Issue #100 | December 2018
#100
Figurative
REALISM Curated by Dirk Dzimirsky
DIRK DZIMIRSKY Lost and Found 39.4" x 39.4" charcoal & acrylic on canvas
One Hundred Issues DANIEL MAIDMAN Until very recently, it was plausible to claim that figurative painting was dead. All the mainstream art magazines, newspaper critics, university art departments, and museums agreed. Figurative painting was very much passé. Educated people mouthed the right appreciations of Rembrandt and Rubens when forced to. But nobody, or at least nobody with good taste, took new figurative painting seriously. And nobody who counted was painting it. There was an astonishing degree of conformity to this position. I’m old enough to remember it. It was like a cloudy sky in winter. You can’t see the clouds because the whole sky is one gigantic cloud. The internet blew apart this fake consensus. It turned out that, while the arbiters, the gate-
keepers, and the investors all agreed, the artists themselves very much did not. Once it became possible for artists to communicate directly with one another, instead of having to pass through the filter of the press, it emerged that a lot of artists were unironically making highly-rendered figurative work. Thousands of them. Many quite good. There were even schools that taught it, schools you never heard of before. And magazines that published it, relegated to the ickier corners of the art periodical sections in the chain bookstores. The internet revealed that we were not alone. Our sheer numbers, and our love for our work and the history of our art, instructed us that we were not wrong. The self-satisfied way that the mainstream told each of us that we were wrong,
100
AIXA OLIVERAS Resilience 24" x 30" oil on linen
I paint the igure because I am fascinated by it. I am fascinated by the rich psychological themes that can be expressed through the human form. I paint the female igure because apart from being female myself, it is the form that I use to transmute my own personal experiences into a symbolic narrative. hrough the igure, I can explore and express ideas about death, rebirth, loss and change. By pairing it with color and rhythmic pattern, the igures in my compositions echo the ebb and low of life itself. I paint the igure because for me, it is the medium that
100 allows me to transform the personal into the universal, and as a result, explore ideas that speak to our shared humanity.
AIXA OLIVERAS is a representational artist who creates symbolic narratives through the medium of the human igure. Her work explores psychological themes of rebirth and identity. She has participated in several group exhibitions in venues such as Abend Gallery in Denver, CO and Gallery 805 in Laguna Beach, CA. One of her paintings is also included in the Reyes-Veray Collection, a public collection of Puerto Rican artists. Her work has also been featured on the November/December 2018 issue of Artists on Art, as well as appearing on the cover. Born in Puerto Rico, Aixa graduated magna cum laude from the School of Plastic Arts and Design in 2007. She currently lives in the United States, where she is pursuing her MFA in Painting at Laguna College of Art and Design in Laguna Beach, CA.
100 ANNE-CHRISTINE RODA Caillou, ciseau, papier 20" x 30" oil on panel
ANNE-CHRISTINE RODA Manya IV 27" x 27" oil on panel