Amar’e Stoudemire Is Igniting a Fast Break for Emerging Art in the NBA
Article: Amar’e Stoudemire Is Igniting a Fast Break for Emerging Art in the NBA
“If you see a painting out there and you wanna call me, I can give you the 411,” six-time NBA All-Star Amar’e Stoudemire tells me from his Miami mansion, a 14,555-square-foot home filled with run-of-the-mill baller pad fare—a movie theater, a nine-car garage, a game room complete with a wet bar—oh, and a budding art collection.
Stoudemire bought the house in 2011 for a cool $3.7 million following a mega-deal with the New York Knicks, and the following year began to fill it with art. His Instagram account, with some 366,000 followers, is dotted with ’grams of new acquisitions—paintings by up-and-coming artists Devin Troy Strother and Hebru Brantley, a print by Basquiat—and, well, one where he’s taking a bath in red wine post-practice. (His favorite soak? Matarromera Crianza. Don’t worry, he drinks a glass after.) More at (Artsy)
In the Rocky Mountains, an Artist Residency Is Launching Careers
Article: In the Rocky Mountains, an Artist Residency Is Launching Careers
Tucked away in the Rocky Mountains, about 20 minutes from Aspen, sits a thriving, 50-year-old arts community. Anderson Ranch Arts Center was established in 1966 by the ceramist Paul Soldner, who sought to create an alternative to art school. With fellow artists Cherie Hiser, Peter Voulkos, and Sam Maloof, among others, Soldner created a place for artists to learn and refine their skills, to develop new work, and to relish the company of other creatives—a model that has flourished and evolved over the years as the community adapts to the demands of an ever-changing art world.
Today, the Colorado ranch offers more than 140 summer art workshops while also engaging its local community with year-round programming and outreach. The center also hosts world-renowned visiting artists, including the Haas Brothers, who recently worked there on a new ceramic series, and Carrie Mae Weems and Alex Prager, who gave artist talks. Yet the most inspiring aspect of Anderson Ranch might be its residency program: two 10-week terms during which 14 artists live and work at the ranch, with an opportunity to freely develop their work, take advantage of abundant resources, and become part of a close-knit arts community. More at Artsy
Genieve Figgis: Solo Exhibition at Gallery Met
Genieve Figgis will have a solo exhibition at Gallery Met opening December 8th, 2016.
(Vogue)
"A typical painting by Genieve Figgis manages to be both delicate and dramatic, both lyrical and macabre. It's a particular tension befitting Roméo et Juliette, Charles Gounod's retelling of Shakespeare arriving at the Metropolitan Opera on New Year's Eve. Earlier in the month, Gallery Met will debut a suite of Figgis's figurative acrylics - all fluid swirls, crackling fissures, and blurred lines - inspired by the tragedy of star-crossed lovers. 'I used the fifteenth century as my springboard,' the 44-year-old Dubliner says. 'But the show just evolved on its own.' Figgis has strayed from the libretto - Shakespeare never put the couple on horseback, or ascending into heaven - but did her research in Verona, the Montague and Capulet hometown. 'I went alone to see Puccini's Turandot in the Roman arena,' Figgis remembers of seeing her first live opera. 'Buckets of rain were falling, with thunder and lightning. It was the most exciting night I've ever had.' - Mark Garducci
Mira Dancy: FUTURE WOMAN // remake me
Opens Tuesday, November 8th, 2016
YUZ MUSEUM
Shanghai, China
Yuz Project Room will present Mira Dancy’s project “FUTURE WOMAN // remake me” from November 8th, 2016 to January 15th, 2017.
Taking a feminist approach, Mira Dancy creates images of women that conjure varied histories from Egyptian hieroglyphics and Greek mythology to advertising models. The bodies of her figures are never passive despite their repose. They are liberated, larger than life, enveloping and consuming the viewer.
As the artist’s first solo exhibition in China, Mira Dancy began preparing for this show in summer 2015. “I started drawing up images, thinking specifically about the cultural significance of showing my work in Shanghai. Time is fluid in painting, and as a medium I take pleasure in this option to lurch forward and backward at once. An ancient goddess or a billboard model are equal inspirations, and often their corresponding fictions fuse in my psyche. My impulse is to resurrect, embody, and overwrite these personas – to inhabit and inevitably alter these mythical constructions of Woman. I want to dig her up and drag her forward – I want to hear her speak. I want the story to be new. These concerns circle me back to the thread I first started pulling at last summer – an idea about Chang’e – the goddess of the moon – weathering her exile. The images here revolve around her fate – what if time peeled away? This repeating image of a woman in repose – she doesn’t dial back. The world writes itself over her – She is a mountain, she is a garden, she’s a sign in a shop window... she is repossessed.”
This exhibition is the first in a series of artist residency projects launched by the Yuz Museum. The residency aims to provide an environment for cultural exchange, an opportunity for non-local artists to learn about China and Chinese culture. Mira Dancy started her residency on November 1st, 2016. Her exhibition opens November 8th and includes paintings, a site-specific wall mural, neon installations and works on paper.
Alex Becerra: Interview
Article: Purple Magazine
BILL POWERS — We have a mutual friend who said she first met you selling sandals on Venice Beach.
ALEX BECERRA — During “Made in LA” in 2012, I got invited by Ali Subotnick to be part of the Venice Beach Biennial. She asked more than 50 artists to be vendors along the boardwalk at the beach. In my little booth, I sold these custom, handmade Huaraches that were made out of acrylic paint. They looked functional, but if you put them on, they’d rip apart after five steps.
BILL POWERS — For your solo show in Berlin this summer, you included a giant painting of your dog?
ALEX BECERRA — Of my dog, Fletch.
BILL POWERS — Is he named after the Chevy Chase movie?
ALEX BECERRA — Yeah. At my studio in LA, he’s always with me. Not too many of my friends live around this
Luis Gispert: The Story Behind the Cover of VICE Magazine's October Music Issue
Article: The Story Behind the Cover of VICE Magazine's October Music Issue
Luis Gispert and Jeff Reed first began collaborating on films and photographs around 2002. Their Stereomongrel project premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art and has been exhibited or screened Internationally. Both work as artists and filmmakers on their respective coasts: Gispert in Brooklyn, New York, and Reed in Venice, California.
Pedro Reyes: Pedro Reyes Named Inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT
Article: Pedro Reyes Named Inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT
(ArtNews)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced today that Mexico City–based artist Pedro Reyes will be the center’s first Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist. Reyes will be in residence at the Cambridge school for at least one year.
The residency is funded by Dasha Zhukova, the philanthropist and founder of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow who, in October 2015, gave a $1 million gift to MIT. (Zhukova is also an ARTnews Top 200 collector.) The gift funds a year-long residency at the institute that allows an artist to pursue projects and research while also teaching a course.
Reyes’s course will be called “The Reverse Engineering of Warfare: Challenging Techno-optimism and Reimagining the Defense Sector (An Opera for the End of Times),” and based on its title, it seems as if it will focus on surveillance technology. A press release includes no information about what Reyes will work on while at MIT.
Reyes, who will soon debut a “political house of horrors” called Doomocracy at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, said in the statement, “My personal experience and perspective from Latin America, where human interaction matters more than technology, have made me particularly interested in challenging techno-optimism at MIT….It’s my hope, along with my co-teacher Carla Fernández’s, that this long-term residency, encompassing both our course and my own research and experimentation, can serve as a laboratory of sorts that will give feedback to MIT as much as it will impact my own practice. We want to place a human perspective where the machine now lives, which is very much a departure from the idea of progress that has prevailed for the last three centuries.”
Vincent Valdez: New Painting by Vincent Valdez Shows Haunting Scene at David Shelton Gallery
Article: New Painting by Vincent Valdez Shows Haunting Scene at David Shelton Gallery
There's a haunting over at David Shelton Gallery in Montrose, but not the ghost and goblin Halloween spookiness that comes around this time of year.
It's a haunting of the soul, and it starts with the shock of turning the corner to view Vincent Valdez's massive, panoramic oil painting of the Ku Klux Klan. The 13 adults and one klanbaby-in-training are staring out, as if interrupted by the viewer, creating a back-and-forth energy that's highly unsettling. (more at Houston Press)
Titus Kaphar: Titus Kaphar Talks Race, History, and Personal Experience at Anderson Ranch
Article: Titus Kaphar Talks Race, History, and Personal Experience at Anderson Ranch
“When people look at my work, and they talk about my work, a lot of times they talk about it in the context of this sort of social and political work,” said New Haven–based artist Titus Kaphar as he began his recent talk at Anderson Ranch Arts Center. “I understand that, but for me, it always comes from a really personal place, some experience that I’ve had — something that’s affected me directly, and I’ve decided to take it to the studio.”
Kaphar’s talk was delivered on July 7 as part of Anderson Ranch’s Summer Series of panels and discussions featuring artists, curators, critics, and collectors. The artist, known for his multimedia practice that investigates, appropriates, and even invents history — particularly African-American history — went on to speak about his most important projects to date, his role as a teacher (of others and himself), and his relationship to the complex narratives of art history. Kaphar’s work feels deeply personal, and indeed his presentation came off that way as well.