April 25, 2013

David Shrigley and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye from The Roving Eye exhibition are 2 of the 4 shortlisted artists for this year’s Turner Prize

“The Turner Prize is awarded to a British artist under fifty each year. Artists are nominated for an exhibition (or other presentation of their work) that took place in the twelve months preceding 16 April 2013. While the four shortlisted artists display their work at a Turner Prize exhibition, the jury award the prize for the originally nominated presentation.”

“David Shrigley, for his solo exhibition at Hayward Gallery David Shrigley: Brain Activity
The exhibition of Shrigley’s well-loved drawings with his photography, sculpture and film offered a comprehensive overview and new perspectives on his work, revealing his black humour, macabre intelligence and infinite jest.”

“Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, for her exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery Extracts and Verses
Yiadom-Boakye’s painted portraits of imaginary people use invented pre-histories and raise pertinent questions about how we read pictures in general, particularly with regard to black subjects.”*

*from the Tate website

Click here to read the full article.

March 11, 2013

Oakland University Art Gallery Exhibit Reinforces Artistic Portraits, by Mike Hodges, the Detroit News

March 9, 2013

Dick Goody, director of the Oakland University Art Gallery, says the omnipresence of portrait photography these days — think Facebook — inspired “The Roving Eye: Aura and the Contemporary Portrait.” This 18-person group show up through March 31 is Goody’s effort to reclaim portraiture “as the domain of the artist rather than the amateur,” as he writes in the exhibit catalog.

One look at Australian Rosemary Laing’s photographs of crying beauties with disorderly hair — “a dozen useless actions for grieving blondes” Nos. 1 and 2 — and you know you’re in the hands of an artistic pro. These are gorgeous compositions, set up like mug-shots, but shot against lipstick-pink backgrounds, a jarring blend of boudoir and police blotter. (Note how the background makes the pink blotchiness of tear-stained faces pop.) One bereft woman looks down, hands rising up in front of her face. Her pain is graphic, but at some remove. In the other portrait, by contrast, the blonde’s stricken eyes meet ours with one enraged, unspoken question: “Why?”

It’s all about the gaze.

Our relationship with the face in question is completely different if their eyes don’t land on us. When not peering in our eyes, as Goody notes, we have the luxury of stepping back and putting on the protective armor of the voyeur.

“We can scan and mine the surface, and ultimately pass judgment,” he writes, “because the eyes of the sitter are not judging us.”

By contrast, when the sitter’s eyes meet ours, we’re plunged into a much more intimate relationship. It’s not always comforting.

Consider New York artist Matthew Watson’s “Chessy,” where a deeply anxious lapdog stares at us from a brown sofa. It’s a study in unhappy uncertainty. The little fellow radiates apprehension, underlining what Watson says in his artist’s notes, where he calls the lapdog “a virtuoso of servitude,” whose greatest joy comes from the limits imposed on its freedoms.

It all seems rather severe for the earnest little guy in question, but there’s no doubting his eyes — again, that gaze — prompt an inescapable, pathos-filled connection with the viewer.

About half the images on display are photographs, the rest video, collage and paintings, like Michael Borremans’ compelling “Portrait” of a man with what appears to be one “lazy eye.”

Equally gripping are German artist Loretta Lux’s photos of a little boy and little girl. Don’t leave the gallery without taking a look. Shot in washed-out colors, there’s something mesmerizingly lost and Victorian about these children with the blank faces.

‘The Roving Eye: Aura and the Contemporary Portrait’

Through March 31

Oakland University Art Gallery

208 Wilson Hall, 2200 N. Squirrel Road, Rochester

Click here to read the full article.

March 5, 2013

Lecture: PIXELVISION: McLuhan as ELECTRONIC FOLK ART, Monday, March 18, 2013, 10-11:30AM; this will be followed by a screening: Best of PXL THIS Festival: 11:30-1PM

Gerry Fiakla, Director of the PXL THIS Film Festival, presents an interactive dialogue on the Fisher-Price LXL-2000 toy video camera.  He explores the significance of this raw DIY moving image art tool through the percepts of Marshall McLuhan and others.  The irresistible irony of the PXL 2000 is that the camera’s ease-of-use and affordability, which entirely democratizes move making, has inspired the creation of some of the most visionary, avant and luminous film of our time.

Click here to view the press release from the event.

February 25, 2013

arthopper: The Roving Eye @ Oakland University by Ron Scott

THE ROVING EYE: Aura and the Contemporary Portrait exhibition, opened on January 13, 2013 at the Oakland University Art Gallery as a survey of international portraiture including eighteen artists from the United States, Europe, and Australia. The unconventional design of the exhibition says as much about the eclectic vision of the curator, Dick Goody, whose roving eye amuses us with his juxtaposition of media, content and likeness, as it does about the artists’ imagery.

To read more go to the link below…

Click here to read the full article.

February 11, 2013

THE SEEN Chicago’s International Art & Design Blog: by James Collins

Click here to read the full article.

January 22, 2013

The 2013 Fred M. Braun Memorial Lecture at Meadow Brook Hall

The Department of Art and Art History

College of Arts and Sciences, Oakland University,

cordially invites you to attend the

The 2013 Fred M. Braun Memorial Lecture:

Living with Fuseli’s Nightmare:

the story of the DIA’s visionary acquisition

Dr. Salvador Salort-Pons,

Head of the European Art Department,

at the Detroit Institute of Arts

On Wednesday, February 6, 2013

At 6:30pm

In the Ballroom at Meadow Brook Hall,

Oakland University

January 8, 2013

Opening Reception – Saturday, January 12, 6-8PM – The Roving Eye: Aura and the Contemporary Portrait

Artists: Michaël Borremans, Noah Becker, Jeff Burton, Andrew Bush, Kent Dorn, Charlotte Dumas, Anh Duong, Pierre Gonnord, Debbie Grossman, Andrew Guenther, Rosemary Laing, Loretta Lux, The Sartorialist (Scott Schuman), David Shrigley, Tereza Vlčková, , Matthew Watson, Nicole Wittenberg, and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye.

This exhibition explores the work of international contemporary artists fixated with portraiture. It considers: the sitter, the artist and, you, the viewer. It proposes to facilitate a fresh look at portraiture, to re-evaluate and reclaim it as a practice central to the artist rather than the amateur. In this context the artist is the only genuine author of authenticity. To glean an authentic essence or presence, each artist must liberate the genuine aura of the sitter: this elusive thing that possesses immense psychological and emotional octane. An effective portrait captures something essential that can only be seen and felt by the viewer in the presence of the likeness. If we value portraiture, we must nurture the form, reconsider its role within the context of contemporary art, re-presented it, and support its practitioners.

The exhibition is accompanied by 42 p. full-color catalogue.

Click here to view the press release from the event.