and then sometimes a series of works might emerge. Eventually I’ll tire of the process

45

Image: Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Dominic Beattie

AMM: Hi Dominic! To start us off, do you perhaps have a motto or philosophy that you work by?

DB: My philosophy as pertaining to being an artist, would be to work hard and focus.

AMM: Your art plays with the so-called categories of ‘art’, ‘design’ and ‘craft’. Please tell us more about this and what your interests are in this kind of hybrid practice.

DB: I see each area as equally valuable, no hierarchy. A beautiful chair can please me in the same way as a masterful painting or textile design. I’m very much inspired by dwellings and architecture; I like to make things that can enhance the environments we live in.

AMM: How do colour and pattern figure in your work?

DB: Colour and pattern have been a major area of exploration for me for the past three years, before that I was more interested in formal elements of shape and materiality.

I sort of graduated into pattern making through the repetition of forms. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Pattern is difficult to make new, I’ve been drawing a lot, in an attempt to unlock some revelation about the mechanics of pattern design, but inevitably it’s fairly predictable geometry.

My use of colour is intuitive, primarily I use it to delineate alternate areas of form.

Aesthetics, harmony or deliberate jarring are a secondary consideration.

AMM: What does abstraction hold for you artistically?

DB: A friend told me a while ago that he never thought of me as an abstract artist. I found that really funny and I try to remember it. I think he saw my work as decorative, which it definitely can be. Abstraction as a category of art has always been the most interesting to me, I like to be surprised when I look at something, to be confused about the thought process that created it. I got that feeling when I was first introduced to abstract expressionism in my teens, I still get it from some contemporary abstraction, design and a lot of outsider art.

AMM: Your work focuses on surface detail. How do the various media and methods that you work in relate to this aspect of art-making?

DB: Surface is never really a concern to me, it’s more a by-product of the materials I use. I’ve always chosen materials that were affordable, easy to get hold of and quick to use. Never really ‘fine art’ paints or canvas, mostly marker pens, house paint, found wood, tape etc. When you use these things I guess you get a more unique surface.

AMM: There’s a lo-fi quality to your art where imperfection and irregularity become features.

What is your thinking behind repetitive markmaking in your work?

“The mark making is a means to an end, I enjoy it but it’s the laborious thing you have to do to make the final piece. All the glitches along the way give the piece its character and make it unique.”

- Dominic Beattie

DB: The mark making is a means to an end, I enjoy it but it’s the laborious thing you have to do to make the final piece. All the glitches along the way give the piece its character and make it unique. The lo-fi vibe is a visual preference that was developed from working fast with rudimentary materials, I make slick stuff too, my work hovers between the hard edge and the handmade.

AMM: The furniture pieces and vessels are suggestive of functional objects but are also quite sculptural in their design. In what ways do you toy with expectation and familiarity in your art?

DB: Everything I make is primarily something to look at. The furniture has function too but my interest is in the look of the piece or the collection. The ‘Ersatz Ceramics’ are definitely not functional, they emulate the style and texture of ceramics I enjoy, such as Troika, West German Pottery or Clarice Cliff. But they are dummies, approximations.

I made them from wood and spray paint and found junk, not as a joke or trick but because making real ceramics would require learning a whole new process and a new studio set up.

I thought I could achieve what I wanted with the skills and materials I had.

AMM: Do you consider yourself a painter? Or a sculptor? Or designer? In what terms do you think of yourself as an artist?

and the series will end, then I move onto something else. I’ve built up a library of ideas of what I can do with different materials and I use that knowledge to create new concepts.

AMM: Your wall-mounted paintings are reminiscent of block-printed textiles. Are you influenced by textile design and printing techniques? What else influences your art?

DB: Textiles have inspired me for years, I’ve tried to emulate folk quilts, Welsh blankets and crocheted blankets in my paintings, I find them really pure and striking to look at. I’ve seen examples that are better than a lot of abstract art. If I had the time or skill I would make them myself. My work is influenced by furniture and decoration, especially midcentury design. Comics, electronic music, architecture, ceramics, primitive carvings, lots of other things.

AMM: You’ve recently been prototyping large geometric wall reliefs. How do these build on from your paintings and furniture objects?

DB: They are for a potential commission, they are directly linked to the small ‘Pattern Studies’ I’ve been producing since 2016.

They are scaled up architectural versions of sections of the drawings. Once complete, I imagine them looking like hard edge style wall carvings. Sort of modern and primitive at the same time. The process for making them is the same as making the furniture, it’s two distinct areas of my practice that have been joined to make something new.

AMM: What themes or ideas are you currently exploring in your work?

DB: At the moment I’m trying to work out how to make an object that is part painting part modular floor. It’s complex and it’s been on my mind for a long time but I think I’m almost there. I’m always developing the furniture with the architect Lucia Buceta, we are drawing a lot of new designs and working with new materials.

AMM: What’s next for you?

DB: I’m curating a large group show called ‘Harder Edge’ with Ali Hillman at ‘h CLUB’ in Covent Garden. It’s going to be a survey of recent abstraction with some striking large pieces. I’m also getting ready for a two person show with Olivia Bax next year at Linden Hall Studio in Deal, Kent.

DB: Just as someone who makes things to be looked at.

AMM: What is your creative process?

DB: Lots of material exploration, testing what I can do with certain media. I tend to play with a material until a theme develops and then sometimes a series of works might emerge. Eventually I’ll tire of the process

45

Image: Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Dominic Beattie

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

46

47

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

46

47

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

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49

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

Dominic Beattie Ersatz Ceramics Studio ephemera dimensions variable

48

49

Dominic Beattie Untitled ink and spray paint on plywood 50 x 40 cm

Dominic Beattie Four String Glitched ink and spray paint on plywood 50 x 40 cm

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Dominic Beattie Untitled ink and spray paint on plywood 50 x 40 cm

Dominic Beattie Four String Glitched ink and spray paint on plywood 50 x 40 cm

50

51

Dominic Beattie Study For Four String ink and spray paint on plywood 50 x 40 cm

Dominic Beattie Four String ink and spray paint on wood 228 x 198 cm

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Dominic Beattie Study For Four String ink and spray paint on plywood 50 x 40 cm

Dominic Beattie Four String ink and spray paint on wood 228 x 198 cm

52

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www.juliecurtiss.com

Piecing the puzzle in Julie Curtiss’ paintings Artist Julie Curtiss combines bold, daring aesthetics with the uncanny to create her stunning paintings in oils and gouache.

Her work depicts scenes that appear straight out of a graphic novel, but one that was created by a surrealist. Here, strands of hair become electrifying currents of colour, fingernails become alive with a pulsating glow. Curtiss’s work magically depicts the figure while still abstracting its form so that identity is not yet revealed. Instead, her subjects’ faces are absent, hidden behind purple hands or long, wild hair that consume the figure.

Often cropping her compositions around a hand, an arm, or a finger, the fragmented body becomes a reoccurring image within her body of work. The artist discusses these hidden identities and disjointed bodies referring to the “elusivity of the self,” provoking the unknown.

Originally from France, Curtiss lives and works in New York City, where her forthcoming solo exhibition will be taking place at Anton Kern Gallery.

Join us in conversation as we discuss with the artist the influences that inform the iconography in her work, the transformations her style has undergone during her travels throughout the years, and the many things she has learned along the way.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Christina Nafziger

Featured image: Julie Curtiss Blind hands gouache on paper 12 x 9 inches

www.juliecurtiss.com

Piecing the puzzle in Julie Curtiss’ paintings Artist Julie Curtiss combines bold, daring aesthetics with the uncanny to create her stunning paintings in oils and gouache.

Her work depicts scenes that appear straight out of a graphic novel, but one that was created by a surrealist. Here, strands of hair become electrifying currents of colour, fingernails become alive with a pulsating glow. Curtiss’s work magically depicts the figure while still abstracting its form so that identity is not yet revealed. Instead, her subjects’ faces are absent, hidden behind purple hands or long, wild hair that consume the figure.

Often cropping her compositions around a hand, an arm, or a finger, the fragmented body becomes a reoccurring image within her body of work. The artist discusses these hidden identities and disjointed bodies referring to the “elusivity of the self,” provoking the unknown.

Originally from France, Curtiss lives and works in New York City, where her forthcoming solo exhibition will be taking place at Anton Kern Gallery.

Join us in conversation as we discuss with the artist the influences that inform the iconography in her work, the transformations her style has undergone during her travels throughout the years, and the many things she has learned along the way.

interview by Maria Zemtsova text by Christina Nafziger

Featured image: Julie Curtiss Blind hands gouache on paper 12 x 9 inches

AMM: Hi Julie! You were raised in France, studied in USA and France, and lived in Tokyo for some time - three countries with significant cultural and historical heritage. How have such experiences influenced your artistic vision and career?

JC: Each country influenced me in very different ways. My first exposure to arts was in France, through my parents. When I was a kid, they brought me to shows at museums, they sent me to the conservatory for a musical and dance education… In a way I had a very traditional cultural upbringing.

When I first came to Chicago for my studies it really changed the way I saw the world.

In America I think people are less worried about what others think. On the other side, there is generally less critical thinking in comparison to France. In any case, I felt a new sense of freedom in the US that I never felt in France. Also I became more acquainted with subculture and the music scene there.

Tokyo was more like a strange parenthesis in my life. I stayed there for a year. My time there was difficult because the culture felt somewhat oppressive. However it was an important year of my life, right after graduation, I had to become financially independent while pursuing my art. It was hard but also freeing. I realized I didn’t have to please my teachers anymore, and get grades, I truly could do what I wanted. Also I incorporated a lot of Japanese culture into my art.

AMM: Now, living and working in New York, how do you find the art scene in the big city?

JC: There is a multitude of art scenes in New York. After having lived here for a while, it’s becoming a little less overwhelming and eventually I started to navigate different groups, make connections and friends. I love the entrepreneurial spirit of the New York artist, curating shows, visiting their peers, organizing events, and running project spaces.

I know many people who have families, jobs, their own art practice and after all that still find time to run a gallery space with their friends!

AMM: How has your practice developed over the years? Were there major milestones?

JC: I think my art is completely linked to my private life.

Chicago broadened my artistic awareness; changing environment helped me to open up to different types of practices including conceptual art.

After school, I worked as a security person at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. There I was very impressed by a series of black and white drawings by Mike Kelley. A few months later in Japan, I started a series of works on paper with cartoon-like imagery, with big droopy eyed, depressed characters. This was the beginning of a more graphic style in my art.

When I came back to France, I found out that my mother had cancer and the 3 years that followed were dark years. My art changed a lot and became a way for me to funnel my anxiety.

I turned inward with my art, trying to make sense out of life.

Finally, my art went through a new phase a few years after I settled in New York. I slowly healed from my mother’s death and my art became lighter and more in phase with new life challenges: affirming myself as a woman, embracing the multiple facets within myself, engaging more with the outer world.

AMM: What painting traditions influence you?

JC: I find a lot of my inspiration in French and European painters/sculptors from the 19th and 20th centuries... because a lot of these artworks are popular, I enjoy how they worked their way into people’s subconscious. They are iconic and therefore they work on several levels, subliminally but also overtly. People love drawing connections, and understanding an image within a frame of references. I like to use old masters and divert the meaning of their works, adding anachronistic elements or simply borrow parts that are timeless. My attachment to some images is also sentimental (Degas, Manet, Vuillard, Ingres...), they were the first to draw me in and work on my imagination as a child.

AMM: Who are the figures you depict; would you say your work is autobiographical?

JC: I believe there are similarities between the way I paint and the way a writer writes. My figures are a mixture of personal experiences, of projection, archetypes, borrowed elements and observations. For example, there is a lot pertaining to the housewife stereotype in my work, but obviously I am not one and don’t even know any in the traditional sense of the term. I am interested in the stereotype of the housewife and how it resonated in us.

AMM: Your work borders the lines between realistic figuration and abstraction, the characters and scenes in your work appear dreamlike. How are you able to find the balance between the two?

JC: The reason why I enjoy cartoon and sometimes I use a cartoonish or illustrative style, is because I like to simplify a form (abstract) while retaining essential details, so they can work upon one’s imagination with great vividness.

AMM: Your paintings have a very graphic feel.

JC: As mentioned above, I like to paint on the edge of illustration.

But also, I have worked with gouache for a long time. I love the flatness of gouache and its quick drying qualities. I tend to draw rather than paint, that’s why gouache is ideal for me.

You can go into fine details, like for hair. After painting a series of gouache works on paper, I enjoyed it so much that I tried to replicate the

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“I enjoy being a woman painting woman. It’s a strange selfreflective exercise of being both the examiner and the examinee. And I particularly enjoy riffing on the works of old masters, shifting the viewer’s perception.

In a way I paint about men painting women. Men are present in my work between the lines.”

- Julie Curtiss same qualities onto the canvas. I use vinyl, acrylic and oil paint in ways that mimic the gouache finish.

AMM: The female body is one of the most prominent features in art. What is its appeal for you, and why did it become a focus theme of your practice?

JC: My work is deeply personal, I am painting from my point of view, a woman’s point of view. Therefore I am concerned with a lot of issues that touch womanhood.

I like the idea that thus far men have represented the world, but over the past century women are slowly taking the narrative in their own hands and paint, write, sculpt… about the things they care about.

I enjoy being a woman painting woman. It’s a strange self-reflective exercise of being both the examiner and the examinee. And I particularly enjoy riffing on the works of old masters, shifting the viewer’s perception. In a way I paint about men painting women. Men are present in my work between the lines.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Julie Curtiss

AMM: Hi Julie! You were raised in France, studied in USA and France, and lived in Tokyo for some time - three countries with significant cultural and historical heritage. How have such experiences influenced your artistic vision and career?

JC: Each country influenced me in very different ways. My first exposure to arts was in France, through my parents. When I was a kid, they brought me to shows at museums, they sent me to the conservatory for a musical and dance education… In a way I had a very traditional cultural upbringing.

When I first came to Chicago for my studies it really changed the way I saw the world.

In America I think people are less worried about what others think. On the other side, there is generally less critical thinking in comparison to France. In any case, I felt a new sense of freedom in the US that I never felt in France. Also I became more acquainted with subculture and the music scene there.

Tokyo was more like a strange parenthesis in my life. I stayed there for a year. My time there was difficult because the culture felt somewhat oppressive. However it was an important year of my life, right after graduation, I had to become financially independent while pursuing my art. It was hard but also freeing. I realized I didn’t have to please my teachers anymore, and get grades, I truly could do what I wanted. Also I incorporated a lot of Japanese culture into my art.

AMM: Now, living and working in New York, how do you find the art scene in the big city?

JC: There is a multitude of art scenes in New York. After having lived here for a while, it’s becoming a little less overwhelming and eventually I started to navigate different groups, make connections and friends. I love the entrepreneurial spirit of the New York artist, curating shows, visiting their peers, organizing events, and running project spaces.

I know many people who have families, jobs, their own art practice and after all that still find time to run a gallery space with their friends!

AMM: How has your practice developed over the years? Were there major milestones?

JC: I think my art is completely linked to my private life.

Chicago broadened my artistic awareness; changing environment helped me to open up to different types of practices including conceptual art.

After school, I worked as a security person at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. There I was very impressed by a series of black and white drawings by Mike Kelley. A few months later in Japan, I started a series of works on paper with cartoon-like imagery, with big droopy eyed, depressed characters. This was the beginning of a more graphic style in my art.

When I came back to France, I found out that my mother had cancer and the 3 years that followed were dark years. My art changed a lot and became a way for me to funnel my anxiety.

I turned inward with my art, trying to make sense out of life.

Finally, my art went through a new phase a few years after I settled in New York. I slowly healed from my mother’s death and my art became lighter and more in phase with new life challenges: affirming myself as a woman, embracing the multiple facets within myself, engaging more with the outer world.

AMM: What painting traditions influence you?

JC: I find a lot of my inspiration in French and European painters/sculptors from the 19th and 20th centuries... because a lot of these artworks are popular, I enjoy how they worked their way into people’s subconscious. They are iconic and therefore they work on several levels, subliminally but also overtly. People love drawing connections, and understanding an image within a frame of references. I like to use old masters and divert the meaning of their works, adding anachronistic elements or simply borrow parts that are timeless. My attachment to some images is also sentimental (Degas, Manet, Vuillard, Ingres...), they were the first to draw me in and work on my imagination as a child.

AMM: Who are the figures you depict; would you say your work is autobiographical?

JC: I believe there are similarities between the way I paint and the way a writer writes. My figures are a mixture of personal experiences, of projection, archetypes, borrowed elements and observations. For example, there is a lot pertaining to the housewife stereotype in my work, but obviously I am not one and don’t even know any in the traditional sense of the term. I am interested in the stereotype of the housewife and how it resonated in us.

AMM: Your work borders the lines between realistic figuration and abstraction, the characters and scenes in your work appear dreamlike. How are you able to find the balance between the two?

JC: The reason why I enjoy cartoon and sometimes I use a cartoonish or illustrative style, is because I like to simplify a form (abstract) while retaining essential details, so they can work upon one’s imagination with great vividness.

AMM: Your paintings have a very graphic feel.

JC: As mentioned above, I like to paint on the edge of illustration.

But also, I have worked with gouache for a long time. I love the flatness of gouache and its quick drying qualities. I tend to draw rather than paint, that’s why gouache is ideal for me.

You can go into fine details, like for hair. After painting a series of gouache works on paper, I enjoyed it so much that I tried to replicate the

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“I enjoy being a woman painting woman. It’s a strange selfreflective exercise of being both the examiner and the examinee. And I particularly enjoy riffing on the works of old masters, shifting the viewer’s perception.

In a way I paint about men painting women. Men are present in my work between the lines.”

- Julie Curtiss same qualities onto the canvas. I use vinyl, acrylic and oil paint in ways that mimic the gouache finish.

AMM: The female body is one of the most prominent features in art. What is its appeal for you, and why did it become a focus theme of your practice?

JC: My work is deeply personal, I am painting from my point of view, a woman’s point of view. Therefore I am concerned with a lot of issues that touch womanhood.

I like the idea that thus far men have represented the world, but over the past century women are slowly taking the narrative in their own hands and paint, write, sculpt… about the things they care about.

I enjoy being a woman painting woman. It’s a strange self-reflective exercise of being both the examiner and the examinee. And I particularly enjoy riffing on the works of old masters, shifting the viewer’s perception. In a way I paint about men painting women. Men are present in my work between the lines.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Julie Curtiss

AMM: Why do many of your characters appear to hide their faces or look away?

AMM: Your palette is vivid and bold. What guides your colour choices?

JC: Painting faces can make subjects too specific or personal, like portraits. There is something satisfying about painting and looking at facial traits and expressions. By omitting the face, I want to frustrate the viewer.

I can allude to a character’s personality and internal life by dropping clues here and there, and leave to the viewer the task of piecing the puzzle together.

JC: Drawing comes to me more easily than painting, which explains why my images are very graphic. I will change colors more than anything else when I work. Also, I rarely use a color out of the tube, I like to mix my own, which I think gives a retro feel to my work.

Over the years, I believe that I developed a personal palette. I depend on that whenever I am struggling to find the colors that I see in my head.

Partially obscured faces, the fragmented bodies point to the elusivity of the self. The self cannot ever be fully grasped.

AMM: Let’s talk about hair. Why is it so evident in your work?

JC: Hair evokes the primordial in my work.

With nails, it’s a part of our bodies that grows of its own and that we can sever off without pain. It refers to the wild, the untamed, the beast in us. In the myth, the hair on Medusa’s head is made out of snakes. In our societies, hair is combed and braided and the nails manicured. Women transcend these physical attributes for social ends... As a woman, I am interested in the way we fashion our bodies, to be reflected through the other’s eyes.

In my paintings, hair slowly started to leave the human head to proliferate to other things: animals, objects covered in hair… It’s a way of blurring boundaries between the inanimate and the living, between the internal and the external world. It’s also a way to appeal to the sense of touch, to our sensuality.

AMM: Can you comment on the inclusion of certain accented details in your paintings such as the nails, nipples, breasts, cigarettes, vaginas, heels and diverse female accessories?

JC: All the elements you mentioned belong to the realm of the body, or to the extended body, like prostheses (cigarettes, fake nails, heels…).

The accessories become living extensions of the self. The natural body is enhanced and transformed by artefacts.

AMM: You frequently use food and drink motifs. Do they reference the feminine characters depicted in other paintings?

JC: Yes, foods and drinks hold an important place in my work. They are transformative and symbolic. For instance I often paint roasted turkeys. The physical resemblance (large breast of the bird) and also the sentimental image of the family gathering around home cooked meals ... To me they clearly allude to something sacrificial in the role of the mother.

Cannibalism is a recurring theme as well. I think it comes from the fact that women are literally and psychologically consumed in their lives, for instance during motherhood.

AMM: Please take us through your daily studio rituals.

JC: I recently bought a digital piano, and started playing at the studio - I learned when I was a teen and I haven’t really played in 20 years.

I work on a few favorites: Chopin, Debussy, Schubert, Satie… It clears my mind, time flies when I play. It’s a way for me to take breaks. I also enjoy listening to audio books occasionally while painting.

Another studio ritual is snacking! The coffee shop across the street has the best lemon cake…

You can see how central food is in my life…

AMM: What are you reading and listening to at present; does the content inform your work?

JC: What I read or listen to often informs my work. For instance, last year, Elena Ferrante’s writing has been a lot in my head.

I am currently working on a small book project with SPHERES publication and Brigitte Mulholland from Anton Kern Gallery. I am trying to find writers to collaborate with… So I am reading a little more than usual! Since I am a fiction reader, I am enjoying the process very much. I recently discovered the writer Nick Mulgrew “The First Law of Sadness” and Lauren Groff “Delicate Edible Birds”. Both books are short stories collections and are engrossing in completely different ways.

AMM: You’ve successfully shown nationally and internationally; what advice can you share with others hoping to emulate such success?

JC: This is what I did when I was trying to get my work out there: Visit my peers, attend shows in my communities, organize shows, use social media to connect with others... but I would say before all, make the art that fulfills you.

Image:

AMM: We are excited to find out about your forthcoming solo exhibition in the Anton Kern Gallery. Could you tell us more about it? What lies ahead for you apart from that?

JC: So far I have tried to keep it one step at a time. My next step is the show at Anton Kern, it’s a pretty big deal to me and my main challenge is to produce the best work possible.

All my focus is on it.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Julie Curtiss

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Julie Curtiss No place like home acrylic and oil on panel 24 x 36 inches

AMM: Why do many of your characters appear to hide their faces or look away?

AMM: Your palette is vivid and bold. What guides your colour choices?

JC: Painting faces can make subjects too specific or personal, like portraits. There is something satisfying about painting and looking at facial traits and expressions. By omitting the face, I want to frustrate the viewer.

I can allude to a character’s personality and internal life by dropping clues here and there, and leave to the viewer the task of piecing the puzzle together.

JC: Drawing comes to me more easily than painting, which explains why my images are very graphic. I will change colors more than anything else when I work. Also, I rarely use a color out of the tube, I like to mix my own, which I think gives a retro feel to my work.

Over the years, I believe that I developed a personal palette. I depend on that whenever I am struggling to find the colors that I see in my head.

Partially obscured faces, the fragmented bodies point to the elusivity of the self. The self cannot ever be fully grasped.

AMM: Let’s talk about hair. Why is it so evident in your work?

JC: Hair evokes the primordial in my work.

With nails, it’s a part of our bodies that grows of its own and that we can sever off without pain. It refers to the wild, the untamed, the beast in us. In the myth, the hair on Medusa’s head is made out of snakes. In our societies, hair is combed and braided and the nails manicured. Women transcend these physical attributes for social ends... As a woman, I am interested in the way we fashion our bodies, to be reflected through the other’s eyes.

In my paintings, hair slowly started to leave the human head to proliferate to other things: animals, objects covered in hair… It’s a way of blurring boundaries between the inanimate and the living, between the internal and the external world. It’s also a way to appeal to the sense of touch, to our sensuality.

AMM: Can you comment on the inclusion of certain accented details in your paintings such as the nails, nipples, breasts, cigarettes, vaginas, heels and diverse female accessories?

JC: All the elements you mentioned belong to the realm of the body, or to the extended body, like prostheses (cigarettes, fake nails, heels…).

The accessories become living extensions of the self. The natural body is enhanced and transformed by artefacts.

AMM: You frequently use food and drink motifs. Do they reference the feminine characters depicted in other paintings?

JC: Yes, foods and drinks hold an important place in my work. They are transformative and symbolic. For instance I often paint roasted turkeys. The physical resemblance (large breast of the bird) and also the sentimental image of the family gathering around home cooked meals ... To me they clearly allude to something sacrificial in the role of the mother.

Cannibalism is a recurring theme as well. I think it comes from the fact that women are literally and psychologically consumed in their lives, for instance during motherhood.

AMM: Please take us through your daily studio rituals.

JC: I recently bought a digital piano, and started playing at the studio - I learned when I was a teen and I haven’t really played in 20 years.

I work on a few favorites: Chopin, Debussy, Schubert, Satie… It clears my mind, time flies when I play. It’s a way for me to take breaks. I also enjoy listening to audio books occasionally while painting.

Another studio ritual is snacking! The coffee shop across the street has the best lemon cake…

You can see how central food is in my life…

AMM: What are you reading and listening to at present; does the content inform your work?

JC: What I read or listen to often informs my work. For instance, last year, Elena Ferrante’s writing has been a lot in my head.

I am currently working on a small book project with SPHERES publication and Brigitte Mulholland from Anton Kern Gallery. I am trying to find writers to collaborate with… So I am reading a little more than usual! Since I am a fiction reader, I am enjoying the process very much. I recently discovered the writer Nick Mulgrew “The First Law of Sadness” and Lauren Groff “Delicate Edible Birds”. Both books are short stories collections and are engrossing in completely different ways.

AMM: You’ve successfully shown nationally and internationally; what advice can you share with others hoping to emulate such success?

JC: This is what I did when I was trying to get my work out there: Visit my peers, attend shows in my communities, organize shows, use social media to connect with others... but I would say before all, make the art that fulfills you.

Image:

AMM: We are excited to find out about your forthcoming solo exhibition in the Anton Kern Gallery. Could you tell us more about it? What lies ahead for you apart from that?

JC: So far I have tried to keep it one step at a time. My next step is the show at Anton Kern, it’s a pretty big deal to me and my main challenge is to produce the best work possible.

All my focus is on it.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10, Interviewed: Julie Curtiss

58

Julie Curtiss No place like home acrylic and oil on panel 24 x 36 inches

Julie Curtiss The Guest acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Julie Curtiss Chemtrails gouache on paper 19 x 14 inches

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Julie Curtiss The Guest acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

Julie Curtiss Chemtrails gouache on paper 19 x 14 inches

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Julie Curtiss Piggy Tail acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 32 inches

Julie Curtiss Faisceaux acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

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Julie Curtiss Piggy Tail acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 32 inches

Julie Curtiss Faisceaux acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 30 inches

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Julie Curtiss Cleave (Vagina) oil and acrylic on canvas 30 × 25 inches

Julie Curtiss The nest gouache and acrylic wash on paper 9 x 12 inches

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Julie Curtiss Cleave (Vagina) oil and acrylic on canvas 30 × 25 inches

Julie Curtiss The nest gouache and acrylic wash on paper 9 x 12 inches

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Julie Curtiss Feast acrylic and oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches

Julie Curtiss Appetizer gouache on paper 12 x 9 inches

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Julie Curtiss Feast acrylic and oil on canvas 18 x 24 inches

Julie Curtiss Appetizer gouache on paper 12 x 9 inches

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Julie Curtiss Late afternoon acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 34 inches

Julie Curtiss Quarantine acrylic and oil on canvas 40 x 34 inches

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Julie Curtiss Late afternoon acrylic, vinyl and oil on canvas 40 x 34 inches

Julie Curtiss Quarantine acrylic and oil on canvas 40 x 34 inches

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curated selection of works

by Maria Zemtsova, Founder and Editor of ArtMaze Magazine Featured image: Jamey Hart Blonde acrylic, nails, shingles, ropes, glues, nails, wood, other things. approx: 9.5 x 17 x 2.5 inches more on p. 121

curated selection of works

by Maria Zemtsova, Founder and Editor of ArtMaze Magazine Featured image: Jamey Hart Blonde acrylic, nails, shingles, ropes, glues, nails, wood, other things. approx: 9.5 x 17 x 2.5 inches more on p. 121

D a n P e r k i n s

www.danperkinsart.com

Dan Perkins’ work plays in the space between the natural and the digital, using tight looping geometries to activate shapes, planes, and textures. Starting with images of the natural world, Perkins edits and distills these sources into pure color. The final paintings are recombinations and juxtapositions of these sources, bending and playfully distorting representations of the natural into bright seductive forms. This becomes a way to reflect on the nature of sharing and reproduction that the internet now makes possible, as well as what constitutes the contemporary sublime.

Perkins received his MFA from American University in 2013. Recent exhibitions include: RE_ARRANGE at Juxtapoz Projects (2018); DRIFT: Dan Perkins and Joe Ferriso, curated by Jessica Ross at Brilliant Champions (2018), and Three Squared at the Geoffrey Young Gallery (2018). His work is held in the collection of the Capital One Corporate Art Collection, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, as well as in many private collections. His work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Booooooom, Two Coats of Paint, Artsy, BmoreArt, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore City Paper. Dan lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Midnight Green oil on panel 16 x 12 inches

Orange Rollin’ oil on panel 16 x 12 inches

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D a n P e r k i n s

www.danperkinsart.com

Dan Perkins’ work plays in the space between the natural and the digital, using tight looping geometries to activate shapes, planes, and textures. Starting with images of the natural world, Perkins edits and distills these sources into pure color. The final paintings are recombinations and juxtapositions of these sources, bending and playfully distorting representations of the natural into bright seductive forms. This becomes a way to reflect on the nature of sharing and reproduction that the internet now makes possible, as well as what constitutes the contemporary sublime.

Perkins received his MFA from American University in 2013. Recent exhibitions include: RE_ARRANGE at Juxtapoz Projects (2018); DRIFT: Dan Perkins and Joe Ferriso, curated by Jessica Ross at Brilliant Champions (2018), and Three Squared at the Geoffrey Young Gallery (2018). His work is held in the collection of the Capital One Corporate Art Collection, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, as well as in many private collections. His work has been featured in Juxtapoz, Booooooom, Two Coats of Paint, Artsy, BmoreArt, The Washington Post, and the Baltimore City Paper. Dan lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Midnight Green oil on panel 16 x 12 inches

Orange Rollin’ oil on panel 16 x 12 inches

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73

C a l e b

H a h n e

J u l i a

M a i u r i

www.instagram.com/calebhahne

www.juliamaiuri.com

Caleb Hahne graduated from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2014 and currently lives and works in Colorado. He is currently an artist in residence at Redline in Denver. His work has been included in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Denver, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Montreal, Berlin, and the United Kingdom and most recently at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver as well as the New Museum NY in collaboration with Adidas. Hahne has been featured in New American Paintings, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and Booooooom.com. Denver Westword named Hahne one of the 100 Colorado Creatives of 2014 and one of the Top 10 Artists to watch in 2015. He is also listed as one of the top 10 contemporary artists under 40 by Wide Walls.

In my work, I use paint and collage to connect the dots between fragments of a story, considering multiple versions of the same moment, event, or time period, and morphing them into a single image. Through torn pieces of paper, layers of paint, and shifts in color, the images are able to drift between different perspectives; blurring the line between memory and reality, truth and lies, and past and present.

Expand with every breath.

How limited are our bodies. bend until it breaks become space Can we take what is given?

Image: A Place To Rest acrylic and pastel on canvas 32 x 32 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

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Image: Seeing oil on paper 11 x 12 inches

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C a l e b

H a h n e

J u l i a

M a i u r i

www.instagram.com/calebhahne

www.juliamaiuri.com

Caleb Hahne graduated from Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2014 and currently lives and works in Colorado. He is currently an artist in residence at Redline in Denver. His work has been included in multiple solo and group exhibitions in Denver, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Montreal, Berlin, and the United Kingdom and most recently at Museum of Contemporary Art Denver as well as the New Museum NY in collaboration with Adidas. Hahne has been featured in New American Paintings, Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and Booooooom.com. Denver Westword named Hahne one of the 100 Colorado Creatives of 2014 and one of the Top 10 Artists to watch in 2015. He is also listed as one of the top 10 contemporary artists under 40 by Wide Walls.

In my work, I use paint and collage to connect the dots between fragments of a story, considering multiple versions of the same moment, event, or time period, and morphing them into a single image. Through torn pieces of paper, layers of paint, and shifts in color, the images are able to drift between different perspectives; blurring the line between memory and reality, truth and lies, and past and present.

Expand with every breath.

How limited are our bodies. bend until it breaks become space Can we take what is given?

Image: A Place To Rest acrylic and pastel on canvas 32 x 32 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

74

Image: Seeing oil on paper 11 x 12 inches

75

A s h l e y

G a r r e t t

www.ashleygarrett.com

Ashley Garrett (b. 1984, Dover, NJ) is an artist living and working in New York City and East Chatham, New York. Her work draws upon her experience growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania raising animals and transforms the essence of being through abstract and figurative forms. Tracking a shifting psychological presence in the landscape, personal attachment and letting go of objects and animals, her paintings approach an understanding of human experience through the interaction with land and animals: their cultivation, development, and eventual (inevitable) loss. At times the subjects and figures in her paintings remain intact or preserved, and in others there is a foundation of objects or images while spaces fracture, spin out, and open up.

There is no exit from the ever-present landscape where we humans are located in space and time.

Garrett’s paintings are grounded in a close observation of land and all that lives and grows in it, real, remembered, imagined, and intuited. Dense organic forms emerge and become body while body becomes land revealing articulated moments of detail: organic matter small and hidden, large and imposing, unknowable yet intimate. Capturing organisms and space in simultaneous expressions of the phases of life cycles, Garrett’s work questions the boundaries between what is “inside” and what is “outside” the self and the power of human feeling.

Ashley Garrett earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2008. She has had many exhibitions nationally including New York City, Brooklyn; Los Angeles, CA; Dallas, TX; Saugerties, NY; West Hartford, CT; Great Barrington, MA, and Rhode Island. Her paintings on paper were included in ‘Got It For Cheap 2017’, a traveling exhibition of works on paper making stops in the United States and abroad, including to venues in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta GA, Austin TX, Honolulu HI, Greece, British Columbia, and Copenhagen. Her work has been reviewed in Painting Is Dead, Gorky’s Granddaughter and Arts in Bushwick among others.

Image: No Exit oil on canvas 48 x 49 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

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Image: Sossusvlei oil on canvas 50 x 54 inches

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A s h l e y

G a r r e t t

www.ashleygarrett.com

Ashley Garrett (b. 1984, Dover, NJ) is an artist living and working in New York City and East Chatham, New York. Her work draws upon her experience growing up on a farm in Pennsylvania raising animals and transforms the essence of being through abstract and figurative forms. Tracking a shifting psychological presence in the landscape, personal attachment and letting go of objects and animals, her paintings approach an understanding of human experience through the interaction with land and animals: their cultivation, development, and eventual (inevitable) loss. At times the subjects and figures in her paintings remain intact or preserved, and in others there is a foundation of objects or images while spaces fracture, spin out, and open up.

There is no exit from the ever-present landscape where we humans are located in space and time.

Garrett’s paintings are grounded in a close observation of land and all that lives and grows in it, real, remembered, imagined, and intuited. Dense organic forms emerge and become body while body becomes land revealing articulated moments of detail: organic matter small and hidden, large and imposing, unknowable yet intimate. Capturing organisms and space in simultaneous expressions of the phases of life cycles, Garrett’s work questions the boundaries between what is “inside” and what is “outside” the self and the power of human feeling.

Ashley Garrett earned her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2008. She has had many exhibitions nationally including New York City, Brooklyn; Los Angeles, CA; Dallas, TX; Saugerties, NY; West Hartford, CT; Great Barrington, MA, and Rhode Island. Her paintings on paper were included in ‘Got It For Cheap 2017’, a traveling exhibition of works on paper making stops in the United States and abroad, including to venues in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, Atlanta GA, Austin TX, Honolulu HI, Greece, British Columbia, and Copenhagen. Her work has been reviewed in Painting Is Dead, Gorky’s Granddaughter and Arts in Bushwick among others.

Image: No Exit oil on canvas 48 x 49 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

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Image: Sossusvlei oil on canvas 50 x 54 inches

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L e n a G u s t a f s o n

Lena is a visual artist based in Oakland, CA. After graduating from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in 2011, she cofounded Night Diver Press with her partner Peter Calderwood.

Together they use silkscreen and other alternative printing techniques to create and publish multiples in the form of prints, books, zines, and monotypes. Lena’s recent paintings are technically informed by her background in preparing images for screen-prints. She has shown her paintings in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami FL, New York, as well as in Mexico City and Canada.

Lena’s recent work uses bright colors and large female figures at the center of each image. She uses repeated visual symbolism such as flags, water, plant life, color, and repeated gestures to communicate different stories within the body. Oftentimes the line that separates the figure from her environment are blurred.

www.lenagustafson.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Soliloquy acrylic on paper 24 x 30 inches

Cliff Hangers acrylic on paper 27 x 36 inches

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79

L e n a G u s t a f s o n

Lena is a visual artist based in Oakland, CA. After graduating from the Art Institute of Boston at Lesley University in 2011, she cofounded Night Diver Press with her partner Peter Calderwood.

Together they use silkscreen and other alternative printing techniques to create and publish multiples in the form of prints, books, zines, and monotypes. Lena’s recent paintings are technically informed by her background in preparing images for screen-prints. She has shown her paintings in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Miami FL, New York, as well as in Mexico City and Canada.

Lena’s recent work uses bright colors and large female figures at the center of each image. She uses repeated visual symbolism such as flags, water, plant life, color, and repeated gestures to communicate different stories within the body. Oftentimes the line that separates the figure from her environment are blurred.

www.lenagustafson.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Soliloquy acrylic on paper 24 x 30 inches

Cliff Hangers acrylic on paper 27 x 36 inches

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D a n

F i g

www.danfig.net

Dan Fig is a recent graduate of the Hunter College MFA program. His paintings are amalgamations of cultural influences ranging from explicit art historical references, graphic design and advertising language, soccer matches, and more. These elements, in concert with one another and in their invented spaces, create a familiarity with a tendency toward the absurd.

The narcissist sits with the the half wits and parses it- the calamity, The insanity, the pits, the zits and the “why try?”

The idiot flies by sipping mai tais and worries not—“I mean- why cry?”

The pith of it, the whipping bit, consistent crit, the unaware participant: The nincompoop, with naught to lose and flipping through the flippant blues Who chose to choose wifi over the winsome group at jai alai Got out at Kingston and Throop in Bed Stuy, Abstruse and obtuse, the pessimist laughed to the pragmatist: “Whose crag is this and where are we now? Can we return and do you know how?”

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Okey Dokey, Hokey Pokey (11:11 or 3:32) acrylic on canvas diptych, each 60 x 40 inches

The Athlete Naps with Purpose (Oogie Boogie Baby) acrylic on canvas 80 x 98 inches

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81

D a n

F i g

www.danfig.net

Dan Fig is a recent graduate of the Hunter College MFA program. His paintings are amalgamations of cultural influences ranging from explicit art historical references, graphic design and advertising language, soccer matches, and more. These elements, in concert with one another and in their invented spaces, create a familiarity with a tendency toward the absurd.

The narcissist sits with the the half wits and parses it- the calamity, The insanity, the pits, the zits and the “why try?”

The idiot flies by sipping mai tais and worries not—“I mean- why cry?”

The pith of it, the whipping bit, consistent crit, the unaware participant: The nincompoop, with naught to lose and flipping through the flippant blues Who chose to choose wifi over the winsome group at jai alai Got out at Kingston and Throop in Bed Stuy, Abstruse and obtuse, the pessimist laughed to the pragmatist: “Whose crag is this and where are we now? Can we return and do you know how?”

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Okey Dokey, Hokey Pokey (11:11 or 3:32) acrylic on canvas diptych, each 60 x 40 inches

The Athlete Naps with Purpose (Oogie Boogie Baby) acrylic on canvas 80 x 98 inches

80

81

E m i l y S t u a r t

S n o d d y

M a r i e

M i l l e r

www.stuartsnoddy.com

www.emilymariemiller.com

I paint the fantasy of me. This is my story replete with the screw-ups, the pleasures, and the pleasant fictions. I paint fake portraits and fake views that surface from a nostalgia for something that I can’t quite remember. Some of these fantasies are illuminated by the refulgence of past encounters like the glowing filament in a freshly turned off light bulb. Others are ideas of people whom I haven’t met yet. And some come from...who knows, or wherever? I like the idea of disrupting my narrative by revisiting it. Revising it. There is a slightly uneasy place that exists just past the horizon of a pleasant memory. It’s the place where fantasy starts to erode into something more sinister. That’s where my paintings exist.

Emily Marie Miller (b. 1991 St Petersburg, FL) is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. Miller received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Florida in Gainesville in 2013. She recently was in the group exhibition SEED, curated by Yvonne Force, at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City.

I paint the naked female body confined within physical and psychological spaces. The shapes that the bodies put themselves into are gestural movements that act out surrender, confusion, healing, and rage. Writhing together, the figures have palpable movement and presence. To challenge the comfort of the bodies within the space, I impose new figures and gestures on top of the original compositions. These new figures act as obstructions that I must reconcile in some way.

Painting is the path to something deeper within myself. The process of making the work is a spiritual dance with my unconscious. Through the manipulation of flesh in oils, I exorcise the past.

The resulting figures are immortalized on canvas in a painted limbo.

Image: Lace Caller oil on panel 12 x 9 inches

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Image: Smoking the Filter oil on canvas 32 x 24 inches

83

E m i l y S t u a r t

S n o d d y

M a r i e

M i l l e r

www.stuartsnoddy.com

www.emilymariemiller.com

I paint the fantasy of me. This is my story replete with the screw-ups, the pleasures, and the pleasant fictions. I paint fake portraits and fake views that surface from a nostalgia for something that I can’t quite remember. Some of these fantasies are illuminated by the refulgence of past encounters like the glowing filament in a freshly turned off light bulb. Others are ideas of people whom I haven’t met yet. And some come from...who knows, or wherever? I like the idea of disrupting my narrative by revisiting it. Revising it. There is a slightly uneasy place that exists just past the horizon of a pleasant memory. It’s the place where fantasy starts to erode into something more sinister. That’s where my paintings exist.

Emily Marie Miller (b. 1991 St Petersburg, FL) is a painter based in Brooklyn, NY. Miller received her BFA in Sculpture from the University of Florida in Gainesville in 2013. She recently was in the group exhibition SEED, curated by Yvonne Force, at Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York City.

I paint the naked female body confined within physical and psychological spaces. The shapes that the bodies put themselves into are gestural movements that act out surrender, confusion, healing, and rage. Writhing together, the figures have palpable movement and presence. To challenge the comfort of the bodies within the space, I impose new figures and gestures on top of the original compositions. These new figures act as obstructions that I must reconcile in some way.

Painting is the path to something deeper within myself. The process of making the work is a spiritual dance with my unconscious. Through the manipulation of flesh in oils, I exorcise the past.

The resulting figures are immortalized on canvas in a painted limbo.

Image: Lace Caller oil on panel 12 x 9 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

82

Image: Smoking the Filter oil on canvas 32 x 24 inches

83

S a r a h B e d f o r d

www.sarahbedford.com

I see personal curiosity in the natural world as the defining principle in my artistic practice. These recent monoprints were inspired by the polluted environment surrounding Greenpoint, Brooklyn where I live and the oppressive reality of global warming, that I seem to have very little control over. My hope is that these works convey a sense of wonder and awareness for our fragile ecosystems— before they truly disappear.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Living and Breathing monoprint on paper 12 x 9 inches

Sunrays monoprint on paper 14 x 11 inches

84

85

S a r a h B e d f o r d

www.sarahbedford.com

I see personal curiosity in the natural world as the defining principle in my artistic practice. These recent monoprints were inspired by the polluted environment surrounding Greenpoint, Brooklyn where I live and the oppressive reality of global warming, that I seem to have very little control over. My hope is that these works convey a sense of wonder and awareness for our fragile ecosystems— before they truly disappear.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Living and Breathing monoprint on paper 12 x 9 inches

Sunrays monoprint on paper 14 x 11 inches

84

85

R y a n

S u n y o u n g

C r u d g i n g t o n

H w a n g

www.ryancrudgington.com

I work in layers, which I use as a way to either specify or obfuscate the individual objects in my work. Many of the objects I like to represent in my work are quite ordinary. Commonly among them are a dog, a bone, a window, an archway, a smiley face, and the occasional cartoon effigy. I can’t speak much of the collective significance of these things, only that I find particular enjoyment in drawing or painting each that they stuck around as symbols after some time. I find symbols particularly attractive as subjects because they characterize the stuff of life; objects and actions and relationships. In the broadest sense, the work I make is an attempt to arrange the stuff of my life in a meaningful way.

Ryan Crudgington received a BFA in Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Image: In the Ring acrylic on canvas 11 x 14 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

86

www.sunyounghwang.co.uk

Sunyoung Hwang (b. 1988, South Korea) received her BFA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London (2012) and completed an MA in Painting at Royal College of Art, London (2016). She was selected as a finalist for Young Contemporary Talent 2018, the recipient of the Chadwell Award 2016, the third prize winner of the Bath Open Art Prize 2016, and one of the “Six Talents to Watch from RCA’s 2016 Graduate Show” featured by New York based magazine, Sight Unseen. Hwang has had solo exhibitions at Nunnery Gallery, London (2018) and galerieERD, Seoul (2017). Selected group exhibitions include The Cello Factory, London (2018); Centre Artasia Paris (2016); and SÍM Gallery, Reykjavík (2016). Hwang has participated in a residency at Bow Arts, London (2016-17) as part of winning the Chadwell Award, and in SÍM Residency, Reykjavík (2015).

Full of ambiguity and uncertainty, Hwang’s paintings are not intended to be read as recognisable, figurative elements as they do not directly depict anything. Instead, they can be described as a physical manifestation of the unconscious, incoherent flow of metaphorically internalised thoughts, emotions, memories, impressions, and as an attempt to uncover their invisible accumulation that is implicit in, or exists beneath or between layers of what is perceptible.

Exploring physical and psychological layering with an intuitive approach to painting, Hwang overlaps multitudinous layers of different times and spaces, tempos and rhythms, gestures and functions, temperatures and emotions without preliminary sketches, drawings, or photographic references. As the entire process of painting happens only on the canvas, each painting has its own sense of the passage of time, and there comes a time when it seems to reach the end spontaneously. This is when seeing the invisible, touching the impalpable, or hearing silence are made possible through the tangibility of paint on canvas.

Image: Dreams Turn Us Inside Out acrylic and oil on canvas 153 x 133 cm

87

R y a n

S u n y o u n g

C r u d g i n g t o n

H w a n g

www.ryancrudgington.com

I work in layers, which I use as a way to either specify or obfuscate the individual objects in my work. Many of the objects I like to represent in my work are quite ordinary. Commonly among them are a dog, a bone, a window, an archway, a smiley face, and the occasional cartoon effigy. I can’t speak much of the collective significance of these things, only that I find particular enjoyment in drawing or painting each that they stuck around as symbols after some time. I find symbols particularly attractive as subjects because they characterize the stuff of life; objects and actions and relationships. In the broadest sense, the work I make is an attempt to arrange the stuff of my life in a meaningful way.

Ryan Crudgington received a BFA in Printmaking from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She lives and works in Los Angeles, California.

Image: In the Ring acrylic on canvas 11 x 14 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

86

www.sunyounghwang.co.uk

Sunyoung Hwang (b. 1988, South Korea) received her BFA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, London (2012) and completed an MA in Painting at Royal College of Art, London (2016). She was selected as a finalist for Young Contemporary Talent 2018, the recipient of the Chadwell Award 2016, the third prize winner of the Bath Open Art Prize 2016, and one of the “Six Talents to Watch from RCA’s 2016 Graduate Show” featured by New York based magazine, Sight Unseen. Hwang has had solo exhibitions at Nunnery Gallery, London (2018) and galerieERD, Seoul (2017). Selected group exhibitions include The Cello Factory, London (2018); Centre Artasia Paris (2016); and SÍM Gallery, Reykjavík (2016). Hwang has participated in a residency at Bow Arts, London (2016-17) as part of winning the Chadwell Award, and in SÍM Residency, Reykjavík (2015).

Full of ambiguity and uncertainty, Hwang’s paintings are not intended to be read as recognisable, figurative elements as they do not directly depict anything. Instead, they can be described as a physical manifestation of the unconscious, incoherent flow of metaphorically internalised thoughts, emotions, memories, impressions, and as an attempt to uncover their invisible accumulation that is implicit in, or exists beneath or between layers of what is perceptible.

Exploring physical and psychological layering with an intuitive approach to painting, Hwang overlaps multitudinous layers of different times and spaces, tempos and rhythms, gestures and functions, temperatures and emotions without preliminary sketches, drawings, or photographic references. As the entire process of painting happens only on the canvas, each painting has its own sense of the passage of time, and there comes a time when it seems to reach the end spontaneously. This is when seeing the invisible, touching the impalpable, or hearing silence are made possible through the tangibility of paint on canvas.

Image: Dreams Turn Us Inside Out acrylic and oil on canvas 153 x 133 cm

87

A m a n d a

B a l d w i n

Amanda Baldwin (b. 1984, Seattle, WA) lives and works in Queens, NY. She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a BFA from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Baldwin recently had a solo exhibition at 106 Green (Brooklyn, NY) and has appeared in numerous group shows including recent shows at Underdonk Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Essex Flowers Gallery (New York, NY), Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, NY), and Brennan & Griffin (New York, NY).

The invested attention given to still life painting by artists over the centuries and its constant evolution is something I am interested in exploring within my own work. Objects take on new meanings and symbolize different things to us as we change and evolve as people. Varied degrees of representation and rendering allow me to focus and highlight specific ideas projected onto everyday objects and vessels. Mundane items like fruit and plants can begin to take on anthropomorphic qualities as I enhance and blow up certain forms and colors. Texture, pattern, and layers of depth allow walls, tables, and windows to play within a skewed yet familiar environment. Using irregular and incongruous painting decisions I am attempting to bring new considerations to the idea of the still life and its potential as a construct in painting.

www.amandacbaldwin.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Blue Bricks oil and acrylic on canvas 22 x 28 inches

Zeal, Zest, Zing #3 oil on canvas 33 x 42 inches

88

89

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

A m a n d a

B a l d w i n

Amanda Baldwin (b. 1984, Seattle, WA) lives and works in Queens, NY. She received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a BFA from the University of Washington, Seattle, WA. Baldwin recently had a solo exhibition at 106 Green (Brooklyn, NY) and has appeared in numerous group shows including recent shows at Underdonk Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), Essex Flowers Gallery (New York, NY), Thierry Goldberg Gallery (New York, NY), and Brennan & Griffin (New York, NY).

The invested attention given to still life painting by artists over the centuries and its constant evolution is something I am interested in exploring within my own work. Objects take on new meanings and symbolize different things to us as we change and evolve as people. Varied degrees of representation and rendering allow me to focus and highlight specific ideas projected onto everyday objects and vessels. Mundane items like fruit and plants can begin to take on anthropomorphic qualities as I enhance and blow up certain forms and colors. Texture, pattern, and layers of depth allow walls, tables, and windows to play within a skewed yet familiar environment. Using irregular and incongruous painting decisions I am attempting to bring new considerations to the idea of the still life and its potential as a construct in painting.

www.amandacbaldwin.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Blue Bricks oil and acrylic on canvas 22 x 28 inches

Zeal, Zest, Zing #3 oil on canvas 33 x 42 inches

88

89

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

M a f i a

Ta b a k

Mafia Tabak (b. 1990 Austria). Acadamy of Fine Arts (abstract painting class) 2010-2016. Lives and works right now in Vienna.

By painting graffiti since 2006, Mafia Tabak creates his very own visual language and it formed his artistic identity. Although his roots came from that, he separates nowadays graffiti totally from any kind of art stuff. All his studio work (canvases, installations, drawings, prints) are another way of expressing himself, which is of course all influenced by his graffiti background.

His work reflects his ironic driven humor and the fact the he does not want to take painting as something too serious. The use of his materials, motives, references and even how Mafia Tabak shapes forms and chooses colors are related to clichés but reinterpreted in new contexts. Although all the forms, figurative or abstract, are portrayed expressively and vividly, Tabak organizes them into intelligible structures. He paints the figures as less fierce than other artists, but they are characterized with the exact same tenderness and naivety. Mafia Tabak works as a well-educated admirer of child drawing, who decided to reject all the possible academic approach towards it. Despite the fact that we can easily recognize that Tabak is inspired by surrealism, we should not presume that he lets the avant-garde masters influence him excessively. His collage-like canvases, short crayon strokes and “badly” coloured colouring pictures show that he purely and simply did not forget the joy of unschooled creation.

When assembling the layers of everyday and/or exceptional things and situations, Mafia Tabak always generously leaves room for the viewer’s own layers, encouraging them to participate. The beholder should feel awkward, confused and surprised at the same time. Tabak describes his painting style as “Naive art” or “Primitivism” mixed up with referential motives and Installation elements and brought together as actual or painted collages on paper or canvases. The topics should mirror his sense of humor and give insights of his daily lifestyle as a full time artist.

www.mafiatabak.net

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

King Canazzo acrylic, oil crayons and objects on canvas 300 x 200 cm

You and my blackout acrylic, oil crayons, felt tips and textile on canvas 110 x 160 cm

90

91

M a f i a

Ta b a k

Mafia Tabak (b. 1990 Austria). Acadamy of Fine Arts (abstract painting class) 2010-2016. Lives and works right now in Vienna.

By painting graffiti since 2006, Mafia Tabak creates his very own visual language and it formed his artistic identity. Although his roots came from that, he separates nowadays graffiti totally from any kind of art stuff. All his studio work (canvases, installations, drawings, prints) are another way of expressing himself, which is of course all influenced by his graffiti background.

His work reflects his ironic driven humor and the fact the he does not want to take painting as something too serious. The use of his materials, motives, references and even how Mafia Tabak shapes forms and chooses colors are related to clichés but reinterpreted in new contexts. Although all the forms, figurative or abstract, are portrayed expressively and vividly, Tabak organizes them into intelligible structures. He paints the figures as less fierce than other artists, but they are characterized with the exact same tenderness and naivety. Mafia Tabak works as a well-educated admirer of child drawing, who decided to reject all the possible academic approach towards it. Despite the fact that we can easily recognize that Tabak is inspired by surrealism, we should not presume that he lets the avant-garde masters influence him excessively. His collage-like canvases, short crayon strokes and “badly” coloured colouring pictures show that he purely and simply did not forget the joy of unschooled creation.

When assembling the layers of everyday and/or exceptional things and situations, Mafia Tabak always generously leaves room for the viewer’s own layers, encouraging them to participate. The beholder should feel awkward, confused and surprised at the same time. Tabak describes his painting style as “Naive art” or “Primitivism” mixed up with referential motives and Installation elements and brought together as actual or painted collages on paper or canvases. The topics should mirror his sense of humor and give insights of his daily lifestyle as a full time artist.

www.mafiatabak.net

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

King Canazzo acrylic, oil crayons and objects on canvas 300 x 200 cm

You and my blackout acrylic, oil crayons, felt tips and textile on canvas 110 x 160 cm

90

91

J e s s i c a

S i m o r t e

Jessica Simorte completed her MFA with an emphasis in painting at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning in 2014. She is currently living in Texas where she teaches within Sam Houston State University’s WASH program. She has shown regionally, nationally and internationally and has been included in numerous publications including Looking At Painting and Maake Magazine. In the last year, she has held a solo exhibition in Houston, been in many national exhibitions, had works purchased for an international public collection, and co-curated exhibitions.

Simorte’s practice serves as an ongoing examination of how art making can function as a mode of place making. Having experienced hypersensitive connections to her inhabited surroundings her entire life, the work ultimately focuses on drawing and painting as a means of navigating physical and intangible places.

www.jessicasimorte.com

This work is an ongoing examination of how art making can serve as a mode of place making. My interests are primarily based in topophilia, and this bond between people and places powers my studio practice. Through painting I am able to create environments that interest me in a manner that is suggestive but not specific—they are parts of inside spaces, but beyond that they are ambiguous. These places I am painting are satisfying in ways my daily environment is not.

Abstraction is the framework in which I investigate ideas of place dependence in contemporary human experience. I intend for the work to have a transparency regarding its prioritization of formal investigation and process. I strive for the outcome to be indicative of an environment that is intangible and peculiar. The works maintain a belief in abstraction’s ability to function both on a self-referential level and exist as cultural objects that are discursively relevant, socially engaged, and mindful of a viewer’s emotional and intellectual experiences.

Making work with a strong sense of urgency and intuition allows for a sort of call-and- response for unexpected outcomes, resulting in paintings and drawings that feel both highly considered, and largely instinctual. These works are produced with an introverted inclination and modest scale; I have adopted a sincere approach to contemporary abstract painting. By looking at interiors through the filter of materials and physicality, the work ultimately focuses on drawing and painting as a means of navigating physical and intangible places.

Image (left): Image: Hold acrylic and graphite on canvas 8 x 6 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

92

Image (right):

Tug acrylic and graphite on canvas 8 x 6 inches

High acrylic and graphite on canvas 8 x 6 inches

93

J e s s i c a

S i m o r t e

Jessica Simorte completed her MFA with an emphasis in painting at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning in 2014. She is currently living in Texas where she teaches within Sam Houston State University’s WASH program. She has shown regionally, nationally and internationally and has been included in numerous publications including Looking At Painting and Maake Magazine. In the last year, she has held a solo exhibition in Houston, been in many national exhibitions, had works purchased for an international public collection, and co-curated exhibitions.

Simorte’s practice serves as an ongoing examination of how art making can function as a mode of place making. Having experienced hypersensitive connections to her inhabited surroundings her entire life, the work ultimately focuses on drawing and painting as a means of navigating physical and intangible places.

www.jessicasimorte.com

This work is an ongoing examination of how art making can serve as a mode of place making. My interests are primarily based in topophilia, and this bond between people and places powers my studio practice. Through painting I am able to create environments that interest me in a manner that is suggestive but not specific—they are parts of inside spaces, but beyond that they are ambiguous. These places I am painting are satisfying in ways my daily environment is not.

Abstraction is the framework in which I investigate ideas of place dependence in contemporary human experience. I intend for the work to have a transparency regarding its prioritization of formal investigation and process. I strive for the outcome to be indicative of an environment that is intangible and peculiar. The works maintain a belief in abstraction’s ability to function both on a self-referential level and exist as cultural objects that are discursively relevant, socially engaged, and mindful of a viewer’s emotional and intellectual experiences.

Making work with a strong sense of urgency and intuition allows for a sort of call-and- response for unexpected outcomes, resulting in paintings and drawings that feel both highly considered, and largely instinctual. These works are produced with an introverted inclination and modest scale; I have adopted a sincere approach to contemporary abstract painting. By looking at interiors through the filter of materials and physicality, the work ultimately focuses on drawing and painting as a means of navigating physical and intangible places.

Image (left): Image: Hold acrylic and graphite on canvas 8 x 6 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

92

Image (right):

Tug acrylic and graphite on canvas 8 x 6 inches

High acrylic and graphite on canvas 8 x 6 inches

93

O l i

E p p

www.oliepp.com

My paintings are informed by my everyday experiences and observations. They are autobiographical; sometimes confessional, sometimes irreverent and frequently handled with a humorous sense of pathos. I focus on situations that either involve me, or others that I have witnessed, in public and private moments that pass by as unremarkable, at a glance. But documenting these unreported tragedies in paint is, for me, an act of discovery.

I want my imagery to feel familiar to as many people as possible; to draw out the ridiculous comedy of certain shared rituals and behaviours. I begin by recording things I see (or recall) in simple line drawing to economise on the essence of the situation. I have created simplified humanoid characters, which lend a sort of parody of the real world in the way that cartoons do. These avatars have oversized heads and are hermetically sealed by an absence of facial features, which is an exaggerated reflection on human interaction in the post digital age – these figures appear idiotically isolated, but adorned with earpieces, branded items of clothing and objects that are important to consumption and communication. I use the visual language of branding and interplay between graphic and painterly surfaces to create optical confusion, echoing the way that our real and digital lives are merged.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Fat Belly oil acrylic and spray paint on canvas 110 x 110 cm

You Spin Me Right Round oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas 150 x 180 cm

94

95

O l i

E p p

www.oliepp.com

My paintings are informed by my everyday experiences and observations. They are autobiographical; sometimes confessional, sometimes irreverent and frequently handled with a humorous sense of pathos. I focus on situations that either involve me, or others that I have witnessed, in public and private moments that pass by as unremarkable, at a glance. But documenting these unreported tragedies in paint is, for me, an act of discovery.

I want my imagery to feel familiar to as many people as possible; to draw out the ridiculous comedy of certain shared rituals and behaviours. I begin by recording things I see (or recall) in simple line drawing to economise on the essence of the situation. I have created simplified humanoid characters, which lend a sort of parody of the real world in the way that cartoons do. These avatars have oversized heads and are hermetically sealed by an absence of facial features, which is an exaggerated reflection on human interaction in the post digital age – these figures appear idiotically isolated, but adorned with earpieces, branded items of clothing and objects that are important to consumption and communication. I use the visual language of branding and interplay between graphic and painterly surfaces to create optical confusion, echoing the way that our real and digital lives are merged.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Fat Belly oil acrylic and spray paint on canvas 110 x 110 cm

You Spin Me Right Round oil, acrylic and spray paint on canvas 150 x 180 cm

94

95

G e o r g e

L i t t l e

www.georgelittle.co.uk

Something steaming arrives at a table, a silencing of conversation and petty mutterings.

Collectively leaning forward, elbows raised, someone lifts a tablecloth, reaching down for a phone. The social setting of eateries, their etiquettes and formalities seem to inform and be played out in the studio, and in the paintings. The crustacean-esque shapes that present in many of his works raise questions around standing and follow a form of internal division and abstraction, splayed over varying sections of white, Damask linen and its stains. Surfaces, window panes and awnings among other recognizable forms shift within a personal gastronomical lexicon of visual languages to create collage like compositions. Glimpses of what could potentially be verdant plate dressing, pure decorativeness- ness or the fading light of the terrazzo, all vista glimmer in faded European exoticized Modernism. The structural compositions often informed from historic menu design, frontage and signage. Works find fictional/tangential narratives that examine and follow their intertwined narrative. A new body of work looks at the archetypal figurehead of the lobster, its hierarchy and cultural relevance, through shifts from loose abstraction and recognizable figuration.

George Little is an Anglo Danish artist living and working in London. Having studied painting at Royal College of Art, he has shown internationally in both solo and group shows as well as at art fairs in Europe and the US. Little was selected as an Art Review Future Great in 2013 and a Bloomberg New contemporary in 2012. His most recent solo show was Split Bisque, Deweer Gallery, Belgium, November 2017. Group shows have included: Peace, Love and Happiness, Kris Day 2017; New Order II, Saatchi Gallery, UK 2014; Classification Bouillabaisse, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York, 2013 and Tutti Frutti, Turps Banana Gallery, UK, 2015.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

4 Bar oil, acrylic and mixed medium on linen 50 x 40 cm

The Blues, The Swimmerets oil, acrylic and watercolour on linen 150 x 120 cm

96

97

G e o r g e

L i t t l e

www.georgelittle.co.uk

Something steaming arrives at a table, a silencing of conversation and petty mutterings.

Collectively leaning forward, elbows raised, someone lifts a tablecloth, reaching down for a phone. The social setting of eateries, their etiquettes and formalities seem to inform and be played out in the studio, and in the paintings. The crustacean-esque shapes that present in many of his works raise questions around standing and follow a form of internal division and abstraction, splayed over varying sections of white, Damask linen and its stains. Surfaces, window panes and awnings among other recognizable forms shift within a personal gastronomical lexicon of visual languages to create collage like compositions. Glimpses of what could potentially be verdant plate dressing, pure decorativeness- ness or the fading light of the terrazzo, all vista glimmer in faded European exoticized Modernism. The structural compositions often informed from historic menu design, frontage and signage. Works find fictional/tangential narratives that examine and follow their intertwined narrative. A new body of work looks at the archetypal figurehead of the lobster, its hierarchy and cultural relevance, through shifts from loose abstraction and recognizable figuration.

George Little is an Anglo Danish artist living and working in London. Having studied painting at Royal College of Art, he has shown internationally in both solo and group shows as well as at art fairs in Europe and the US. Little was selected as an Art Review Future Great in 2013 and a Bloomberg New contemporary in 2012. His most recent solo show was Split Bisque, Deweer Gallery, Belgium, November 2017. Group shows have included: Peace, Love and Happiness, Kris Day 2017; New Order II, Saatchi Gallery, UK 2014; Classification Bouillabaisse, Ana Cristea Gallery, New York, 2013 and Tutti Frutti, Turps Banana Gallery, UK, 2015.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

4 Bar oil, acrylic and mixed medium on linen 50 x 40 cm

The Blues, The Swimmerets oil, acrylic and watercolour on linen 150 x 120 cm

96

97

P e t e S c h u l t e

Pete Schulte (b. 1970, Rock Island, Illinois) received an MFA in painting and drawing from The University of Iowa in 2008. He has presented solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson New York; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Luise Ross Gallery, New York City; The Woskob Family Gallery at Penn State University; and The Visual Arts Gallery at The University of Alabama, Birmingham. His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at McKenzie Fine Art, New York City; Hemphill Fine Art, Washington DC; The Spring/Break Art Show, New York City; The Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta; Transmitter, Brooklyn; Look&Listen, Saint-Chamas, France; and at Jeff Bailey Gallery.

Art in America, World Sculpture News, BURNAWAY, and The New Art Examiner have reviewed his work, among other publications. Schulte is the 2017 Southern Art Prize Fellowship Winner for the State of Alabama. Pete Schulte lives in Birmingham, Alabama and is Associate Professor of Art at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In 2013 he co-founded The Fuel And Lumber Company curatorial initiative with artist Amy Pleasant. His work is represented by Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, New York and Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta.

Drawing is the cornerstone of my practice, which includes the integration of sculpture, site-specific wall drawings and installations. The works are rarely predetermined, but arrive through the act of improvising and revising, with one work often begetting the next. Ideas and images, intuited or observed, are explored and re-examined in an effort to probe the boundaries of an inquiry. My interests reside in the manner in which the language of abstraction can be utilized in service of both the meditative experience and as a carrier of meaning. I deliberately craft relatively small, quiet, intimate drawings; works that hinge on nuance and subtlety, the properties of which are nearly impossible to reproduce. I believe this to be a virtue of the work. Without irony, I am attempting to produce a life affirming response to the existential, political, social, and ecological catastrophes that currently confront us.

www.schulteprojects.com

All drawings are made by hand using traditional graphite pencils and drawing tools. On occasion, gouache, ink, and pigment will also be utilized in the construction of the works. No photographic, mechanical, or printmaking processes are employed in their execution.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Jeremiad graphite on off-white paper 15 x 15 inches

Untitled graphite on cream paper 9 x 9 inches

98

99

P e t e S c h u l t e

Pete Schulte (b. 1970, Rock Island, Illinois) received an MFA in painting and drawing from The University of Iowa in 2008. He has presented solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson New York; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Luise Ross Gallery, New York City; The Woskob Family Gallery at Penn State University; and The Visual Arts Gallery at The University of Alabama, Birmingham. His work has been included in recent group exhibitions at McKenzie Fine Art, New York City; Hemphill Fine Art, Washington DC; The Spring/Break Art Show, New York City; The Schick Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Atlanta; Transmitter, Brooklyn; Look&Listen, Saint-Chamas, France; and at Jeff Bailey Gallery.

Art in America, World Sculpture News, BURNAWAY, and The New Art Examiner have reviewed his work, among other publications. Schulte is the 2017 Southern Art Prize Fellowship Winner for the State of Alabama. Pete Schulte lives in Birmingham, Alabama and is Associate Professor of Art at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. In 2013 he co-founded The Fuel And Lumber Company curatorial initiative with artist Amy Pleasant. His work is represented by Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, New York and Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta.

Drawing is the cornerstone of my practice, which includes the integration of sculpture, site-specific wall drawings and installations. The works are rarely predetermined, but arrive through the act of improvising and revising, with one work often begetting the next. Ideas and images, intuited or observed, are explored and re-examined in an effort to probe the boundaries of an inquiry. My interests reside in the manner in which the language of abstraction can be utilized in service of both the meditative experience and as a carrier of meaning. I deliberately craft relatively small, quiet, intimate drawings; works that hinge on nuance and subtlety, the properties of which are nearly impossible to reproduce. I believe this to be a virtue of the work. Without irony, I am attempting to produce a life affirming response to the existential, political, social, and ecological catastrophes that currently confront us.

www.schulteprojects.com

All drawings are made by hand using traditional graphite pencils and drawing tools. On occasion, gouache, ink, and pigment will also be utilized in the construction of the works. No photographic, mechanical, or printmaking processes are employed in their execution.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Jeremiad graphite on off-white paper 15 x 15 inches

Untitled graphite on cream paper 9 x 9 inches

98

99

M e r e l

E l l e n

J o n

M a r s h a l i k

www.merelellen.com

www.jonmarshalik.com

Amsterdam based artist Merel Ellen is best known for her landscapes of the human interior using mixed media on canvas and paper. Sometimes photography (her own and found) is used as part of her work.

Using iconography from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, my work deals with dreaming, plays of perception and fantasy vs reality, looking, physicality, and the physical being disconnected from or at odds with the sensed. I am interested in the evocative qualities of these images without a mask of irony. I see it as a metaphor for being a physical entity moving through a perceptual world. I am also interested in material qualities that evoke memory, setting, and the range from the ephemeral to the solid and stone-like.

She explores human emotions and how they are influenced. She often starts by taking an honest and merciless look at her own emotional development. In her series ‘Family Influences’ themes like Birth, Mother and Family Home are examined. Inspiration comes from psychology (she holds a masters degree in neuropsychology), photography, nature, traveling and spiritual theories and beliefs of different cultures.

Next to this she creates new worlds out of photos taken while traveling. In the ‘On The Road’ series images are used from California, Vietnam and Australia. The works included are about Home, Birth and the monster we carry with us from our youth.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

I hold an MFA from MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting and was a 2014 participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. I live and work in Los Angeles.

Image:

Image:

Blind Dawn acrylic on canvas 110 x 140 cm

Predator vs Rekall 1 synthetic polymers, airbrush, image transfer, and colored sand on polyester 60 x 50 inches

100

101

M e r e l

E l l e n

J o n

M a r s h a l i k

www.merelellen.com

www.jonmarshalik.com

Amsterdam based artist Merel Ellen is best known for her landscapes of the human interior using mixed media on canvas and paper. Sometimes photography (her own and found) is used as part of her work.

Using iconography from Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, my work deals with dreaming, plays of perception and fantasy vs reality, looking, physicality, and the physical being disconnected from or at odds with the sensed. I am interested in the evocative qualities of these images without a mask of irony. I see it as a metaphor for being a physical entity moving through a perceptual world. I am also interested in material qualities that evoke memory, setting, and the range from the ephemeral to the solid and stone-like.

She explores human emotions and how they are influenced. She often starts by taking an honest and merciless look at her own emotional development. In her series ‘Family Influences’ themes like Birth, Mother and Family Home are examined. Inspiration comes from psychology (she holds a masters degree in neuropsychology), photography, nature, traveling and spiritual theories and beliefs of different cultures.

Next to this she creates new worlds out of photos taken while traveling. In the ‘On The Road’ series images are used from California, Vietnam and Australia. The works included are about Home, Birth and the monster we carry with us from our youth.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

I hold an MFA from MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting and was a 2014 participant in the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. I live and work in Los Angeles.

Image:

Image:

Blind Dawn acrylic on canvas 110 x 140 cm

Predator vs Rekall 1 synthetic polymers, airbrush, image transfer, and colored sand on polyester 60 x 50 inches

100

101

E m i l i e

S e l d e n

www.emilieselden.com

Originally from Petoskey, Michigan, Emilie Selden lives and works in New York. Recently her work was selected for the Flat File Program at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn. Selden has completed residencies at Mass MoCA and the Wassaic Project, and was selected by Art Zealous as an emerging artist to start collecting. Her work has been exhibited at Fjord Space, Park Place Gallery, Trestle Gallery, Victori + Mo Gallery, After Dark Projects, and the Hunterdon Art Museum among others. Selden has an MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Fine Arts and English from Amherst College.

My work plays on the mix of anxiety and glamor in American consumer culture. My paintings reflect this landscape of smoke and mirrors, where it’s difficult to distinguish between fact and promoted fiction, real nourishment and a cheap high, treasure and trash.

My recent work proposes a relationship between consuming food and consuming images, and the power structures that surround these acts. I paint canned goods to evoke imagery both of food drives for the very poor, and Pop Art available only to the extremely wealthy. With their vivid colors and cheerful branding, cans celebrate the American way, while at the same time calling up the fears of doomsday preppers, nervously hoarding goods for a life lived off the grid.

My paintings reference pixelation, and describe life on the grid. Formally, I combine an over-bright realism with flat abstraction to capture the co-mingling of virtual and physical spaces we now experience in everyday life.

My paintings situate familiar objects in imagined spaces populated with shadows, reflections, and doubles. I’m interested in the symbolic power of everyday objects. I’m looking at the American iconography of artists like Leslie Hewitt and H.C. Westermann, the dystopias of Roger Brown and Cady Noland, and the object sculptures of Haim Steinbach and Rachel Whiteread.

L e n n a r t

F o p p e

www.lennartfoppe.de

Lennart Foppe was born 1991 in Lingen, and is currently living in Muenster, Germany. His work varies between a wide range of paintings and installations. The aesthetic vocabulary of Foppe, who studied Illustration and Fine Arts at the Muenster School of Design, incorporates large scale installations with everyday objects, making references to seemingly autonomously working apparatuses and biological forms. They are to be seen as an abstract closed system, which is following its own set of regulations. Foppe’s biological based installations and paintings are reminiscent of biospheres, where every period is connected to processual timing; running stages of bacteria processing to cell division; other organisms seeking reproduction as part of a larger cell cycle. At the intersection point of the bustling organic periods his work reveals a closer look at the origin of human existence; a snapshot of biological surfaces and primeval forms supplemented by a set of technical notes and gadgets. A formally reduced representation of the processes allows the viewer to look from a non-scientific point of view. As a consequence the installation “tunicata prokaryote” and “a gathering breaks” tries to evoke a world of biological forms by displaying several scientific moments in a spatial experience. The objects, which are made of synthetics such as foam rubber, polyester or latex are somehow connected to different periods of intercellular activity. On further inspection the objects also seem to have a human technical aspect.

Spontaneously placed little microcosms where the function is somehow abstract and impenetrable to the viewer.

Ultimately, what I hope to capture in my paintings is the discord between the easy banality of everyday life and the uncertainty and injustice that such comforts can belie.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

To idioT acrylic, graphite on panel 12 x 18 inches

tunicata prokaryote acrylic on polystyrene , silicone, pvc, wood , rivets foil, ceramic, expanding foam , spray paint various dimensions

102

103

E m i l i e

S e l d e n

www.emilieselden.com

Originally from Petoskey, Michigan, Emilie Selden lives and works in New York. Recently her work was selected for the Flat File Program at Tiger Strikes Asteroid in Brooklyn. Selden has completed residencies at Mass MoCA and the Wassaic Project, and was selected by Art Zealous as an emerging artist to start collecting. Her work has been exhibited at Fjord Space, Park Place Gallery, Trestle Gallery, Victori + Mo Gallery, After Dark Projects, and the Hunterdon Art Museum among others. Selden has an MFA in drawing and painting from the University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Fine Arts and English from Amherst College.

My work plays on the mix of anxiety and glamor in American consumer culture. My paintings reflect this landscape of smoke and mirrors, where it’s difficult to distinguish between fact and promoted fiction, real nourishment and a cheap high, treasure and trash.

My recent work proposes a relationship between consuming food and consuming images, and the power structures that surround these acts. I paint canned goods to evoke imagery both of food drives for the very poor, and Pop Art available only to the extremely wealthy. With their vivid colors and cheerful branding, cans celebrate the American way, while at the same time calling up the fears of doomsday preppers, nervously hoarding goods for a life lived off the grid.

My paintings reference pixelation, and describe life on the grid. Formally, I combine an over-bright realism with flat abstraction to capture the co-mingling of virtual and physical spaces we now experience in everyday life.

My paintings situate familiar objects in imagined spaces populated with shadows, reflections, and doubles. I’m interested in the symbolic power of everyday objects. I’m looking at the American iconography of artists like Leslie Hewitt and H.C. Westermann, the dystopias of Roger Brown and Cady Noland, and the object sculptures of Haim Steinbach and Rachel Whiteread.

L e n n a r t

F o p p e

www.lennartfoppe.de

Lennart Foppe was born 1991 in Lingen, and is currently living in Muenster, Germany. His work varies between a wide range of paintings and installations. The aesthetic vocabulary of Foppe, who studied Illustration and Fine Arts at the Muenster School of Design, incorporates large scale installations with everyday objects, making references to seemingly autonomously working apparatuses and biological forms. They are to be seen as an abstract closed system, which is following its own set of regulations. Foppe’s biological based installations and paintings are reminiscent of biospheres, where every period is connected to processual timing; running stages of bacteria processing to cell division; other organisms seeking reproduction as part of a larger cell cycle. At the intersection point of the bustling organic periods his work reveals a closer look at the origin of human existence; a snapshot of biological surfaces and primeval forms supplemented by a set of technical notes and gadgets. A formally reduced representation of the processes allows the viewer to look from a non-scientific point of view. As a consequence the installation “tunicata prokaryote” and “a gathering breaks” tries to evoke a world of biological forms by displaying several scientific moments in a spatial experience. The objects, which are made of synthetics such as foam rubber, polyester or latex are somehow connected to different periods of intercellular activity. On further inspection the objects also seem to have a human technical aspect.

Spontaneously placed little microcosms where the function is somehow abstract and impenetrable to the viewer.

Ultimately, what I hope to capture in my paintings is the discord between the easy banality of everyday life and the uncertainty and injustice that such comforts can belie.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

To idioT acrylic, graphite on panel 12 x 18 inches

tunicata prokaryote acrylic on polystyrene , silicone, pvc, wood , rivets foil, ceramic, expanding foam , spray paint various dimensions

102

103

E l i s a

S o l i v e n

www.elisasoliven.net

Elisa Soliven, born in New York City, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from Hunter College and a BA from Bryn Mawr College.

Her work has been reviewed by Two Coats of Paint, artcritical, and Hyperallergic. She has shown at Nudashank, Baltimore; Daily Operation at Bull & Ram, NYC; Sardine, Brooklyn; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago; LABspace, Hillsdale, NY; The Re Institute, Millerton, NY; Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Arts & Leisure, NYC; among others. She is also a co-founder of the Bushwick based artist collective, Underdonk.

I am drawn to clay for the immediacy with which it conveys the working process, and for the way in which it captures a sense of the talismanic in the ordinary. The sculptures serve as a record of my inquiry to capture the essence of my subjects both figurative and abstract, as well as to preserve a frozen history of gestural mark-making. I symbolically transfigure the subject through an archaeological accumulation of modeled layers of clay and embedded ceramic. Working with constructed forms in clay and found materials, I rework the familiarity of the everyday object of the vessel into idiosyncratic inventions.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Grid Head With Neck glazed ceramic and aluminum leaf 15 x 15 x 3 inches

Grid Vessel With Neck glazed ceramic and aluminum leaf 15 x 15 x 3 inches

104

105

E l i s a

S o l i v e n

www.elisasoliven.net

Elisa Soliven, born in New York City, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. She received an MFA from Hunter College and a BA from Bryn Mawr College.

Her work has been reviewed by Two Coats of Paint, artcritical, and Hyperallergic. She has shown at Nudashank, Baltimore; Daily Operation at Bull & Ram, NYC; Sardine, Brooklyn; Andrew Rafacz, Chicago; LABspace, Hillsdale, NY; The Re Institute, Millerton, NY; Deanna Evans Projects, Brooklyn, NY; Arts & Leisure, NYC; among others. She is also a co-founder of the Bushwick based artist collective, Underdonk.

I am drawn to clay for the immediacy with which it conveys the working process, and for the way in which it captures a sense of the talismanic in the ordinary. The sculptures serve as a record of my inquiry to capture the essence of my subjects both figurative and abstract, as well as to preserve a frozen history of gestural mark-making. I symbolically transfigure the subject through an archaeological accumulation of modeled layers of clay and embedded ceramic. Working with constructed forms in clay and found materials, I rework the familiarity of the everyday object of the vessel into idiosyncratic inventions.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Grid Head With Neck glazed ceramic and aluminum leaf 15 x 15 x 3 inches

Grid Vessel With Neck glazed ceramic and aluminum leaf 15 x 15 x 3 inches

104

105

A m y

P l e a s a n t

www.amypleasant.com

My work includes painting, drawing, and ceramic sculpture, all exploring the body and language through repetition. Adopting the structure of a diagram or list, I explore the fragmented figure as sign or symbol.

With a limited palette and an economy of line, I draw images like writing a letter, documenting essential, universal motions and human behaviors.

Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1999). She was recently awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2018). Other awards include the South Arts Prize for the State of Alabama (2018), Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award (2015), Mary Hambidge Distinguished Artist Award (2015), Cultural Alliance of Birmingham Individual Artist Fellowship (2008), and Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship (2003).

She has held solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, (Hudson/NYC); whitespace gallery (Atlanta, GA); Augusta University (Columbus, GA); Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (IN); Birmingham Museum of Art (AL); Atlanta Contemporary (GA); Auburn University’s School of Liberal Arts (AL); Rhodes College (Memphis, TN); Candyland (Stockholm, Sweden), and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (AL).

Group shows include the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (AL); Adams and Ollman (OR); Cuevas Tilleard Projects (NY); Zuckerman Museum of Art (GA); Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art (GA); Knoxville Museum of Art (TN); Weatherspoon Art Museum (NC); Hunter Museum of American Art (TN); Columbus Museum of Art (GA); National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC); Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (NC); the Mobile Museum of Art (AL), and the US Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic.

Her work has been reviewed in publications such as World Sculpture News, Sculpture, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, artforum.com, Art Papers, Bad at Sports and BURNAWAY. Pleasant also co-founded the curatorial initiative The Fuel And Lumber Company with artist Pete Schulte in 2013.

Image: Image: Untitled (Torso) oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

106

Arms oil on canvas 72 x 62 inches

107

A m y

P l e a s a n t

www.amypleasant.com

My work includes painting, drawing, and ceramic sculpture, all exploring the body and language through repetition. Adopting the structure of a diagram or list, I explore the fragmented figure as sign or symbol.

With a limited palette and an economy of line, I draw images like writing a letter, documenting essential, universal motions and human behaviors.

Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1999). She was recently awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2018). Other awards include the South Arts Prize for the State of Alabama (2018), Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award (2015), Mary Hambidge Distinguished Artist Award (2015), Cultural Alliance of Birmingham Individual Artist Fellowship (2008), and Alabama State Council on the Arts Individual Artist Fellowship (2003).

She has held solo exhibitions at Jeff Bailey Gallery, (Hudson/NYC); whitespace gallery (Atlanta, GA); Augusta University (Columbus, GA); Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art (IN); Birmingham Museum of Art (AL); Atlanta Contemporary (GA); Auburn University’s School of Liberal Arts (AL); Rhodes College (Memphis, TN); Candyland (Stockholm, Sweden), and the University of Alabama at Birmingham (AL).

Group shows include the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (AL); Adams and Ollman (OR); Cuevas Tilleard Projects (NY); Zuckerman Museum of Art (GA); Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art (GA); Knoxville Museum of Art (TN); Weatherspoon Art Museum (NC); Hunter Museum of American Art (TN); Columbus Museum of Art (GA); National Museum of Women in the Arts (DC); Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (NC); the Mobile Museum of Art (AL), and the US Embassy, Prague, Czech Republic.

Her work has been reviewed in publications such as World Sculpture News, Sculpture, The Brooklyn Rail, Art in America, artforum.com, Art Papers, Bad at Sports and BURNAWAY. Pleasant also co-founded the curatorial initiative The Fuel And Lumber Company with artist Pete Schulte in 2013.

Image: Image: Untitled (Torso) oil on canvas 60 x 48 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

106

Arms oil on canvas 72 x 62 inches

107

Tr e y A b d e l l a

I was raised by my TV and computer; because of that I find myself constantly referring to cartoons, video games, and the internet to better understand the world around me. In my current work I’m exploring ways to synthesize these different pictorial languages into my own personal narratives.

www.treyabdella.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Backyard BBQ acrylic on canvas 62 x 39 inches

Rose acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 inches

108

109

Tr e y A b d e l l a

I was raised by my TV and computer; because of that I find myself constantly referring to cartoons, video games, and the internet to better understand the world around me. In my current work I’m exploring ways to synthesize these different pictorial languages into my own personal narratives.

www.treyabdella.com

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Backyard BBQ acrylic on canvas 62 x 39 inches

Rose acrylic on canvas 40 x 30 inches

108

109

M a x i m

B r a n d t

www.maximbrandt.de

My name is Maxim Brandt. I was born 1986 in the Ukraine on the Crimean peninsula. I studied Fine Arts at the Muthesius Art Academy (BFA, MFA) in Kiel, Germany. For three years I have been living and working in Berlin. My medium is painting. All my friends belong to different cultures, and I am a mix of UkrainianRussian-Jewish origins. This intercultural environment and my mixed identity have probably had a strong and positive influence on my philosophy of life and my art. My paintings are eclectic, collage-like and often indefinable. Like a sponge I soak up sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously different cultures and traditions that surround me. The results of this are often absurd, ambiguous dream images which have an independent logic.

In my paintings I try to create an absurd, poetic reality that radiates an atmospheric mystery. I am moving between reality and fiction, between present and reminiscence. Everyday motives are deconstructed and recombined again with each other. My works have a surrealistic appearance but I realize my image ideas with the rationality of a set designer, who always has the viewer’s perception in mind. The compositional decisions are taken quite soberly and rationally. The process of mounting is comparable for me to a “miseen-scène” in the theater or to the rhyming of a poem. I try to create an absurd, poetic reality. It’s like putting poetry on a stage. I use different motives from everyday life, art history or from my imagination which get deconstructed and recombined again with each other. This creates new meanings and connections between things that often seem incomprehensive or irrational. The result of this is usually absurd, ambiguous dream images which have a self-contained logic. This new arrangement of things means for me an absolute poetry. It expresses itself by incoherence, acausality and discontinuity.

Currently I am working on the topic ‘Forest/Islands of Things’. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard said: “The forest is a state of mind.” Man goes into nature to find peace but actually he meets himself there.

A dark impenetrable forest or a boundless field is a barrier, which hides another world—the world of the unconscious. Man is going in the forest to meet his ‘inner forest’. It is scary but at the same time fascinating.

For me, the inner forest of an artist embodies a limitless world of poetry and imagination. In my paintings I try to connect my “inner forest” with real floral landscapes, where a curious poetics arises, which invites the viewer into a trans-rational poetic landscape of things in which each viewer can discover his own “forest”.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

M a r k

Z u b r o v i c h

www.cargocollective.com/markzubrovich

The prospect of being intimate with another man can often be scary, but what if he was also a big fluffy dog? I paint a universe of homoerotic dog-men who perform masculinity through the visual language of baseball. I put these hyper-masculine figures into vulnerable situations, often emotional or sexual in nature. They’re allowed to play the part of a queer id and ego unrestrained by heteronormative inhibitions. On an animalistic whim they can switch from curious exploration, to violent fistfights, to bashful displays of sexual submission. Anthropomorphizing and cartooning these male figures blurs a line between what’s cute, what’s sexy, what’s approachable, and what’s intimidating. Pairing them with a lexicon of baseball euphemisms (landing the bases, bats, balls, who’s pitcher vs catcher, etc.) gives this homoerotic energy an accessible framework to hang on.

The work pulls from sports and contemporary subcultures such as the furry fandom to further build this framework. Giving animals human characteristics is nothing new in art or history, but with the advent of the Internet it has become a sort of folk-language; a template on which one can create a new “fursona”. This language is often used by LGBT individuals to explore different bodies and ways of being, within a wholly safe and supportive environment. The alternate world is a liminal space where larger than life expressions of an inner self develop and become accepted by a wider community. My main tool in synthesizing this universe into a cohesive whole has been the airbrush. It’s an industrial tool that has a history in fan and DIY culture, and presents itself as an ideal tool for shaping my world not only for its precision but its limits as well. The soft focus and delicate touch of the sprayed mark describe intertwining limbs and speckled cast shadows. The speckled mark-making creates a filmic, voyeuristic blur through which the narratives play. Sharp edges rarely exist. This world is soft and fuzzy, like a big fluffy dog.

Image:

Image:

Green Corner or Love Between Trees and Rocks oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm

Ball Gag acrylic and flashe on canvas 11 x 14 inches

110

111

M a x i m

B r a n d t

www.maximbrandt.de

My name is Maxim Brandt. I was born 1986 in the Ukraine on the Crimean peninsula. I studied Fine Arts at the Muthesius Art Academy (BFA, MFA) in Kiel, Germany. For three years I have been living and working in Berlin. My medium is painting. All my friends belong to different cultures, and I am a mix of UkrainianRussian-Jewish origins. This intercultural environment and my mixed identity have probably had a strong and positive influence on my philosophy of life and my art. My paintings are eclectic, collage-like and often indefinable. Like a sponge I soak up sometimes consciously sometimes unconsciously different cultures and traditions that surround me. The results of this are often absurd, ambiguous dream images which have an independent logic.

In my paintings I try to create an absurd, poetic reality that radiates an atmospheric mystery. I am moving between reality and fiction, between present and reminiscence. Everyday motives are deconstructed and recombined again with each other. My works have a surrealistic appearance but I realize my image ideas with the rationality of a set designer, who always has the viewer’s perception in mind. The compositional decisions are taken quite soberly and rationally. The process of mounting is comparable for me to a “miseen-scène” in the theater or to the rhyming of a poem. I try to create an absurd, poetic reality. It’s like putting poetry on a stage. I use different motives from everyday life, art history or from my imagination which get deconstructed and recombined again with each other. This creates new meanings and connections between things that often seem incomprehensive or irrational. The result of this is usually absurd, ambiguous dream images which have a self-contained logic. This new arrangement of things means for me an absolute poetry. It expresses itself by incoherence, acausality and discontinuity.

Currently I am working on the topic ‘Forest/Islands of Things’. The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard said: “The forest is a state of mind.” Man goes into nature to find peace but actually he meets himself there.

A dark impenetrable forest or a boundless field is a barrier, which hides another world—the world of the unconscious. Man is going in the forest to meet his ‘inner forest’. It is scary but at the same time fascinating.

For me, the inner forest of an artist embodies a limitless world of poetry and imagination. In my paintings I try to connect my “inner forest” with real floral landscapes, where a curious poetics arises, which invites the viewer into a trans-rational poetic landscape of things in which each viewer can discover his own “forest”.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

M a r k

Z u b r o v i c h

www.cargocollective.com/markzubrovich

The prospect of being intimate with another man can often be scary, but what if he was also a big fluffy dog? I paint a universe of homoerotic dog-men who perform masculinity through the visual language of baseball. I put these hyper-masculine figures into vulnerable situations, often emotional or sexual in nature. They’re allowed to play the part of a queer id and ego unrestrained by heteronormative inhibitions. On an animalistic whim they can switch from curious exploration, to violent fistfights, to bashful displays of sexual submission. Anthropomorphizing and cartooning these male figures blurs a line between what’s cute, what’s sexy, what’s approachable, and what’s intimidating. Pairing them with a lexicon of baseball euphemisms (landing the bases, bats, balls, who’s pitcher vs catcher, etc.) gives this homoerotic energy an accessible framework to hang on.

The work pulls from sports and contemporary subcultures such as the furry fandom to further build this framework. Giving animals human characteristics is nothing new in art or history, but with the advent of the Internet it has become a sort of folk-language; a template on which one can create a new “fursona”. This language is often used by LGBT individuals to explore different bodies and ways of being, within a wholly safe and supportive environment. The alternate world is a liminal space where larger than life expressions of an inner self develop and become accepted by a wider community. My main tool in synthesizing this universe into a cohesive whole has been the airbrush. It’s an industrial tool that has a history in fan and DIY culture, and presents itself as an ideal tool for shaping my world not only for its precision but its limits as well. The soft focus and delicate touch of the sprayed mark describe intertwining limbs and speckled cast shadows. The speckled mark-making creates a filmic, voyeuristic blur through which the narratives play. Sharp edges rarely exist. This world is soft and fuzzy, like a big fluffy dog.

Image:

Image:

Green Corner or Love Between Trees and Rocks oil on canvas 70 x 90 cm

Ball Gag acrylic and flashe on canvas 11 x 14 inches

110

111

D e l p h i n e

H e n n e l l y

Using the weave of tapestries as an infrastructure from which to form a gestural pattern, I embrace the lenticular effect of the pattern that develops and coincidentally the interlacing quality of a seemingly digitized image. The idea of tapestries and screen technology as apparatus for viewing becomes a meaningful aspect of the paintings and provides a lattice, so to speak, from which much of my formal decisions are made. Replacing thread for the brushstroke, it is the parts of the tapestry that are frayed that become interesting to me, the effect of looking at something worn by the ages is a quality I am trying to replicate. I paint breaks in the otherwise overall systematic linear pattern creating an image that becomes digitized, broken up, worn with wear and tear, glitchy. Although the resulting image does not move and shift when viewed at different angles, an allusion to lenticular printing changes the entire depth of field. Furthermore, the painted weave of tapestries lending itself to a digital raster effect or the effect of interlaced video suddenly gives way to an image with a shallow depth of space, implied as though behind a kind of screenal interference. The figure now receding inwards from the surface of the canvas rather than protruding outwards from the surface provides an image that truly embeds itself within the drawing.

My palette is pastel suggesting a playful levity; furthermore, the gendered proclivity pastel colors perpetuate is of interest to me in my wish to subvert such tropes. Flower garlands to decorate but also to act as a foil, - to distract; stones locking a picture plane in place like possible paper weights, a pair of pastoral lovers: all these motifs, along with colors I choose, work in service to formally build a ligature from which to hang the image. Within this framework the use of repetition and decoration, either masking or unmasking, offers a multiplicity of possible interpretations. In a text by Amy Goldin published in Artforum in 1975 titled Patterns, Grids, and Painting, Amy Goldin states: “Pattern is basically antithetical to the iconic image, for the nature of pattern implicitly denies the importance of singularity, purity, and absolute precision.” This quote perfectly exemplifies my interest in using repetitive motifs but more pointedly explains much of the reasoning behind my choice in duplicating the figure. Goldin further writes: “to see the same image over and over again in a variety of situations disengages the control of context and erodes meaning.” By playing with repetition I enjoy seeing how far I can subvert the iconic image from its singular contextual meaning while retaining some residue of the power an iconic image can hold. Perhaps I am attempting to have my cake and eat it too. Nonetheless, it is the tension that lies in this dichotomy that has become fruitful in my wish to pursue figurative/ pictorial inventiveness.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

112

www.delphinehennelly.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Watteau Variation In Green oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches

After The Feast oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches

113

D e l p h i n e

H e n n e l l y

Using the weave of tapestries as an infrastructure from which to form a gestural pattern, I embrace the lenticular effect of the pattern that develops and coincidentally the interlacing quality of a seemingly digitized image. The idea of tapestries and screen technology as apparatus for viewing becomes a meaningful aspect of the paintings and provides a lattice, so to speak, from which much of my formal decisions are made. Replacing thread for the brushstroke, it is the parts of the tapestry that are frayed that become interesting to me, the effect of looking at something worn by the ages is a quality I am trying to replicate. I paint breaks in the otherwise overall systematic linear pattern creating an image that becomes digitized, broken up, worn with wear and tear, glitchy. Although the resulting image does not move and shift when viewed at different angles, an allusion to lenticular printing changes the entire depth of field. Furthermore, the painted weave of tapestries lending itself to a digital raster effect or the effect of interlaced video suddenly gives way to an image with a shallow depth of space, implied as though behind a kind of screenal interference. The figure now receding inwards from the surface of the canvas rather than protruding outwards from the surface provides an image that truly embeds itself within the drawing.

My palette is pastel suggesting a playful levity; furthermore, the gendered proclivity pastel colors perpetuate is of interest to me in my wish to subvert such tropes. Flower garlands to decorate but also to act as a foil, - to distract; stones locking a picture plane in place like possible paper weights, a pair of pastoral lovers: all these motifs, along with colors I choose, work in service to formally build a ligature from which to hang the image. Within this framework the use of repetition and decoration, either masking or unmasking, offers a multiplicity of possible interpretations. In a text by Amy Goldin published in Artforum in 1975 titled Patterns, Grids, and Painting, Amy Goldin states: “Pattern is basically antithetical to the iconic image, for the nature of pattern implicitly denies the importance of singularity, purity, and absolute precision.” This quote perfectly exemplifies my interest in using repetitive motifs but more pointedly explains much of the reasoning behind my choice in duplicating the figure. Goldin further writes: “to see the same image over and over again in a variety of situations disengages the control of context and erodes meaning.” By playing with repetition I enjoy seeing how far I can subvert the iconic image from its singular contextual meaning while retaining some residue of the power an iconic image can hold. Perhaps I am attempting to have my cake and eat it too. Nonetheless, it is the tension that lies in this dichotomy that has become fruitful in my wish to pursue figurative/ pictorial inventiveness.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

112

www.delphinehennelly.com

Image (left):

Image (right):

Watteau Variation In Green oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches

After The Feast oil on canvas 72 x 60 inches

113

S u n g

H w a

K i m

www.sunghwakim.com

My current work is conceptually founded on my interest in Chaosmos, inspired

by James Joyce’s use of the term - “cosmos at the verge of chaos, one that is surging toward the exciting possibility of going out of existence, struggling onward at the edge of the existential abyss.” Our perception of reality is defined by a conscious awareness of the current surroundings that one is situated in; which can be limited to define the truth of actual being. My interest lies in being aware of this collective perceptual information, and then processing it through multiple layers of dimensions which leads to a subconscious stage of wonder. To explore this idea, I set up a dialectic relationship during the process of work. It is ongoing research of self-questioning as well as questioning the reality of time and space without the sense of being.

Sung Hwa Kim currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from The Art Institute of Boston with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2008 and has exhibited his installations and paintings throughout Boston. Kim, who has presented his work at The Painting Center, New York and City Arts, Baltimore, received his Master’s degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger school of painting. After graduating in 2012, he was a semi-finalist for the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Haiku acrylic on paper 11 x 14 inches

Chaosmos #6 inkjet, acrylic on cotton 36 x 31 inches

114

115

S u n g

H w a

K i m

www.sunghwakim.com

My current work is conceptually founded on my interest in Chaosmos, inspired

by James Joyce’s use of the term - “cosmos at the verge of chaos, one that is surging toward the exciting possibility of going out of existence, struggling onward at the edge of the existential abyss.” Our perception of reality is defined by a conscious awareness of the current surroundings that one is situated in; which can be limited to define the truth of actual being. My interest lies in being aware of this collective perceptual information, and then processing it through multiple layers of dimensions which leads to a subconscious stage of wonder. To explore this idea, I set up a dialectic relationship during the process of work. It is ongoing research of self-questioning as well as questioning the reality of time and space without the sense of being.

Sung Hwa Kim currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He graduated from The Art Institute of Boston with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2008 and has exhibited his installations and paintings throughout Boston. Kim, who has presented his work at The Painting Center, New York and City Arts, Baltimore, received his Master’s degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art’s LeRoy E. Hoffberger school of painting. After graduating in 2012, he was a semi-finalist for the Janet & Walter Sondheim Artscape Prize.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Haiku acrylic on paper 11 x 14 inches

Chaosmos #6 inkjet, acrylic on cotton 36 x 31 inches

114

115

A g n i e s z k a

K a t z

W i l l

B a r l o w

H u t n i c k

www.agnieszkakatzbarlow.com

www.willhutnick.com

My paintings are made up of vibrant layers of colour and wayward flat shapes that act as surrogate figures. I like to avoid binary ideologies and embrace ambivalent spaces and anarchic identities. I let my work be a balancing act of opposing paradoxes - at once figurative and abstract, sensual and dark, violent and playful, masculine and feminine, deeply serious and humorous, layered and slow yet seemingly fast and simple. I’m interested in visual intellect and in playfully composing ideas that are very specifically my own, coming from an internal digested pulp. The narratives and spaces I create are fictions that originate from, and can only exist within, the language of painting.

Will Hutnick is an artist and curator based in Wassaic, NY. His work has been exhibited most recently at LVL3 Gallery (Chicago, IL); Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA); GlenLily Grounds (Newburgh, NY); Paradice Palase (Brooklyn); Geoffrey Young (Great Barrington, MA); Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn); DEMO Project (Springfield, IL); VICTORI+MO (Brooklyn); Providence College Galleries (Providence, solo); The Java Project (Brooklyn, solo) and Pratt Institute. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, and Frontrunner Magazine, among others. Hutnick has curated numerous exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Trestle Projects, Pratt Institute (New York and Brooklyn) and Hamiltonian Gallery (Washington, DC). He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), DNA Gallery (Provincetown, MA), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and a curator-inresidence at Benaco Arte (Sirmione, Italy) and Trestle Projects (Brooklyn). Hutnick is a 2017 Martha Boschen Porter Fund grant recipient from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) and his BA from Providence College (Providence, RI). He is currently the Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Brooklyn, as well as the Residency Director at the Wassaic Project, a nonprofit organization that uses art and art education to foster positive social change.

Agnieszka Katz Barlow was born in Krakow, Poland, and grew up in Uppsala, Sweden.

She moved and settled in London in 1999 where her life and art studio are based. She received a BA hons in Fine Art from Central St Martins and an MFA from Slade School of Art, London in 2015. She has exhibited in London, Berlin and Poland - most recently at the 31 Celsius Exhibition, ASC Gallery curated by Paul Carey-Kent; A.P.T Gallery selected by Alison Wilding; Unit 3 Projects and Pinch, London. She was awarded the Barto dos Santos Memorial Award in 2015. Her work is held in private collections in the UK and the US.

Image: It is the thunderbolt, that steers the course of all things pigment and glue on canvas 180 x 150 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

116

Hutnick’s work asks questions about impermanence and identity by conjuring up interstitial, queer spaces that exist inbetween perception, what is real, and normative expectations. Hutnick uses personal and discarded objects to act as stencils because of their indexical nature and allusions to topography: old milk crates from his late father’s car; torn pieces of used tape from his studio walls. By creating multiples and variations of the same form, Hutnick’s work explores how spaces - real, fantasy, queer—are constructed and assigned, and how malleable and potential they actually are.

Image: Free Hold acrylic, mica and spray paint on canvas 68 x 62 inches

117

A g n i e s z k a

K a t z

W i l l

B a r l o w

H u t n i c k

www.agnieszkakatzbarlow.com

www.willhutnick.com

My paintings are made up of vibrant layers of colour and wayward flat shapes that act as surrogate figures. I like to avoid binary ideologies and embrace ambivalent spaces and anarchic identities. I let my work be a balancing act of opposing paradoxes - at once figurative and abstract, sensual and dark, violent and playful, masculine and feminine, deeply serious and humorous, layered and slow yet seemingly fast and simple. I’m interested in visual intellect and in playfully composing ideas that are very specifically my own, coming from an internal digested pulp. The narratives and spaces I create are fictions that originate from, and can only exist within, the language of painting.

Will Hutnick is an artist and curator based in Wassaic, NY. His work has been exhibited most recently at LVL3 Gallery (Chicago, IL); Vox Populi (Philadelphia, PA); GlenLily Grounds (Newburgh, NY); Paradice Palase (Brooklyn); Geoffrey Young (Great Barrington, MA); Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn); DEMO Project (Springfield, IL); VICTORI+MO (Brooklyn); Providence College Galleries (Providence, solo); The Java Project (Brooklyn, solo) and Pratt Institute. His work has been featured in New American Paintings, Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, and Frontrunner Magazine, among others. Hutnick has curated numerous exhibitions at Ortega y Gasset Projects, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Trestle Projects, Pratt Institute (New York and Brooklyn) and Hamiltonian Gallery (Washington, DC). He has been an artist-in-residence at Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY), DNA Gallery (Provincetown, MA), Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and a curator-inresidence at Benaco Arte (Sirmione, Italy) and Trestle Projects (Brooklyn). Hutnick is a 2017 Martha Boschen Porter Fund grant recipient from the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation. He received his MFA from Pratt Institute (Brooklyn, NY) and his BA from Providence College (Providence, RI). He is currently the Co-Director of Ortega y Gasset Projects, an artist-run curatorial collective and exhibition space in Brooklyn, as well as the Residency Director at the Wassaic Project, a nonprofit organization that uses art and art education to foster positive social change.

Agnieszka Katz Barlow was born in Krakow, Poland, and grew up in Uppsala, Sweden.

She moved and settled in London in 1999 where her life and art studio are based. She received a BA hons in Fine Art from Central St Martins and an MFA from Slade School of Art, London in 2015. She has exhibited in London, Berlin and Poland - most recently at the 31 Celsius Exhibition, ASC Gallery curated by Paul Carey-Kent; A.P.T Gallery selected by Alison Wilding; Unit 3 Projects and Pinch, London. She was awarded the Barto dos Santos Memorial Award in 2015. Her work is held in private collections in the UK and the US.

Image: It is the thunderbolt, that steers the course of all things pigment and glue on canvas 180 x 150 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

116

Hutnick’s work asks questions about impermanence and identity by conjuring up interstitial, queer spaces that exist inbetween perception, what is real, and normative expectations. Hutnick uses personal and discarded objects to act as stencils because of their indexical nature and allusions to topography: old milk crates from his late father’s car; torn pieces of used tape from his studio walls. By creating multiples and variations of the same form, Hutnick’s work explores how spaces - real, fantasy, queer—are constructed and assigned, and how malleable and potential they actually are.

Image: Free Hold acrylic, mica and spray paint on canvas 68 x 62 inches

117

Making all my surfaces, I paint, draw, collage and construct objects in oil and acrylic paint on canvas, wood panel, aluminium panel and paper.

The remnants of the painting and studio process are collected to develop sculptural paintings, reverberating my 2 dimensional work. The outcomes are 3 dimensional objects constructed of wood, screws, bolts, oil paint, metal, plaster and or concrete.

I am interested in the life, death and rebirth of the studio materials, and connect this to my life experiences and the current civil unrest in our world today.

The catalyst to my painting practice was growing up in a socially and politically divided Northern Ireland where my childhood memories are marked by a postconflict society.

In 1998, my hometown Omagh, was bombed in the worst atrocity since the beginning of the conflict known as ‘the troubles’.

This event transmitted us children into the darker days, and personally remains as a source of empathic unsettlement ingrained in my psyche which continues to feed into my work.

www.ronanbowes.com

R o n a n

B o w e s

Image:

Image:

The Spot oil and spray paint on canvas 60 x 45 cm

Boatman oil on canvas 95 x 85 cm

119

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Making all my surfaces, I paint, draw, collage and construct objects in oil and acrylic paint on canvas, wood panel, aluminium panel and paper.

The remnants of the painting and studio process are collected to develop sculptural paintings, reverberating my 2 dimensional work. The outcomes are 3 dimensional objects constructed of wood, screws, bolts, oil paint, metal, plaster and or concrete.

I am interested in the life, death and rebirth of the studio materials, and connect this to my life experiences and the current civil unrest in our world today.

The catalyst to my painting practice was growing up in a socially and politically divided Northern Ireland where my childhood memories are marked by a postconflict society.

In 1998, my hometown Omagh, was bombed in the worst atrocity since the beginning of the conflict known as ‘the troubles’.

This event transmitted us children into the darker days, and personally remains as a source of empathic unsettlement ingrained in my psyche which continues to feed into my work.

www.ronanbowes.com

R o n a n

B o w e s

Image:

Image:

The Spot oil and spray paint on canvas 60 x 45 cm

Boatman oil on canvas 95 x 85 cm

119

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

H a f f e n d i

A n u a r

J a m e y

H a r t

www.haffendianuar.net

Haffendi Anuar (b. 1985, Malaysia) initially studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence before completing his undergrad degree in fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London in 2013.

He then returned to his hometown of Kuala Lumpur which has since provided the subtext for the development of different series.

Working with found objects, images and materials, I create sculptures, paintings, drawings and installations that look into our relationship with the city, landscapes and various environments, whether physical or digital. The expanded notion of the landscape in the 21st century informs my practice, and I am interested in linking this to the tradition and history of sculpture, looking at how the object, either monumental or humble, could magnify our understanding of the larger environment, like how objects in an ethnographic museum give an impression of a time long gone. In a way, working and manipulating everyday substances and materials sourced from my immediate environment, such as the city streets, night markets and corner shops around my studio in Kuala Lumpur are an attempt to pull out something from these objects and environments, something of an ‘essence’ that exemplifies the current times or hints to the future.

Image: Slow Tropical Snails II terracotta, ceramics, epoxy putty, epoxy adhesive, cement, sand, latex, Puttyfilla, oil paint, varnish 34 x 48 x 50 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

120

www.jameyhart.com

Hart’s painting practice focuses tightly on the way a thing comes into being, like a rock or a snowball, compacted and varied. The objects orbit the material language of abstract painting and reveal the potential therein.

They grow from themselves through a concentrated and slow gestation of material, finding a resting place somewhere between image and object in a kind of acknowledgement that painting is always both a portal and something you can bump up against. They become careful and slow meditations on form, completeness, and the link between looking and feeling.

Image: Alligator Code acrylic, fabric, glues, nails, linoleum, wood, other things. approx: 13 x 19 x 2.5 inches

121

H a f f e n d i

A n u a r

J a m e y

H a r t

www.haffendianuar.net

Haffendi Anuar (b. 1985, Malaysia) initially studied at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence before completing his undergrad degree in fine art at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London in 2013.

He then returned to his hometown of Kuala Lumpur which has since provided the subtext for the development of different series.

Working with found objects, images and materials, I create sculptures, paintings, drawings and installations that look into our relationship with the city, landscapes and various environments, whether physical or digital. The expanded notion of the landscape in the 21st century informs my practice, and I am interested in linking this to the tradition and history of sculpture, looking at how the object, either monumental or humble, could magnify our understanding of the larger environment, like how objects in an ethnographic museum give an impression of a time long gone. In a way, working and manipulating everyday substances and materials sourced from my immediate environment, such as the city streets, night markets and corner shops around my studio in Kuala Lumpur are an attempt to pull out something from these objects and environments, something of an ‘essence’ that exemplifies the current times or hints to the future.

Image: Slow Tropical Snails II terracotta, ceramics, epoxy putty, epoxy adhesive, cement, sand, latex, Puttyfilla, oil paint, varnish 34 x 48 x 50 cm

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

120

www.jameyhart.com

Hart’s painting practice focuses tightly on the way a thing comes into being, like a rock or a snowball, compacted and varied. The objects orbit the material language of abstract painting and reveal the potential therein.

They grow from themselves through a concentrated and slow gestation of material, finding a resting place somewhere between image and object in a kind of acknowledgement that painting is always both a portal and something you can bump up against. They become careful and slow meditations on form, completeness, and the link between looking and feeling.

Image: Alligator Code acrylic, fabric, glues, nails, linoleum, wood, other things. approx: 13 x 19 x 2.5 inches

121

D a n i e l

F l e u r

www.instagram.com/danielfleur

Lines move through the paintings as short melodies, striving to reveal what they began to describe the contours of. Color backlit by the canvas becomes the keynote which the melodies allow to play along with. Time and place appear, as well as parts of something recognizable. The formation of these moments could be temporary, but not their presence.

Lines and color behave as when one tries to remember a dream just after waking, in a position between prominence and disappearance.

My painting has its starting point in the change and the deviations that may occur when a material painting is translated into coded information. My artistry is based on an interest in painting both as a method and theme. I allow both my own usage of digital images and our collective way of communicating to be transformed into an input where the substance of the digital image and its relation to painting are examined.

The submitted paintings are all constructed from repetition and copying. A specific light, a few seconds shutter speed, has been frozen and digitized. The photograph of the previous work has then served as the starting point for a new one.

Translation of information and compression creates deviations.

A small change in color temperature can cause major changes. What becomes visible in the new painting is not merely the surrounding space and the light in which the preceding painting was photographed, but also the impact of technology on the alteration of a picture. The images oscillate between dematerialization and materialization. There is a confrontation or a meeting between coded information and the haptic qualities of painting that in itself influences the image.

The paintings carry their past in their present state. But the paintings are never static. It’s not simply about a then and a now, it’s also about a future, in which the image continues to undergo changes.

I received my MA from the Malmö Art Academy this year, that’s where I also took my BA. At the moment, I will continue to live and work in Malmö. But in the future, I’m planning to move to New York. I have two separate shows running through October and November, one at Wadström Tönnheim Gallery in Malmö (opened 19/10) and one at Galleri Kant in Copenhagen (opened 26/10). I’m also participating in a group show at Wadström Tönnheim Gallery in Marbella (opened 27/10), which is shown throughout the year.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Buffer oil on canvas 190 x 150 cm

Cache oil and acrylic on canvas 190 x 150 cm

122

123

D a n i e l

F l e u r

www.instagram.com/danielfleur

Lines move through the paintings as short melodies, striving to reveal what they began to describe the contours of. Color backlit by the canvas becomes the keynote which the melodies allow to play along with. Time and place appear, as well as parts of something recognizable. The formation of these moments could be temporary, but not their presence.

Lines and color behave as when one tries to remember a dream just after waking, in a position between prominence and disappearance.

My painting has its starting point in the change and the deviations that may occur when a material painting is translated into coded information. My artistry is based on an interest in painting both as a method and theme. I allow both my own usage of digital images and our collective way of communicating to be transformed into an input where the substance of the digital image and its relation to painting are examined.

The submitted paintings are all constructed from repetition and copying. A specific light, a few seconds shutter speed, has been frozen and digitized. The photograph of the previous work has then served as the starting point for a new one.

Translation of information and compression creates deviations.

A small change in color temperature can cause major changes. What becomes visible in the new painting is not merely the surrounding space and the light in which the preceding painting was photographed, but also the impact of technology on the alteration of a picture. The images oscillate between dematerialization and materialization. There is a confrontation or a meeting between coded information and the haptic qualities of painting that in itself influences the image.

The paintings carry their past in their present state. But the paintings are never static. It’s not simply about a then and a now, it’s also about a future, in which the image continues to undergo changes.

I received my MA from the Malmö Art Academy this year, that’s where I also took my BA. At the moment, I will continue to live and work in Malmö. But in the future, I’m planning to move to New York. I have two separate shows running through October and November, one at Wadström Tönnheim Gallery in Malmö (opened 19/10) and one at Galleri Kant in Copenhagen (opened 26/10). I’m also participating in a group show at Wadström Tönnheim Gallery in Marbella (opened 27/10), which is shown throughout the year.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Buffer oil on canvas 190 x 150 cm

Cache oil and acrylic on canvas 190 x 150 cm

122

123

S e a n

D o w n e y

www.seandowney.net

I have been thinking a lot about our relationship to screens, and the screen’s relationship to, and origins in, painting. Images have always been, in part, an attempt to crush space and time and to lure viewers into an Orphic journey, or down a click hole. My current work takes a variety of images, some deeply personal and others fairly arbitrary, and attempts to fuse them by processing them through a very handmade approach to painting. Image transparency has become a way to collage vertically and to compress the composition, in the way a movie poster might try to crowd the highlights of a complicated story into a single, static image. Confusing the source imagery has also become a way to keep my approach and response hovering in an abstract space even as the images remain for the most part recognizable. This in-between state seems to mirror my own experience, as a consciousness attempting to sift through and make sense out of a nonstop onslaught of thoughts, memories, and experiences.

Sean Downey received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Boston University.

He has had recent solo exhibitions at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA), LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA), and University of Massachusetts Lowell. Downey is a 2014 recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, and a 2015 MacDowell Colony Fellow. He is a founding member of the Boston-based collaborative kijidome, winner of the 2015 James and Audrey Foster Prize from the ICA Boston. Downey is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Maharishi University in Fairfield, IA.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Two Steps oil on panel 20 x 16 inches

Division oil on panel 20 x 16 inches

124

125

S e a n

D o w n e y

www.seandowney.net

I have been thinking a lot about our relationship to screens, and the screen’s relationship to, and origins in, painting. Images have always been, in part, an attempt to crush space and time and to lure viewers into an Orphic journey, or down a click hole. My current work takes a variety of images, some deeply personal and others fairly arbitrary, and attempts to fuse them by processing them through a very handmade approach to painting. Image transparency has become a way to collage vertically and to compress the composition, in the way a movie poster might try to crowd the highlights of a complicated story into a single, static image. Confusing the source imagery has also become a way to keep my approach and response hovering in an abstract space even as the images remain for the most part recognizable. This in-between state seems to mirror my own experience, as a consciousness attempting to sift through and make sense out of a nonstop onslaught of thoughts, memories, and experiences.

Sean Downey received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from Boston University.

He has had recent solo exhibitions at Steven Zevitas Gallery (Boston, MA), LaMontagne Gallery (Boston, MA), and University of Massachusetts Lowell. Downey is a 2014 recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, and a 2015 MacDowell Colony Fellow. He is a founding member of the Boston-based collaborative kijidome, winner of the 2015 James and Audrey Foster Prize from the ICA Boston. Downey is currently an Associate Professor of Art at Maharishi University in Fairfield, IA.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Two Steps oil on panel 20 x 16 inches

Division oil on panel 20 x 16 inches

124

125

A m a n d a

C h u r c h

Amanda Church is an artist and writer living and working in New York City and a recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Art as well as the Pollock-Krasner and NYFA grants in 2017. Her painting’s overarching Pop ethos has consistently referenced the body in landscape, and has at times veered toward figuration, with recognizable body parts populating what remains an essentially abstract arena. Most recently, her work has swerved back toward abstraction with fewer figural intimations, always with an underpinning of eroticism.

Her paintings have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe and over the years she has contributed to a variety of publications, including Flash Art, Art in America, ARTnews, and Art Papers. Amanda has also co-curated three shows to date, two – “Tract” and “Sunrise Sunset”– with art historian and now Dia Chief Curator Courtney J. Martin, and the third – “Data Panic” – with fellow artist Franklin Evans. Amanda’s work was featured in a 2013 book edited by Sharon Louden, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, with a concurrent show at Aberson Exhibits in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her most recent solo exhibition was at Espacio 20/20 Gallery (now Zawahra Alejandro) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2105, and she has another upcoming in 2019 at High Noon Gallery in NYC.

Image: Intimacy oil on canvas 32 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

126

www.amandachurchart.com

Image: Landscape with Legs and White Square oil on canvas 32 x 36 inches

127

A m a n d a

C h u r c h

Amanda Church is an artist and writer living and working in New York City and a recipient of a 2015 Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Art as well as the Pollock-Krasner and NYFA grants in 2017. Her painting’s overarching Pop ethos has consistently referenced the body in landscape, and has at times veered toward figuration, with recognizable body parts populating what remains an essentially abstract arena. Most recently, her work has swerved back toward abstraction with fewer figural intimations, always with an underpinning of eroticism.

Her paintings have been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe and over the years she has contributed to a variety of publications, including Flash Art, Art in America, ARTnews, and Art Papers. Amanda has also co-curated three shows to date, two – “Tract” and “Sunrise Sunset”– with art historian and now Dia Chief Curator Courtney J. Martin, and the third – “Data Panic” – with fellow artist Franklin Evans. Amanda’s work was featured in a 2013 book edited by Sharon Louden, Living and Sustaining a Creative Life, with a concurrent show at Aberson Exhibits in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her most recent solo exhibition was at Espacio 20/20 Gallery (now Zawahra Alejandro) in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2105, and she has another upcoming in 2019 at High Noon Gallery in NYC.

Image: Intimacy oil on canvas 32 x 36 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

126

www.amandachurchart.com

Image: Landscape with Legs and White Square oil on canvas 32 x 36 inches

127

R o x a n n e

J a c k s o n

The macabre works of Roxanne Jackson are black-humored investigations of the links between transformation, myth, and kitsch. These transformative sculptures are reinforced by seductive, lustrous glazes—achieved through layering surfaces and multiple kiln firings. Influenced by ceramic practices mimicking geology, as clay morphs from a malleable material into a hard one, her evolving forms open to reveal precious gems once hidden. The monster paw, ‘Lesser Evil’ (2018), draws from contemporary manicure culture, a postmodern gesture that echoes what T.S. Eliot called the manipulation of a “continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity”. This provocative work juxtaposes the old and the new, the real and the fabled, the absurd and the grotesque.

Roxanne Jackson is a ceramic artist and mixed-media sculptor living in Brooklyn, NY. Press for her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Gothamist, SculptureCenter Curators’ Notebook, Beautiful/Decay, ArtSlant, Brooklyn Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, The L Magazine, Eyes Towards the Dove, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Ireland, and New Ceramics, among others. She has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Wassaic Project, the Ceramic Center of Berlin, Hunter College, Chashama/chaNorth, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Oregon College of Art and Craft, and the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, funded by an NCECA International Residency Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in New York at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, The Hole, Honey Ramka, Lu Magnus, Denny Gallery, Zürcher Gallery, Orgy Park, Regina Rex, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, The Lodge Gallery, 99 Cent Plus Gallery, the Parlour Bushwick, BAM, English Kills, Elijiah Wheat Showroom, the Knockdown Center, BRIC, and Airplane Gallery, as well as at the Satellite Art Show in Miami Beach, FL; the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA; the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, MN, and more. She has shown in China, Portugal, Romania, Canada, and such cities as Mexico City, London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Brussels and Leipzig.

Jackson is the cofounder of NASTY WOMEN, a national/international art exhibition and fundraising project; and Heather Metal Parking Lot, a nocturnal outdoor heavy metal party, held each summer at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

www.roxannejackson.com

Image:

Image:

Venom ceramic, glaze, luster 8 x 16 x 8 inches

Lesser Evil (View 1) ceramic, faux fur, glaze, luster, chains, minerals, mini dice, rhinestones, taper candles 16 x 15 x 11 inches

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R o x a n n e

J a c k s o n

The macabre works of Roxanne Jackson are black-humored investigations of the links between transformation, myth, and kitsch. These transformative sculptures are reinforced by seductive, lustrous glazes—achieved through layering surfaces and multiple kiln firings. Influenced by ceramic practices mimicking geology, as clay morphs from a malleable material into a hard one, her evolving forms open to reveal precious gems once hidden. The monster paw, ‘Lesser Evil’ (2018), draws from contemporary manicure culture, a postmodern gesture that echoes what T.S. Eliot called the manipulation of a “continuous parallel between contemporaneity and antiquity”. This provocative work juxtaposes the old and the new, the real and the fabled, the absurd and the grotesque.

Roxanne Jackson is a ceramic artist and mixed-media sculptor living in Brooklyn, NY. Press for her work has appeared in The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, Gothamist, SculptureCenter Curators’ Notebook, Beautiful/Decay, ArtSlant, Brooklyn Magazine, Whitehot Magazine, The L Magazine, Eyes Towards the Dove, Ceramics Monthly, Ceramics Ireland, and New Ceramics, among others. She has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Socrates Sculpture Park, the Wassaic Project, the Ceramic Center of Berlin, Hunter College, Chashama/chaNorth, Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, Oregon College of Art and Craft, and the Pottery Workshop in Jingdezhen, China, funded by an NCECA International Residency Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited in New York at SPRING/BREAK Art Show, The Hole, Honey Ramka, Lu Magnus, Denny Gallery, Zürcher Gallery, Orgy Park, Regina Rex, Catinca Tabacaru Gallery, The Lodge Gallery, 99 Cent Plus Gallery, the Parlour Bushwick, BAM, English Kills, Elijiah Wheat Showroom, the Knockdown Center, BRIC, and Airplane Gallery, as well as at the Satellite Art Show in Miami Beach, FL; the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA; the Minneapolis Institute of Art in Minneapolis, MN, and more. She has shown in China, Portugal, Romania, Canada, and such cities as Mexico City, London, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, Brussels and Leipzig.

Jackson is the cofounder of NASTY WOMEN, a national/international art exhibition and fundraising project; and Heather Metal Parking Lot, a nocturnal outdoor heavy metal party, held each summer at the Wassaic Project in Wassaic, NY.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

www.roxannejackson.com

Image:

Image:

Venom ceramic, glaze, luster 8 x 16 x 8 inches

Lesser Evil (View 1) ceramic, faux fur, glaze, luster, chains, minerals, mini dice, rhinestones, taper candles 16 x 15 x 11 inches

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M a t e a s

P a r e s

www.mateaspares.com

By cutting holes in the canvas and placing different sculptures into it in various ways I can release the canvas from the boundaries of being a purely pictorial vehicle and charge it with abstract and existential concepts that can only exist in thought. The fact that the sculptures and the canvas are forced together makes it natural to use the concept of conflict and its essential role in moving through life and time, as the overarching theme in my artistry. A theme I coincidentally am also very fascinated by and have lots of experience of.

Mateas Pares (b. 1973) studied graphic design and communication in the late 1990s. Although being awarded Cannes Grand Prix and numerous other prominent awards for his work, he found himself drifting aimlessly as an advertising creative and graphic designer between London, Amsterdam, Paris, Hong Kong, and Stockholm, which he has described as “a Sisyphean attempt to try to find creative meaning and happiness in a business I was never really comfortable with, but ended up in because of laziness, cowardliness, and greed.” He took up art in his late 30s and currently lives and works in Stockholm. Pares uses materials often associated with modernism, such as raw canvas, plaster, wood, and bronze, as well as less traditional materials and processes like resin, styrofoam, CNC carving, and 3D printing. Patinated bronze is frequently used as “it can depict the notion of time unlike any other material.”

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Hour 490 885 mixed media, bronze, punched unprimed canvas mounted on board 75 x 100 cm

Hahaha mixed material, bronze, punched canvas 50 cm x 60 cm

130

131

M a t e a s

P a r e s

www.mateaspares.com

By cutting holes in the canvas and placing different sculptures into it in various ways I can release the canvas from the boundaries of being a purely pictorial vehicle and charge it with abstract and existential concepts that can only exist in thought. The fact that the sculptures and the canvas are forced together makes it natural to use the concept of conflict and its essential role in moving through life and time, as the overarching theme in my artistry. A theme I coincidentally am also very fascinated by and have lots of experience of.

Mateas Pares (b. 1973) studied graphic design and communication in the late 1990s. Although being awarded Cannes Grand Prix and numerous other prominent awards for his work, he found himself drifting aimlessly as an advertising creative and graphic designer between London, Amsterdam, Paris, Hong Kong, and Stockholm, which he has described as “a Sisyphean attempt to try to find creative meaning and happiness in a business I was never really comfortable with, but ended up in because of laziness, cowardliness, and greed.” He took up art in his late 30s and currently lives and works in Stockholm. Pares uses materials often associated with modernism, such as raw canvas, plaster, wood, and bronze, as well as less traditional materials and processes like resin, styrofoam, CNC carving, and 3D printing. Patinated bronze is frequently used as “it can depict the notion of time unlike any other material.”

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Hour 490 885 mixed media, bronze, punched unprimed canvas mounted on board 75 x 100 cm

Hahaha mixed material, bronze, punched canvas 50 cm x 60 cm

130

131

K y l e

L y p k a

a n d

T y l e r

C r o s s

www.crosslypka.wixsite.com/lypkacross

Kyle Lypka (b. 1987 Philadelphia, PA) and Tyler Cross (b.

1992 San Diego, CA) have been together since 2013, and began making art together in 2016.

Each sculpture is the result of us living out our relationship through making art with one another. It involves trust, conversations, arguments and compromises. Working with someone else allows you to bounce ideas off one another allowing the work to always be in flux or change.

We have found that in many ways, working together feels better than working alone.

Image:

Image:

Nude eating snake skin ceramic, glaze, stain 17.5 x 9.5 x 6.5 inches

Moth meets the Sun ceramic, glaze, stain 12 x 10 x 10 inches

132

133

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

K y l e

L y p k a

a n d

T y l e r

C r o s s

www.crosslypka.wixsite.com/lypkacross

Kyle Lypka (b. 1987 Philadelphia, PA) and Tyler Cross (b.

1992 San Diego, CA) have been together since 2013, and began making art together in 2016.

Each sculpture is the result of us living out our relationship through making art with one another. It involves trust, conversations, arguments and compromises. Working with someone else allows you to bounce ideas off one another allowing the work to always be in flux or change.

We have found that in many ways, working together feels better than working alone.

Image:

Image:

Nude eating snake skin ceramic, glaze, stain 17.5 x 9.5 x 6.5 inches

Moth meets the Sun ceramic, glaze, stain 12 x 10 x 10 inches

132

133

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

L o u i s e G r e s s w e l l

Louise Gresswell’s recent body of work comprises of non- representational painting on board. Through a painting practice Gresswell imbues the work with subjective readings as she explores concepts of vulnerability and protection.

Central to Gresswell’s work is the materiality of paint and surface as she investigates deeply personal histories and transfers that which is felt from hand to surface. The action of manipulating oil paint, the building up and covering of layers over time becomes a metaphor for the past. Sensory narratives are created through textured and rich surfaces with evidence of touch.

The use of cutting, reassembling and suturing evokes vulnerability but also signifies a metaphor for defiance. Through subverting the tradition of painting and embracing imperfection, the paintings speak about wholeness and fragmentation, creating ‘fractured icons’.

Gresswell completed her Master of Fine Art studies from RMIT in 2017 with High Distinction. During her time there she was awarded the School of Art International Studio Residency at Sangmyung University Gallery, South Korea. Gresswell has also been selected as a finalist in the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, 2018 and the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, 2018 and her works were included in the Melbourne Art Fair, 2018.

www.louisegresswell.com

Image:

Image:

Fractured (purple and orange) oil on board 31 x 24 cm

Fractured (rectangular line) oil on board 37 x 28 cm

134

135

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

L o u i s e G r e s s w e l l

Louise Gresswell’s recent body of work comprises of non- representational painting on board. Through a painting practice Gresswell imbues the work with subjective readings as she explores concepts of vulnerability and protection.

Central to Gresswell’s work is the materiality of paint and surface as she investigates deeply personal histories and transfers that which is felt from hand to surface. The action of manipulating oil paint, the building up and covering of layers over time becomes a metaphor for the past. Sensory narratives are created through textured and rich surfaces with evidence of touch.

The use of cutting, reassembling and suturing evokes vulnerability but also signifies a metaphor for defiance. Through subverting the tradition of painting and embracing imperfection, the paintings speak about wholeness and fragmentation, creating ‘fractured icons’.

Gresswell completed her Master of Fine Art studies from RMIT in 2017 with High Distinction. During her time there she was awarded the School of Art International Studio Residency at Sangmyung University Gallery, South Korea. Gresswell has also been selected as a finalist in the Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize, 2018 and the Churchie National Emerging Art Prize, 2018 and her works were included in the Melbourne Art Fair, 2018.

www.louisegresswell.com

Image:

Image:

Fractured (purple and orange) oil on board 31 x 24 cm

Fractured (rectangular line) oil on board 37 x 28 cm

134

135

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

I’m interested in analyzing the fragmentation and validity of memory through the recollection of home and community. I find investigating domestic environments to be like looking at the root to question the flower.

Certain paintings depict the struggle of trying to accurately remember a space from the past; small aspects or vignettes shift and blend together without a clear picture of the space as a whole. Some play with manipulating memory through a process of implanting a fake consciousness of a fake space; remembering how it felt to be somewhere that physically exists nowhere. Others come from a practice of empathy; imagining someone else’s memory and what that might feel like. The subject and viewpoint of the work is free of the confines of time and space; often paintings are from a memory of a space from as it might be remembered in the future. All approaches demonstrate a critical lens on memory; how fluid and individualistic we can be and yet how it completely shapes the world we collectively live in.

www.muzaesesay.com

M u z a e

Like the variations of how and what we choose to internalize, each guest visiting these paintings is encouraged to take on a unique perspective on how to interpret the composition. Opposed to an acute recollection of facts; focusing on atmosphere, color and rhythm reflects how we feel about specific memories. In painting as in thought, the emotional takeaway ends up surpassing the clarity of direct representation. Thus the guest is compelled to understand the space, question its dimensionality, dive inside and walk around.

S e s a y

Image:

Image (right):

Romance Language 001: We’ll Always Have... acrylic and graphite on canvas 16 x 20 inches

Romance Language 002: The Place We Come To acrylic and graphite on canvas 16 x 20 inches

137

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

I’m interested in analyzing the fragmentation and validity of memory through the recollection of home and community. I find investigating domestic environments to be like looking at the root to question the flower.

Certain paintings depict the struggle of trying to accurately remember a space from the past; small aspects or vignettes shift and blend together without a clear picture of the space as a whole. Some play with manipulating memory through a process of implanting a fake consciousness of a fake space; remembering how it felt to be somewhere that physically exists nowhere. Others come from a practice of empathy; imagining someone else’s memory and what that might feel like. The subject and viewpoint of the work is free of the confines of time and space; often paintings are from a memory of a space from as it might be remembered in the future. All approaches demonstrate a critical lens on memory; how fluid and individualistic we can be and yet how it completely shapes the world we collectively live in.

www.muzaesesay.com

M u z a e

Like the variations of how and what we choose to internalize, each guest visiting these paintings is encouraged to take on a unique perspective on how to interpret the composition. Opposed to an acute recollection of facts; focusing on atmosphere, color and rhythm reflects how we feel about specific memories. In painting as in thought, the emotional takeaway ends up surpassing the clarity of direct representation. Thus the guest is compelled to understand the space, question its dimensionality, dive inside and walk around.

S e s a y

Image:

Image (right):

Romance Language 001: We’ll Always Have... acrylic and graphite on canvas 16 x 20 inches

Romance Language 002: The Place We Come To acrylic and graphite on canvas 16 x 20 inches

137

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

S a s k i a

F l e i s h m a n

www.saskiafleishman.com

This series of paintings, developed through archiving my family’s collection of landscape photographs taken from 1995-2018 across North America, serve as a meditation on time, perception, and memory. These images have been either digitally manipulated or composed as color studies to question what is interfering with or obstructing our perception of memory.

I use materials such as sand sourced from different locals, with resin and clay, in combination with clean edges, smooth gradients, and singular color fields, to push and pull space. The interaction between the viewer, the space, and the physicality of the pieces, work together to challenge the viewer’s preconceived perceptions of landscapes, illusions, and memories. By combining hard-edge paint applications aesthetic with nostalgic seascapes and skies, this body of work searches for new spaces of reflection and re-evaluation during this distressing period in American history. These paintings not only redefine our environment by tricking the eye, but also flip our perception of “pure” abstraction by utilizing materiality that appears to fluctuate in the space. Using the language of Op-Art and traditional color theory to depict landscape imagery, these works challenge preconceived truths and ideas about both abstraction and our perception of our world and our relationship to it.

Saskia Fleishman b. 1995 graduated Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a BFA in painting.

Fleishman, based in Brooklyn NYC is currently an artist in residence at Trestle Art Space. Recent residencies include: Vermont Studio Center and The Otis Emerging Curator Retreat. Curious about curating other artists’ work as well as exhibiting her own, Saskia continues to collaborate with peers around the greater New York area.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

V a n y a

H o r w a t h

www.vanyastudio.com

Vanya Horwath was born 1992 in Phoenix, Arizona. She acquired her BFA from the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California and is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, UK where she received her MA in painting. She was the inaugural recipient of the Franklyn Liegel Award for Excellence in Painting, Los Angeles, California (2013), and was shortlisted for the Chadwell Award, London,UK (2018). Horwath has shown in London, Los Angeles and Turkey. She now lives and works in London.

My work explores the potential of painting materials through the invention and intervention of process. Design may initiate a painting, but the path taken remains flexible. This allows for the material to influence the making. Neither component takes precedence over the other.

I manipulate, train and follow the materials to create the effect that I want while embracing their fluid nature and letting them behave naturally. Experimentation occurs on site through the making of the work, increasing the possibilities of chance accidents and slips in a process. These happy accidents introduce new potentials for the course of the painting’s making and propose unexpected complications to navigate.

The paintings begin with an idea—perhaps a cultural quotation expressed in colour or form – but the unpredictable behaviour of my materials is a catalyst for how the painting evolves as it diverges from an initial design. Drips, smears, glitches, cracks unapologetically permeate the surfaces of the paintings and expose the negotiation between my control and an insistent materiality. There is a dialogue between maker and material: I make a move, the material responds and the artist reacts. This call and response cycle is what realises the final image of the painting. Alongside process, the paintings amalgamate colour relationships, signs, symbols culled from material and visual cultures and varied genres while juxtaposing two and three-dimensional renderings to evoke a sense of uncanny familiarity that is difficult to define.

Image:

Image:

Magenta Fading Into Baby Blue acrylic, resin, sand, and paper clay, on MDF board 24 x 36 inches

Musical Chairs acrylic, emulsion, and PVA glue on canvas 183 x 153 cm

138

139

S a s k i a

F l e i s h m a n

www.saskiafleishman.com

This series of paintings, developed through archiving my family’s collection of landscape photographs taken from 1995-2018 across North America, serve as a meditation on time, perception, and memory. These images have been either digitally manipulated or composed as color studies to question what is interfering with or obstructing our perception of memory.

I use materials such as sand sourced from different locals, with resin and clay, in combination with clean edges, smooth gradients, and singular color fields, to push and pull space. The interaction between the viewer, the space, and the physicality of the pieces, work together to challenge the viewer’s preconceived perceptions of landscapes, illusions, and memories. By combining hard-edge paint applications aesthetic with nostalgic seascapes and skies, this body of work searches for new spaces of reflection and re-evaluation during this distressing period in American history. These paintings not only redefine our environment by tricking the eye, but also flip our perception of “pure” abstraction by utilizing materiality that appears to fluctuate in the space. Using the language of Op-Art and traditional color theory to depict landscape imagery, these works challenge preconceived truths and ideas about both abstraction and our perception of our world and our relationship to it.

Saskia Fleishman b. 1995 graduated Rhode Island School of Design in 2017 with a BFA in painting.

Fleishman, based in Brooklyn NYC is currently an artist in residence at Trestle Art Space. Recent residencies include: Vermont Studio Center and The Otis Emerging Curator Retreat. Curious about curating other artists’ work as well as exhibiting her own, Saskia continues to collaborate with peers around the greater New York area.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

V a n y a

H o r w a t h

www.vanyastudio.com

Vanya Horwath was born 1992 in Phoenix, Arizona. She acquired her BFA from the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena, California and is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, UK where she received her MA in painting. She was the inaugural recipient of the Franklyn Liegel Award for Excellence in Painting, Los Angeles, California (2013), and was shortlisted for the Chadwell Award, London,UK (2018). Horwath has shown in London, Los Angeles and Turkey. She now lives and works in London.

My work explores the potential of painting materials through the invention and intervention of process. Design may initiate a painting, but the path taken remains flexible. This allows for the material to influence the making. Neither component takes precedence over the other.

I manipulate, train and follow the materials to create the effect that I want while embracing their fluid nature and letting them behave naturally. Experimentation occurs on site through the making of the work, increasing the possibilities of chance accidents and slips in a process. These happy accidents introduce new potentials for the course of the painting’s making and propose unexpected complications to navigate.

The paintings begin with an idea—perhaps a cultural quotation expressed in colour or form – but the unpredictable behaviour of my materials is a catalyst for how the painting evolves as it diverges from an initial design. Drips, smears, glitches, cracks unapologetically permeate the surfaces of the paintings and expose the negotiation between my control and an insistent materiality. There is a dialogue between maker and material: I make a move, the material responds and the artist reacts. This call and response cycle is what realises the final image of the painting. Alongside process, the paintings amalgamate colour relationships, signs, symbols culled from material and visual cultures and varied genres while juxtaposing two and three-dimensional renderings to evoke a sense of uncanny familiarity that is difficult to define.

Image:

Image:

Magenta Fading Into Baby Blue acrylic, resin, sand, and paper clay, on MDF board 24 x 36 inches

Musical Chairs acrylic, emulsion, and PVA glue on canvas 183 x 153 cm

138

139

E t h a n

M i c h e l l e

C a f l i s c h

B r a n d e m u e h l

www.ethancaflisch.com

www.michellebrandemuehl.com

a of b moving into b of a. a and b, material, process, form.

My work is a conversation about the whatness of people, places and things. I rely on restraint and minimal form as a point of entry, exploring the relationship between subtlety and the sublime. I’m interested in the qualities of opposites and how two opposing forces hold the same space, as examined through my choice of materials— the grit of spray paint on linen, black on white, fabric and house paint. The object responds to and changes based on these contradictions. The materials and structure I choose form an emotional architecture, creating a dialogue with the viewer that invites them to explore these paradoxes.

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Michelle Brandemuehl studied painting and received her BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been a resident of the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, NY and CCA Residency in Brooklyn, NY. Michelle has exhibited her work in Chicago, New York City, Brooklyn and San Francisco.

Image: Spending the night in a different bed IV quilted linen and canvas in wood frame 57 x 51 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

140

Image: Slow Burn acrylic, spray paint and canvas on board 20 x 16 inches

141

E t h a n

M i c h e l l e

C a f l i s c h

B r a n d e m u e h l

www.ethancaflisch.com

www.michellebrandemuehl.com

a of b moving into b of a. a and b, material, process, form.

My work is a conversation about the whatness of people, places and things. I rely on restraint and minimal form as a point of entry, exploring the relationship between subtlety and the sublime. I’m interested in the qualities of opposites and how two opposing forces hold the same space, as examined through my choice of materials— the grit of spray paint on linen, black on white, fabric and house paint. The object responds to and changes based on these contradictions. The materials and structure I choose form an emotional architecture, creating a dialogue with the viewer that invites them to explore these paradoxes.

Based in Brooklyn, NY, Michelle Brandemuehl studied painting and received her BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has been a resident of the Edward F. Albee Foundation in Montauk, NY and CCA Residency in Brooklyn, NY. Michelle has exhibited her work in Chicago, New York City, Brooklyn and San Francisco.

Image: Spending the night in a different bed IV quilted linen and canvas in wood frame 57 x 51 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

140

Image: Slow Burn acrylic, spray paint and canvas on board 20 x 16 inches

141

V o j t ě c h

K o v a ř í k

www.vojtechkovarik.com

“...In the latest paintings by Vojtěch Kovařík (born 1993, CZ) he treats the fighters as pagan deities, giving them all the dignity they deserve to be depicted with.

Although captured in a dramatic moment, they somehow resemble classical sculptures. They have been stopped in the middle of a movement. Kovařík puts deep shadows on their voluminous bodies of unnatural incarnates. Set in rather abstract surroundings, represented by a mere symbol, all the attention is attracted to the idols. Regardless of their prominent musculature, they often give the impression of being melancholic, as if they were forced to fight, to attack, to perform. In Kovařík’s earlier paintings, the characters were pictured as anonymous silhouettes, reminiscent of a shadow puppetry performance of a myth. Instead of sombre (whilst still violent) wrestlers, dominating their sketchy environment, the human shapes co-create the environment by simply standing or moving, equal to every other element of the tableau...” - Kindheit (Vienna), Die Schöne Gallery, 2018.

Image:

Image:

Mike Tyson acrylic on canvas 200 x 200 cm

Samuel Peter acrylic on canvas 200 x 225 cm

142

143

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

V o j t ě c h

K o v a ř í k

www.vojtechkovarik.com

“...In the latest paintings by Vojtěch Kovařík (born 1993, CZ) he treats the fighters as pagan deities, giving them all the dignity they deserve to be depicted with.

Although captured in a dramatic moment, they somehow resemble classical sculptures. They have been stopped in the middle of a movement. Kovařík puts deep shadows on their voluminous bodies of unnatural incarnates. Set in rather abstract surroundings, represented by a mere symbol, all the attention is attracted to the idols. Regardless of their prominent musculature, they often give the impression of being melancholic, as if they were forced to fight, to attack, to perform. In Kovařík’s earlier paintings, the characters were pictured as anonymous silhouettes, reminiscent of a shadow puppetry performance of a myth. Instead of sombre (whilst still violent) wrestlers, dominating their sketchy environment, the human shapes co-create the environment by simply standing or moving, equal to every other element of the tableau...” - Kindheit (Vienna), Die Schöne Gallery, 2018.

Image:

Image:

Mike Tyson acrylic on canvas 200 x 200 cm

Samuel Peter acrylic on canvas 200 x 225 cm

142

143

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

C a r o l i n e

W a y n e

www.carolinewayne.net

Caroline Wayne (b.1984) is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she trained in both textile studies and millinery, building a practice based on the alignment of craft, labor, and autobiography. Her work reveals commonly protected personal narratives while questioning the modern state of interpersonal communication, how we share and the way we listen. She has participated in group exhibitions nationally and was a 2017/2018 A.I.R. Gallery Fellow where she opened her first solo show, Pretty Real; a collection of beaded sculptures that depicted scenes from dreams recounting her own history of childhood incest. In current work Wayne remains committed to transparency and unflinching self- exposure as a means to facilitate difficult conversation. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. I employ couture millinery and embellishment techniques to build visibly labor- and time-intensive objects. Physical labor, through the repetitive motion of hand sewing, translates the emotional and psychological labor expended in order to manage the suffering a body can accumulate over time. With my own autobiography as a backdrop, I question the line between interpersonal connections, objectification, and self-exposure. Rooted in radical vulnerability my sculptures are an extension of collected Social Experiments that tested the definitions of intimacy, anonymity, and a woman’s private space in an increasingly publicized world. In allowing unfettered access to my own stories I am able to build trust with the viewer in a cultural and political climate where honesty and trustworthiness are diminished daily. With the use of craft practices I speak directly from my body, a process in which genuineness and transparency become impossible to filter out of the message. Through this clarity and candor I intend to spark conversation about the daily realities in our lives that often go ignored for fear of a learned societal discomfort. While I face truth in all its perceived ugliness my beadwork traditionally beautifies raw stories into palatable narratives that can draw viewers into topics normally deemed repelling. It’s from this point that we can begin to communicate honestly and start our own personal evolution.

Image: Choke felt, glass beads, sequins 8 x 9 x 9 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

144

Image: Choke felt, glass beads, sequins 8 x 9 x 9 inches

145

C a r o l i n e

W a y n e

www.carolinewayne.net

Caroline Wayne (b.1984) is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she trained in both textile studies and millinery, building a practice based on the alignment of craft, labor, and autobiography. Her work reveals commonly protected personal narratives while questioning the modern state of interpersonal communication, how we share and the way we listen. She has participated in group exhibitions nationally and was a 2017/2018 A.I.R. Gallery Fellow where she opened her first solo show, Pretty Real; a collection of beaded sculptures that depicted scenes from dreams recounting her own history of childhood incest. In current work Wayne remains committed to transparency and unflinching self- exposure as a means to facilitate difficult conversation. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. I employ couture millinery and embellishment techniques to build visibly labor- and time-intensive objects. Physical labor, through the repetitive motion of hand sewing, translates the emotional and psychological labor expended in order to manage the suffering a body can accumulate over time. With my own autobiography as a backdrop, I question the line between interpersonal connections, objectification, and self-exposure. Rooted in radical vulnerability my sculptures are an extension of collected Social Experiments that tested the definitions of intimacy, anonymity, and a woman’s private space in an increasingly publicized world. In allowing unfettered access to my own stories I am able to build trust with the viewer in a cultural and political climate where honesty and trustworthiness are diminished daily. With the use of craft practices I speak directly from my body, a process in which genuineness and transparency become impossible to filter out of the message. Through this clarity and candor I intend to spark conversation about the daily realities in our lives that often go ignored for fear of a learned societal discomfort. While I face truth in all its perceived ugliness my beadwork traditionally beautifies raw stories into palatable narratives that can draw viewers into topics normally deemed repelling. It’s from this point that we can begin to communicate honestly and start our own personal evolution.

Image: Choke felt, glass beads, sequins 8 x 9 x 9 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

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Image: Choke felt, glass beads, sequins 8 x 9 x 9 inches

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A v i v

B e n n

My paintings exist in the fine line between humor and tragedy. Using expressive, immediate and comical painting language, I capture my feelings and reactions towards life in our current era— an age of anxiety, fear and uncertainty. The proverbial actors starring in my stage-canvases are suspended in a state of shock, stuck in the pictorial space with no possibility of escape—the horror show must go on. The sense of horror and detachment we experience fluctuates from the personal to the public and vice versa. The edges/borders of the “self,” as we know it, have changed in the last few years due to our constant usage of social media. Unless our image is reflected back to us by complete strangers, we feel lost and confused, and the information we drown in becomes an integral part of our identity.

Much like the blurring lines between ourselves and others, and the interchangeable personal and shared trauma, so the figures in the paintings blend into each other and into their background, and become a throbbing mass of faces, hands, teeth and organs. Body parts merge to create new beings, the foreground and background are alternating and providing a sense of detachment and disorientation. Everything is constantly shifting and we are not sure what’s real anymore.

The humorous and comical painting language in the work allows the viewers to distance themselves from the pain and to reflect about their own state of being, however, much like the fusing body parts, the illusion of humor appears and shutters simultaneously before our eyes. The sense of push-pull and disarray in the paintings is created by layers of transparent and opaque gestures, using various mediums aside of oil paint such as distemper (rabbit skin glue and pigment), textile mono-prints, spray paint and wax medium. The imagery and tactile and expressive brush strokes relate to the body and its many intricacies, passions and agonies. The painting becomes a body in itself, and echoes the physicality of the viewer; large scale paintings are pools of organs and screaming faces one can drown in. Small scale paintings operate as direct reflections of the viewer, meeting them at eye level, their gaze follows.

www.avivbenn.com

Aviv Benn (b. Tel-Aviv in 1988), lives and works in Chicago IL. She completed her MFA in Painting and Drawing in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018, and completed her BFA at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 2013. Benn had solo exhibitions at Art von Frei gallery in Berlin in 2016, Raw Art Gallery in Tel Aviv in 2017 and Devening Projects Gallery in Chicago in 2018. She participated in various group exhibitions in Germany, Chicago, New York and Tel-Aviv. She received the Rabinovich Foundation Grant in 2015.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Nightness oil, spray paint, pigment, rabbit skin glue and wax on canvas 76x60 inches

Round Sound oil, pigment and rabbit skin glue on canvas 63x63 inches

146

147

A v i v

B e n n

My paintings exist in the fine line between humor and tragedy. Using expressive, immediate and comical painting language, I capture my feelings and reactions towards life in our current era— an age of anxiety, fear and uncertainty. The proverbial actors starring in my stage-canvases are suspended in a state of shock, stuck in the pictorial space with no possibility of escape—the horror show must go on. The sense of horror and detachment we experience fluctuates from the personal to the public and vice versa. The edges/borders of the “self,” as we know it, have changed in the last few years due to our constant usage of social media. Unless our image is reflected back to us by complete strangers, we feel lost and confused, and the information we drown in becomes an integral part of our identity.

Much like the blurring lines between ourselves and others, and the interchangeable personal and shared trauma, so the figures in the paintings blend into each other and into their background, and become a throbbing mass of faces, hands, teeth and organs. Body parts merge to create new beings, the foreground and background are alternating and providing a sense of detachment and disorientation. Everything is constantly shifting and we are not sure what’s real anymore.

The humorous and comical painting language in the work allows the viewers to distance themselves from the pain and to reflect about their own state of being, however, much like the fusing body parts, the illusion of humor appears and shutters simultaneously before our eyes. The sense of push-pull and disarray in the paintings is created by layers of transparent and opaque gestures, using various mediums aside of oil paint such as distemper (rabbit skin glue and pigment), textile mono-prints, spray paint and wax medium. The imagery and tactile and expressive brush strokes relate to the body and its many intricacies, passions and agonies. The painting becomes a body in itself, and echoes the physicality of the viewer; large scale paintings are pools of organs and screaming faces one can drown in. Small scale paintings operate as direct reflections of the viewer, meeting them at eye level, their gaze follows.

www.avivbenn.com

Aviv Benn (b. Tel-Aviv in 1988), lives and works in Chicago IL. She completed her MFA in Painting and Drawing in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2018, and completed her BFA at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem in 2013. Benn had solo exhibitions at Art von Frei gallery in Berlin in 2016, Raw Art Gallery in Tel Aviv in 2017 and Devening Projects Gallery in Chicago in 2018. She participated in various group exhibitions in Germany, Chicago, New York and Tel-Aviv. She received the Rabinovich Foundation Grant in 2015.

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

Image:

Image:

Nightness oil, spray paint, pigment, rabbit skin glue and wax on canvas 76x60 inches

Round Sound oil, pigment and rabbit skin glue on canvas 63x63 inches

146

147

E s t e b a n O c a m p o - G i r a l d o

Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo was born in Manizales, Colombia in 1987. He studied Visual Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and graduated in 2012. He started his MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art, finishing his studies in 2015 and graduating as a Chubb Fellow for the upcoming 2015-2016 year. Esteban has shown his work in numerous cities all over the United States, as well as some countries in Europe and Latin America. He is represented by ZieherSmith Gallery and Gitler &___ Gallery, both in New York City, where Esteban currently lives and works.

How many times have I played soccer in my life? Seen my parents lying in bed on a Sunday morning?

Played ping-pong during school recess? Partied with friends at someone’s beach house? I paint an idea: the feeling of repeated experiences, which are always different in their own way, condensed into one image.

Combining visual references from life and photographs, and using my imagination, I recreate my memories and everyday experiences as they feel and look inside my head. My paintings can’t be placed in a particular day, month or year of my life, nor can they be understood as a literal, recognizable moment.

As a Colombian raised in the digital age, I was constantly exposed to American culture visually, musically, and historically through the internet and television. My upbringing as an artist has also always been colored by Western art history and imagery. My work is an amalgam of those influences and my Colombian lifestyle and personal experiences. It looks nothing at all like typical ‘Colombian-looking’ paintings, but instead strongly reflects this cross-cultural influence. Since I moved to New York in 2013, I have come to deeply appreciate my South American and Colombian upbringing. Through painting, I integrate memory, experience and imagination into work that recognizes the humor, connection and loss in everyday life.

Image: Reflejo de Mona oil on canvas 30 x40 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

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www.estebanocampo.com

Image: Viendo ‘The Notebook’ oil on canvas 35 x 60 inches

149

E s t e b a n O c a m p o - G i r a l d o

Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo was born in Manizales, Colombia in 1987. He studied Visual Arts at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, and graduated in 2012. He started his MFA in Painting at the New York Academy of Art, finishing his studies in 2015 and graduating as a Chubb Fellow for the upcoming 2015-2016 year. Esteban has shown his work in numerous cities all over the United States, as well as some countries in Europe and Latin America. He is represented by ZieherSmith Gallery and Gitler &___ Gallery, both in New York City, where Esteban currently lives and works.

How many times have I played soccer in my life? Seen my parents lying in bed on a Sunday morning?

Played ping-pong during school recess? Partied with friends at someone’s beach house? I paint an idea: the feeling of repeated experiences, which are always different in their own way, condensed into one image.

Combining visual references from life and photographs, and using my imagination, I recreate my memories and everyday experiences as they feel and look inside my head. My paintings can’t be placed in a particular day, month or year of my life, nor can they be understood as a literal, recognizable moment.

As a Colombian raised in the digital age, I was constantly exposed to American culture visually, musically, and historically through the internet and television. My upbringing as an artist has also always been colored by Western art history and imagery. My work is an amalgam of those influences and my Colombian lifestyle and personal experiences. It looks nothing at all like typical ‘Colombian-looking’ paintings, but instead strongly reflects this cross-cultural influence. Since I moved to New York in 2013, I have come to deeply appreciate my South American and Colombian upbringing. Through painting, I integrate memory, experience and imagination into work that recognizes the humor, connection and loss in everyday life.

Image: Reflejo de Mona oil on canvas 30 x40 inches

ArtMaze Magazine Issue 10: curated selection

148

www.estebanocampo.com

Image: Viendo ‘The Notebook’ oil on canvas 35 x 60 inches

149

We are looking for more artists to publish and promote If you would like your work to be featured in our upcoming issues, please find out more details on how to apply to be considered.

See p. 13 or visit our website: www.artmazemag.com We have an open call for art for the next print issue which provides publishing opportunities, as well as the ongoing open call for online blog.

For any questions, please contact us at info@artmazemag.com

151

We are looking for more artists to publish and promote If you would like your work to be featured in our upcoming issues, please find out more details on how to apply to be considered.

See p. 13 or visit our website: www.artmazemag.com We have an open call for art for the next print issue which provides publishing opportunities, as well as the ongoing open call for online blog.

For any questions, please contact us at info@artmazemag.com

151