Kim Keever

JOIN US MARCH 21ST FOR ONE NIGHT ONLY

WORKS BY MITCHELL, BACHLER AND KENNEDY

PRESENTED BY A SURFACE LIBRARY AND LYNN DUNHAM FINE ART

551 WEST 21ST STREET (#402 - 4TH FLOOR) NY, NY

MITCHELL: ABSTRACTS 2011, AB 054 36 X 36 INCHES (45 X 45 FRAMED)

ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT - EDITION OF 5

SIGNED, DATED AND NUMBERED VERSO

Aaron Yassin: IMPEIBOCHK

This work will be shown at the Architectural Digest Home Show
by Lynn Dunham Fine Art in Booth M16, Pier 94 -March 17-20

Open Door Interiews

Laurie Frick - Extraordinary

Artist's Statement
Frick uses pattern to replicate the feel of neurons firing in the brain. The use of vaguely familiar cut-up materials are representative of everything the brain processes, the amount that is seen and the amount stored - including the periferal things to which only partial-attention was given.
"I think neuroscience will find there is a link between how the mind processes pattern, and the underlying structure of the brain. How do I connect an abstract idea of neural processing to neuroscience in everyday life, and the rationale for my explorations? I like the idea of art artist expression anticipating scientific proof.", says Frick.

Neuroscience?
Frick has straddled both the world of technology and visual art. Over the past several years, she has studied the developments in neuroscience and believes scientists will begin to unravel the mystery of how the brain uses memory to develop an instant attraction to visual objects and surroundings. She believes aesthetics, is related to brain fluency and the desire to re-experience the familiar. Mathematical proportions are relevant, the attraction to external patterns may emulate the internal neural structure in the mind. "There is a human desire to find the neural mirror to ourselves, even at the most basic level -- the firing pattern of hippocampal neurons.
I'm currently investigating the notion that there is a statistical pattern underlying all cognition. If you could capture the neural rhythm and replay it, you might actually simulate the original experience.", says Frick.

Read more about Frick - Carolinas Health Care Artist-in-Residence in residency at McColl Center in Charlotte, NC.

JONATHAN LAURENCE, Master, mixed media 8 x 8 inches

JONATHAN LAURENCE, Camden Maine

April 19, 2010 - 7:05:53 pm
a three legged dog looks out across a bay at 44°6′14.546″N 69°4′39.161" W

This is a fragment... a moment... a memory...

Photography is less than 200 years old, as technology has evolved, it has vastly influenced the way we create, view and respond to imagery.

Shapes is an exploration of documenting and sharing the world that surrounds me. I visually record my experiences with my iPhone™ and upload them to Facebook™, instantly contributing to the ever evolving global visual community. In this way, the images take on a life of their own.

Volume 1 is a selection of pictures, chronologically placed, from moments between July 2009 and July 2010. This is one year of my life.

Jonathan Laurence is a mixed-media and digital artist incorporating processes that span from painting and photography to video and installation. He grew up in Rockport, Maine where he first began his studies in the field of photography at Rockport College (The Maine Media Workshops). After earning his Associates Degree in 2005, he went on to pursue a Bachelors of Fine Art at the Art Institute of Boston where he received the competitive Presidential Scholarship. Graduating in 2007, Laurence returned to the Maine where he works as a freelance multimedia producer, consultant, and artist.

Jonathan has exhibited widely across the east coast and his techniques have been published in multiple digital media guidebooks, including Christopher James’ “The Book of Alternative Photographic Processes“ (Second Edition). He is a regular contributor to Maine Magazine. Maine Home + Design highlighted him as one of the top 60 most collectable artist in Maine (2010). In 2009 he received “The Rising Star Award” from the Palm Beach Photographic Center. Laurence teaches courses at the University of Maine, The Maine Media Workshops (Rockport, Maine), Toscana Photographic Workshops (Bologna, Italy), and Nordphotography Workshops (Oslo, Norway).

He also enjoys of eating and cooking good food, travel, adventure, design, films, art, music, looking, making, assembling, floating, learning, teaching, and generally anything positive.


His bio doesn't mention how engaging he is...which he is....and if you didn't have the opportunity as I did to see this work in Rockland at Assymetrick Arts, you may have a look here. And the 365 photographic essay SHAPES, in book form is available at BLURB

LYNN DUNHAM:

LYNN DUNHAM:

"INTERSECTIONS OF ART AND SCIENCE"
by Diane Calder

"Invention is not the product of logical thought."--Albert Einstein"Organized perception is what art is all about."--Roy Lichtenstein (Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College, East Los Angeles County) Since ancient times, when the Greek goddess Techne served as the inspiration for science as well as for art, individuals willing to look at the bigger picture have acknowledged some degree of mutuality in these seemingly disparate fields. The Greek verb, tikein (to create), and the word "technique" are both derivations of Techne's name. As techniques are employed to make mechanical instruments such as telescopes and microscopes more sophisticated, our range of vision into worlds previously unimagined is extended, opening opportunities for creative artists and scientists to interact.

These sorts of interactions and the focus of In the Minds Sky: Intersections of Art and Science. Curator Mary Davis MacNaughton’s discerning catalogue essay investigates the fusing of inspiration and intellect that probes the fundamental structure of nature, alters views of space and time and formulates new visions of the world. The exhibition presents the work of six artists who take their points of departure from scientific phenomena at extreme scales--from the cosmic to the sub-atomic.The surfaces of Nancy Macko's fourteen-foot long birchwood panels give birth to iridescent layers of meaning in Quintessence: New Constellations. Macko integrates her considerable skills as a painter, digital and graphic artist, as well as interpreter of feminist figuration into the creation of new galaxies filled with life giving, memory-bearing imagery. Constellations of winged beings light the way to free floating forms that suggest ancient ladder climbers searching out honeycombs, or tethered astronauts inhabiting Macko's vision of an egalitarian future.Carol Saindon marks the entry to her dark-walled installation with the phrase, "Because Distance is Impossible to Perceive." Velvety charcoal and white chalk drawings of clusters of stars, inspired by satellite photographs, float on the black walls, suggesting a complexity of time and space. Saindon's vehicle for bridging ancient cultures and distant galaxies is a transparent glass boat projecting the sounds and undulating images of distant oceans as it rides a spiraling swirl of glistening fragmented glass.

Claire Browne's modestly scaled, intuitive pencil drawings on canvas composed of patterns of circles, conjure images of expanding particles that could be cells or constellations. In direct opposition to Browne's subjective, repetitive surfaces are the large scale oil images painted by British artist Mark Francis. These masterfully rendered works pair groupings of dull surfaced black dots that hover above painterly blurred strokes, dancing across sensuously alluring surfaces. The dots resemble viruses, keys to life and death. They allude to the boundaries crossed by Francis in his search for similarities between viral decoding and the modernist grid.The layered stains that float through Dennis Ashbaugh's two huge, color-drenched canvases are inspired by the most cardinal of human identifiers, DNA sequencing. Ashbaugh's gene sequence portraits reflect his fascination with a culture obsessed with science and technology. The less structured of the two works, Montecito Micropore, discloses a red field whose cracked surfaces contain iron filings, holding within it a suggestion of the possibilities and threats inherent in genome experimentation.Recent advances position brain research on the brink of mind boggling revelations. This fact inspired an explorative collaboration between Susan Rankaitis and Dr. David Somers. Rankaitis, an esteemed artist/photographer who deftly seeds fragments of scientific imagery and codes throughout her layered, collage-like surfaces has found her reverse equivalent in Somers, a neuroscientist who studies brain processes with MRI imaging. Together they have fabricated a prototype for a learning lab inside curved grey walls fourteen feet in diameter. They trust the viewer to enter this waiting room and collaborate in the construction of meanings from the hundreds of 5 by 7 inch images that Rankaitis and Somers have fabricated. Manipulated MRI images inform schemes of brain mapping; suggested correlations between various parts of the body and mind mix with images influenced by mass media. Art and science indeed intersect.

More on art and and neuroscience colliding:
"I’ve developed a hypothesis — I think beauty or the sense of great comfort from art is related to the viewer’s early experience and the desire to recover something recognizable. Not at the literal or narrative level of memory, but where pattern operates like music, and provides a rhythm that feels like a familiar recollection at the level just below consciousness. I think science will find attraction and desire are based on brain fluency, which is wired from the cumulative stimulus of individual life experience. By extension, I believe each of us has something like a ‘genome of sensory preference’, which could be mapped. And eventually it’s possible a predictive model of aesthetics could be built for each of us." Laurie Frick

The bloggesphere connecting like firing neurons transferring information in the brain... more about Laurie Frick here

DIVERGENCE

at

the Sande Webster Gallery

Five Views On Photography In the main gallery July 2 - August 28, 2010

RECEPTION: Friday, July 9, 2010, 6-8pm

LOCATION: 2006 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103 - (215) 636-9003

http://www.sandewebstergallery.com/

This summer the Sande Webster Gallery presents Divergence: Five Views on Photography. This exhibitionexplores diverse approches to the photographic medium. As the field continually evolves to incorporate digital technologies, artists are finding freedom from traditional processes and new creative opportunities for personaland aesthetic expression. This contemporary photography exhibition begins a dialog about the current and future state of the printed photographic image. Divergence showcases the work of Krantz, Love, Mitchell, Stein and Tarver.Gregg Krantz is a Philadelphia artist with a graphic sensibility expressed through a love of printmaking,photography and design.

Krantz’s recent photographic works are abstract narratives that document surfaces and patterns indicative of particular places. His close-up, detailed photographs capture the texture, color and quality of light in his West Philadelphia neighborhood as well as his travels abroad. Through subject matter and rhythmic phrasing in each series, Krantz heightens one’s perception of the invisible dimension of time. His photographs ofurban facades, geometric forms and painted surfaces are transformed into a personal vocabulary that are arrangedin series, like musical compositions, in varying qualities of tone and harmony.

Arlene Love is an accomplished figurative sculptor turned street photographer. She has been working on anongoing photographic project called Walking Distance over the past few years. She doesn’t search for exotic newplaces and people to photograph. Her camera goes with her as she goes about her life within walking distanceof her home. The people on the streets of Philadelphia are as interesting to her now as were those in Mexicowhere she lived for many years. Nothing is more interesting to Arlene Love than simply watching people – exceptphotographing them when they are blissfully unaware of her presence. Love has exhibited her work both nationally and internationally, and is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

Mitchell rejects the assumption that photography is about representation. Pure abstraction and the process ofimage making are the subject of his work. His photographs have more in common with the sensory experiencesassociated with color field paintings and ambient sound than they do with the tradition of photography. Images areshot with the purest of intuition and from a perspective largely influenced by aura occurrences associated withTemporal Lobe Epilepsy. Auras can produce heightened abstract emotions, affecting the visual field. Concepts and meanings in words that might invigorate the imagination, or perhaps for the intellect alone are explored in his titles, which enhance the imagery. While the experience with auras, is not always evident in the result, it is irrefutably connected in the process of creation.

Phil Stein creates dimensional photographic collages of the urban landscape. He finds inspiration in the random visual fragmentation that occasionally occurs in live streams and video downloads. The Streets series explores various themes of image reconstruction based on these common algorithmic accidents. Digital processes are used with a variety of fine papers to create this body of photo-based work. The resulting artwork is a combination of photograph, collage and sculpture. The world through Stein’s digital lens is made up of bits of visual information. He creates a new way of seeing the world around us, defining what it means to be an artist in the digital age.

Ron Tarver began his recent series of ethereal black and white flower portraits as a journey through his ownbackyard. Beginning the first day of the season, Tarver set out to document the spring flowers of the Northeast,beginning with crocuses then on to the next blooms, such as magnolia and tulips. Tarver captures the beauty ofnature in such intimate detail. There is a sensuality to these images that is revealed in the graceful curves of eachpetal. Tarver is a master at his craft and presents sumptuous images that remind us how incredible our naturalworld truly is. Tarver, a 2001 Pew Fellow, is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Oklahoma Museum of History and the National Museum of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.

Sara Vanderbeek: Four Photographers, 2008 (detail 1 of 2)

I just received the latest issue of Blind Spot (BS) - stunning as usual! This is a tri-annual art journal that publishes unseen work by living photographers. Remarkably it is free of commercial and editorial content. Images are selected and published collaboratively rather than curatorially. While today, the de rigueur artists’ statements and essays to support work seem to have become as important as the work itself, BS presents artists and their works without any introductory, biographical or explanatory text. This is enlightening in the art world where over intellectualizing has sometimes spoiled the pure experience of viewing and appreciating art. As its creators have stated, BS is not about photography - it is photography.

BS juxtaposes emerging artists with those who are established creating a significant milieu where each can benefit from the other. By publishing accomplished artists on an intimate scale, BS enriches its readers viewers. Since its launch in 1993, BS has featured over 300 living photographers including Uta Barth, Gregory Crewdson, Tim Davis, Rineke Dijkstra, Adam Fuss, and Vik Muniz, many of whom have gained critical and audience acclaim through their exposure in the magazine.

Blind Spot is a photography publication of exemplary design: This tri-annual journal is a "must have" for fine art collectors and artists. To view the BS archive of the past fifteen years click here. It is distributed internationally and is found in some of the best independent bookstores, museums, and larger booksellers around the world. For information on where to find BS click here.

For the link for BS artist submissions click here.

JANUSIAN by MITCHELL

at
THE VIEWING ROOM

551 West 21st Suite #402 – 4th floor New York, NY 10011

An inaugural New York Solo Exhibition of abstract photographs
June 2nd-4th daily 10am-5pm by appointment

Opening Reception: June 3, 2010, 5-8pm

Mitchell’s 14 piece Janusian collection referencing "Janusian thinking", a thought process characterized by the concept of merging view points to reach a conclusion or decision will be presented at The Viewing Room for a very limited one night exhibition. The term, “Janusian” stems from “Janus”, the Roman god of gateways and doors who is usually illustrated as a two headed figure facing in opposing directions. But it is the interplay of perspectives – the exchange of information and communication which Mitchell alludes to in his minimal and dichotomous compositions; the point of engagement whereby the transference of ideas occurs.

Dunham will also include works from the Multifarious and Linear collections – both of which are also rooted in minimalism.

ABOUT MITCHELL
Contrary to the assumption that photography is about representation, pure abstraction in which the notion that something representational must be depicted is rejected in the vast majority of work. The images themselves along with the process of image making are the subject rather than the depiction of something identifiable. Images are shot with the purest of intuition and from a perspective largely influenced by aura occurrences associated with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy.

“I am searching for those slow motion frames from the mislaid footage of our lives, those elongated experiences we lost or slept through, echoes of memories, some thing in the mist of personal history, the blinkered image, the half frame peep beyond the curtain, it’s almost audible; the sound of snow—slightly deaf in one eye”, says Mitchell.

Immersion into the artist’s abstracted and mesmerizing imagery may be equated to visually experiencing ambient sound; in much of his work he engages senses beyond sight. It may not be the factual world we envision through the artist’s eyes nor lens, but what we experience through his introspective mind which is so compelling. He transports us to a realm of contrasts within which we find ourselves between definition and uncertainty; past, present and future; reality and the imaginary; even life and death. In his work these opposites coexist in a paranormal state as we are transported to a limbo where the unreal becomes real, the subliminal becomes obvious and disturbance becomes peripheral. In this semi-conscious disconnect he imposes; the amorphous becomes transformed to a clear and tranquil reality. Although the creative process for Mitchell has been inherent throughout his fashion and commercial career, it is in his fine art work that he reaches a higher level of aesthetic and conceptual thinking to which both his imagery and titles are testament. His inspiration is internally and externally environmental. Some years ago he was diagnosed with a neurological condition associated with aura oriented seizures which can create a temporary altered state of consciousness. In these episodes his physical and mental awareness can become intensified and dimmed concurrently. The onset of this condition has enhanced his sensory perception denoting a pivotal point in his career. We all may be memory collectors from our plastic camera holidays but behind the lens there are those of us who take pictures and those of us who are artists. Undeniably when Mitchell is behind the lens, he is a consummate artist.

ABOUT THE VIEWING ROOM: The Viewing Room, home to artists’ studios and fine art dealers/consultants has been featuring First Thursday openings for some time. It is the location for both the Manhattan studio of painter, James Kennedy and exhibition annex to Surface Library. Surface Library is an atelier and gallery in the Springs historic district of East Hampton, New York just across the road from the Pollock Krasner House. The gallery exhibits works of proprietors painter, James Kennedy and ceramicist, Bob Bachelor among others.

Work of Art, Bravo’s new reality show debuts 11 p.m. (ET/PT) June 9 with judges, critic Jerry Saltz and dealer Leanne Greenburg Rohatyn and Bill Powers, there will be no lack of theatre. The series features 14 artists in competition for $100,000 and a solo show at The Brooklyn Museum and i understand the pilot is hilarious.
Very much in the style of Project RunwayProject Runway, the show follows a similar casting protocol resulting ina collection of trained and untrained artists, one host (Connoisseur China Chow), one mentor (auctioneer Simon de Pury), and three judges (art critic Jerry Saltz, Half Gallery owner Bill Powers and gallerist Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn) — but that the editing remains much the same.

Work of Art’s first episode introduces audiences to the artists and asks them to execute a challenge. In this case, the task was to create a portrait of one of their colleagues - very art school but not so sure anything is wrong with that.

Not sure the next best thing will be revealed but the entertainment factor and value is anticipated to be great and someone gets "their 15 minutes"

Neuroscience and Art

"The struggle for scientific truth is long and hard and never ending. If we want to get an answer to our deepest questions—the questions of who we are and what everything is—we will need to draw from both science and art, so that each completes the other. From: To answer our most fundamental questions, science needs to find a place for the arts." By Jonas Leher

In working with Mitchell, (Mitchell's BIO) whose abstract photography is directly related to Neroscience, I have been seeking like minded artists. Here are some links on the topic of neuroscience and art: The work of Steve Miller, intergrating science and art. I like this quote on his website: "It seems to me that the most important gifts the sciences and arts have to offer eachother is a recognition and a synthesis of their different approaches to thinking, their different ways of being in the world. When these differences come together, often uneasily, we witness the full complexity and the mystery, and ultimately the grandeur of being human. Alan Lightman "Nature" vol 434, March 17, 2005. - -- A photographer who has had a history of experiencing/enduring repeated strokes Christian Erroi BIO Images --- Laurie Frick, mixed media artist states on the topic of neuroscience and art: I use pattern, words and color to replicate the feel of neurons firing in the brain. IQ points, bits of memory and accumulated media are all chopped up into a brain memory salad. Neuroscientists think memory is closer to bits flying out a blender than the often cited file-drawer analogy. I imagine the brain breaks down visual time into bits where the novel and odd are as important to recollection as the intensely emotional.

I use vaguely familiar cut-up materials as a stand-in for all the stuff you encounter in a day, where 24 hours are broken into corresponding mathematical equivalents and reorganized into a whole. Science is just moments away from explaining how our minds take in rhythm and how visual recollection and memory affect how each of us respond to art. Many neuroscientists are trying to assess from brain scans what is visually pleasing or beautiful. I think attraction is built on early experience, brain fluency and the desire to recover something recognizable. Not at the conscious or narrative level, but where pattern operates like music, and provides a rhythm that feels like a familiar recollection.
Mapping the brain is possibly the last big frontier, and it seems within reach. I compulsively study neuroscience – maybe deep down I worry about the slow deterioration of my mind and memory….does a fixation ever resolve anything? --- Susan Rankaitis, photographer in collaboration with neuroscientist David Somers. Her Limbick works at Robert Mann Gallery. Intersections of Art and Science at Scripps College - --"I Remember Better When I Paint", narrated by Olivia de Havilland, is the first international documentary about the positive impact of art and other creative therapies on people with Alzheimer's and how these approaches can change the way we look at the disease. A film by Eric Ellena and Berna Huebner, presented by French Connection Films and the Hilgos Foundation.. Among those who are featured are noted doctors and Yasmin Aga Khan, president of Alzheimer's Disease International and daughter of Rita Hayworth, who had Alzheimer's.

Aperture Panel: Abstraction in Photography, Hammer Museum

From the beginning, abstraction has been intrinsic to photography, and its persistent popularity reveals much about the medium. Artists Susan Rankaitis and James Welling and UCLA Associate Professor of Art History George Baker debate a host of approaches to the abstract photographic experience in this panel discussion moderated by Lyle Rexer, the author of The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography.

The Laumont staff with Mitchell's new work now available for exhibition. Stunning work!