Created in Place
September 5–October 24, 2020 A MODERNISM Inc. #EssentialArt Online Exhibition
Above: Judy DATER, Came the Plague, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27 3/4 inches Cover: Eva LAKE, Nurse No. 5 (Red Beret), 2020, collage, 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches
Created in Place ALEXANDMUSHI
SHAWN HUCKINS
CHARLES ARNOLDI
BILL KANE
GARY BASEMAN
JERRY KEARNS
GLEN BAXTER
JONATHON KEATS
JEAN-CHARLES BLAIS
NAOMIE KREMER
MARIA CHEVSKA
EVA LAKE
JUDY DATER
SANDRA MARTAGEX
ELENA DORFMAN
LINDSAY McCRUM
MICHAEL DWECK
PATTI OLEON
DAMIAN ELWES
STEPHEN SOMERSTEIN
SHELDON GREENBERG
ROBERT STIVERS
DUNCAN HANNAH
MARK ULRIKSEN
GOTTFRIED HELNWEIN
JACQUES VILLEGLÉ
TONY HERNANDEZ
STÉPHANE ZAGDANSKI
September 5–October 24, 2020 A MODERNISM Inc. #EssentialArt Online Exhibition
Stephen SOMERSTEIN, “BLACK LIVES MATTER” march leaving San Francisco Civic Center Rally traveling to the Castro District on June 5, 2020, 2020 archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 13.3 x 20 inches (image)
FOREWORD Early this Spring Modernism temporarily closed, three days after opening Naomie Kremer’s Embodiment exhibition, due to the COVID-19 pandemic shelter-in-place orders. Shortly thereafter we launched our #EssentialArt program, a series of video vignettes visiting our artists’ studios over the past five months. Today we are pleased to share a broad presentation of works “Created in Place” during this unprecedented and challenging period, a time in which our artists have flourished, each taking a different approach to their work. Judy Dater in Berkeley began her Plague Journal on day one of the shelter-in-place, an ongoing photo- and text-based diary chronicling her new daily life. Gottfried Helnwein in Ireland, whose work, fittingly for this time, already addresses the human condition and ills of the world, revisited his iconic Mickey Mouse portrait series, with the large-scale painting Crimson Mouse, in which Mickey looms with portent. Jacques Villeglé, isolating in St. Malo, France, also “confined” himself to making drawings on the subject “L’art est?” (Art is?). In the South of France, Jean-Charles Blais continued his exploration of bold abstracted forms, turning progressively into figures, painted on thick layers of large billboard posters. The densely layered posters convey a sense of timelessness, playing with the viewer’s subconscious, on emotional, visual, and physical levels. For photographer Stephen Somerstein, who photo-documented the famous 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Alabama civil rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr., there was no question that he would take as his subject the current Black Lives Matter protests in San Francisco. We hope you will enjoy this special #EssentialArt exhibition of works “Created in Place” during this shared global experience.
Elena DORFMAN, Flores Vitae / Flores Mortes: April 10, 2020 (6:01PM), 2020 pigment print on Hahnemuhle fine art paper, 40 x 26 inches, Edition: 3
An Essential Service By Jonathon Keats August 20, 2020
Everyday life in the United States changed on March 19, 2020.To control the spread of the novel coronavirus, many state governments ordered the closure of businesses and spaces deemed “non-essential” to public welfare. Grocery stores and gas stations were permitted to remain open. Art galleries and flower stands had to shut down. The photographer Elena Dorfman happened to be visiting the Los Angeles Flower Market on that momentous Thursday. As vendors got ready to close, she bought all the flowers she could find, and scavenged more from the trash. Over the following months, she regularly photographed the bouquets in her studio, documenting their gradual decay, transforming them into a sort of funereal clock as she endured the conditions of social distancing while watching the rising death count in the news. Dorfman’s Flores Vitae / Flores Mortes is an iconic artwork of this era, a product of the pandemic that reflects on Covid-19 while also offering an antidote to isolation through the shared experience of grieving. These multiple interrelated ways in which art operates for both the creator and the viewer – while the contagion continues spreading and much of public life remains shuttered – are explored in Created in Place, an online exhibition of recent work by Dorfman and twenty-seven other Modernism Gallery artists working in media ranging from painting to collage.
Installation view of Charles ARNOLDI studio featuring Zoot (left) and Mind Reader (right) Right: Patti OLEON, Apartment Lobby Hallway #2, 2020, oil on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches
To create in place, working in isolation, comes more naturally to many artists than to most people working in other fields.The studio is commonly designed as a refuge, which artists living in ordinary times might aspire to make more remote. For their ability to work alone, and through their practice, these artists have the potential to be gurus of quarantine, revealing how to make the most of social isolation. Some of them, including the painters Naomie Kremer and Tony Hernandez have gone so far as to create videos that allow the public to experience their solo studio work vicariously, potentially taking inspiration. Yet the lockdown can also be a trial, a case of wish fulfillment exposing what an artist actually needs to nourish or counterbalance the time spent alone. As artists contend with these tensions, and reveal anxieties through artwork, they provide grounds for everyone to consider the relationship between the individual and social self. Work that shows forbearance through meticulous craftsmanship, such as Patti
Sheldon GREENBERG, Rio, 2020, oil on canvas, 60 x 68 inches Right: Duncan HANNAH, Girl from Annecy, 2020, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 inches
Oleon’s architectural paintings and Charles Arnoldi’s geometric abstractions, can be an encouragement to endure these times. Work that shows nostalgic longing, such as Sheldon Greenberg’s RIO and Duncan Hannah’s Girl from Annecy, can be a reminder not to get too inured to the status quo, dropping relationships and losing one’s place in the social fabric. Some Modernism artists explicitly take on the coronavirus as a subject. In her series of Nurse collages, Eva Lake outfits cutouts of women from midcentury magazines with facemasks improvised from imagery of American flags and butterflies, evoking how Covid-19 recontextualizes everything: We view the world in terms of the pandemic, losing track of life before and after it, an amnesia that may be harder to overcome than the viral infection. Glen Baxter is more direct with his colorful absurdist drawings, many of which reflect on sheltering in place or social distancing. For instance, a drawing of two children gamely
Glen BAXTER, We discovered so many ways to make lockdown less boring, 2020 ink and crayon on paper, 15 x 11 inches
playing with light bulbs and barbed wire is captioned, “We discovered so many ways to make lockdown less boring.” Baxter’s commentary on ennui is not only a reminder that our experience of separation has paradoxically become the new universal, but also an admonition that isolation can be more painful and dangerous than shards of glass or steel barbs. Rebounding from the pandemic will take more than just a vaccine, because the damage done by the virus includes emotional trauma that may elude antibody testing and contact tracing. If paintings, drawings, collages, sculptures and photographs can bring us deeper understanding of these perilous times, and artists can show us coping mechanisms by way of personal example, can art also inoculate society as a whole against the long-term sociopolitical effects of sheltering in place? Admittedly any response to this question must be speculative, since the pandemic is unprecedented and continues to mutate. However art has provided a vital cultural commons in the past. It has been a source of cohesion and consolation, as in the case of religious iconography. It has also been a prompt for collective self-examination, as in the case of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica or Banksy’s West Bank graffiti. Contemporary art is especially potent as a connector because good art today invites manifold interpretations, all of which can converge on an inherently ambiguous image. For instance, a photograph of wilting flowers can evoke a period of mourning or the means by which death begets life through the process of decomposition. If anything can hold us together or bring us back from the brink in a time of social distancing and political divisiveness, it’s probably going to be art. Even if galleries and museums have to operate online and artists need to practice in isolation, society must do all that it can to support visual culture. Grocery stores and gas stations may be important, but art is an essential service. Public welfare depends on it.
ALEXANDMUSHI Alex Nichols and Mushi Wooseong James “Take a picture of yourself. Send it to me. I copy it and make a new one for you to copy.” Every morning an image was sent and received between San Francisco and Seoul. What happens when you copy someone’s body? What do you feel? What happens if you copy it day after day? Going back and forth between Seoul and San Francisco as a mode of connecting every time distance became an issue (like the way it is now with COVID where our current circumstances limit us from being able to physically connect with our close ones). This method of connection was hugely important to us because it was a physical way of connecting to each other without being in the same physical space. Next to the images are handwritten personal stories exploring the stories in our lives. We each come from different countries and cultures, and we are looking at how different each person’s reality can be, and how it is possible to come together to bridge and forge something together. WATCH: ALEXANDMUSHI: WHY COLLABORATE?
I didn’t know I was mixed-race growing up. My mother would tell me that I’m what she was talking about. One morning, before I got on the bus for pre-sc anyone asks you where you’re from, tell them that you are a citizen of the w entered the bus packed with kids. It seemed so crowded and so I went to th bus driver. At one point, as we’re driving, he asked, “Where are you from?” a world.” He laughs and says “ok.” After pre-school I tell my mother what happ why she was laughing so much, but I laughed too because I’d never seen her
—
Still Conversation: San Francisco to Seoul
m different but I had no idea chool my mother told me, “If world.” I nodded my head and he front and sat next to the and I said, “I’m a citizen of the pened. I was confused about r laugh like that.
—Mushi Wooseong James
Everything in the image is carefully composed. All the objects and colors that are not in the image are in piles in a corner of the room. In this corner is reality. My mother is in the corner, asking me what I want to keep. She is standing by the dining table, dishes stacked next to folded linens. She is leaving the family home. My father is dead. She is alone. I walk from room to room trying to remember. At fourteen I left home. I can’t find the remnants of myself as a child. My mother spent years erasing us from the space. My mother asks me again. I just keep circling, trying to feel myself, feel her. I look at a brass vase on the floor, remembering the smell of white chrysanthemums; my mother used to fill the vase with flowers with white spider mums. I pick it up. —Alex Nichols
#32, 2020, archival print with handwritten stories, Edition: 3 + 2 AP, 39 3/4 x 60 inches
Charles ARNOLDI “I call these new ones the ‘Virus’ series. I’m pretty excited about these and it’s interesting...they are loose and aggressive, and the shapes—no two are alike. I let the paintings develop themselves quickly and spontaneously.” WATCH: STUDIO TOUR WITH CHARLES ARNOLDI
Zoot, 2020, styrofoam, plaster, acrylic, 30 x 32 x 26 inches Right: Mind Reader, 2020, oil, acrylic, charcoal on canvas, 74 x 66 inches
Backed Up, 2020, oil, acrylic, charcoal on linen, 48 x 39 inches
Untitled, 2020, oil, acrylic, charcoal on linen, 38 x 32 inches
Gary BASEMAN While sheltering in place, Gary Baseman created For she once was the true love of mine based on lyrics from one of the artist’s favorite Bob Dylan songs “Girl from the North Country.” Finding solace in music while drawing or painting, Baseman often creates soundtracks that thematically represent a body of work. As part of the Self-Portrait as Blackie series (2018–on), Baseman features his own pet companion in a red jacket. Since March 2020, Baseman has taken long and often multiple walks daily, including with the recently passed Blackie the Cat who would stroll up and down the sidewalk in front of their Los Angeles home. The act of walking (while social distancing) has become a meditation and healing practice for Baseman, a way to keep moving forward while experiencing the pandemic of COVID-19.
For she once was the true love of mine, 2020, colored pencil on paper, 12 x 9 inches
Glen BAXTER “Artists are perhaps more than most people used to working in isolation, but in this unprecedented time, things did feel totally different as I became aware that I would be sharing this feeling of dislocation with the rest of the planet, many of whom were ill-equipped to cope. I did feel extremely lucky to be locked away in my studio, and also slightly guilty as I realised that I would be able to lose myself in my work and wonder at the transcendent power of art to rise above even the most challenging circumstances.�
At Camp Baxter, the social distancing advice..., 2020, ink and crayon on paper, 11 x 15 inches
Uncle Frank emerges from self isolation..., 2020, ink and crayon on paper, 15 x 11 inches
During the long weeks of quarantine..., 2020, ink and crayon on paper, 11 x 15 inches
Uncle Frank was keen..., 2020, ink and crayon on paper, 15 x 11 inches
Jean-Charles BLAIS “I actually keep starting paintings, so that there is no beginning as such, but rather the continuation of another painting, the consequence of previous drawings. There is always a precedent. Paintings are linked, bring forth their sequel, prolong their activity in the next painting. The process is incited by the use of the poster paper medium. It is a succession of images, an overlay and a memory in itself. The painting, as I apply it on this support, composes with this pre-existence, with this quantity of preliminary forms, which are as many already made paintings, works of others, poster images, their format, their layers, their colors… All these conditions orchestrate the composition of the painting. My work is simply the arranging of these preliminary elements with the present moment, in which I conduct a loose control of what is actually happening, so that, very often, there is a moment when I wait for the painting to come together by itself. This combination between all the components operates, I am just encouraging them. I am not achieving a predestined painting, of which I would hold the keys of how I will make it, what it will look like. It is the implementation of the painting, its wanderings, its modalities, its transformations that will characterize it. Sketched out hypotheses that coincide, and draw the definitive image so to speak, or more exactly, the image as it settles. I’m interested in unifying the figure. By figure, I mean not only the drawn shape, laid on the surface, but the figure is the painting itself. The object, the piece of paper, the spread paint, somehow the totality of these elements become one. The painting becomes a form of embodiment, a unified object, whose elements are inseparable. Every attempt implies a risk, an uncertainty, an operation whose method I could not formulate. The idea is to successfully do, in our case a painting, while putting ourselves at stake in the process, maintaining a form of vigilance and awareness, as to seize the opportunities, and inventive connections for it to remain enticing, interesting, lively.” WATCH: JEAN-CHARLES BLAIS IN HIS STUDIO
2amisombres, 2020, oil painting, charcoal and chalk on posters, 65 x 55 inches
Maria CHEVSKA Made with the limited means available at home due to the suddenness of the lockdown (drawing pens, color inks, or oil crayons on paper), Maria Chevska began a series of “Quarantine Drawings,” a somewhat rare medium for her, different from her oil painting, but one she fully embraced. “As drawings they take an intuitive journey, yet, thematically are related to my recent oil on canvas paintings: “Notes on saint’s hair.” These works focus on the very ordinary (specifically hair) within iconic representations. All the drawings (and paintings) adhere to one another—their marks and forms haunting each other, they repeat.” Referencing Rainer Maria Rilke’s “(1875–1926) “Duino Elegies 1 & 2,” Chevska’s drawings suggest a lack of gravity, power, the super-human, hovering, intimacy, falling and waking. The Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky thought to not only say, but to show, the simple things: “it is implicitly a bid to make art. Art considered to be what we are here for”…
a breath?… a name?…#6, 2020, pen, ink, and oil pastel on paper, diptych, 14 1/8 x 11 inches each
a breath?‌ a name?‌#1, 2020, pen, ink, and oil pastel on paper, 13 3/8 x 10 1/4 inches
Left: a breath?… a name?…#3, 2020, pen, ink, and gouache on paper, 14 1/8 x 11 inches Rightt: a breath?… a name?…#4, 2020, pen, ink, and oil pastel on paper, 14 1/8 x 11 inches
a breath?‌ a name?‌#2, 2020, pen, ink, and oil pastel on paper, 13 3/8 x 10 1/4 inches
Judy DATER “I have been keeping a journal on life during the pandemic. It is a strange and difficult time. The virus, the political climate, and my own health issues have totally absorbed my attention and imagination. All of my creative energy has gone into creating my Plague Journal as I refer to it. Both public and private thoughts and events are represented. I began keeping it on the first day of shelter in place.�
A Good Omen, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27.7 inches
Timmy, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27.7 inches
The Nightly News, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27.7 inches
Staring at my Feet, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27.7 inches
Medicine Wheel, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27.7 inches
Eternal, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 4, 20 x 27.7 inches
Elena DORFMAN FLORES VITAE / FLORES MORTES is a series of photographs made in direct response to the COVID-19 global pandemic. When I encountered the last open shop in the downtown flower market on the day all businesses in Los Angeles were forced to close, I gathered dozens of flowers, which I purchased or found in the trash. Possessed by the immediacy of the crisis, I photographed the blooms as they metamorphosed every day throughout April and May, and into June, where I continued to record their transformation. These photographs were made in the spirit of imbuing the clichĂŠd bouquet and the solitary flower with darkness and light, as a reflection of this singular moment in time when the customary rituals of celebration and mourning, as well as the objects and symbols that accompany these rituals, exist in a broken state. These arrangements were made during an unprecedented time when the toll on society, the economy, and human life has been high, while at the same time the earth is being renewed and humanity is rallying. WATCH: STUDIO TOUR WITH ELENA DORFMAN
Right: Flores Vitae / Flores Mortes: April 10, 2020 (6:01pm) Following page left: Flores Vitae / Flores Mortes: April 15, 2020 (6:00pm) Following page right: Flores Vitae / Flores Mortes: May 4, 2020 (2:28pm) Each: 2020, pigment print on Hahnemuhle fine art paper, Edition: 3 + 1 AP, 40 x 26 inches
Michael DWECK DREAMSCAPES “I dream for a living. I like to make pictures because I like to enter other worlds and get lost. And photography to me is a magical medium that makes you dream. It’s a fantastic thing, to get lost inside the world of a photograph. The mobility of the eye is such a fundamental treasure that we have, and that coexists with sensation. As a child I remember looking through a kaleidoscope for the first time - experiencing this dream imagery of changing colors and textures. The eyes have this unique ability to transpose what they see from one moment to another, to see something once as an object, and then as a design. That’s what I wanted to convey in these works.”
Dreamscape 4, 2018, gelatin silver print, Edition: 5, 48 x 60 inches
Dreamscape 3, 2018, gelatin silver print, Edition: 5, 48 x 60 inches
Dreamscape 8, 2018, gelatin silver print, Edition: 5, 48 x 60 inches
14th STREET “I’ve taken pictures around my neighborhood for several years and during lockdown I chose my favorite ones for this series. The subjects that interested me the most were the ones that seemed to be wholly absorbed in what they are thinking, feeling and doing. My preference is to print these very large so that they force a confrontational experience with the spectator instead of just being “consumed.” The relationship between the photograph and the viewer standing before it are central to the picture.”
Above: May 12, New York, 2019, chromogenic print, Edition: 5, 40 x 32 and 60 x 48 inches Right: August 5, New York, 2019, chromogenic print, Edition: 5, 40 x 32 and 60 x 48 inches
May 28, New York, 2019, chromogenic print, Edition: 5, 40 x 32 and 60 x 48 inches
August 3, New York, 2019, gelatin silver print, Edition: 5, 40 x 32 and 60 x 48 inches
LAVA “I would like people to have a transcendental experience with this work. In that regard I think of these works as both a window into another world and a mirror to the world we are currently living in. I want these pictures to be working in both of those directions. It’s fantastic that these abstract photographs seem to be composed of randomly arranged objects – a dance of color, form, pattern, and visual coincidences.”
Above: Lava Lamp 4, 2019, chromogenic print, Edition: 5, 40 x 30 inches Right: Lava Lamp 2, 2019, chromogenic print, Edition: 5, 40 x 30 inches
Damian ELWES “My paintings of studios focus on moments when creative people, in their own confined spaces, are excelling.” WATCH: ARTIST TALK WITH DAMIAN ELWES
Alex Katz’s Studio, 2020, pencil and watercolor on paper, 12 x 9 in inches
Sheldon GREENBERG “The Shark Pool is a painting relating to being in isolation, distancing, and the different ways that things are changing. The cartoon bird is a reflection of my innocence, of the past growing up, and thinking that everything was so wonderful and in Technicolor. The man is grey, symbolizing a sadness of the loss of innocence, while the shark is the danger of the upcoming reality.�
The Shark Pool, 2020, oil on canvas, 60 x 68 inches
Duncan HANNAH “I retreated to my Cornwall, Ct., studio on March 13th. There was none of the distraction I usually deal with in my Brooklyn life, so I was able to build a momentum like never before, and indulge myself in my filmic fantasies on small canvases. I began to put my movie star crushes on the covers of magazines that I collect. I was inspired not only by foreign cinema, but by 60s English Pop artists Peter Blake and Pauline Boty, who I’d long admired.”
Above: Myrna Loy, 2020, oil on canvas, 16 x 12 inches Upper Left: Today (My Sweet Life), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches Upper Right: Novela Film (Sutcliffe), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches Lower Left: Cinémonde (Vitti), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches Lower Right: Ciné Revue (Spaak), 2020, oil on canvas, 14 x 11 inches
Swing, 2020, oil on canvas, 24 x 12 inches
Pigalle, 2020, oil on canvas, 18 x 18 inches
Gottfried HELNWEIN “Gottfried Helnwein’s portrait of Disney’s favorite mouse, rendered from an oblique angle, his jaunty, ingenuous visage looks somehow sneaky and suspicious. His broad smile, encasing a row of gleaming teeth, seems more a snarl or leer. This is Mickey as Mr. Hyde, his hidden other self now disturbingly revealed. We are meant to be transported to the flickering edges of our own childhood memories in a time imaginably more blameless, crime-less and guiltless. But Mickey’s terrifying demeanor hints of things unfolding…” —Alicia Miller, Artweek
Crimson Mouse, 2020 mixed media (oil & acrylic) on canvas 65 3/8 x 98 1/2 inches
Tony HERNANDEZ Tony Hernandez on his series titled “A New World”: “I went into the studio on February 9th, and didn’t come out until the world was shut down, and I figured it was a new world.” The painting starts with an idea of an image, sometimes (they) come from drawings, sometimes imagery from books. I usually look through hundreds of books on subjects I’m working on, from drawings of Auschwitz to the Kabbalah, children during the Holocaust. I’m always looking for symbols. I really wanted to turn something horrible into something that can be beautiful.” WATCH: TONY HERNANDEZ IN THE STUDIO
Untitled, 2020, oil & encaustic on birch wood panel, 36 x 36 inches
Shawn HUCKINS “He that deceives me once, it’s his fault; but if twice, it’s my fault.” -The Court and Character of King James by Anthony Weldon, 1651. ‘Fool’s Errand,’ focuses on our relationships with the past and how it effects our current state of the world and our place in it. Digging deep into what makes a society thrive, in addition to what makes a society collapse, ‘Fool’s Errand’ features a collection of paintings challenging the idea of learning from previous mistakes and what happens when those lessons go unfulfilled. Using Roman sculpture as a preemptive warning of a failed society and disembodied hands as a metaphor of current day manipulations of the past, Huckins recreates iconic 18th century American paintings to contrast our progression from the days of our nation’s birth to our increasingly chaotic society that could potentially be at a colossal tipping point. Are we immune to societal destruction and extinction? “The slide of the United States into illiberalism may well have begun.....It may well signal the beginning of the end of the American experiment.”—Gen. John Allen, who led the fight against ISIS.
(Robert Shewell), 2020, oil & acrylic on canvas, 30 x 24 inches
Bill KANE “Art reflects its time and much of todays art is rightfully focused on the important issues of today— the pandemic, racism, political and social polarization, environmental degradation, extinction of species, misogyny, pollution, even what is truth (!) … the list goes on and on. There is also art that is not temporal but equally important. Art that explores subtle relationships and possibilities that connect us to something deeper. Being sheltered in place the past few months has intensified my conviction that the answers we seek cannot be found merely in our outer social/political realms. We need to look deeper. The Emanation Series is my attempt to offer images that give a respite, moments of reflection, and peace of mind in a turbulent time.”
Right: EMDL-41c, 2020, pigment on canvas, Edition: 3, 84 x 24 inches Far right: EMDL-43, 2020, pigment on canvas, Edition: 3, 84 x 24 inches Following pages left: EMDL-41b, 2020, pigment on canvas, Edition: 3, 84 x 24 inches Center: EMDL-35, 2020, pigment on canvas, Edition: 3, 84 x 24 inches Right: EMDL-50, 2020, pigment on canvas, Edition: 3, 84 x 24 inches
Jerry KEARNS “No one knows where they ground is now - everything is suspended and disconnected - a sense of floating in limbo - not knowing where you are or where you are going - life turns on a dime from bright blue skies to burning streets and chaos in a blink.�
Hello Gorgeous, 2020, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 72 inches
Stormy Weather, 2019-20, acrylic on canvas, 84 x 84 inches
Jonathon KEATS Standard time is measured by atomic clocks, providing a technical basis for global transactions. Might weather be a more meaningful timekeeper? Might attentiveness to natural patterns of rain and wind encourage us to nurture our environment instead of obliterating it? This booklet is a template for an annual atmospheric calendar based on careful observation and documentation of weather conditions in your midst. To create your own local atmospheric almanac, open your window every day and observe meteorological phenomena that seem characteristic of the time of year, such as the color of the sky or the effect of precipitation on nearby trees or the impact of barometric pressure on your mood. Over the course of a month, your cumulative observations – which may be recorded in any medium, from watercolor painting to musical notation to poetry – will fill one leaf in the twelve-page almanac. Repeat the process throughout the year, using your eyes and body as meteorological instruments. Make daily observations of the same climate phenomenon each month, documenting its annual cycle in a dozen discrete stages. In future years, your almanac will serve as a personal standard for reckoning time by comparing weather patterns to almanac notations, finding the page with the closest match, and reading the month in which the observations were initially made. Changes in meteorological conditions will result in a discrepancy between the Gregorian and atmospheric calendar. You can prioritize the planet over atomic clocks and industrial development by acknowledging weather patterns as a new time standard and synchronizing your life to the local atmosphere. – Jonathon Keats DOWNLOAD YOUR ATMOSPHERIC ALMANAC HERE
Naomie KREMER “The three paintings in this exhibition are a continuation of the subject of my recent exhibition, Embodiment, which opened March 12th and had to be put on hold March 14th. Especially poignant is the fact that this series of works is intimately engaged with the body, and the pandemic which struck is precisely an attack on the body. Normally after mounting an exhibition I welcome the opportunity to revisit the show again and again in order to take in the work I’ve done and “regroup” for beginning the next body of work. I was eager to engage with the paintings in progress in my studio as a way of experiencing a connection to my show, and continuing the thought process that had stimulated that body of work. ” WATCH: ‘EMBODIMENT’ EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH
Face à Face, 2020, pigment and oil on canvas, 50 x 50 inches
Above: Spree, 2020, oil on linen, 60 x 78 inches Right: Untitled Vision I, 2020, pigment and oil on canvas, 71 1/2 x 40 1/2 inches
Eva LAKE The Nurse series started with images of nurses from WW2. This was right after we all got sent home because of COVID-19. But after the first two [collages], I began to use all kinds of women from my mid-century stash, not just whoever was portrayed as a nurse. As we are all encouraged to wear masks, we are all practicing medicine in some way. Offering protection, we are all caregivers, we are all nurses. This is not to belittle a real nurse, but is just a recognition of that fact. The series is also connected to a conversation I had with an artist years ago who told me she went to a new doctor, and when she first saw him, he said: “Oh you paint? I paint too.” She was rather put off by that and said back to him: “Well, I give out aspirin and prescriptions at home, so I guess I practice medicine about as much as you practice art.” This idea of us all practicing medicine has been in the back of my mind since then. The butterfly masks idea came to me when I had already made quite a few. For me a butterfly is about transformation and change, and hope and the future, and so many positive things that we need right now.
Right: Nurse No. 17 (Golden Mask), 2020, collage, 12 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches Following pages left: Nurse No. 5 (Red Beret), 2020, collage, 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches Right: Nurse No. 4 (Zsa Zsa), 2020, collage, 14 x 11 inches
Sandra MARTAGEX “The artist brings with his sublime poetic energy the remedy to the bleeding human heart. He heals and repairs humanity. The folds are necessary, introspection is our daily life. We lock ourselves up, we confine ourselves, in our workshops where creation becomes an immense space for freedom. We are here to say what is not being said, to show what cannot exist. and cry long live life.�
Above: Night Train, 2019, ballpoint pen and watercolor on paper, 8 1/4 x 5 1/8 inches Right: Metamorphosis, 2020, ink, glue and pigment on cardboard (double-sided), 6 1/4 x 5 3/4 inches
Resurrection, 2020, ink, watercolor, glue and pigment on
n carboard, diptych (double-sided), 6 1/2 x 8 7/8 inches
Lindsay McCRUM “As we navigate this strange and uncertain time of Covid, distractions seem to be welcome company. Whether it’s walking and reflecting, or reading, listening to music and drinking, we all find ways to negotiate a new normal.�
...Pondering..., 2020 archival pigment print, Edition: 8 13 x 20 inches and 20 x 28 inches
Patti OLEON “In my new body of work I’ve photographed 1970s apartment building lobbies in Los Angeles. Shot from outside, up against the glass, I utilized reflections of things out on the street to superimpose over the interiors, letting the light and floating fragments of imagery fracture the tableau, so that one can’t place where one is located and one can’t tell what is real and what is not. The resulting paintings are an amalgam of things: a real place dislocated in time and space, very realistically rendered but on the verge of abstraction. This distance between something that appears concrete and real, yet which is impossible to discern, creates a disquiet, a sort of menace that is unidentifiable in the midst of mundaneness.”
Above: Apartment Lobby Hallway #2, 2020, oil on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches Right: Night Palm, 2020, oil on wood panel, 24 x 18 inches
Stephen SOMERSTEIN “These photographs are a sample of my photo-exploration of events accompanying the COVID-19 pandemic and the “Black Lives Matter” movement. I’ve been doing documentary photography for more than fifty-five years. During the past months I encountered similar challenges, as I had covering the 1965 Selma to Montgomery, Alabama Civil Rights March. San Francisco has a marvelous activist undercurrent, in sympathy with contemporary political and social issues, that only awaits a catalyst to articulate a direction and put it in motion. The response of people and businesses to the pandemic magnified and added interesting imagery of its own to my photojournalistic mélange. I watched the emergence of public events nucleating around “Black Lives Matter” issues, quickly creating marches, protests, posters, articulate sidewalk and wall murals. I set myself the task of both covering these public events as a photojournalist, but also as a photo-historian, recording the interesting spontaneous personal signs in home and business windows, the ephemeral chalk drawings on sidewalks and people displaying their own wearable messages. They are the unique signs of our present times, that historians will recognize as this generation’s signature.”
Left: Jewish mother partic
Above: “BLACK LIVES MAT
cipating in “ BLACK LIVES MATTER” march through the San Francisco Castro district, July 4, 2020, 2020 archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 20 x 13.3 inches (image)
TTER” march leaving San Francisco Civic Center Rally traveling to the Castro District on June 5, 2020, 2020 archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 13.3 x 20 inches (image)
Left: A chalk drawn “BLACK LIVES MATTER” optimistic sentiment, on Cabrillo Street, in Richmo
Right: COVID-19 masked man pushing masked amputee in wheelchair along Market Stre
ond district of San Francisco, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 20 x 20 inches (image)
eet, San Francisco, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 14 1/2 x 20 inches (image)
Left: Family preparing for “BLACK LIVES MATTER” Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy march through the San
Right: Young girl in Supergirl outfit showing her hand-drawn “BLACK LIVES MATTER” poster, at c
archival pigment print, Edition
Francisco Castro district on July 4, 2020, 2020, archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 19.1 x 20 inches (image)
conclusion of march with her family through the San Francisco Castro district. July 4, 2020, 2020
n: 25, 14.7 x 20 inches (image)
“Lady Liberty Reclining” mural on building wall, at 4th and Welsh Street
ts, 2019, archival pigment print, Edition: 25, 13.3 x 20 inches (image)
Robert STIVERS “During the quarantine months between mid-March and early June of 2020, I began a daily ritual of creating new work in my darkroom. I don’t believe I missed one day of work during this period. It was a labor of love and a pact with myself to re-focus my energies to the creative process. Most of the time, I had no idea what image/s I would work on in the darkroom. I was resolved to improvise and experiment—approaching my work without agenda, intention or a preconceived idea of what an image should look like. Since, the coronavirus had created a world of uncertainty, it seemed quite natural to create with uncertainty as well, save that I would have resolution, of sorts, at the end of each session—a print would be created.” WATCH: RECENT WORK BY ROBERT STIVERS
Above: Profile of Rose #9, Spring 2020, unique gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches Right: Hands (variant), Spring 2020, concept for unique gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches
Eyes #1, Spring 2020, unique gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches
Portrait of V (detail), Spring 2020, unique gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches
Portrait of E, distressed, Spring 2020, unique gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches
Woman in Long Dress, Spring 2020, unique gelatin silver print, 24 x 20 inches
Mark ULRIKSEN “Are artists built for sheltering in place? We tend to live in our heads and work independently, and for me there really hasn’t been any change in my day to day work routine. But because my work is so isolating and I’m such a people person, I’m craving the other half of my life where I’m not working but I’m socializing with friends, traveling, living life. My wife and I recently received an invite out of the blue from a friend in Sonoma to house sit for four days, leaping at the chance. While luxuriating on her deck with nothing pressing to do, I did this digital drawing of Leslie and our dog Ivy who joined along. It’s called “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and thats exactly how we both felt at that moment in time, pandemic be damned.”
Peaceful Easy Feeling, 2020, archival print, 19 x 13 and 30 x 18 inches (paper)
Jacques VILLEGLÉ “I gave myself a working theme which was: what would I do if I was asked to illustrate Marc Dachy’s book “L’art est?“ (Art is?)? It was sort of confining myself to a subject. Confining oneself can be considered as punishment, as well as meditation!!! For me, it’s an interweaving of the two. “
Confinement & Arquelinades, August 2020 marker and ballpoint pen on Canson paper 90 gr., 25 1/2 x 19 5/8 inches
Stéphane ZAGDANSKI
Commercial “logos” are the best illustration of Guy Debord’s sentence: “the spectacle is money one can only look at,” since they are only made to be instantly watched and absorbed by hypnotised customers, pretending be words and names but being only orders to endlessly buy.
In my new serie called “ / logos,” by breaking commercial logos in fragments of language—which is what “logos” means in greek—then reassembling them in subversive sentences, I compose what Guy Debord called “moments” of truth: “In a world which really is topsy-turvy, the true is a moment of the false.”
LE SPECTACLE EST L’ARGENT, 2020, color pencils and felt pens on paper, 16 1/2 x 23 3/8 inches
WATCH: WORDS ARE WORSE THAN VIRUSES
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THE SPECTACLE IS MONEY, 2020, color pencils on paper, 16 1/2 x 23 3/8 inches