Ole Aakjær

To Understand the Mechanisms

2019

SILVIO MERLINO PENSA UNA NUVOLA DI PIOGGIA, 1989 mixed media on paper 19 x 27 in. 49.5 x 69.8 cm storm landscape

In BOOM BUST REPEAT17, Peña creates a silhouette of house and fills it with sharpe-edged shapes that contain gradients and saturated hues of red, green, and violet. He balances these colors with muted tones of orange and yellow . The viewer can create a house that is yet to be built in between the gaps here. In "Boom, Bust, Repeat", Peña remarks on a house and landscape that has yet to take place. The painting is created with watercolor and acrylic paint on paper. In the foreground we see Sintra board or flattened PVC that has been CNC routed. In the "soil" beneath the house are small circular lines that have been hand drawn with India ink. The Sintra board has been cut to reveal arrows in the negative space pointing upwards as to hint at a boom in the market. Peña’s works range from painting to multimedia installations that question the ever-changing psychological landscape of America; asking the viewer to re-examine their perceptions of the “American Dream” and the affects that pursuit has on our environment and national psyche. The realization that both the idealistic pursuit of happiness and the relevance of painting in a technologically driven world informs his practice. With each composition the labor begins with digital composites of a fragmented American landscape in peril —where tension lies in the contrasts between past and present, analog and digital, representation and abstraction, and stability and instability. In his most recent series the American home (stability) and fragmented and shifting landscape (instability) are veiled by a digitally produced mat. Traditionally a mat is, by definition, a flat, thin piece of paper based material included within the picture frame and serves as additional decoration when framing artwork. He activates this commonly overlooked material by using a non-traditional material, Sintra (flattened sheet of PVC), that has a negative digitally drawn image cut-out. This cut-out might, at first glance, look hand cut however, a more astute viewer would realize the precision is mechanical. The mat has been transformed from inactive decoration to digitally produced veil that represents the technologically anxious precision we surround ourselves with. Nick Peña...

Realistic still life painting of pastel pink lilies, roses, and foxglove on dark blue Hand-painted cyanotype by Julia Whitney Barnes "Picturesque Botany (Lily, Rose, Cherry Blossom, ...

India ink, arches watercolor paper, embroidery thread, foam core

Aquatint and watercolor collage by Jenny Toth, mixed media artist, professor, graduate of Yale School of Art

"#51 – WE THINK" is from Amy Williams' series "A Farewell to Arms" – wherein the artist works directly onto page 51 of a found copy of Ernest Hemingway's ...

"#159 – SLEEP" is from Amy Williams' series "A Farewell to Arms" – wherein the artist works directly onto page 159 of a found copy of Ernest Hemingway's WWII romance novel. The artis...

Poet Robert Gibbons and visual artist Amy Williams team up to collaborate on a new series of erasure poems and artworks inspired by the words of writer Zora Neale Hurston...

Poet Robert Gibbons and visual artist Amy Williams team up to collaborate on a new series of erasure poems and artworks inspired by the words of writer Zora Neale Hurston...

Poet Robert Gibbons and visual artist Amy Williams team up to collaborate on a new series of erasure poems and artworks inspired by the words of writer Zora Neale Hurston...