Here are some great West Coast artists to follow...
Turns Back to Look at Her Once More
Two hand-cut inkjet prints on Somerset velvet paper, 2011, Soo Kim
Soo Kim, born in South Korea in 1969, moved to Los Angeles in 1980. Kim's practice as an artist blends the making of photographs with the critical interpretation of images on a broader level. She uses the techniques of cutting and layering prints, introducing areas of absence or disruption in order to address the issues of photographic transparency and the immediate consumption of images. Kim believes that the lengthy process required to create her photographs infuses them with a "slowness" that finds its counterpart in the amount of time it takes the viewer to "read" them.
Falling Suddenly to Her Knees
Hand-cut chromogenic print, 2009, Soo Kim
Her recent bodies of work portray landscapes in different degrees of stillness and action by slicing the images along the boundaries between figure and ground, removing the substance of the buildings, leaving the basic outlines. She then layers one filigreed image atop another, creating a complex network of cutouts, giving way to depth and activity. In the images, quiet and noise fill the space simultaneously.
In a Natural Tone
Hand-cut chromogenic print and acrylic paper, 2011, Soo Kim
Kim also has been working on a series of semi-sculptural wall pieces creating wintry branches from cut-out strips of paper and coating them with gold and silver metallic paint.
Untitled, oil on canvas on fir, 2009, Dianna Molzan
Dianna Molzan's paintings explore the language of painting by presenting recognizable historical styles, then attempting to overcome mannerism through radical alterations to the picture plane. Molzan has made cuts into painted canvases, built extrusions atop their surfaces, and exposed their strainers in her brightly colored explorations into the space of painting.
Untitled, oil on canvas on fir, 2009, Dianna Molzan
Her canvases engage in an open and unpredictable dialogue with the history of abstract painting, taking it to a whole new level. While she uses a variety of traditional materials, such as oil on linen, each painting exhibits a subtle precision in its execution, invoking elements of the decorative arts, ceramics, fashion and modern design.
Gift, C-print on metallic paper, 2010, Carter Mull
Atlanta born Carter Mull creates pictures through a process of re-photographing and altering existing images. His work intertwines multiple mediums to question the media that constructs our conception of the world. In turn, the practice recomposes an understanding of our shared, social imagination.
Vista, C-print on gloss paper with pastel print, 2011, Carter Mull
Working with newspapers and the headlines of the day, Mull manipulates with his computer using it to interface with his material. He is drawn to how one responds to an image of distant trauma within the framework of the local news, with the information literally placed next to mundane advertisements.
Black Star, Mixed media on panel, 2011, Brenna Youngblood
Initially trained in photography, Brenna Youngblood began to treat her photographs as sources for large-scale layered collaged compositions. Invested in exploring the multidimensional qualities of materials, Youngblood soon began to expand her formal sensibilities, leading to unconventional treatments and juxtapositions of materials and forms. Photographs, wallpaper, textbook pages, wooden sheets, paint, and other materials came together to create Youngblood's unique palette of shaped canvases.
Analog Imitation, mixed media on panel, 2011, Brenna Youngblood
Youngblood draws from documents and materials in her personal archive to establish both a point of departure and context for the work.
The Gold Panic, Archival pigment print, 2012, William E. Jones
William E. Jones is an artist, filmmaker, photographer and writer known for using documentary and historical research to call attention to the intricate relationships between images and power. Jones investigates the roles of film and photography during moments of cultural upheaval, concentrating on the visual impact.
War Planes
Sequence of digital files, black and white, looped, silent, 2011
William E. Jones
To create the movies, Jones applies formal and organizational strategies to existing photographs and film footage, seeking to reveal the hidden, and even suppressed, historical narratives in their content. Since Jones works on the frames individually in Photoshop and then sequences them as animations, each frame retains an incredibly high level of photographic detail.
Punctured
Sequence of digital files, black and white, looped, silent, 2010
William E. Jones
To give you an idea of the work that goes into a film, here is some background on one of his latest pieces... During the Great Depression, the Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration documented American society in photographs. The director of this program, Roy Stryker, edited rolls of photographs taken in the field after they were sent to Washington, D. C. for processing. Not a photographer himself, Stryker had the ultimate say over which of the 145,000 negatives exposed by FSA photographers were worthy of printing and publication. Nearly half of the pictures from 1935 to 1943 were rejected, or in Stryker's term, killed. Roy Stryker and his assistants routinely killed 35mm negatives by punching holes in them, thereby rendering them unusable for publication. Photographers working under Stryker strenuously objected to an editorial practice that they regarded as dictatorial and arbitrary, and Stryker finally stopped destroying the work in early 1939. All killed negatives were preserved and filed away, but they remained unprinted, and until recently, unseen. In Jones' "Punctured," these suppressed images downloaded from the Library of Congress website have been reframed with the holes as the central feature, and edited in a quick montage showing glimpses of an unofficial view of Depression-era America.
availability of work
Work is available by all of the artists mentioned above. Please contact tag-arts if you are interested in seeing more work by a specific artist.
pricing
Prices vary according to artist and size of work. Most pieces start at around $10,000.
tag-arts website
Check out our list of services, past newsletters, and art we have purchased at www.tag-arts.com.
