art

Sudan’s rich contemporary arts history is seldom acknowledged amidst all the headlines about war, poverty, and famine that make it to the global media. After World War II, when graduates of Khartoum’s Gordon Memorial College School of Design formed the movement known as the Khartoum School, artists like the father of Sudanese modernism, Ibrahim Elsalahi, calligrapher Osman Wagialla, and Ahmed Shibrain pioneered a unique fine arts movement that reflected a confluence of African, Arab, and Islamic influences. 

Tavormina's dramatic images reflect the sumptuous detail of 17th century Old Master paintings.  Using a contemporary medium and a modern approach, her vibrant photographs of food and flora are reminiscent of Dutch, Spanish, and Italian still lifes of the Golden Age.  To create these luscious compositions, Tavormina collects “props”—such as butterflies, shells, dried flowers and ceramics—which evoke the still-life vernacular and imbue each tableau with allegorical meaning.

Suschitzky's photograph is one of 150 London street photos featured in the book London Street Photography 1860-2010 –which was published in the U.K. last year to compliment a touring exhibit of the same name. The exhibit closed last month at the Museum of the City of New York, but the book is still available through Dewi Lewis Publishing. The collection features more than 70 photographers and spans three centuries – from the industrial revolution to the dawn of the information age – offering a glimpse of modern British history through the microcosm of life on its streets and avenues. 

Once a month, on Sunday at 11:30 a.m., art enthusiasts meet at Dixon Place on the Lower East Side in New York for an event called “Secret City.” Led by Chris Wells, the participants enjoy each other’s company, look for support, and worship art. The Secret City is very popular among its followers and has been growing ever since its establishment in 2007. The event takes place in a theater and lasts an hour and a half. Under Wells’ direction, it features a band, singers, a mingling exercise, storytelling, and a discussion about the work of a monthly-changing artist who has been invited to speak. The audience can talk directly with the artist and hear more about his or her creative process. 

Focusing on the inherent tension between reality and fiction in photography, Mónika Sziládi’s digital collage constructions investigate the complexities of human behavior and group dynamics. Her photographs illustrate the paradoxical relationship between the multitude of possibilities for re-invention and individual expression offered by society along with the pressure for assimilation perpetuated by interactions with new media. Hrvoje Slovenc documents psychologically charged domestic environments that evoke the illusory relationship between fact and fiction. He possesses a deep interest in the many visual languages photography offers.  

Cero Space, a gallery in the Brewery Arts Complex of downtown Los Angeles, is presenting paintings by contemporary abstract artist Jennifer Perlmutter. The series, "Running Through the Forest, Trails of Uncertainty" explores the artist's emotional and psychological challenges as filtered through the colors, energy and subtle impressions of the natural world. 

Arditi wants to infuse the future of visual art with the power of its primitive past. “I want to be as close as possible to what art started as, but with a modern twist,” he said when I visited his studio this month. He pulls pigments from natural sources like flowers, rocks, dirt, soil, clay, crystals — anything earth-produced that has a distinct color. He dyes a thick lacquer with the pigment, and then uses the solution to paint. “I want my art to be simple and accessible. I want art for the masses because that’s where art began. It has since turned into pretense and facade. The earth was the original canvas.”

There is, perhaps, no greater venue for illustrating exactly how vast a disparity exists between the haves and have-nots right now than at the sale of million-dollar artworks. Lending support to the gathering of disgruntled art handlers who have been locked out of Sotheby’s auction house in New York since August, Occupy Wall Street protestors have made things very uncomfortable for the auction house and its clients during the two biggest sales weeks of the year.