Untitled. 2010
Acrylic and silver deposit on canvas.

Untitled. 2010
Acrylic and silver deposit on canvas.

Untitled. 2010
Acrylic and silver deposit on canvas.

Untitled. 2010
Acrylic and silver deposit on canvas.

Untitled. 2010
Acrylic and silver deposit on canvas.

Born in 1984, New York native Yacob Kassay has spent the last couple of years producing promising abstract works which demonstrate a concern with process and concept alongside increasingly minimal appearance.

The piece shown below left, for example, takes the traditional starting point of a painting – the first strokes of a layer of gesso – and turns it into a finished work through sanding and scarring of the gessoed centre.

Kassay’s most exciting development, however, is a recent foray into silver-plating which was debuted at his first solo show (page top and above, right).
Preparing his canvases with loosely applied, broad strokes of colour, the work is then chemically plated.

The resulting mirror-like planes reveal the ghostly presence of the underpainting as surface irregularities, pock-marked occasionally with tiny patches of colour. In addition, any exposed canvas is scorched by the plating process, resulting in dark, smoky edges to the metallic surfaces.
Part sculpture, part painting, these bravura works play with the idea of reflection and revelation in obvious, though none the less satisfying ways. There’s also, of course, a reference to photography – capturer of reflections par excelence – in Kassay’s nod to the silver coated plates commonly used in the 19th century.

It’s early days for Kassay, of course, and it will certainly be interesting to see how (and if) he develops his work.

Nevertheless, we’re betting that his name will be popping up everywhere in 2010, so tracking his progress shouldn’t be a problem.

Text by: Modern Edition

KL20
Acrylic on canvas. 40×30 cm. 2011

KL22
Acrylic on canvas. 40×30 cm. 2011

KL45
Acrylic on canvas. 200×250 cm. 2011

KL40
Acrylic on canvas. 25×20 cm. 2011

KL39
Acrylic on canvas. 20×25 cm. 2011

The works of Yago Hortal are characterized by plastically shapeless blobs of bright paint that mingle fluidly with one other, thus creating a psychedelic effect. In their violent yet harmonious twists and swirls, Hortal’s canvases resemble a Glenn Mckay liquid light show or an acid-induced reverie.

Sometimes vertiginously fast, other times smoothly slow, Hortal’s canvases seem to have a double existence. But maybe it’s all in our mind and in the way we relate to the works. They change from day to day, reflecting our intimate connection with time.

What sometimes appears to the viewer as a chaotic space can also, in a strange relationship between eye and psyche, appear perfectly ordered. We should not be surprised. Emil Cioran said, “Chaos is being yourself”, but ultimately by being yourself you realize how imperfectly everything is ordered.

Yago Hortal was born in Barcelona, Sapin (1983). He lives and works in Berlin, Germany. Yago graduated with a degree in Fine Arts from the University of Barcelona in 2006, having already studied the 4th Course at the University of Sevilla in 2004/2005. In 2007 he won the art prize “Premi de Pintura Jove de la Sala Parés”, sponsored by the Fundació Banc Sabadell.

Alexander Slonevsky & André Escarmeia.
New York, July 2011.

From the exhibition: Works on canvas. Rooster Gallery.

Untitled. 2010.
Watercolor on paper. 69×99 cm.

Untitled. 2005.
Watercolor on paper. 152 x 101 cm.

Untitled 6-21. 2010.
Watercolor on paper, 22 x 30″.

Untitled DC16. 2010
Watercolor on paper, 30 x 22″.

From the work: “Black watercolor paintings”

When all doors open, when all abysses of fear have been overcome and every subjective desire has been switched off, when the view gets clear like a mountain lake in spring, when the excited play of thoughts is interrupted and the hand finds rest, there comes to life a state of being out of which Joachim Bandau, born 1936, creates his meditative watercolors. For more than twenty years now the sculptor has been practicing this painting rite, demanding the highest degree of concentration, self-possession, discipline, trust and patience. The work, graphic-painterly, is created by a contemporary who thinks three-dimensionally, whose work mirrors inner spaces, which have recently become increasingly more complex, layered in and about one another. Bandau understands how to employ his media with ever greater sovereignty, unveiling picture-spaces of nearly musical transparence while retaining a great sensual vision.

Even as Miles Davis’ free improvisations trumpet wildly through his studio while Bandau works, the inner force of his “Black Watercolors” remains unbroken. Immersed in the painting process, he turns it around: lines emerge not as borders of surface-space but as a result of application of areas of color. While drying, lines form, made up of clotted paint-pigment, sharp and clear at the color’s edges, applied by a broad Japanese brush. The lines are so fine the viewer thinks they were made by a pencil. These lines have been created with no further device than the meeting of wet and dry paint-surfaces while applying a brush not too softly nor too hard. Where surface touches surface, where paint layers overlap, building on top of one another, increasing in density to form rhombic shapes, picture-spaces of unquestionable architectural quality are unveiled: corridors, cells, walls open entirely new fields of association. [Extract : On the Meditative Black Watercolors of Joachim Bandau : Dr. Katja Blomberg]

Via: Azurebumble

Mesmerandom
C-Print. 24″x24″. 2009.

Mesmerandom
C-Print. 24″x24″. 2009.

Mesmerandom
C-Print. 24″x24″. 2009.

Works from the print series “Mesmerandom“

Yoshi Sodeoka is a Japan born artist and musician who has been producing art projects since the early 1990s. In 1989 he moved to New York City to study art and design at the Pratt Institute.

His digital artwork has been featured on numerous DVDs, film festivals, art galleries, and in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Britain, Deitch Projects, Turbulence.org, Creative Time’s Holiday Light Shows at the Grand Central Terminal and OFFF Festival in Spain.

In addition, Sodeoka lectured widely on the topic of digital art and design and has juried design awards for Webby Award, the Art Director’s Club, the One Club, the Society of Publication Designers and the .MOV Festival held by Shift Japan.

He was a contributing writer for Artbyte magazine in which he wrote a bi-monthly column about underground digital culture. Prior to that, he was the founding art director of Word Magazine, one of the Web’s oldest and most influential ezines, which launched in 1995. Sodeoka’s work is in the permanent collections of New York’s Museum of the Moving Image as well as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Untitled #4HO, 2006.
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 122 x 162 cm / 48.03 x 63.78 in.

Untitled #389, 2007.
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 86 x 61 cm / 33.86 x 24.02 in.

Untitled #1Q3. 2005.
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 122 x 163 cm / 48.03 x 64.17 in.

Untitled #3A3, 2005.
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 220 x 176,5 cm / 86.61 x 69.49 in.

Untitled #4K3. 2004.
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 122 x 163 cm / 48.03 x 64.17 in.

Untitled #19A. 2008
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 91 x 91 cm / 36 x 36 in.

Untitled 1H4. 2005
Acrylic on Canvas on Wood, 46 x 61 cm / 18.11 x 24.02 in.

Prudencio Irazábal is a classical painter who has been working on the growth of his oeuvre during the last twenty-five years, regardless of the regularly reoccurring declarations of the death of painting. Irazábal just paints. He cultivates a highly defined technique of abstract acrylic painting, adding a vast number of translucid layers onto each other, finished by a polished mirror-like surface. Underneath this surface and in sharp contrast to it, an endless cosmos of diffuse colour spaces opens up. Irazábal`s paintings have the depth of outer space – drowned in colour.

Regardless of the linear development of his work, the paintings themselves turn out to be quite distinctively individual compositions. Regarding their level of abstraction and their varieties of differentiation in colour and tone, Prudencio Irazábal´s paintings resemble musical compositions. Like in a sonar, Irazábal´s technique of painting seems to generate two-dimensional pictures out of sound waves. His works appear to be music frozen into paintings.

Born 1954 in the Basque city of Puentelarrá, Irazábal has lived in New York for twenty years and moved back to his native Spain in 2008. His paintings have been shown extensively throught Europe, Canada and the United States. Collections include Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and Museo de Bellas Artes Álava.

Text by Hamish Morrison Galerie

iteration TRI [78641_CircleScape06_TRI]. Digital image.

SNAG_Program-0001. Digital image.

SNAG_Program-0014. Digital image.

31505_CircleScape06_3. Digital image.

After study sculpture in the art academy of Dresden, german artist Holger Lippmann (Mittweida , 1960) specializes in computer and generative art.

This pieces are a selection of his series “Work in process” in wich the images are writing through code variations. The strata and accumulative aspect of this works drives the classical abstraction to a new direction, only possible through the process they are made.

In his own words:

“These works, are programmed and recorded as vector files, thus they are unlimited scaleable without a loss of quality. I usually realize 3 prints; one unique print in a smaller size about 80cm (+-) width, one unique print in a medium size about 1 meter (+-) width, and 1 unique print in larger size about 1,80 m (+-) width. since the file format allows unlimited scalability with no decrease in quality and these works are mostly based on very dense and finely generated structures, extra large prints would be ideal.
all works are programmed and realized with processing.”