dayoutlast: Shoshana Wayne

dayoutlast is a record of my direct engagement with mostly contemporary art, mostly Los Angelean.

As this blog has evolved since its 2010 inception, so has my perspective. What I once perceived as central within the investigation was what was central, literally, within the photographic frame that I shared here. While still an important consideration, such thinking has also given way to more peripheral considerations, ones also accompanied occasionally by text (written manifestation of thought) and the oscillations between them. What's missing here are larger unknowns surrounding issues of presentation and representation; the amount of time and space it actually takes to accomplish such first-hand observations; and the quandaries between documentation and interpretation.

Despite my attempt to communicate here with image and text what is essential in some respect about the artwork, neither representation should ever be considered a substitution for the primary viewing experience. Of course, occasionally there are exceptions.

Most of the time, these posts are merely remnants---residual fragments---from my last day out.

--Justin Lowman

Showing posts with label Shoshana Wayne. Show all posts

Friday, January 29, 2016

Phil Argent "Misaligned" @ Shoshana Wayne

Untitled (Mind the Gap), 2015

Acrylic on canvas

84” x 72” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Endless Fences II), 2014

Acrylic on canvas

72” x 56” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Waffle cone), 2014

Acrylic on canvas over panel

35” x 27” x 2”

Sea Within a Sea (Shadow), 2014

Acrylic on canvas

84” x 72” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Sick Glass), 2014

Acrylic on canvas

72” x 56” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Monster), 2015

Acrylic on canvas over panel

23” x 21 1/2” x 2“

Untitled, 2014

Acrylic on canvas

70” x 50” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Displaced), 2015

Acrylic on canvas

40” x 30” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Scuttle), 2015

Acrylic on canvas

40” x 30” x 1 1/2”

Untitled (Drift is OK), 2015

Acrylic on canvas

40” x 30” x 1 1/2”

Key Ingredient, 2015

Acrylic on canvas

38” x 52” x 1 1/2”

What it proposes about surface interaction in terms of communication (interlocking potentials and irregularities). Sometimes a fit, sometimes not. But color connects and verifies, clarifies. That said, the pictures here function more as diagram than pure visual effect of said communication. That is to say, they illustrate the points without much of them being the points. Imagistic, photographic/print-oriented facture. Pictorial digital interface. Video game movement a la Pac Man meets Mondrian. And the watery sign of painting. Organic, fluid process meets, interacts, and integrates with orders, logical systems and signs. Zipper effect. Interlocking edges (human made and natural) attempting to suture the way logic and emotion might, if we could be visualizing such a relationship here. Yes. Layers and Windows onto worlds. Touches, smears, and departures. Catch and release. Snapshot engage. Postulating an opening onto infinite. What acrylic paint can do. Flatten and refer to artificial color and industrial era. What can it now say in a post-digital age of painting? Somewhere between psychedelic haze (posters) and current light-based technologies (phones, tablets, et al). Just a little too graphic for my tastes ultimately, but what isn't anymore? Explode, cut and tear. Collage. Jane Callister. Kim Fisher. Distant Warholian palimpsest in terms of style (print decay. repeated painting). Balancing forces uprightly in orientations and so reference to human portrait with occasional landscape.

Thursday, June 11, 2015

Oliver Michaels "Fill: Content-Aware" @ Shoshana Wayne

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Michal Rovner "Nofim" @ Shoshana Wayne

Current Cross, 2014

Video Projection

Dimensions Variable

Broshei Laila, 2012

Black limestone and video projection

3'-3/8" x 11'-13/16" x 3"

Divided, 2014

LCD Screens, paper, and video

46 1/2" x 40 1/2" x 2 3/8"

(Divided, cropped at frame edges)

Yet another video installation with interesting setups (layered projections, projection on stone, paired flat screens). In my primary viewing, I thought about scale in the first, the second monumentality, and the third division. And, on this particular viewing day, I was also thinking about light, materials, and time in relation to Animal Charm (see here) and Anya Galaccio (see here) both of which I had viewed just before.

Despite making some thoughtful connections (light, time, scale, movement, surface), something kept me from, ultimately, liking the show, something in the aesthetic, I'm sure. Despite it's proposed levity, I also think it took itself too seriously, and therefore read a little too tight for my liking. When considering the artist's conceptual concerns in terms of time and place (she is from Tel Aviv and is now still a part-time resident of Israel), one can perhaps feel the agony of this work, particularly if one were to consider recent political events in the area not to mention a larger historical narrative of such division in place. So, then taking into account artist persona and intent, the work still seems conflicted between a global, big picture perspective, and smaller fragments. I prefer the latter, because not only does the image then become more abstract, but it also all encompassing in its inclusion of smaller, concrete elements thereby actually containing a whole in the smallest of divided details, again a fragment. While these issues (the formal/conceptual ones) are clearly not black and white but varying tones along a continuum, this much I can view and appreciate about Rovner's work. I still wonder where she stands on this spectrum, at least between dark and light.