Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

Comprising only a large installation at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Gabríela Friðriksdóttir’s Crepusculum – Latin for “twilight” or “dusk” – is a mixed-media, polyphonic, physical exploration of metaphysical structures that govern the human psyche, and speculates that an enigmatic and irrational system of signs, meanings and forms counterbalances the deceptively ordered exteriors of our existence.

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

Above all, it is an experiential and tactile show that prioritises evoking a multitude of emotions over engaging the intellect. A large, white spherical entity around which alchemic instruments are scattered sits on a pile of sand; music seems to leak out from all sides of the wall, surrounded by glass-protected ancient Icelandic calfskin parchments that record supernatural accounts of a medieval Scandinavian world inhabited by witches, trolls and dragons. The installation is populated with elemental components of the earth such as dust, dough, fire, blood, burlap and fur, but also overlaid with textures that are fur- or hair-roughened. An accompanying video bolsters the already-surreal installation as a narrator weaves a showy mythological universe with his droning words: a man guts slimy fish, a figure lithely unfolds itself out of clay “legs” and “helmet”, a figure wrapped in tattered cloths hikes laboriously across a sandy wasteland with another strapped to his back towards the self-same spherical entity.

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

Crepusculum’s allusive and mystical atmosphere appears to be as much a personal aesthetic journey as it is a collective memory of Iceland’s histories. Materially, the exhibition is about Friðriksdóttir’s continued creative experimentation with diverse materials and media that has been in part influenced by the breadth of Swiss/German Dieter Roth’s artistic processes and vocabulary. Friðriksdóttir’s starting point for Crepusculum is rooted in her own dreams – intangible tendrils of thoughts that bleed into each other are first allowed to drift unassisted into esoteric realms and subsequently thematically developed through a combination of simple sketches, sculpture and film. The overall effect is an imagistic universe comprising a choir of overlapping voices, an aggregate of signs and diverse earthy components, but it is hard to see beyond Crepusculum as an oracular endeavour to present nebulous connections to sexual psychology and pop culture while casting light on deconstructing traditional patterns of narratives located within Norse mythology .

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir, Crepusculum, 2011. Photo from Video, 29:00 mins / ed. 5 + 2 AP. Courtesy of the artist © Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt, 2011 Photo Jirí Hroník.

But Crepusculum is also Friðriksdóttir’s personal re-imagination of a time in Iceland when folklore, gods and magic were fundamental tenets of existence, and where elaborate stories of creation were punctuated by moments of horror, melancholy and unquestioning didacticism. Augmenting her exhibition are twelfth century manuscripts and almanacs loaned from the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík for the first time; such is the reinforcement of the historical investment in Iceland’s national cultural heritage and the revelation of the intense grip that these traditions and mythology still have on twenty-first century Icelandic culture. Perhaps then, for Friðriksdóttir, this is simultaneously a profound ambassadorial undertaking on behalf of the Icelandic people, a cultural burden so complex that it could only be presented in ambivalent spaces as metaphysical considerations.

***

Gabríela Friðriksdóttir: Crepusculum will be on show at the Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt until January 8, 2012.

Fire has always mesmerized me; as a child, I was frequently chastised for playing with matches and open flames. Until last winter, when I came upon a burning apartment building, my experience was limited to these tame interactions. Within moments, the flames engulfed the structure, sending giant plumes of orange and yellow and black smoke into the night sky. The scene led me to pause with a combination of horror and awe.

Over the past two years Lee Yujin has produced sumptuous drawings that examine the tension between the beauty and violence of smoke. In Cloud Series – the first body of work to investigate this subject matter – she isolates found images of bombs and explosions, divorcing these potent indicators of turmoil and violence from their original contexts. While these works in pencil present smoke as a static phenomenon, the dynamism of Lee’s meticulous mark-making breathes energy into these forms.

Lee Yujin. “Volcano Eruption 2." Pencil on Paper. 110 x 218 cm. 2010. Courtesy of the Artist.

Lee Yujin. Detail from “Volcano Eruption 2." Pencil on Paper. 110 x 218 cm. 2010. Courtesy of the Artist.

When viewed from the perspective of form and shape, these drawings reveal themselves as arresting abstractions. I was immediately reminded of Alfred Stieglitz’s Equivalents, a series of small-scale, black and white photographs of cloud-filled skies. Stieglitz viewed these photographs as “vision[s] of life,” a visual “equivalent” for human experience. Lee views smoke in much the same way. She explains, “there is something beautiful about smoke because it is something we cannot take control over. It is intangible and ephemeral. Its shape is unexpected and transformable. In this sense, ‘smoke clouds’ can be an allegory for life…”

Lee Yujin. "I am a Telescopic Viewer, You are a Telescopic Viewer, We are Telescopic Viewers (Telescope Series)." A series of 100 drawings; each drawing with frame 43 x 43 cm. Charcoal and conte on paper. 2011. Courtesy of the Artist.

While these pencil drawings are particularly notable for their incredible precision, her most recent series, I am a Telescopic Viewer, You are a Telescopic Viewer, We are Telescopic Viewers, approaches the subject with a more fluid gesture, using charcoal and conte to produce drawings that introduce color. The quietude of her earlier drawings is in stark contrast to these new works which, when exhibited en masse, allude far more evidently to the violence underlying these images.

Lee was included in several solo and group exhibitions in Berlin in 2011, including “One Night Stand” at Kims Bar, “Benumbed” at Takt Kunstprojektraum, and “We Can Start a Process” at Kreuzberg Pavilion. You can stay apprised of her upcoming projects through her website.

In 2004, indigenous Australian Cameron Doomadgee was brutally murdered at the hands of a white officer while in police custody, sparking riots on Palm Island in North Queensland. Doomadgee was first arrested for public drunkenness and reported dead an hour later, having suffered from four broken ribs which had ruptured his liver and spleen. His death was recorded as “an accidental fall” in the coroner’s report and all charges on the officer were later dropped in 2007.

“Tall Man”, Four-channel video installation, 2010. Image courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

In his four-channel video installation, Tall Man (a reference to Aboriginal Shire Councillor Lex Wotton’s commitment to the rights of Palm Islanders), Ah Kee appropriates footages from mobile phones and camcorders, edited together with archival news footages to reconstruct the unfolding of events – footages that were ironically used in court as evidence to convict Wotton of inciting the Palm Island riot. But in the hands of Ah Kee, they tell a different story of the injustices faced by the Aboriginal community in Australia. In contrast to the video installation where Wotton is seen enraged and devastated in public, Ah Kee depicts Wotton with subtle and gentle lines – a non-threatening, calm and warm-hearted figure.

"Tall Man”, Charcoal, crayon and acrylic on linen, 2011. Image courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

The final component of the exhibition is a large text-based work that fills the entire front display windows of Gertrude Contemporary. Appropriated from Shakespeare’s Macbeth and reproduced as a run-on sentence, Ah Kee situates the relevance of the seventeenth-century allegory of man’s endless cruelty to man in the brutality faced by Aboriginal people on Australian soil.

“Fill Me”, Vinyl lettering, 2009. Image courtesy of the artist and Milani Gallery, Brisbane

As a whole, the exhibition exposes the superficial attitudes toward multiculturalism and the constructed representations of Australian history. If it is commonly accepted that history has only ever been written by the victors, why have we still stuck to this story? How is the Aboriginal community to exercise their freewill when they are ceaselessly prevented from demonstrating such rights? Just when it seems that Australia has been making some progress, this illusion is shattered once again with the recent major policy shift by the Baillieu government to dump the compulsory protocol of acknowledging the traditional Aboriginal landowners for being too politically correct. The resurfacing narrative of the Palm Island riot is an important reminder of the continuing lack of respect of indigenous culture.

Christine Ay Tjoe, The Famous One from Lucas, 2011, Installation view. Photo: Edward Hendricks.

A biblical parable tells of a wayward son who leaves home for a distant land after demanding his inheritance from his father. Squandering his riches quickly, he repentantly returns to his father’s house hoping to be hired as one of his father’s servants but find instead, his father’s unexpected kindness and forgiveness. Christine Ay Tjoe’s current site-specific show The Famous One from Lucas # I at the Hermès Art Space references this well-known narrative of prodigality, articulating the interdependency of loss/gain and despair/hope through soft-fabric sculptures constructed out of goose-feathers, tulle fabric, stockings and industrial felt.

Christine Ay Tjoe, 24 of Us 65, 2006, Mixed Media and Glass Box, 65.5 x 50 x 6 cm.

Attempting to sublimate the profound personal workings of hope and despair into rituals of healing and rebirth has been a recurrent theme in Tjoe’s artistic practices. Unlike what we’ve come to expect from many contemporary Asian artists who respond to political or social change, Tjoe’s sensibility veered off this course early on. In 2003, her installation Santa/Satan at the CP Open Biennale was an acerbic critique of government authorities encumbered by bureaucracy and its trappings. But at some stage, her artistic gaze had turned inward, probing out suitable platforms on which questions of the transcendental could be raised. “I’m interested in the relationships between theology and humanity, which give rise to perceptions on the range of human emotions, motivations and experience,” she writes in an email interview, when asked if there were indeed, fundamental questions about art and religion that she had always sought to answer. “It relates to universal human experiences and emotions such as joy and grief and human expressions in extreme situations – this is something I’ve been curious about and continually investigate in my works.”

Christine Ay Tjoe, Santa/Satan, 2003, Installation, mixed media, 80 x 52 x 37 cm.

Steered by spiritualistic meditations and cosmological perspectives, her works are unsurprisingly attuned to the allegorical and the symbolic, utilising ephemeral spaces and fragmentary images that comment on the irreducible essence of flawed human nature. Lama Sabakhtani Club (2010) compares the tragic scale of loneliness and anguish to Christ’s ordeal on the cross in a series of installations assembled by strings, nails and fabrics. In Interiority of Hope (2008), Tjoe’s imagines the psychological state of the criminal Barabbas – the man Pilate released instead of Christ at the demand of the people – as one caught between the joy of his release and the unrelenting guilt of the crimes that he committed. In both shows, the forms of her work often appear as impressionistic renderings of complex lines or as misshapened entities whose purpose remain ambivalent. They share an allusive and elusive quality that often suggests that materials from without exist only to reveal the malleability and flux found within, elucidating an artistic vision that treads dangerously close to rehashing Renaissance humanist patterns of self-knowledge and its limitations.

Christine Ay Tjoe, Barabas Lights no. 07, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 170 x 135 cm.

The Famous One from Lucas # I continues Tjoe’s exploration of materiality as metaphor for the esoteric nature of the human condition. Textiles are primarily transformed into both familiar and non-familiar objects – a worn-out sofa and a teddy bear being the more recognisable ones –, their surface textures and form adding, according to Tjoe, an interesting dimension of sensation especially for the object art she creates. But like wanderers in a labyrinthine environment, it is hard to tell where The Famous One from Lucas # I starts and ends, despite Tjoe’s assertion we are walking through memory markers (displayed as physically undefined objects along cocooned walls) that express the journey of one’s life. We know the show’s conceptual starting points: the sheer greyness of the human psyche dictates that hope and despair are faces of the same coin, defined by their relation to one another. Yet the lack of linearity in its atmospheric spaces, soft curved walls and winding pathways seems to scope out a more cosmic intersection of nature and nurture; it introduces into the visitor experience a hint of the tenuous boundaries separating the cerebral and the emotional, the past and the present, the spiritual and the carnal.

Christine Ay Tjoe, The Famous One from Lucas, 2011. Photo: Edward Hendricks.

The physicality of the work reflects its metaphorical framing; we inexplicably find ourselves wandering in its pathways numerous times, beginning where we end, ending so that we could start once more. In this visual text, we can participate in the shameful indulgence and repeated transgressions of prodigality while simultaneously walking the passage of redemption and liberation.

***

The Famous One from Lucas #I was on show at the Hermès Art Space until November 27; this article could not have been completed without the contribution of Christine Ay Tjoe herself in an email interview and the support of Hermès Art Space and the Singapore Tyler Print Institute.

FOLKERT DE JONG The Balance: Trader's Deal 9, (detail) 2010 Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

Michael Tomeo: I’m really into the Trader’s Deal pieces. From the moment we learn about it in grade school, Americans laugh at how foolish native people were to sell the island of Manhattan for a bunch of beads. You make the pitch made to the native people seem goofily transparent and demeaning, like some sort of song and dance.  But there’s also an oddly hypnotic quality in the stares of the offerers. It’s like they’re half street hustler, half visionary. Could you elaborate on these?

Folkert de Jong: The Trader’s Deal pieces are about unfair deals, profiteering, colonialism and imperialism. I based the character on the monument for Peter de Minuit, the Dutchman who purchased Manhattan for beads and mirrors. The figures in the artwork are all copies from one character…a 16th/17th century trader, that I created out of many figures from history: The painting “The Nightwatch” by the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn, and characters such as Pedro de Alvarado, Peter de Minuit and Hernan Cortes. All the figures in the artwork are copies made from one mould, from one single character. The clones are trading with themselves, their own kind, ripping off each other and facing their destiny; self-destruction.

FOLKERT DE JONG: Operation Harmony, James Cohan Gallery, 2011 (exhibition view) Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: Coming from the Netherlands, were you taught a different view on the di Minuit transaction than children in the U.S. are?

FdJ: Well, if you look at the propaganda machine that promoted the 400 years Dutch-New York connection, I would say that still not much has changed. The Dutch seem to be very proud of their historical conquests. For me as a kid growing up here, they are like adventurous stories, with costumed characters as in Hook and Peter Pan. What disturbs me most is the interference of governments and the Royal Families in the manipulation of the historical myths. But I guess that is what happens with all nations, if you can change the cause of history into your own advantage, it simply becomes more profitable.

MT: What’s the symbolism behind the cubes and other polygons in your work? The people in the Trader’s Deal pieces offer strings of them and the half figure in Hail the One is sort of crushed by one.

FdJ: The shapes are references to dices, or mathematical forms. I am interested in the element of chance. How science has been always trying to simplify natural processes, and how uncontrollable nature actually can be.

FOLKERT DE JONG: Operation Harmony, James Cohan Gallery, 2011 (exhibition view) Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: You often mix colonial imagery with contemporary objects and you combine traditional sculptural techniques with industrial materials. Is there a “those who don’t learn from history are destined to repeat it” sense of moralism at play here?

FdJ: In a way, yes. I believe that there are timeless natural cycles. The costumes and setting looks different every time, but the people and their behavior remains the same.

FOLKERT DE JONG Operation Harmony, 2008 Styrofoam, pigmented polyurethane foam, pearls 340 X 700 X 230 cm Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: What inspired Operation Harmony? In part, I’m getting a Goya’s Los Caprichos for the 21st century vibe…

FdJ: Yes, I am fascinated about the role of Goya as an artist reflecting upon his own time. There is a timelessness in his work that reflects upon the fear, and fascination for human nature at work.

MT: I love the works on paper in this show. Often incorporating text, they have more of an unburdened sense of humor than the sculptures.  How does your mindset change when making the drawings?

FdJ: Thank you. The drawings are coming more out of an uncontrolled stream of thoughts, flowing out on the paper, telling thing about my fascinations…more uncut maybe?

FOLKERT DE JONG The DeWitt Bodies, 2007 Marker on paper 16 1/2 X 23 1/2 inches Photo: Jason Mandella Copyright the artist Courtesy James Cohan Gallery, New York/Shanghai

MT: Do you see your sculptures as monuments of sorts?

FdJ: Not deliberately, but there is a strong reference to the powerful meaning and function of monuments in my work for sure. Maybe they’re monuments for the moral subjects that are unspoken around the glory and heroic and fame of our history and time?

Folkert de Jong’s work can also be seen in Cryptic: The Use of Allegory in Contemporary Art with a Master Class from Goya, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, MO, from May 20^th to August 14^th, and Shape of Things to Come: New Sculpture, The Saatchi Gallery, London from May 27^th to October 16^th.

Louise Bourgeois, "Echo I", 2007, Bronze painted white, and steel 76” x 17” x 14", Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

This past weekend, the art world took a collective breath as it was informed of the death of a titan, French-American artist Louise Bourgeois. At the age of 98, Bourgeois had accomplished an impressive sixty-year career which, at the time of her death, was continuing to gain momentum.

Bourgeois was born December 25, 1911 in Paris, France where her artistic career started as a young child participating in her family business of tapestry restoration. She attended the Sorbonne in the 1930s, at the height of the Surrealist movement and studied in the workshop of Fernand Léger. In 1938, Bourgeois moved to New York with her husband, American Robert Goldwater (an art historian who specialized in tribal art), and again found herself in the epicenter of the artistic avant-garde, interacting with not only the European artists who were in exile from WWII, but also with the Abstract Expressionists who were claiming the spotlight. From there, Bourgeois was front and center for the subsequent artistic movements that were to follow: Pop Art, Pluralism, Identity Politics, Body Art, Feminist Art and Post-Modernism. Yet, Bourgeois’ work could never be defined as belonging to one. Rather, her work was able to incorporate aspects of all and, working in a variety of mediums, able to elevate into an entirely new category all on its own.

Bourgeois culled her childhood history and personal life as subject matter, and her works were riffed with what we can now categorize as Freudian and Lacanian theory. Growing up in Choisy-le-Roi, France, Bourgeois often references her imperious and philandering father and her mercurial mother, charging her work with sexuality, psychology and mortality.

It wasn’t until the late 60’s/early 70s that Bourgeois begin to gain recognition of her work, and once the ball started rolling, there was no slowing it down. Between 1978 and 1981, she had five-one woman shows in New York. She has participated in four separate Whitney Museum Biennales. She has represented the U.S. in the Venice Biennale and had her work included in Documenta. In the last twenty years of her career, the list of institutions which housed her solo exhibitions reads like a “Who’s Who” of international museums.

A wonderful display of her work is now on exhibit at Gallery Paule Anglim in San Francisco. The show, Mother and Child (open through June 12^th), is a collection of recent sculptures, gouache drawings and mixed media print works.  With this particular grouping of drawings, Bourgeois applied blood-red gouache onto wet paper and the affect of the absorption, in some inexplicable way, perfectly illuminates the complicated relationship of the female form with childbirth. I use the word “complicated” because Bourgeois work is such: beautiful, graphic, raw, and visceral. Additionally, Bourgeois often depicts the female form as an abstracted fertility form often encountered in ancient civilizations, reminding us that even with all our modern day technology, childbirth is just as primordial as it ever was.

Louise Bourgeois, "The Birth", 2007, Gouache on paper 23 1/2” x 18”, Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

The central piece of the exhibition, for me, was the work THE FRAGILE, 2007, a large piece of 36, 10 x 8 inches, archival dyes on fabric. Of all the work in the front room of a female form giving birth, this piece, installed in a smaller gallery room, seems the most intimate to me. This work comprises imagery of a variety of female fertility forms and spiders, juxtaposed together into a large grid. Often, Bourgeois would discuss the association of the spider form to her mother, and it is with this knowledge that the artwork reveals itself the most to the viewer. With THE FRAGILE, Bourgeois is allowing herself to be vulnerable with her audience, trusting enough to confide in us her complicated feelings about her mother, and possibly, her own role she has played in motherhood.

Louise Bourgeois, "THE FRAGILE", 2007, Archival dyes on fabric, in 36 parts 10” x 8” inches (each), Courtesy of the artist, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco and Cheim & Read, New York; Photo courtesy of Cheim & Read, New York

With her passing, there have been a slew of articles written about Louise Bourgeois and her contributions and positioning within art history. Many of these articles allude to the majority of her influence being felt by a largely younger, female contingency. This may be true, but one does not need to be female to appreciate and feel the power of Bourgeois’ work. One must be willing to allow him or herself to let down their walls and engage in the intimacy that Bourgeois invites the viewer to experience. In this day and age of many artists attempting to assert their identity of who and what they are in this world via their chosen medium, I defy you to find one who can strip down their psyche to such a vulnerable state as Bourgeois, while metaphorically returning your gaze.

Robert Mapplethorpe, "Louise Bourgeois in 1982 with FILLETTE, 1968", Copyright the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe

Ewan Gibbs, San Francisco, 2009; graphite on paper, 11 11/16 x 8 1/4 in.; Commissioned by SFMOMA; © Ewan Gibbs; photo: courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

Bean Gilsdorf: How long have you been drawing?

Ewan Gibbs: I started making the work that was the origin of this in 1993, when I was twenty. I came across this language based on knitting patterns and I knew then that this was the thing I was going to do.

BG: When you say “language based on knitting patterns”, what do you mean?

EG: Basically, I had been making paintings that were quite derivative of Lichtenstein: acrylic, flat color, black outline. I was very interested in interiors, but I just felt like it was all too derivative. I was almost paralyzed by the possibilities that were out there. And I just stopped doing anything—it’s a weird place to be, but typical of being a student—and then I found a book on knitting patterns where there’s a grid, and different marks determine what color [yarn] you use.

BG: And what was it that drew you to that?

EG: Well, it’s a functional language, but it can also be quite naturalistic. [In the patterns] they use a darker mark to describe darker areas. There was a practicality, it had another purpose other than as just a drawing. I had people make me needlepoints based on my drawings and I made a couple, as well.

BG: But you didn’t find that satisfying?

EG: I found it very satisfying, but it became a political issue of, “Why is a man doing this?” I wasn’t interested in trying to make some comment about craft, or something that’s traditionally seen as a female thing. Painting and drawing was what I was interested in. So I took an Edward Hopper painting, and I took the knitting pattern—a found image and a found language—and I put them together. It was a way of going back to square one to build my confidence. Then I decided to go into a holiday shop [a travel agency], and I got all the brochures and cut out thousands of these tiny pictures of hotel rooms. They were ready-made images, and they were free. I would never crop them. I thought, “There’s an element here that’s very subjective, I have to choose one, but once I’ve chosen, the composition is fixed.” It eliminated all that subjectivity so that I could function.

BG: How do you achieve the different gradations in the work?

EG: In the pen drawings, there are five different nib sizes, so I’m just picking up a different nib. There are only five variables for any square. In pencil, I’ve got ten different kinds of pencils, and each pencil I can use hard, light, or medium; so then I’ve got thirty different variables. One of the difficulties of what I do, or skills, is to be consistent over a few weeks, to make the same decisions and use the same pressure, so I don’t end up with a stripy picture that looks like a Xerox that’s running out of ink. I firmly believe I could teach anyone to do it, there’s a logic to it.

BG: What determines the scale, if you are working from very small images?

EG: Originally, the source image was about two inches square and I blew it up to the size of the paper. When I started you didn’t have digital photography or home printers, so I’d go to a Xerox shop. Now I take my own photos and print off the exact size I want. I still use A4 paper, which is the most familiar-sized paper, it’s the size of your head, there’s an intimacy. I have no interest in doing a massive one in some bombastic way to impress a crowd. I don’t want people to go, “Wow, that must have taken forever!”

BG: People say that already!

EG: They might, but then I say, “It only takes two weeks,” and they say, “Oh, that’s not that long.” Also, every bit of effort I make is visible, so it’s really economical in terms of effort. We’re fascinated with “work” in art, but it’s so often out of sight. But I can make one mark in one square and it takes a certain amount of time. Multiply that by the total number of marks, and that’s how long it took.

BG: Some of your marks are like counting, they’re like the hatch marks a prisoner makes to mark time.

EG: Yeah, definitely. I was looking for a practice that would…not kill time or waste time, but spend time. Not that I’m interested in labor intensity for the sake of it. The reward in the end is the final image. It’s kind of like, “Look after the pennies and the pounds take care of themselves”—you look after each unit, be diligent and rigorous, and you end up with a naturalistic image. And it’s almost as if these things have made themselves.

Ewan Gibbs, San Francisco, 2009; graphite on paper, 11 11/16 x 8 1/4 in.; Commissioned by SFMOMA; © Ewan Gibbs; photo: courtesy the artist and Timothy Taylor Gallery, London

BG: Do you feel like your work has a connection to mapping, or is it closer to photography?

EG: I’ve never really thought of it in terms of mapping. And I’m not trying mimic photography, I’m trying to take the best parts of photography, like the naturalism that we accept as the most developed way to view the world. I don’t want someone to see my work and think, “Oh, is that a photograph?” When you get up there you see the marks, they’re very evident. With photography you get up close and there’s so much information. With my drawings you stand back and then you come in close to get more, and then you’re repelled again because there isn’t anything there. There’s more clarity when you stand back.

BG: You’ve had three main bodies of work, Destinations, Hotel Facades, and Typical Interiors. What’s behind that type of imagery?

EG: The interiors, I was just fascinated with the genre. But at a certain point I realized that was an easy way of making art-historical references, and kind of lazy. But in those same travel brochures were pictures of the outsides of the hotels. So that gets us away from the connotations of loneliness and art history and it becomes more objective. I’m not really interested in telling anyone about me, or my life. Then I started using pictures I had taken of landmarks, and I realized that they were more meaningless. A picture of the Chrysler Building doesn’t really have any connotations other then your own anecdotal ones. It doesn’t take you anywhere, you just recognize it, and you stop there. I quite like that. So I did a series of buildings [from photographs] taken from the Empire State Building. But the limitation I put on myself was that I could only take pictures from the viewing deck, because the thought of being able to wander around the city and take pictures of anything brought me back to that daunting subjectivity

BG: What makes one drawing more successful than another?

EG: Sometimes a drawing will fail because there’s not enough clarity, or I don’t feel like the marks work. I did a book of failed drawings. I did 300 drawings, of which 100 failed, and I wanted to make a book of them because if you’re seeing my work for the first time it shows you how the process works and how the language is developed. I didn’t want to make a monograph of my work as if I’m established…to me, this is like an artist’s book rather than a catalog.

BG: But what makes one successful? When do you sit back and say, “This is good, I’ve done good work”?

EW: Well, I’m trying to find the perfect mark. For example, in some I’ve softened the mark with a Q-tip, and that worked for a few drawings. But the same technique failed when I was trying to draw these windows, so the drawing failed. You’ve got to have quality control, don’t you? You’ve got to believe that if someone only saw one of your things that you would be proud. But I realized that there isn’t a perfect language, there’s only the right language for the right picture. If I like it, it’s more like I was a conduit for the language to do its thing.

Andy DuCett is a Minneapolis- based artist working with a multitude of media, utilizing sculpture, collage, drawing and installation.  His installations predominantly feature site-specific pilings of mostly found objects.  The sculptures are temporary, and are most typically indicative of the cultural location in which they are built. His first solo show, entitled AOT Has Been Here Forever, Except When It Wasn’t,  recently on view at Art of This gallery in Minneapolis chronicles the history of the buildings, residents and streets around the gallery. The installation uses items from thrift stores and cast objects in order to draw attention to our interactions with the world. This assemblage of objects typical in his sculptural work is mimicked in his drawings, which pull together various occurrences and locations, illustrating for instance, events taking place over the course of a month.  His interest in found objects is apparent in his collage work, as well.  Using only found photographs and illustrations, DuCett constructs impossible scenes that subvert comfort, utilizing imagery of youthfulness to depict hazards and barriers.

DuCett received his Masters in Fine Arts from The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2006.  He is also currently presenting work in a group exhibition of artists using collage entitled CUTTERS: An Exhibition of International Collage at Cinder’s Gallery in New York.

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Austin-based artist Jonathan Marshall creates large paintings and drawings that rely heavily on wit, working through color and design. These graphic images explore nature and the landscape through illustrative imagery, showing destruction through absurdity and humor. His success began shortly after his graduation from University of Texas at Austin (2003), and, in 2005 alone, Marshall received the best-in-show award for the Texas Biennial and a feature in New American Paintings. In 2006, he showed with Lawndale Art Center in Houston, plus Art Palace and Okay Mountain in Austin.

Using the framework of children’s drawings, Korean artist Yeondoo Jung has created a series of photos titled “Wonderland.” In this series, the artist takes a literal approach in translating information between actual children’s drawings and staged photographs. Space and distance are distorted as the artist’s photographs offer a mix of reality and fantasy in the interpretation of a child’s view of the world. Yeondoo Jung received his BFA from the Fine Arts College at Seoul National University and his MA from Goldsmiths College at the University of London. The artist has exhibited with Tina Kim Fine Art, NYC (2005), and Insa Art Center, Seoul (2004). Jung also participated in the artist residency programs Villa Arson, Nice, France (2004); and Art Omi, NYC (2003). In 2002, the artist received the 2nd Shanghai Biennale Asia-Europe Foundation Cultural Grant.

New York based Ethan Murrow creates work in a variety of self informing media such as drawing, video, sculpture and performance. The artist recreates scenes where subjects engage in a variety of experimental scientific endeavors as they attempt to discover something about nature. These scenes are actually performed by the artist, videotaped and used as source material for future works, or sometimes as work themselves. This month Ethan Murrow is exhibiting with Bucheon Gallery in San Francisco, and is featured on the SF based website fecalface.com. In April of 2007, the artist will exhibit with Winston Wachter Fine Art in Seattle.