WOLFE VON LENKIEWICZ

WOLFE VON LENKIEWICZ's chief artistic concern is the appropriation of language and mythology. He boldly experiments with hybrid visual combinations that straddle the murky borders of the shocking and offensive. His art historical intervention demonstrate our own complacency of art towards famous images, namely those highly learnt visual compositions of art history. Our knowledge of them has become so much second nature that we take them for granted. It is not until they are disturbed that we realise how much confidence we place in them.

Of course this is nothing new. The history of art can be understood as compromising of changes from one mode of visual representation to another. The difference is the contemporaneity and extremity of Lenkiewicz's subject matter. 9/11 becomes a stage for giant butterflies, Damien's Hirst's spot painting s merge with the designs of William Morris, and Adam and Eve are expelled from a field of oil dereks. The works demonstrates that no image is sacred and thus the artist is free to disseminate subject matter as they see fit. What is important is distinguishing when such combinations "work".Lenkiewicz has been described as an unbound geneticist-turned-artist, a contemporary iconoclast; allusions he no doubt relishes.


☁ WOLFE VON LENKIEWIC

JONATHAN WATERIDGE

JONATHAN WATERIDGE
Born in Zambia, 1972
Lives and works in London

☁ JONATHAN WATERIDGE @ SAATCHI
☁ JONATHAN WATERIDGE @ ALL VISUAL ARTS

JANAINA TSCHÄPE

JANAINA TSCHÄPE Born in Munich, Germany, 1973
Currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York

Education
1997-1998 Master in Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts, New York, USA
1992-1998 Fine Arts studies, Hochschule fur Bilende Kuenste, Hamburg, Germany

☁ JANAINA TSCHÄPE

HAN BING

HAN BING /// URBAN AMBER

In Urban Amber, Han Bing's visual interventions also raise questions about the paradoxes of desire. Desire for Han Bing is an irreducibly bifurcated modality, that is, it has powerful manifestations and effects that can be both beautiful and poisonous. In his conceptual photography series of single-exposure images, Urban Amber, this paradox takes on a different form. The spectre of glamorous high-rises, those icons of middle-class China's dreams of home and a better life, are juxtaposed to the rundown, temporary dwellings of the urban poor living in their shadows. These fantasy high-rises appear resplendent and dream-like until you realize that their inverted images are reflected in Beijing's ubiquitous, industrial-waste and garbage-infested "stinky rivers." Like amber, these rivers capture the sediment of the times, showing us through a mirror darkly, the underbelly of China's fantasy of modernity.


☁ HAN BING
☁ HAN BING @ THE ARTIST AND HIS MODEL

ELISA K SCHWALM

ELISA K SCHWALM has been photographing all her life. As a child, she used photography as a way to explore the people and the places that surrounded her. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Elisa returned to her passion for photography. While studying photography at Speos Photographic Institute in Paris, France, Elisa developed a keen interest in architecture, specifically details in lines and structure.

After graduating from Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photographic Studies, Elisa pursued an artistic life. This led her to New York City, where she is now studying for a Masters of Fine Art in Photography from Parsons School of Design. Her interests lay mainly in architectural and social landscape photography. Her photographs have been published in Flare, Photo Ed, the National Post and the Toronto Star.


☁ ELISA K SCHWALM

EVA LAKE

EVA LAKE///THE BABE IN THE TARGET

By the time I was thirteen, I was firmly entrenched in the worldwide craze of “nostalgia” – especially anything to do with the beautiful and complex women of Hollywood and the fashion industry. At the same time I was brought up by a woman artist who loved cosmetics and glamour. All of these things fed into my idea of what a woman artist’s life was like – she makes objects but she’s also the object. The conversation is as much about her, her body, how she looks and how sexy she is – as it is her work.

A high school friend introduced me to Pop and Interview when I was a freshman in high school (1970). Eventually I learned about Jasper Johns and the target. This friend would also take me to the Ashland Police Rifle Range, where we would steal the shooting practice targets. From then on, throughout 40 years of making montages, the target continued to resurface in my work. Now I am doing what was in the back of my mind from nearly the start – focusing completely on both “The Babe” and the target.

I am also maintaining a conversation with art history, citing artists like Delacroix, Fontana, Riley, Davis, Warhol, Hamilton, Gene Davis and John Chamberlain, as well as “art throughout the ages.” The goddess of ancient art history collides with our modern day version. And the back-story of these individual women is important - their power and their very public story, their status as complex objects of adoration as they live through tragedy and triumph. Their power lies in the fact that they were not just beautiful but were also people who worked for every dime and newsflash.

EVA LAKE


☁ EVA LAKE