Art Basel Miami 2016 - Sun Xun's "Reconstruction of the Universe" Behind...

Rodriguez- Crit #5

In and Out-Then Inside out - Developed Piece

I created a giant sitting sac like object made up of a comforter and stuffed with rags, cloth and cotton. I created a variety of pockets along the droopy object and each had it's own character based on material, form and the content of each pocket.

The pockets placed at the top of the form are my version of what s called a "pocket pussy". I had no alluded the decision to make these to lean towards the idea of the glorification of women and over-sexualization, looking back at this piece. The pockets had a limb-like quality to them, even when I didn't directly imitate the form of a literal body part. There are pockets within pockets within pockets, leading to a minuscule 'prize' or strange ,unexpected object when you go through each. 

I enjoyed playing around with form and embellishing each pocket with extra ribbon, thread, yarn , buttons and the stitching.

Sweeny-Artist Presentation 2: Sun Xun

Sun Xun  孙逊 (pronounced soon shoon)

Born in Fuxin, China around 1980 and growing up in a period immediately following the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the Great Leap Forward. Sun Xun studied printmaking at the China Academy of Fine Arts, and founded Pi animation studio in 2006. He has held many solo exhibitions around the world, not just limiting himself in the east. H e had exhibited his artwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and even at Basel. He currently lives and works in Beijing, China were he works on art that blurs the lines between drawing, painting, installation and animation. He uses a wide array of materials like woodcuts, paint, traditional Chinese ink and charcoal drawings which are combined to create expressionistic pieces. Sun Xun's work reflects his obsession with history because when he grew up he learned two different history's in China: the one presented in school with official accounts  and the truths that happened in the 1960s and 70s. His father told him these truths about how his grandmother was marched in a public square and harassed for having a upper-class background. This lingering effect continues to have a impact on his work, which often explores the ideas of culture, memory and politics. Sun's work discusses the concepts of past versus present, personal versus political in symbolic and surrealist ways. 

The Time Vivarium- November 11, 2014

Acrylic on paper 

Currently located at the Sean Kelly Gallery in New York

Sun Xun's gets inspired from political cartoons, biology books and instruction manuals. He took calligraphy and ink-and-brush painting classes while training at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, he graduated in 2005. Initially he experienced a huge culture shock as he navigated the differences between a rural and urban area. He works with mix media often and has even produced some 3D films by using books, newspaper and other documentary material to serve as a highlight of the passages history.

Magician Party and Dead Crow-2013

Sun created this work during his three month residency at the ShanghArt Beijing Space, and exhibited it from April 30 to May 8 of 2013. The entrance to the show featured calligraphy-filled folded manuscripts, a model zeppelin, dragon, locomotive, and huge hanging skeleton. This exhibition resembles a warehouse full of props for a movie company that existed before CGI. The huge skeleton filled the space with an ominous sense of construction while the statues of celestial phoenixes and soaring dragons positioned throughout the exhibition, as well as crow and carp images which helped develop the narrative. The characters and relationships somewhat resemble a puppet show that reflects Sun's own expressed narrative and fantasy. Another crucial part of the exhibition were the animations Sun created, for the first time using red-blue 3D technology, he built a custom-made stage on which he projected a montage of 3D images of his characters acting out a spectacular, captivating story and footage documenting his residency. And then surrounding the place with murals and installations with themes that provide visual clues that offered partial understanding of the story.

Rodriguez- Artist Presentation #2: Kimsooja

                     

Kimsooja

• Born in Taegu, South Korea- 1957
• Earned her BFA and MA from Hong-IK University, Seoul
• She choose the name Kimsooja for herself because it eliminates the gender association- there is no separation of her given name and her family name. 
• lives and works in New York
• She started off using the bottari as an alternative to painting on paper and then began to see the possibilities that can come from simply wrapping the bottari and began to work three-dimensionally

Mind and the World, 1991

Influence/Early Life Here

Kimsoojas contribution to the Art world

- she uses the "bottari"- a traditional bed cover used to wrap personal belongings in her work, which serves as a metaphor for structure and connection

- she relies on the presence of the viewer and emphasizes it in her work, allowing the viewer to take some of the bottaris in some of her exhibition installations

-uses the human body, fabric, air that she considers to be breathing fabric and sewing in her work- predominately.

- she uses her body as a method of describing human interaction, anonymity and the power of stillness

- her videos and installations blur boundaries between aesthetic and transcendent experience through repetitive actions: doing laundry and sewing, everyday actions.

A Sacred Soliloquy

Deductive Object VI

                         

'Bottari Truck', 2000- Rodin Gallery

                               - " In her 1997 video work Cities on the Move - 2727 km bottari truck, she traveled throughout the countryside of Korea for 11 days in a small truck piled with bottaris in the back. Kim moved often when she was a child because her father, who was a serviceman, had frequent job transfers. In that sense, Cities on the move is a travel through the memories of her own childhood. At the same time, it is a metaphor for her current state of being, an artist who constantly travels for work to different places in the world, and the work expresses the sensibilities of "on the move" and "itinerant" inherent in the bottari. When the video portion of the work, accompanied by the bottari truck, were shown at the 1998 Bienal do Sao Paolo and the 1999 La Biennale di Venezia, Kimsooja became known in the art world as the so-called bottari artist who poses the questions of identity, mobility, borderlessness, and nomadism."

                      

Needle Woman 1999-2001

                  

"Encounter–Looking Into Sewing," 1998-2002

Sweeny Crit-#4

Kris Kuksi -Ryan Haney

Kris Kuksi

Kuksi is an assemblage artist who was born on March 2, 1973 in Springfield, Missouri. He was the youngest of three children and was raised by a single mother. Growing up, his family wasn't very economically stable; one effect that this had on Kuksi was the lack of cable television. In fact, he claims that the only channel he would ever watch was PBS, Kuksi believes that watching PBS throughout his childhood ended up fueling his creativity, since all that was on the channel was educational documentaries and, as Kuksi calls it, "British stuff", like Monty Python. "If it hadn't been that way" he says, "I probably wouldn't be doing what I'm doing".

Early drawing by Kuksi

Early on, Kuksi focused on Gothic-inspired drawings and basic realism in his paintings. Currently, however, he is focusing more on sculpture.

Plague Parade by Kuksi

His work falls under the genre of "Fantastic Realism", and utilizes surrealistic aspects along with assemblage art. Kuksi utilizes found objects in his work, such as dollhouse parts, miniature army toys and jewelry, along with other objects. However, despite his focus on collecting found objects, he is not afraid to spend in order to get what he wants for his work. Kuksi recently purchased an eight-foot tall sculpture of a giraffe that he plans to incorporate into a new piece. After retrieving his materials, he then distorts them in any way he pleases in order to create large and elaborate compositions. He also uses wood and metal scraps.

Table of random objects used by Kuksi

Currently, Kuksi works out of a studio that is built into a church in North Lawrence, Ohio. He makes his work in order to portray narratives, while also working with the idea of polarity. He plays with the contrasts between light and dark, masculine and feminine, good and evil, etc. When it comes to his narratives, Kuski likes to leave the meaning up to the viewer, saying "If you don't have the full puzzle together, it's a little bit more interesting, because your mind gets to fill the gaps...You're just going to tell part of the story".

Kuksi making an allusion to Michelangelo's Creation of Adam

Kuksi's work will soon be featured in a solo show titled "Kris Kuksi. New Works" at the Lawrence Arts Center; it will be his first solo exhibition.

Untitled, unfinished piece.

Close up of one of Kuksi's sculptures, giving more insight to his materials and detailing work.

Churchtanks: Kuksi comments on the relationship between war and religion.

Bernardo- Critique #4

In this project I was finally able to expand my project in order to reach another sense-hearing. These foam core sculptures encompass a capsule containing beads which make sound when shaken. the cloudy, fluffy feeling that the foam core presents is contradicted by the clamor of the beads dancing within it. In future projects I want to add auditory components with my sculptures in order to confuse the participate and alter the way he or she experience the sculpture.

Creature #3
Spray foam, plastic cups, beads

Small Sculpture- Spray foam in a plastic bag (bad idea)

Small Sculpture - Experimentation for next project

Personal website: http://cargocollective.com/tonybernardo