Link to Post:
http://geoform.net/interviews/an-interview-with-artist-tadasuke-tadasky-kuwayama/
Julie Karabenick interviews painter Tadasky (Tadasuke Kuwayama) about his work.
Tadasky comments: "My work uses simple geometric forms, most often the circle, because they allow me to create the visual impact that I seek. I’ve always wanted my work to be clear. The circle is a form from Nature—one of the most common forms for humans, one that we can’t avoid. So the circle is easy to understand and needs no explanation to appreciate. I use numbers rather than literary titles because my paintings are not meant to refer to anything outside of themselves. There is no philosophy or theory, no religion or ideology involved. People are free to look at my work in many different ways... Looking at one of my paintings is for me like entering a traditional Shinto shrine. Because they are both so simple and symmetrical, the impact is very powerful. I am not a believer, but some people would call this experience 'spiritual.' "
Link to Post:
http://geoform.net/interviews/an-interview-with-artist-ed-mieczkowski/
Julie Karabenick conducts an in-depth interview with painter and sculptor Ed Mieczkowski. Mieczkowski discusses how he came to be an artist, his career, the artist group Anonima he helped found in 1960, and development of his work.
Asked about the label "Op Art", Mieczkowski says: "I have always favored the term 'perceptual abstraction.' I didn’t reallly mind the term Op art, but I certainly didn’t intend my work to be optical demonstrations. I was far too ingrained as a painter. After all, in high school I had studied Cézanne, and by my first year in art school, I was into Picasso. I really was first and foremost a painter, and as a painter I think your work leads the way. Whatever you want to verbalize about it is somehow tangential, not completely the case. What can you say about the impulse to work? You want to make another painting. You want to make it larger, better in color or composition - all those ambitions for it come together for better or worse."
Submitted by Brett Baker on October 31, 2012
Bridget Riley, Blue (La Reservee), 2010, (© Bridget Riley, All Rights Reserved, courtesy of Karsten Schubert, London)
In a recent interview with The Guardian's Charlotte Higgins, painter Bridget Riley discussed "movement, shimmering, sparkling and reflecting … all those things that happen in landscape" as the inspiration for her abstract paintings. In the two videos below, Riley elaborates on the influence of landscape from an early age, and the visual power found in rhythm and repetition.
Link to Post:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/oct/29/bridget-riley-sikkens-prize-colour
Charlotte Higgins interviews painter Bridget Riley, winner of the 2012 Sikkens Prize.
Riley recalls that her start as an abstract painter came from her dissatisfaction with rendering the landscape from observation. She told Higgins: "So I decided to start again to find a new beginning – to start from the themes themselves, that is to say, shapes, lines, and so on. That led to my making a black-and-white painting and seeing what it would do: and it moved... Movement, shimmering, sparkling and reflecting … all those things that happen in landscape.' "
Link to Post:
http://patternsthatconnext.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/the-empiricism-of-michael-kidner-dreams-of-the-world-order/
Andy Parkinson visits the exhibition Michael Kidner: Dreams of the World Order: Early Paintings at Flowers Gallery, London, on view through October 20, 2012.
Parkinson writes: "To my mind the work in this exhibition is proof, if proof were needed, that a rational, systematic (empirical rather than pre-conceived) approach to abstraction can result in works that are both emotionally charged and intellectually interesting. It could even be said that Kidner combines the opposing traditions of expressionism and constructivism. Although he criticised abstract expressionism for its “assault on the unconscious” there is something of Rothko’s feeling for colour in these paintings. Yet there is no mysticism or 'spirituality' here, even though there is Grace in the sense of the term that (following Aldous Huxley) systems thinker Gregory Bateson used of 'integrating conscious and unconscious minds.' "
Link to Post:
http://thegreatgodpanisdead.blogspot.com/2012/05/kandy-kolored-pinstriped-babies.html
Robert Boyd reviews the exhibition HJ Bott: Rhythm & Rhetoric at Anya Tish Gallery, Houston, TX, on view through June 9, 2012.
Boyd writes: " 'Displacement of Volume' or DoV is a geometric form that has been appearing in Bott's paintings and sculptural objects since 1972... beyond whatever meaning that DoV has for Bott, it is interesting that he has created such a rich body of works out of it. DoV is a constraint on Bott. He has chosen to limit himself to working with a single shape over and over again. Or to put it another way, he has turned his back on total freedom, the birthright of any painter since about 1900... the answer is that a constraint can be an immense boon to creativity... Bott is taking a constraint, the DoV, that on the face of it is inherently limiting, and uses it as a means of increased expression. So a painting like Hip Hop Core radiates a relative calm compared to the jittery Fluer de Enclume, where the near symmetry makes the work feel like it should be perfectly balanced--except that it isn't."
Link to Post:
http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/kuspit/beverly-fishman1-3-12.asp
Donald Kuspit reviews the exhibition Beverly Fishman at Galerie Richard, New York, on view through January 28, 2012.
Kuspit writes that Fishman's "patterns are transcriptions of EKG, EEG, and neuron spike readouts, with some bar codes thrown in to add a social measure to the disembodied bodily data. And, for good measure, some of the patterns are derived from the modular shapes of the pills and capsules that are supposed to cure us of our ailments, mental as well as physical. The pattern registers time, giving it spatial form, a geometrical objectification that suggests that all our problems are subjective and thus of no great consequence, however fraught with understated consequence the diagnostic patterns are."
Link to Post:
http://www.gorkysgranddaughter.com/2011/12/palma-blank-dec-2011.html
Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting visit the studio of painter Palma Blank.
During the conversation Blank notes that: "I do like using neon colors… they're kind of what gives the painting that inner light… that electronic… buzz… if you can get past [the optical effects] and into them, I think there is a space to… see in a different way… you're just experiencing seeing."
Link to Post:
http://www.abstraktion.org/2011/04/david-whitaker-at-grundy-art-gallery-uk.html
David Moxon posts about British painter David Whitaker (1938-2007). A retrospective of Whitaker's work is on view at the Grudy Art Gallery, Blackpool through May 14, 2011. Moxon writes that Whitaker was "a contemporary of Bridget Riley" and remained "devoted to geometric abstraction... until his premature death in 2007."
