Daniel Arsham "Circa 2345"

This past weekend I viewed the Daniel Arsham "Circa 2345" exhibition at Galerie Perrotin, which recently opened Thursday, September 15th.  I love a good installation show and this one did not disappoint.

Arsham using a medium of crystalline calcite, created standout pieces such as a glowing Spalding ball, an intriguing tower of footballs, a Yankees Hat and a Chicago Bulls Jacket (to name a few) in this radiant blue/purplish hue.  The collection gives the illusion that you are viewing old deteriorated human artifacts of the past.  The intense blue tone in his work is a stark difference from his previous collections which were mostly monochromatic black and whites. Apparently this stark blue results from Arsham’s research in correcting his inherent colorblindness.  

On the lower level of the gallery, Arsham created this cave-like installation. Drawing on the themes of the fragility of human civilization and the nature of time itself, by transforming elemental materials such as stone, crystal, and ash into cultural artifacts. Arsham’s “Circa 2345” exhibit offers a glimpse into our current culture from the perspective of a future archeological site in the faraway future — from which the exhibition draws its name.

His work may seem familiar to you because Usher featured two views of a sculpture in this same archaeological style for his new album cover art.  It was a collaboration between the two (artist and musician) and apparently Usher spent four hours sitting still while Arsham put him through the process of creating an ancient statuesque piece that might be discovered in sometime in the future.

Daniel Arsham's Exhibit: 

September 15th - October 22, 2016 

Galerie Perrotin - 909 Madison Ave, NYC 11021

29 Rooms

This past weekend Refinery29 created one of the coolest interactive installations I've been to in a long time.  My favorite art enthusiast and adventure sidekick Cory and I were so stoked for this event that we talked about it for days and made sure we arrived there early to avoid a long wait and major queuing. Open for only three days (September 9-11) visitors had the opportunity to explore 29 Rooms and immerse themselves into a wonderland of fashion, beauty, design, art, and technology while being able to capture and share the amazing moments and obligatory selfies on social media platforms.

The 29 Rooms event took place in a massive 80,000 square foot warehouse in Bushwick Brooklyn.  Each room had a different theme, some were designed by individual artists, and others collaborated with various brands such as Perrier, Ulta, Papyrus, Google and Michael Kors.  Some of the collaborators included artist Baron Von Fancy, Broad City‘s Abbi Jacobson, singer Tinashe, actor Adrian Grenier, artistic director for Diesel Nicola Formichetti, RuPaul, makeup artist Ryan Burke, and interactive artist Daniel Rozinare.

"Show Your Pride" room, photo by Kali Brown

Ulta's "Beauty Wonderland" Room, photo by Kali Brown

Lonely Whale Foundation "Turn the Tide" room, photo by Kali Brown

Adwoa Aboa's "Gurls Talk" room, photo by Kali Brown

The most popular rooms were those that combined interactivity with great photo opp's, such as the Gurls Talk room created by founder Adwoa Aboa.  The room had an installation with over 500 old-school pink telephone receivers hanging from the ceiling. 

When you put the gold phones to your ears you heard various voices. Later I learned that the people speaking through the phone were women that Aboah admires like activist Erica Garner, model Cara Delevinge and Denise Gough.

In the “You-niverse” room you could get an "aura photo" taken or a Polaroid portrait that reads your spiritual energy through color.  The line for this room was very long and you had to pay a $15 fee for the picture so I skipped that and just took cool photos in the room decorated like a moonscape, with tons of brightly lit stars and moon-like sand covering the floor.  

Perrier "Beyond the Bubbles" Room, photo by Kali Brown

One of my favorite rooms was the “Beyond the Bubbles” room created by Perrier. It was filled with hundreds of balloon displays to give the illusion of bubbles. Also, I loved  RuPaul’s “Wig Out” room, which had these amazing over the top wigs that you could pose under in a salon chair.

Here are some of my favorite flicks while at 29 Rooms.

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Ford's "Garden of Energi" room, photo by Kali Brown

Ford was promoting its environmentally-friendly Fusion Energi car, in a glowing garden installation.  But what made Ford really win was the complimentary rides they offered to guest as they were leaving the event. Our driver Joe was awesome and got us to our next destination in less than ten minutes.

In our complimentary Ford car

Overall it was a wonderful experience. Some rooms were more interesting than others and it was a little sensory overload, but Cory and I had a blast.  It was a great event and I can’t wait until next year! 

Black History Art: Seydou Keïta

Seydou Keïta (born  in 1921) was a self-taught portrait photographer from Bamako, Mali. His portraits gained a reputation for excellence throughout West Africa between the1940s and early 1960s. His photos are widely acknowledged not only as a record of Malian society but also as pieces of art.

Keïta developed an interest in photography when his uncle gave him a Kodak Brownie with eight shots of film in 1935, after returning from a trip to Senegal. In the beginning Keïta worked as both a carpenter and photographer, taking first portraits of his family and friends, later of people in the neighborhood. He learned photography and how to develop from Pierre Garnier, a French photographic supply store owner, and from Mountaga Traoré, his mentor. In 1948 he set up his first studio in the family house in Bamako-Koura behind the main prison.

His numerous clients were drawn by the quality of his photos and his great sense of aesthetics. Many were young men, dressed in European style clothing. Some customers brought in items they wanted to be photographed with but Keïta also had a choice of European clothing and accessories (watches, pens, radios, scooters), which he put at their disposal in his studio. The women came in flowing robes often covering their legs, only beginning to wear Western outfits in the late 60s.

Seydou Keïta worked primarily with daylight and for economic reasons took only a single shot for each picture.

I learned about Seydou Keïta through my interest in another African photographer Malick Sidibé (I will do a whole post on him tomorrow).  It is said that Seydou Keïta was discovered in the West in the 1990s. His first solo exhibition took place in 1994 in Paris at the Fondation Cartier. This was followed by many others exhibits in various museums, galleries and foundations worldwide. He is now universally recognized as the father of African photography and considered one of the greatest photographers of the 20th century.

“It’s easy to take a photo, but what really made a difference was that I always knew how to find the right position, and I never was wrong. Their head slightly turned, a serious face, the position of the hands... I was capable of making someone look really good. The photos were always very good. That’s why I always say that it’s a real art.”

Seydou Keïta died November 21, 2001 in Paris, France.

Black History Art: Kerry James Marshall

Portrait of a Curator (In Memory of Beryl Wright)

Kerry James Marshall (born October 17, 1955) is an American artist who uses painting, sculptural installations, collage, video, and photography to comment on the history of black identity both in the United States and in Western art. I was recently introduce to his work while doing research for a project.  He is well known for paintings that focus on black subjects historically excluded from the artistic canon, and has explored issues of race and history through imagery ranging from abstraction to comics. As he describes, his work is rooted in his life experience: “You can’t be born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1955 and grow up in South Central [Los Angeles] near the Black Panthers headquarters, and not feel like you’ve got some kind of social responsibility. You can’t move to Watts in 1963 and not speak about it.”

De Style

Strongly influenced by his experiences as a young man, he developed a signature style during his early years as an artist that involved the use of extremely dark, essentially black figures. These images represent his perspective of African-Americans with separate and distinct inner and outer appearances. At the same time, they confront racial stereotypes within contemporary American society. This common theme appeared continuously in his large-scale painting throughout the subsequent decades, especially in the 1980s and 1990s.

(l) Untitled, (r) Handsome Young Man

Some of Marshall’s notable works include the Garden Project, which critiques the glorified names of housing projects that conceal desperate poverty and the Lost Boys series about young men killed or abandoned by various social systems. This collection was semi inspired by an autobiographical situation where Marshall’s  youngest brother was incarcerated for seven years.  Marshal says it’s about “the concept of being lost: lost in America, lost in the ghetto, lost in public housing, lost in joblessness, and lost in illiteracy. And all of those things sort of changed...all of those things kind of came together with the fact that my own brother now seemed to be one of those lost.

Untitled (Altgeld Gardens)

Lost Boys: AKA Black Johnny

Marshall explored the concept of black beauty in contrast to Western ideals with paintings where a nude female figure, literally blends into her dark surroundings, her sensuous shape barely discernible. Yet once the viewer looks closely, her curvaceous figure evokes a womanly power only enhanced by the deep black of her skin. As Marshall admits, he himself “‘had not considered that a black woman could be considered a goddess of love and beauty,’” but with his painting he proves its possibility. He challenges the classic perception of a goddess as only a Caucasian woman with long flowing hair, speaking again to the issue of African American identity in the Western world.

Small Pin Up Finger Wag

Beach Towel

Marshall studied in Los Angeles with acclaimed social realist painter Charles White and participated in the residency program at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has received solo exhibitions throughout Europe and North America and his work has been included in prestigious international exhibitions.  His paintings are in private collections and foundations as well as major public collections including the MCA’s.

Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall now lives in Chicago, where he previously taught at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a 1978 graduate of Otis College of Art and Design.

Black History Art: Aaron Douglas

The Creation, by Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas (born May 26, 1899) was an African-American painter, illustrator and graphic artist who played a leading role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.

Douglas had a unique artistic style that fused his interests in modernism and African art. His best-known paintings are semi-abstract, and feature flat forms, hard edges, and repetitive geometric shapes. Bands of color radiate from the important objects in each painting, and where these bands intersect with other bands or other objects, the color changes.  A student of German-born painter Winold Reiss, he incorporated parts of Art Deco along with elements of ancient Egyptian wall paintings in his work. Many of his figures appeared as bold silhouettes.

  (l) Into Bondage (1936), (r) Aspirations (1936), Aaron Douglas

Douglas contributed illustrations to Opportunity, the National Urban League's magazine, and to The Crisis, put out by the NAACP.  These were the two most important magazines associated with the Harlem Renaissance at the time.  He created powerful images of African-American life and struggles, and won awards for the work he created for these publications. His designs brought him to the attention of W.E.B. Du Bois and Dr. Alain Locke who were looking for young African American artists to express their African heritage and African American folk culture in their art.  He ultimately received a commission to illustrate an anthology of philosopher Locke's work, entitled The New Negro.

By 1939, Douglas started teaching at Fisk University, where he remained for the next 27 years.

Aaron Douglas was considered the "Father of African American arts." That title led him to say," Do not call me the Father of African American Arts, for I am just a son of Africa, and paint for what inspires me."

His striking illustrations, murals, and paintings of the life and history of people of color depict an emerging black American individuality in a powerfully personal way. Douglas linked black Americans with their African past and proudly showed black contributions to society decades before the dawn of the civil rights movement. His work made a lasting impression on future generations of black artists including myself (he is one of my favorites).

David C. Driskell, artist and a leading educator and scholar of African American art said, "At a time when it was unpopular to dignify the black image in white America, Douglas refused to compromise and see blacks as anything less than a proud and majestic people."

Douglas died in February 1979 in Nashville, at the age of 79

Picasso Baby

Picasso Sculpture Exhibit (photo by Kali Brown)

Last weekend before the major east coast blizzard I went to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), here in NYC. I went mainly to sign up for a museum membership but while I was there I had an opportunity to check out the Picasso Sculpture exhibition, which is one of the first of it's kind in the United States in half a century. Overall I thought the exhibit was ok. You could see where many of his influences were derived from.  The piece above was my favorite out of the collection, it's definitely African influenced. The exhibit ends February 7th so you have about two weeks to check it out.

While exploring the rest of the MoMA collection I stumbled across this one sculpture that really caught my eye. The piece (below) is called The Impossible III by artist Maria Martins. I found this sculpture very powerful and my interpretation of how life is sometimes. I love it!

The Impossible III, artist Maria Martins (photo by Kali Brown)