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Niki de Saint Phalle : le Jardin des Tarots

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I'm Kyla McDonald and I'm assisting curator at Tate Liverpool, and we're currently in the Niki de Saint Phalle Exhibition which is just opening. This is the first major Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition in the UK since her death in 2002, and it's really the most major comprehensive survey of her work, going through the five decades of her career and showing all the different phases and changes that she made in her work. We start off the exhibition with her very, very early paintings, some of the ones that she did right at the beginning, where she was actually recovering from a nervous breakdown, and we get these very highly decorative, colourful paintings. These then developed into these assemblages where she started sort of paring down the decorativeness into abstract landscapes, but adding all these elements that she found around the house. So she started embedding broken plates and plastic toys that she found around, and she embedded these into the landscapes to make these sort of assemblages. And then we go slightly onto the more sinister, and she starts adding these violent elements to her work, like knives and guns. And it's at this point that we see this dark element of Niki coming out. She's sort of a very tortured soul, and she's looking back again to perhaps this nervous breakdown that she's had, and the way of her dealing with the complex emotions that she was feeling at the time. The Auto Portrait has sometimes also been called a 'tortured self-portrait', and it's influenced, I think, by Gaudi as well, because obviously you've got the ceramic tiles in it, and she'd just recently visited Park Guell in Barcelona. However, it's also looking at her own self, at her being tortured and tormented at that time, and the personal feelings that she was feeling in her head. So it's a very sort of stark figure standing like alone, made out of all these assemblaged objects which she's found around the house. I think the shooting paintings are very cathartic. They are a way of her sort of getting at her aggression by a very aggressive means. She would make little pockets of paint in plastic bags, and she would fill them with foodstuffs sometimes, and paints and all different kinds of things. She would then hang them on a wall in some way, and get a rifle and shoot at them. So these little pockets would burst open with paint, and you can see on all the paintings, they are very vibrant colours as the paint drips down the picture. She herself said that they were like making the paint 'bleed', so again it's that process of shooting something and watching it die and bleed. After the shooting paintings, she has then gone through a quieter period, and wanted to move into exploring worlds of femininity, and women in society. So she looks at them from perhaps a negative point of view, looking at that women should only be brides or mothers. Perhaps it's symptomatic of those feelings of entrapment that she had felt herself, because she creates these sort of grotesque sculptures which, even though they are very white and pure, and are covered with veils, they've got all sorts of dolls hanging from them, and crawling all over the bodies, and are very sort of monstrous and grotesque. And this is kind of opposed to then, at the same time, she starts making the Nana sculptures, which are very brightly coloured, exuberant sculptures of women, and they are very rounded, and these are sort of celebratory and triumphant femininity. So you've got these opposed two looks which are looking at more celebration, and sort of sad, despairing, grotesque. The Tarot Garden, which we concentrate on at the end of the exhibition, she had in the back of her mind that she always wanted to make a huge monumental outside garden that people could go and visit. She achieved that in 1999 when it opened, yet she worked 20 years to make that happen. And I feel that you get a sense, through this exhibition, that whatever she wanted to achieve, she achieved it in the end. Release date in this format: 04/02/2008 http://www.tate.org.uk/tateshots/episode.jsp?item=14121

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Niki de Saint Phalle: Retrospective - TateShots | Tate

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I'm Kyla McDonald and I'm assisting curator at Tate Liverpool, and we're currently in the Niki de Saint Phalle Exhibition which is just opening. This is the first major Niki de Saint Phalle exhibition in the UK since her death in 2002, and it's really the most major comprehensive survey of her work, going through the five decades of her career and showing all the different phases and changes that she made in her work.

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MODERN DAY/CONTEMPORY CONTEXT OF GARDEN OF EDEN

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INSPIRED BY NEW YORK -Alexis Rockman, “Gowanus” (2013), oil on wood, 72 x 90 inches (183 x 229 cm) (courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York)

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Miro sculptures
interesting compositional patterns for colour context

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artist Inspo for buildings to attatch to sculpture

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https://wowde.co/themed-decor-installations/outdoor-festival-decoration/enchanted-forest-theme/

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The user has sent too many requests
in a given amount of time.

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Eden was bright and beautiful, and we tend to think of it in terms of perfection. But rather than thinking of Eden in terms of perfection, we should think of it in terms of potential. Certainly, Eden was pure and pristine, ordered and filled, but the Eden we read about in Genesis 1 and 2 wasn’t yet everything God intended for his creation. It was unsullied but incomplete.

As Adam and Eve worked and kept the garden, and as they were fruitful and multiplied, Eden would grow beyond its current boundaries, and the glory of Adam and Eve’s royal rule would increase.

He should have squashed this rebellion rather than taking part in it.

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Edgar Tolson, Adam and Eve, 1979, carved and painted wood and pencil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, 1986.65.269

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Edgar Tolson, Adam and Eve, 1979, carved and painted wood and pencil, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson, 1986.65.269

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wake the tiger immersive art experience filling space

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wake the tiger immersive art experience filling space

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Colours and use of ceiling space

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https://fionacampbellart.co.uk/commissions/lichen

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Lichen (detail) 7m x 3m x 7m aprx. Scale varies according to site Reclaimed and found materials: steel, copper, lead, twine, wire, plastic netting, & nitrate 2013 Photo by 35 mil

Lichen was originally created for the Abundance Garden Trail, 2013, a Somerset Art Works/National Garden Scheme site-specific commission. Inspired by her selected garden 'Esotera', in Foddington, Somerset, Fiona created the Garden of Eden, an installation based on the idea of nature's repossession. The Garden of Eden was almost tangible at Esotera. Transformed from nothing into an idyllic environment, abundant with creatures and plants living harmoniously, the garden emanated a Utopian ideal. The root meaning of Esotera is 'of the earth'. Fiona's work related to some of the textures and forms, nature's return to Eden, using vibrant found and reclaimed materials collected from the area.

Lichen was the main part of the installation. A large piece spanning 7 metres, it was set in an enclosure of silver birch trees. The work combined a range of reclaimed/found objects and materials, transformed from locally sourced scrap to organic forms reminiscent of lichen found in the garden. Giant and small colourful structures were presented as fantastical freestanding sculptural forms, some delicately suspended from the surrounding silver birch trees, some layered, giving visitors an element of surprise as they were discovered.
"Welded, woven and wrapped, the forms took shape in response to this garden of earthly delights - lovingly nurtured by its owners and adopted as their home by a diversity of wild life. I wanted to surprise, inspire and engage all ages. Working with a plethora of found and reused materials, my challenge was to create a garden of eden that was in itself abundant, evoking ancient, primal forms, the cycle and triumph of life.
Sunlight really made the work glow with mirrored dappled autumn colours. Even the rain created its own dimension; melodies of sounds tinkling on metal surfaces, dew drops reflected and it was thrilling to watch new shoots emerge - serendipity that magnificent fungi should sprout through work inspired by lichen." - Fiona

"Brilliant connection with nature. Full of surprises" - Gina Westbrook, TakeArt

© Copyright Fiona Campbell. All rights reserved, 2021

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Lichen, Fiona Campbell. Art in the environment, mixed media recycled and found materials. Site-responsive art installation; commissioned artwork for outdoors. — Fiona Campbell

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Created for the Abundance Art Trail, commissioned by National Garden Scheme and Somerset Art Works. Lichen by Fiona Campbell is a site-responsive art installation for a specific garden location created from recycled and found materials.

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Niki De Saint Phalle - The story of a free woman

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http://mafa-elanimalinvisible.blogspot.com/2015_04_01_archive.html?m=1

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Ya que hemos desatado nuestra pasión por las escenografías, los dioramas y las experiencias sensoriales que desafían los límites de nuestra percepción y de nuestra imaginación (en el sentido estricto de la palabra, esto es: construir y relacionar imágenes mentales), pasamos de las fascinantes creaciones de Patrick Jacobs a las de un artista conceptualmente no muy lejano pero técnicamente más cercano a Thomas Doyle: Jorge Mayet. Las coincidencias, no obstante, aunque no se acaban aquí (temáticamente Mayet también nos expone de forma poéticamente hermosa pero contundentemente clara nuestra frágil relación con la naturaleza) no suponen que nos encontremos con más de lo mismo, porque sin duda la obra del artista cubano afincado en Mallorca posee un discurso propio muy personal y sin duda notable e interesante. Como en los casos anteriormente mencionados, los trabajos son visualmente atractivos, hermosos -fascinantes incluso- y de meticulosa ejecución técnica, pero, conectando en este sentido con Jacobs, nos alertan de la lejanía del mundo natural en nuestras vidas recurriendo a metafóricos fragmentos de escenografías hipperrealistas naturalistas en las que no vemos presencia humana mi animal a no ser simbólica y vestigialmente. De hecho, aunque hemos escogido su tiburón emergiendo de una pared para introducir su trabajo, se debe más a criterios estéticos de la edición de contenidos de un blog consagrado principalmente a la antrozoología artística que la ejemplar ilustración de los trabajos más emblemáticos de Mayet. En realidad, si observáis, el gran tiburón se convierte en una especie de heraldo o encarnación de la naturaleza que sostiene en sus mandíbulas uno de los símbolos recurrentes del artista: la casa, y, para ser más exactos, la cabaña o choza típicamente tropical (presumo que una conexión icónica con el universo humano de su Caribe natal) que en no pocas obras de Mayet está presente a diferentes escalas, porque, aunque aquí hemos decidido hacer hincapié en sus dioramas, maquetas y miniaturas, os recomiendo revisar su producción en los enlaces que os facilito, porque incluye instalaciones a gran escala que mezclan lo escenográfico con los paisajes naturales.

Desde luego, esta cabaña caribeña conectaría de algún modo con las casas americanas de madera que reproduce Thomas Doyle, pero la ausencia de figuras humanas o escenificaciones más o menos dramáticas confieren a los dioramas de Mayet, como a los de Jacobs, de una serenidad paradójicamente no exenta de expectante inquietud y melancolía. Se intuye, además de una cierta reflexión de carácter ecologista, una apelación a nuestra ausencia del mundo natural, además de una proyección de nuestros estados anímicos a través de la composición de elementos que conforman el paisaje. Esto supone una interesante revisión del propio género paisajístico, que demuestra una toma de conciencia del tiempo que le toca vivir desde un punto de vista antropológico, histórico y sociológico. El paisaje como evocación del mundo natural es históricamente reciente en la cultura occidental, y el mundo del arte lo reivindica como tal a partir del romanticismo y la pintura prerrafaelita del XIX. En realidad, a lo largo de la Historia del Arte occidental, el paisaje como género no se da hasta la pintura holandesa post-renacentista, y, más que una celebración del mundo natural indómito propio del romanticismo, supone un registro iconográfico de un deseo cumplido de domesticar la naturaleza, de cercarla y rentabilizarla. El paisaje pictórico nace, pues, como un producto de la sociedad burguesa agropecuaria que lo sufraga como registro de sus logros y sus propiedades: campos de cultivo, ejemplares de próspera ganadería, molinos y casas de campo. La fidelidad en la reproducción de especies vegetales y animales no vino determinada por la curiosidad zoológica o botánica, sino por la ostentación económica, la misma que exigía la nítida exposición de los materiales atesorados para el vestuario y el mobiliario de los interiores representados en los salones de los propietarios de dichos paisajes humanizados y que propició en el barroco el triunfo de las técnicas al óleo sobre el temple, de secado excesivamente rápido como para recrear matices y difuminados que permitiesen mostrar las sutilezas de las texturas en las que reconocer la calidad de los tejidos, los cueros, las pieles, las maderas y los diferentes metales y minerales valiosos que quienes pagaban las obras deseaban ver inmortalizados junto a su perro de raza selecta, su mejor carruaje, su mejor vaca, su toro semental o su caballo. El detallismo realista en la pintura y en la escultura se debían, pues, a motivos económicos marcados por el nacimiento de una sociedad agraria protocapitalista. Sólo con el transitar de las preferencias y los estilos y, sobre todo, con el advenimiento de la era industrial, el punto de vista romántico observó con recelo la maquinaria del progreso y evocó en sus obras artísticas el deseo del retorno a la naturaleza virgen y, por tanto, hermosa.

No obstante, el detallista realismo de Mayet está al servicio de un oportuno engatusamiento sensorial, necesario para aludir a conceptos más abstractos, más relacionados con el lenguaje y con el pensamiento, tal vez no excesivamente alejados del peculiar surrealismo de Magritte. Pero mentiríamos si otrgásemos a Mayet el carácter exclusivamente intelectual de los ideogramas magrittianos, porque ignoraríamos la simbología folklórica y religiosa que subyace en sus trabajos, interesados no sólo por el lenguaje, sino también por la lengua, como depositaria ancestral de la cultura, y concretamente de la cultura aportada por los esclavos de origen africano que trasladaron su mitología religiosa y animista a la religión Yorubic en Cuba. De modo que la nostalgia por la tierra adquiere todos los sentidos posibles, desde al patrio hasta el ecologista. Las raíces visibles de sus árboles nos hablan de las raíces de la naturaleza, de las raíces de la tradición y de las raíces del propio artista, y su desnudez, su desraizamiento visible no es casual.
A la espera de completar información a través del propio artista, os dejo con una selección de sus obras correspondientes a diversos proyectos expositivos sin un orden cronológico preciso, y, para contextualicéis mejor su obra entre la de otros artistas de mensajes convergentes e incluso técnicas o estilos similares o relacionadas, os introduciré a continuación algunas muestras de Levi van Veluw antes de dar un repaso telegráfico a otros referentes.
Mafa Alborés

Entre dos aguas fue el título escogido para una de las exposiciones de Mayet en la Saatchi Gallery, a la que siguieron otras como De mis vivos y mis muertos o Cuando más pienso en tí, cuyos textos introductorios, a cargo de Osei Bonsu, resumimos a continuación:

Como exiliado cubano que vive en Mallorca, la memoria fotográfica de Jorge Mayet le ha permitido concebir paisajes sorprendentemente realistas y formas naturales basados en visiones de su país de origen. Árboles realistas se yerguen de los sentimientos del artista de nostalgia y añoranza de su tierra geográfica y espiritual. Alimentada por los recuerdos y experiencias, su obra busca retener la esencia del paisaje cubano en sus formas románticas y místicas. En el lenguaje alegórico, la naturaleza y el artificio de Mayet se combinan en una atmósfera enigmática, habiendo surgido sus esculturas efímeras de un sentido único de las culturas folklóricas de la civilización. Obligado por los raptos sociopolíticos que perturban las relaciones entre las poblaciones y sus entornos habituales, el artista crea formas de árboles sin raíces que nunca parecen tocar el suelo como si estuviera en constante transición.
La práctica de Mayet gira en torno a la instalación escultórica de pequeña escala y réplicas en miniatura de árboles imaginarios, plantas y otros objetos naturales. La visión del artista de los árboles es tal que sus raíces permanecen intactas (De Mis Vivos Y Mis, 2008), al igual que el grupo residual de la tierra en la que se plantan (de Cuando Más Pienso En Ti, 2008). Hecho con alambre eléctrico, papel, pintura acrílica y tela, que se combinan para crear cualidades realistas, los objetos muestran un realismo en tres dimensiones. Mientras que los alambres y el papel maché sugieren la cultura artesanal, tienen de hecho sus raíces en el interés del artista por la lengua antigua de la historia precolombina. Mayet sostiene que hay vida en los árboles que da vida a la gente, y la fuerza y la capacidad de recuperación simbólica de las plantas perennes informan acerca del padecimiento universal de la humanidad.
Las esculturas de Mayet confiesan una orientación existencial hacia la realización de otros mundos. Se refieren a una totalidad que ha sido de alguna manera perdida, debido a lo que el artista percibe como el decaimiento de la historia en la sociedad de hoy. Mayet toma el árbol como un icono simbólico capaz de soportar estas condiciones desastrosas, creando objetos que remiten a su imagen. Árboles de Cuba que se asocian con un misticismo simbólico, que viene de los vínculos con la religión Yorubic traída por los esclavos africanos. Las esculturas de Mayet se refieren al ritual en donde las personas oraban ante los árboles, enterrando diversas ofrendas en y alrededor de sus raíces. Los sacrificios de animales, que formaban parte del ritual ancestral, son evidentes en la aplicación de Mayet de plumas de aves, utilizadas por el artista para formar un diálogo entre los árboles, el profundo simbolismo de sus raíces y el simbolismo religioso.

Más información sobre el artista en:
http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/jorge_mayet.htm?section_name=pangaea_II

Y es el momento de no dejar de reflexionar sobre lo que nos dice la obra de Jorge Mayet dando paso a un nuevo ejemplo de cómo el arte puede ofrecer discursos bien diferentes hablándonos de contenidos similares y sirviéndose de recursos técnicos tan coincidentes como simultáneamente dispares. Y el ejemplo nos lo ofrece Levi van Veluw, quien, no en vano, también ha compartido cartel expositivo con Mayet y con otros interesantes artistas consagrados a expresar artísticamente nuestra problemática conexión con el mundo natural, con las plantas y con los animales, dando fé del estado actual de la cultura sobresaturada de información e imágenes fotorrealistas cuya verosimilitud ya no significa credibilidad, volviendo por tanto al simbolismo emblemático de la naturaleza propio de la antigüedad clásica y la Edad Media, como si la ventana aparentemente ubicua de Internet tomase el lugar de la bola de cristal de los antiguos magos y visionarios.
La apariencia de las imágenes de van Veluw, contempladas desde la misma ventana virtual, coincide en muchos aspectos con las de Mayet, o con las de los artistas referidos en las entradas precedentes, pero, incluso en los casos en que no recurre a la edición digital y resuelve las caracterizaciones de sus peculiares autorretratos mediante elementos plásticos tangibles, Levi van Veluw persigue un resultado final fotográfico, de ambiguo origen técnico pictórico, escultórico o escenográfico, pero que en definitiva contemplamos en un encuadre concreto.

Como información complementaria os ofrezco extratos de Artes Magazine y de Cultura Inquieta, recomendables páginas de divulgación artística y cultural, que os recomiendo tener a mano en vuestra bitácora para estar al tanto de manifestaciones verdaderamente atractivas e interesantes. En el caso del artículo que extraemos de Artes Magazine, encontramos un excelente y preciso comentario de Edward Rubin a la exposición Dead or Alive, con profusas y enriquecedoras referencias a los artistas participantes, representativos de movimientos artísticos con miras en la biología como fuente de belleza para explorar el significado de ambas. Entre estos artistas, a los que prestaremos especial atención en adelante, se encuentran, por supuesto, nuestros dos protagonistas de hoy, Jorge Mayet y Levi van Veluw.
Espero que lo encontréis de interés.

Mafa Alborés

http://www.artesmagazine.com/2010/06/new-york%E2%80%99s-museum-of-arts-and-design-explores-meaning-of-%E2%80%98beauty%E2%80%99-in-%E2%80%98dead-or-alive%E2%80%99/

n less sure hands, New York City's Museum of Arts and Design's Dead or Alive, an exhibit of thirty-seven international artists' work composed of feathers, bones, egg shells, insects, fur, antlers, dried and rotting plants- with a few stuffed birds and animals thrown in- would be a creepy, crawly experience, conceivably sending people packing for the exits. Not so with this exhibition, though. Dead or Alive, conceived by chief curator David Revere McFadden and senior curator Lowery Stokes Sims, assisted by curator Elizabeth Edwards Kirrane, examines beauty in the extreme: living proof, so to speak, that a sow's ear can, indeed, be made into a silk purse. It is also, despite outward appearances, an intellectual adventure encouraging serious thought on ecology, beauty, violence to humans and animals, and most notably, one's own mortality. Fine Arts Magazine
Through use of idiosyncratic materials, the attention paid to the oddities of natural history, Dead or Alive, reminds one of a sixteenth century Cabinet of Wonders, for each highly distinctive work of art becomes a microcosm of the world. From videos, to sculptures, to highly crafted installations, it is a virtual sideshow of organic matter made art, some functional, some not. An obsession with numbers seems sometimes to be the artist's métier. In Eight Thousand Miles of Home (2010) Thailand artist Angus Hutcheson weaves roughly 12,000 silk worm cocoons into a beautiful, overhead cloud-like light fixture and Moon (2006), Tracey Heneberger's sculptural wall hanging, comprises over a thousand shellacked sardines arranged intricately in a circle. Marc Swanson contributes a glittering pyramid of deer antlers, Untitled (Antler Pile) (2007), covered in thousands of hand-glued crystals, while Flock (2010), Susie MacMurray's ominous site-specific wall, hidden in a corner of the museum, features tens of thousands of dyed black rooster feathers.
London-based artist Tessa Farmer's theatrical diorama, Little Savages (2007) is a taxidermied fox - signifying humans - and appears under seige by flying and crawling insects. Dried slugs, silk moth cocoons, and plant roots are attached to its fur, a wasp's nest hangs from its tail, and a bird eating an insect is perched on its back. We are here faced, "fast forwarding," as curator Sims notes in the exhibition's catalog, with "the cycle of nature in terms of death, disposal, and decay." In On Top of the World (2009) Claire Morgan, also London-based, threads transparent nylon through hundreds of dead Bluebottle flies, to fashion an eerie army of flying creatures in a suspended, geometrically- layered cube. Atop the cube, invisible to all but the uppermost flies, the artist has added a red spider, suggesting the moment when disaster is poised, threatening her orderly state of perfection.
Dutch artist Levi van Veluw is a performance artist as well as sculptor and photographer. At age twenty-five, this youngest artist of the exhibition uses his own head and shoulders as a canvas on which to build natural landscapes . Seaweed and other organic materials become van Veluw's flora and fauna, as well as stones, tiny plastic animals, trucks, lampposts, and telephone poles - all affixed to his painted face. He creates an entire world, simultaneously becoming part of it. Before "removing his latest face," the artist, represented here by 3 photographs and a remarkable video featuring a toy train circling his landscaped head, documents each new creation. Cuban-born, Mallorca-based artist Jorge Mayet also uses synthetic materials to recreate nature. In Cayendo Suave (Falling Softly) (2009), the artist chooses simple electrical wires, papier mậché, and feathers, to form a super-realistic tree. An angel suspended in midair, with a clutch of feathers attached at its roots. It is astonishingly beautiful.
Keith W. Bentley's Cauda Equina (Horse Tail) (1995-2007) took twelve years to complete and is a labor of love and a eulogy to the thousands of horses slaughtered annually in this country for their meat. Bentley stitched and knotted nearly a million and a half individual hairs from 250 horses into a fabric that was attached to the full-sized taxidermy form of a horse, conjuring up a mourning veil, not unlike those worn by widows during the Victorian era. On the lighter side - but just slightly - is Billie Grace Lynn's, Mad Cow Motorcycle (2008), in which she has mounted the skeleton of an entire cow over a working motorcycle. At the foot of this "kinetic sculpture" a video shows the artist careening through the streets of Miami while passersby-if not aghast- look on in amusement. Speaking of cows slaughtered to meet human needs, curator McFadden wryly notes in his catalog essay, that "even in death this cow is not allowed to rest in peace."
Definitely falling on the lighter side, despite the gravity of its subject, is Apothecarium Moderne, a collaborative work of artists Tim Tate, co- founder and director of the Washington Glass School and Studio outside of Washington, DC, and Connecticut- based artist Marc Petrovic. Nine hand-blown glass apothecary jars line a wall, each filled to the brim with talismans offering cures for various maladies, including loss of faith, over-population, ennui, identity theft, and intelligent design. Etched on each jar is a cure- related story. Apothecary #1 Cure for Erectile Dysfunction, one of the more humorous works, features a photo of Betty Page, the iconic 50's pinup model surrounded by oyster shells, and Enzyte, a natural male enhancement pill. The tale engraved on this jar is the story of little David, who arrives in Manhattan by bus and meets a freakishly tall woman with an Adam's apple, who takes him to her flat in Spanish Harlem, gets him addicted to Absinthe, and makes him into a man.
One of the most unusual works on view is Alastair Mackie's Untitled (+/-) (2009). Here we are faced with a two-part installation, each piece placed dramatically, for effect, on its own concrete plinth. Resting on the first is a pile of thousands of mouse skeletons - all eaten, digested, and regurgitated by barn owls - collected by the artist over the course of a year. Occupying plinth two is a loom with a piece of fabric woven from mouse fur which the artist separated from these bones. Like much of the work in this exhibition, Mackie's mouse-centric installation speaks to the relationship of things and events in the endless cycle of life and death. A strong point of this exhibition is the simply- written labels about the artists as well as each work on view. Once we digest the ideas behind each piece, and the process each artist has used to create it-often taken to the nth degree-everything falls into place, naturally, or so it seems.
*As curator Lowery Sims notes in museum's beautifully appointed catalog, "the work in Dead or Alive might challenge usual and habitual notions of beauty, but artists can extrude beauty from the most base and defiled materials...This maneuvering of a transcendent experience from trash was given a specifically psychological and emotional role in art making by the Surrealists, who linked it with concepts such as "the marvelous" or "convulsive beauty"- both of which were based on the experience of the "uncanny."1 Of particular interest is what Hal Foster called understanding the "marvelous" as "signal(ing) a rupture in the natural order...challeng(ing)...rational causality...(and) its fascination with magic and alchemy. 2
by Edward Rubin, Contributing Writer

Dead or Alive: Nature becomes Art. At the Museum of Art and Design, through October 24, 2010

1. See Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Cambridge, MA), and London, UK: MIY Press, 1993), 19-56
2. Ibid., 19.
Edward Rubin is a writer-photographer whose writings on theater and art appear regularly in various magazines such as Sculpture, ArtUS, Canadian Art, d'art International, Hispanic Outlook, and NY Arts Magazines, as well as for NY Theatre Wire, and Hi! Drama, a Time Warner cable TV show, based in New York City.

El artista Jorge Mayet esculpe paisajes en miniatura que parecen ser islas, flotando en un abismo infinito. Las pequeñas obras, situadas contra las blancas paredes de la galería, crean la ilusión de haber sido arrancadas del suelo. Las raíces y la tierra quedan expuestas bajo la verde y exuberante hierba y las minúsculas casas. Si bien estas escenas parecen apacibles, algunas de las otras obras de Mayet no son tan tranquilas. Explotan en el aire en pedazos llenando el cielo de escombros. Esponjas pintadas de verde, papel mache, alambre y tela, son los materiales que forman estos diminutos mundos.

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Ya que hemos desatado nuestra pasión por las escenografías, los dioramas y las experiencias sensoriales que desafían los límites de nuestra percepción y de nuestra imaginación (en el sentido estricto de la palabra, esto es: construir y relacionar imágenes mentales), pasamos de las fascinantes creaciones de Patrick Jacobs a las de un artista conceptualmente no muy lejano pero técnicamente más cercano a Thomas Doyle: Jorge Mayet.

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Snakes are a recurring image, borne out of what De Saint Phalle called the ‘summer of snakes’ – when she was assaulted by her father. ‘I would have probably bee

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https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/jul/21/niki-de-saint-phalle-exhibition-unseen-works-in-pictures

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genesis- the origin or mode of formation of something

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genesis- the origin or mode of formation of something

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caboodle- the whole of something, including everything that is connected to it

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caboodle- the whole of something, including everything that is connected to it

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Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights

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Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights

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https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-decoding-boschs-wild-whimsical-garden-earthly-delights

"it shows the fiery fate of humanity consumed by passion and pleasure."

“If we look closely, the only thing that connects Paradise with Hell is sin.”

“For centuries, the garden had functioned as a setting for lovers and love-making,