More photographs of Alexa Meade exploration.

Paint on face- Exploring the work of Alexa Meade.

As part of my recent book work, I investigated the work of an artist called Alexa Meade, who

paints portraits on the faces of real people, then photographs them to look like paintings. I tried to immitate this process on my own face. Enjoy.

Stencil design from previous Arnulf Rainer Gimps.

This is the final design I will use at school to try and create some stencils and maybe a printing block to accompany my Arnulf Rainer investigation.

Photoshop texture basis for upcoming Arnulf Rainer painting.

This is a photoshop project I created exploring how to combine the texture of clay to my facial features. I molded a small face out of clay, then took photographs and layered them onto a photograph of my face, using different effects to modify colors and opacity. I now intend to use these photographs to further my research into the works of Arnulf Rainer. My objective is to combine my style and Rainers style, layered with different organic textural elements, to create a collage based self portrait, which will be a component of my upcoming studio project.

Hvass&Hannibal

These artists are simply amazing. Their approach to geometrical surrealism, particularly when creating landscapes, is very similar to my approach. I will be looking at them closely in my future book work, but for now...ENJOY!

Arnulf Rainer

This is a book page I created with the intent of exploring Arnulf Rainer's work. Rainer experiments painting and layering different media predominantly on black and white photographs. I layered acrylics, spray paint, photographs, and bus tickets to create this composition. Enjoy.

Jacques Louis David

In my new studio project I want there to be a visually strong element of painting. I was looking for this element to be an acrylic study of the male form. I deferred from using a figure from Ragnar Kjartanssons work, seeing as the poses in his work are intentionally nonchalant, overly so. I thus decided to look back to the great classical artists who are famous for there explorations into the human form. I started looking at Caravaggio- but was soon put off by his cliche status in the IB spectrum- at this point I looked at Jacques Louis David, a neoclassical painter who returned to the great classical beauty in art by imitating and exploring the style of Caravaggio. He did a series of full-length male nude and semi-nude studies, using the dramatic features typical of Caravaggio's art. Here is a sketch of one of these studies.

Playin around on GIMP

Here I experimented arranging different elements from my recent book work in an attempt to start sketching a possible future studio projecto. I used the one and only, extraordinary, GIMP.

"THOU SHALT ALWAYS, THOU SHALT ALWAYS GIMP!!!" Ranwald Gregory Eriksson the 3rd, Comicon 2006

My Summer Studio Project

Here it is...

The Pavilion of Iceland: Ragnar Kjartansson - The End

The End

Another exhibition which I am looking to develop in my upcoming book work is Iceland's previous participation to the Venice Biennale, which I saw in Reykjavik in February . The exhibition is entitled "The End" and was a massive painting/installation by the renowned Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson. In this exhibition he explores what it means to be an artist, and shows the decadent life style which he associates with living the life of an artist.

Reykjavík, Iceland, March 13, 2009: The official Icelandic representation at the 53rd International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia will feature Ragnar Kjartansson, a self-described incurable romantic, whose multifaceted artistic practice is rooted in a tradition of acting and performance with an existential and absurdist sensibility that can be linked to artists ranging from Caspar David Friedrich to Gilbert and George. Kjartansson’s exhibition for Venice, entitled The End, will feature a tableau vivant of the artist and his model that will last for the entire six-months of the Biennale, along with a monumental video and music installation. It will be presented in the Palazzo Michiel dal Brusà, a 14th-century palazzo on the Grand Canal near the Rialto, which has served as the Icelandic Pavilion since 2007.

Transforming the Pavilion into a makeshift studio for the Biennale, Kjartansson will relentlessly paint the portrait of a young man posing day after day against the backdrop of the Grand Canal. The young man modeling for him will be smoking cigarettes and drinking beer, while clothed only in a bathing suit. For six months, Kjartansson will limit his art production to the painting of this scene. He will produce one work after the other, with the paintings made on previous days left to accumulate in piles around the studio. Though not an idealized version of the artist and his model – such a proposal being disrupted by the incongruous appearance of the Speedo, the cigarettes, and the beer in an otherwise romantic setting – the performance is partially based on questions of the artist’s self, suggesting his perpetual re-conceptualization in relation to his surroundings and previously existing works of art.

In a separate room, a new video and sound installation consisting of several scenes shot in the Canadian Rocky Mountains will display Kjartansson and a collaborator playing an ambiguous country music arrangement on a variety of instruments. Recorded directly in the snow-covered mountains, the music will take on the sounds of nature that, along with the expansive sights and sounds in the video, will be in sharp contrast to the intimate and isolated performance in the adjoining room of the Palazzo. Taken together, the recorded performance in the Rocky Mountains and the live performance in Venice will create a dramatic juxtaposition between two iconic settings. Connecting the two portions of the exhibition, however, are themes of creativity, camaraderie, and Weltschmerz or world-weariness.

Also a part of the exhibition, and in anticipation of the Biennale, Kjartansson and his friend and fellow artist Andjeas Ejiksson began exchanging letters in early 2008 chronicling preparations for the Pavilion. The two artists approached this dialogue from a performance angle, slipping into the roles of two sentimental gentlemen of yore. In the correspondence, which will be published in its entirety in the exhibition catalogue, Ejiksson describes the Pavilion as follows:

“I imagine the Venice Pavilion being a lighthouse at the end of the world, watching the verge of nothingness.
Waves chasing the lost souls and the mist blurring the horizon, protecting you from the vertigo of the abyss. It is a nameless sea and sitting on the dock is a man without fate”

Ragnar Kjartansson: The End will be on view from 10:00am to 8:00pm from 4 June through 13 June 2009. From 14 June through 22 November 2009, the exhibition will be open Tuesday through Sunday from 10:00am to 1:00pm and from 3:00pm to 7:00pm.

About the Artist
Ragnar Kjartansson (b. 1976, Reykjavík, Iceland) conjures up emotions in his work that he can pass on to his viewers, with a keen eye for the tragicomic spectacle of human experience where sorrow collides with happiness, horror with beauty, and drama with humor. In his versatile artistic career, he has focused on video, painting, and drawing, with performance at the heart of his practice. Both of Kjartansson’s parents are actors, and acting, repetition, and identity are ever-recurring themes in his work. He has taken on countless roles in his performances, combining his own personality with personas from cultural history. His work incorporates a mélange of show business icons and nostalgic imagery from bygone eras of theater, television, music, and art, allowing him to blur the border between life and art, reality and fiction, and to create bold statements that strike chords with his audiences. In addition to his work in the visual arts, Kjartansson has had a career in music, releasing several albums with his bands and performing throughout the world.

Kjartansson graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2001, and is the youngest artist ever to represent Iceland at the International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia. He has built an impressive roster of international exhibitions, including several major solo shows in museums, galleries, and art festivals in the last few years. He is representative of the vibrant young art scene in Iceland and has formed an engaging individual style that has drawn the attention of the international art world.

Kjartansson is represented by i8 Gallery in Iceland and Luhring Augustine in the United States.

Book Pages

Here are some of the summer book pages I have been working on exploring the theme of Internal Peace through love and location. I have also been experimenting with the tool of surrealism. Please comment and criticize. Mike

La Divina Commedia (illustrata da Salvador Dalì)

When I was in croatia I got the opportunity to see an exhibition of Salvador Dali's visual interpretation of the Divine Comedy. I had never heard of these works of his, and was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that the works in this exhibition were quite different from his most famous works. Here is a short description of the book containing these works.

Between 1951 and 1960, Dali created 101 watercolor drawings to interpret the Salvador Dali Divine Comedy, a poem by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). These works have been reproduced using a wood engraving technique. With this technique, wood engravers carved 3500 blocks for the prints that make up the suite. These 100 woodblock engravings were published as a set of six volumes. Each volume has a title page, a table of contents, and justification page contained in a cardboard slip case with matching inner boards. Each woodblock from the Salvador Dali Divine Comedy is part of a Canto or book chapter which is about 8 pages in length.

Here is a link to the expo:

http://www.inyourpocket.com/croatia/split/concerts-culture-events-entertainment/Exhibitions/Salvador-Dali:-La-Divina-Commedia,-1963-1964_62905v

Welcome!

This is my art blog. Enjoy.
Mike