Art 413: Contemporary Art Spring 2021

Margaret Kilgallen by  Ben Kokkelenberg on May 13   Untitled ( around 2000). Courtesy the Estate of Margaret Kilgallen and Ratio 3. San Francisco Margaret Kilgallen, born on October 28, 1967 in Washington D.C, grew up in the San Francisco area. She was immersed in bluegrass music, and learned to play the banjo. This musical  led her to draw the sounds she heard without knowing what she was drawing. Her drawings in the beginning focused on heroines and  on empowering women. As her artwork progressed, she chose the medium of graffiti to display her art for the world. Art21’s documentary “Place” created in 2001, shows an interview with Kilgallen in which she talks about her inspirations and her artwork. She explains why she enjoys displaying her art through graffiti. Kilgallen says, “the viewer looks at graffiti and sees garbage and I always wonder why they don’t look at billboards, [especially around San Francisco, there’s millions everywhere] isn’t that garbage, that’...

  Meet Miwa! Animator. Designer. Performer. by Amber Taylor on May 13 Miwa Matreyek is an artist based in Los Angeles. She is known for her diverse background in art, acting as an animator, designer, and performer. While a student at the California Institute of the Arts she indulged herself into many art programs. She first studied art where she made collages, a medium which she would later incorporate into her work. Matreyek’s studies in  animation  led her to her first performance, a film called Ocean Flight produced in 2005. This film, which marks the beginning of her professional career in the field,  and combined pre-made elements with live performances from people acting throughout the show with animations playing in the background.The film used all sorts of illusions and was a theatrical experience. Matreyek’s work has been showcased in museums, film festivals and many universities. THIS WEEK’S TOP ARTIST          ...

  Through her work, Philadelphia-born artist Howardena Pindell brings awareness to racial injustice towards black women in America. Growing up, Pindell often experienced microaggressions and racism from white individuals. Pindell’s art expresses her political affiliation, while also bringing awareness to issues such as sexism, war, and homelessnes.  During a Zoom interview with Howardena Pindell, curator Valerie Cassel Oliver asks Pindell about her childhood, her artwork, and her legacy as a successful African American artist.  Oliver starts by asking Pindell, “What was the moment you decided you wanted to become an artist?” Pindell believes her artistic success developed over a series of events. Her parents had repeatedly told her how talented she was and put her in art school at 8 years old, where she was the only black student attending. Many of the white teachers, however, discouraged her from pursuing art. Some parents were so outraged by the idea of their children b...

  Maya Lin, Ecliptic, 2001, Concret  Maya Lin: More Than Just a Monument April 19, 2021, Anissa Quankep      Maya Lin participated in an Art21 documentary giving us a closer look into her work. Art21 allowed us to be part of the artistic process of Eliptical, an urban park in Grand Rapids Michigan. Eliptical was a made in 2 001 and is a refurbished ice rink made from the park. Lin is best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a project that she designed in her early twenties. Since then she has fallen into the category of a "monument artist," a label she dislikes. During her Art21 interview Identity , Lin states ". . .had I not done the Vietnam memorial. . .I would be called an artist five years sooner. But because I had done the Vietnam Memorial, it was like "Oh you make monuments," or whatever that means." Lin is a contemporary artist who practices art through architecture, making it harder for galleries and museums to showcase her work. Robert...

  Art 413 Taking Back the Power Works of Mark Steven Greenfield By Vince Velasco Untitled ,  2000. Serigraph  Mark Steven Greenfield is an American artist who focuses on the sensitive topic of black experience in the US. His work explores racial discrimination historically, through media and culture The artist sparks the important discussion of racial discrimination by using the provocative imagery of blackface. He appropriates this problematic part of American history and superimposes the black face imagery with an eye chart containing a witty phrase. The addition of the eye exam chart was a clever way of telling the audience to re-examine their views. Greenfield takes the power away from the racist image by spotlighting its original discriminatory meaning  in a way that its racist content may be discussed and forces the audience to reflect upon the history of discrimination in the US.   In his zoom lecture in CSUF , Greenfield mentioned that nowadays, th...

Why Does Howardena Pindell’s Artwork Speak so Loud?  by Seth Houston “Valerie Cassel Oliver in conversation with Howardena Pindell”: organized by the Platform Spring 2021 Speaker Series, Howardena Pindell describes her journey to becoming an accomplished and respected Black artist in a racist and sexist art world. She recalls the scene of the 60’s in which white male artists flooded the field: They were the rule, the exceptions being that “occasionally a white female artist who was the wife, child, or lover of a white male artist” would be shown.        The exclusion of people of color in the art world is far from the only reason that Pindell’s art is centered on her advocacy. She was the only admitted black student at Boston University in her year. Witnessing the prevailing racist environment within her school, and segregational norms in museums. The artist describes the institutional roadblocks that were placed in front of her, but because she ...

Wrestling trauma through “Dream Vessels,” aka photographs.   by Anna Silverstein April 1, 2021 Virtual Reality (2017) Leonard Suryajaya is an artist who lacks concern for performative elitism, winning me over with his authenticity during a live Zoom talk he led at CSUF. Due to the level of sophistication of his work, I was surprised by his approachability and down-to-earth demeanor. Although Suryajaya considers himself a photographer, his process could be seen as theatrical performance. Suryajaya’s theatre background not only gives him set design skills, allowing him to create amazing installations and photographs, but also, his Zoom presentation was inadvertently a captivating and moving performance of its own. The talk was marked with refreshing candor, and relatable trauma “over-sharing”.   The juxtaposition of Suryajaya’s incriminating honesty with the hyper sophistication of his work is one of the artist’s many dichotomies. As an eternal outsider on a quest to fit in, th...

     On April 12, 2021, Valerie Green gave an artist lecture about her recent photographic work at Cal State Fullerton. Green recounted her reasoning for creating the series’ and showcased her favorite pieces. Green’s most recent work is a detailed look at places where most people would not normally expect to find beauty. Her work can be described as  conceptual, as well as situational, because it is abstract, and uses pure color and shape combined with a situation to become meaningful. It discusses many things that have to do with the human condition, and daily life in a very existential way; why we have what we have, the fact that we overlook so many things in our lives, and the nature of time and how it changes things. Green showed the series “Look Up,” (2014) in which she took the plastic screen protector from a phone, stuck it on her moonroof, and photographed it over time. Each photo shows a different sky, different pieces of moisture or debris on the gl...

                                        When thinking about what the biggest influence people’s life is, most would respond that is the type of entertainment they consume daily. These can be the tv shows we watch, the food we eat, and the clothes we buy. Video games are another type of media that people consume daily and that greatly influences their life, and sometimes even more than the ones listed above. What would if we used these daily forms of consumption to bring up social and global issues? Well, Mel Chin and Michael Ray Charles, two artists featured on the PBS show called Art21 made pieces based on this idea of critical consumption. Chin created a video game and installation called the “KNOWMAD” (2000). Chin’s artist website, melchin.org, described the work as, “… a game to play while paying homage to the tribal world and the forces of popular culture.”. The p...

Shaun Leonardo poses for 40 seconds before his lecture Shaun Leonardo: From Seeing to Witnessing | PLATFORM Event #4, February 11. 2021   He started his Zoom lecture at CSUF by going off-script, as good storytellers often do. Leonardo asked his audience to gather information from a pose he struck. He stressed that the pose should be observed, not interpreted. He crossed his arms and turned his gaze upwards as he leaned onto the table. Afterwards, he explained that there was value in his pose, but the meaning could be different for the actor compared to the observer. Regardless of the intended meaning of the gesture, the audience will attribute meaning to it according to their own lived experience. Our perception of things is never pure; we bring our personal past with us.  Leonardo at Assembly workshop https://www.recessart.org/assembly/      Shaun Leonardo structures his artwork around storytelling and what he calls “embodiment,” a way to process and communicat...

Nightmare - 2001     Mark Steven Greenfield (http://www.markstevengreenfield.com/) is a visual artist whose work is highly influenced by his experiences as a black man in America. In a recent lecture at CSU Fullerton (found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVlz9NGNXco), he provided some insights on his life and how his experiences with American culture have influenced the conversations he is provoking through his art. As a black man he is familiar with the unique hardships faced by African Americans, and growing up in LA during the height of the civil rights movement made him deeply politicized. He saw how the image of black people had been historically appropriated and twisted by American media into an ignorant and shameful stereotype.       His work is steeped in modern black culture while confronting head on the ways in which black people were historically belittled by US popular culture. One of his series appropriated vintage photographs of whi...

          Experimental photographer Valerie Green’s inspiration for her 2014 exhibition came from an act of love in the age of tech. Her boyfriend gave her the honor of peeling the protective film off his brand new iPhone 4s. It was when she idly stuck the film onto the moonroof of her car that she found the subject for her work, Look Up (2014).   This gesture, giving away the satisfying sensation of christening an expensive smartphone, led to Green’s creation of a photo series that addresses our physical relationship with technology.           Green shows the viewer scenes of the fickle Los Angeles sky through several filters:  her moonroof, the iPhone protective film, and her camera lens. She uses the protective film’s ghostly outline to gently juxtapose technology with nature. The image also reminds the viewer of the barrier that personal technology and mobile devices can create between us and the physical world. ...