I am fascinated by the authentic architecture and color of this region of the world called Bukovina. For example the simple black/white combination used in some houses says a lot about the history of this region, about its being under Austro-Hungarian control at one time; efficiency, discipline was the rule of the day. There is, of course, a lot of color and nuance variation in various buildings, and they all reflect the ethnic diversity in these parts which includes Romanians, Hungarians, Germans, Jews, Russians and Gypsies. The simple effect of the time and weather elements on a certain style of decrepit roof, for example, can captivate me. And, of course, there is the gorgeous display of the four distinct seasons, which I have made the focus of my latest series Time and Season in Bukovina. In terms of my artistic legacy, I think of leaving behind this: seasons viewed through the lens of memory.
We are discrete objects, alienated by our solid form and yet fluid bodies constantly in a state of flux, giving and receiving information in the form of energy. The work seeks to dissolve the boundaries that we perceive between ourselves and our universe and literally interconnect energy, environment, figures and all things; giving the work a sense of existing in a timeless space and communicating that within the reality of the created space all things are the same in their material and immaterial existences despite our seeming separateness.
Matthew Gautier paints colors and things and also colors and things that mess each other up. Sea lions smush yellow to red progressions. Dudes stumble and knock blue, yellow, and orange lines from their patterns. Kids get lost and try to escape colors, but also sometimes wind up puking colors. Matthew Gautier plays with the flat and the meaty, the etheral and the real, the theory and the reality, in acrylic.
After almost a decade of conceptually staged photography, Carly Sioux has shifted her focus and is using her keen eye for the dramatic to capture candid moments in time that, as isolated images, often evoke the idea of performance. By playing with available light, flash, and improvisation, Carly captures the intimacy, dynamics, and spontaneity of her subjects. In her most recent work she is resisting the immediacy of digital photography in order to more reverently aggrandize the everyday on film. Carly’s music editorials have been featured in numerous printed publications such as N.Y. Magazine, NY Press, Plan B, Bass Notes, and Diva. Carly also participated in the CMJ panel discussion “A Camera and Some Balls: How to Shoot a Rock Star.”
I was the least creative person in a family of artists. I traveled abroad to look at art, not practice it. I barely passed a required drawing class, and at the end I swore I hated art forever. But somewhere along the way fate decided to change my course and as I sat bored in classes I started doodling. I started to look at my old photographs once again. And I realized, try as I might to dislike art, I actually loved it.
Jarek Pulit is a designer and illustrator living in Western New York with his beautiful and patient wife, a creative and ambitious young son and an overweight cat. A 2000 graduate of The State University of New York in sunny Buffalo, he was entitled to a BA in Art which he gladly accepted leaving behind a trail of figure study drawings and a kneaded eraser as his only legacy. He has been shaped in language, personality and culture by Saturday morning cartoons, comics, sugar cereals, giant robots and 8 bit graphic video games. He would love to help you foster your ideas.
I’m interested in exploring the relationship between fantasy and reality through narrative, allowing the viewer to ponder the secrets of an insular world. There are mysteries in the spaces I’ve created, as well as moments of uncanny familiarity. I don’t expect people to specifically recognize these scenes, but would like them to think, viscerally and abstractly: I’ve seen or felt or dreamed this before. Dichotomies of hope and despair, freedom and confinement, and exhibitionism and secrecy create spaces of tension in the paintings. My characters seek safety and revel in possibility—but something darker lurks. These narratives offer an escape, but often linger on those moments when contentment seems out of reach.
The Thoughts In My Head by Lisa Levy
You know that feeling when you’re trying to pick out a greeting card and you imagine all the thoughts that the person on the receiving end is going to have to the point of being overwhelmed and lose sight of your own instincts, so much so, that you can’t go ahead and buy a stupid card? That’s how my brain operates, no matter if it’s focused on something that matters or not. My coping mechanism for managing this cacophony is humor.
About a year ago, I started writing these down these thoughts that I believe are true for me, but true also for many other people as well. In order to give these mostly humorous sayings some gravitas, I make them into oil paintings which I love to do. I enjoy sharing them and when I see people respond to the work, I feel reassured that I’m not the only crazy person on this planet!
Another big part of my inspiration for making these paintings comes as an outgrowth of performing psychotherapy on stage as performance art, internationally, for the last 10 years as Dr. Lisa, *S.P. (*Self-Proclaimed). I am passionate about connecting with people this way which is both hilariously funny and yet oftentimes deadly serious. I am always fulfilled by understanding the way people think and what is important to them. The motto for my show is, “Dr. Lisa is fixing the planet one person at at time.” The New York Times has written about it the show in, “A Shrink With Stage Presence’, as well as being dubbed, “Riotously Funny” by the London Times.
The color pallette is a set of 12 colors as defined by the 1969 Ellsworth Kelly Painting, Spectrum V. I choose a background color which I feel reflects the emotion of the statement. If someone wishes to get one of the paintings and interpret the background in a different color/emotion, I see that as a fair and honest interpretation of the art and will honor their request.
About Lisa Levy
I have an exaggerated need to emotionally connect with people in a direct way, which I believe is what drives my work. Growing up, I was very shy and isolated. I was afraid of my parents and struggled making friends. Although I always had a “best friend”, a lot of my routine interactions with people and relationships were fearful for me.
It seems that my work is a reaction to that part of my childhood. I use my work to try to make emotional, platonic connections as often as I can. Art is healing; I am now described as outgoing.
Timeless, Placeless: The Paintings of Malado Baldwin
Gawker Artists is pleased to announce the opening of Timeless, Placeless, a solo show of paintings by Malado Baldwin at Gawker Media’s NYC headquarters. Timeless, Placeless is comprised of real and imagined landscapes from Malado’s various travels and youth spent in west Africa. In her work lush colors, geographical forms, and art historical and cultural references combine to create a sense of nostalgia, mystery and grandeur. In Malado’s own words, “Psychedelic and modern meld with ancient terrain to become timeless and placeless. The landscapes of my childhood in Africa co-habitate with Chinese landscapes, Roman mosaics, Italian frescoes, cave art, and science fiction. I paint these strange places: rocky formations; striations, remnants, ruins, boulders, mounds, caves, domes, huts, and architectural spaces…..as localities that could be primordial; may be post-apocalyptic, and are as familiar as alien. Ideas of both destruction and resurrection play through a lens of vibrant color. I speak to the power of landscape to hold suggestive meaning beyond mapping or describing, into exaltation.” Timeless, Placeless will be on display through March and is open by appointment. For more information email artists@gawker.com.
I began as a painter, majored in graphic design and became enamored of photography along the way. I synthesize this journey in my work, using my camera to frame things otherwise perceived as ordinary so that they become abstract “paintings.” The results are captured not on canvas, but rather in the digital format so familiar to me as a graphic designer. These “brushstrokes” are largely chromatic — it is important to me that raw imagery is physically altered as little as possible.
My art is about this catharsis of etching, layering, writing in the “Terra” of the body and soul. It is written on the body through every touch, laugh, heartbreak, memory and loving kiss…I seek to tell the story of that magical connection to the Holy One through my work. The challenge of making art is to search and discover our lost selves in the strata of our beings. The pathway to hope and love is painting the picture deep inside May you find in these paintings a part of your lost history, perhaps an artifact or a sacred myth?
I have an exaggerated need to emotionally connect with people in a direct way, which I believe is what drives my work. Growing up, I was very shy and isolated. I was afraid of my parents and struggled making friends. Although I always had a “best friend”, a lot of my routine interactions with people and relationships were fearful for me. It seems that my work is a reaction to that part of my childhood. I use my work to try to make emotional, platonic connections as often as I can. Art is healing; I am now described as outgoing.
I’m drawn to images that I don’t believe. My works are pictorial orchestrations of a time warp, composed of everyday life, human agency and the disingenuous.
Kevin Bierbaum is a German / American visual artist. Born and raised in southern Germany in 1983, at age seven he and his family immigrated to America. His early childhood years were spent in southwestern Minnesota. After High School, he attended a public South Dakota university, graduating with a degree in the mid 2000s. Bierbaum’s art draws heavy influences from 20th century Abstract Expressionism, Geometric Abstraction, and Minimalism. He uses multiple mediums from latex to oil, and sometimes mixed media elements. He hopes to be at the forefront of a new abstraction movement fusing Minimalism with Geometric Abstraction.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Pauly Lingerfelt attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and has been producing paintings, drawings, and collages since. His work is unified by his fascination with the atrophied beauty of past traditions and the antique modes of life that have been abandoned by society at large— The great Cowboy swilling bottled whiskey burn, lingering in early mythic America’s frontiersman cattle carcass ghost towns dabbed with pale flames & streaked with shadows whose origins lie across the great verdigris body where the laudanum-imbued and slightly bookish mysticism of the Rimbaud and the Jarry doused the jolly “belle epoque” with word and whisper of poetic filigree intimating an exquisite corpse left in the wake of decadence.
