Author Archives: jolanta

“Composite sketches” or memory portraits are very interesting from a psychological point of view. What we memorize; how we recall things; why we recall this as opposed to that; why this way; was it like this; is it really like that? While painting, I initially concentrated on re-creating a close-to-real image of a human being […]

At the end of the 90s there was a tendency in the art education in Romania to reach the illustrated ideal in the catalogues, which one could find at the university library. In the local art schools the glossy Western model triumphed of course against the neo-orthodox oriented alternative in the years of freedom, which […]

Performance artists have been enjoying a major resurgence in popularity around the world. Spearheading this renaissance are museums and biennales. And why not. Such one-of-a-kind theatrical events where anything can happen and usually does, is primo entertainment. Here in New York City and environs five major art museums recently played host to a tsunami of […]

Through his particular brand of iconoclasm, Matias Faldbakken spears the premise of today’s pop culture ideology, the territory of the hipster intellectual. His work of the past few years is boldly about negation, challenging modern social mores with a surprisingly novel form of anti-art. His definitive 2009 show Shocked into Abstraction at the National Museum […]

Mirage was made after a trip to India (an underlying influence) and was the last of the black-and-white series of video performances. It was first designed specifically for the screening room of Anthology Film Archives, New York, where I had spent hundreds of hours viewing films. There was no live video, only pre-recorded tape and […]

I am 31 years old. I am at the beginning of my artistic career. I live and work in Romania. I avoid styles and trends. I consider myself and my artwork free from any “school.” Generally my main mediums have been painting and drawing. I am influenced, to a certain extent, both by classical and […]

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s project Gravity Is a Force to be Reckoned With, is based upon Mies van der Rohe’s uncompleted project, the 50×50 House (1951), a square structure open to view on all four sides through glass walls. In Manglano-Ovalle’s work, the house will be constructed at approximately half scale and inverted, the ceiling of the […]

Leah Oates: What is your background, and when did you know you would be an artist? Vadana Jain: I was born in Queens, but we flew back to India often while I was growing up to visit family. It was such a change from New York City, with animals grazing everywhere and rag carts and […]

The Mesocosm is the mediating space between the Absolute and the Material, a place where the real, imaginary, and symbolic coexist. Sites become states of being, and different realities collide and cooperate. The landscape is reconfigured as an environment for a new transculture, a utopian construction, a metaphor for consciousness. These paintings are constructed from […]