Marcel Duchamp explained that in the midst of creation "the artist goes from intention to realization through a chain of totally subjective reactions." Once the artist is done, it is the spectator who brings it in "contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act." That is, the viewer, along with the artist, is responsible for art's success.
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"Mapping the Flow: Wopo Holup's River Drawings" by Nicholas Robbins
Rivers are the ostensible subjects of Wopo Holup's drawings, but not in any conventional sense. As they were for Thoreau, rivers are Holup's point of departure for the investigation of an expansive range of questions and concerns-aesthetic, scientific, historical, and ecological. Derived from satellite imaging systems, Holup's drawings present themselves as a kind of hand-crafted, subjectivized mapping, a personalized rendering of landscapes originally captured by a data-driven, all-seeing eye.
Read More"Slyboots : Stephen Schofield and the Making of Believers" by Jake Moore
The "conditional" is a term used to express what would happen given certain events or actions. Equivalents exist in many languages; in English, additional words are required to put potential into linguistic play. In French, the conditional is expressed through a form of conjugation, so the potential for a shift is thus inherent, or rather, structural.
Read More"Liberating the Airwaves: Free Radio's Broadcasting Communities" by Kareem Estefan
Radio is, famously, a location-less medium. It exists in the "ether," neither here nor there. Often it meets listeners in transit: on the road one catches broadcasts from the local station, or tunes in to more remote content from satellite transmissions. Depending on where the dial (or on-screen arrow) lands, one hears either corporate content assembled by automatic playlists or carefully selected regional voices; however uncommon the latter, radio remains a rare haven for independent production. With Free Radio, Brian Gillis and Robin Lambert aim to expand the social space opened by community radio, helping underserved community groups to develop and transmit their "voices" through a DIY radio station that could be heard across the New York metropolitan area from CUE's gallery.
Read More"Greg Wilken's Terra Incognita" by Tucker Neel
Greg Wilken arrives at his final images through a process akin to a fact-finding mission. On these expeditions the artist is motivated by the discovery of a significant historical event or condition which results in research, field explorations, documentation gathering, and the presentation of evidence, usually in the form of framed photographs, films, and custom-made artist books. Taken at face value, it's a fairly simple set of procedures, a way of getting from A to Z, but the resulting works are anything but easy, demanding a cognitive shift from viewers.
Read More"A Single-Minded Migratory Bird" by Camille Xin
Leonard Contino is the kind of visionary artist described by Rilke as a single-minded migratory bird. Although formally untrained, Contino's mode of geometric and optical art is highly sophisticated, his work a unique blend of spiritual and metaphysical curiosity. He effortlessly switches between different mediums but other than his creativity, nothing is effortless for Contino.
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