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07 February 2010 by nathaniel

Profundity and plasticity for the greedy

Passing Between: Mail and Guardian reviewProfundity and plasticity for the greedy
This article by Chris Roper appeared in both the online and print editions of the Mail & Guardian. Also see their online video feature.

“… The work is funny, pretty and accessible, but it’s also complicated, surprising, exceedingly well crafted and rewards a long-term relationship. That’s your cue to rush out and buy a piece, take it home and plug it in.”

“I’d better take a stab at describing the pieces in the gallery, although it would be easier all round if you checked out the video of the work on www.mg.co.za/stern. Basically, it’s a new-media mash-up. Paraphrasing the artists’ own description: they mount translucent prints and drawings on top of video screens, creating moving pictures on paper.”

“That doesn’t do justice to, for example, the mesmerising, joyful experience of watching insubstantial sharks endlessly circling The Gallerist. He’s depicted kneeling on some driftwood in the middle of the ocean while sketchy vultures hover ominously. And there’s a perfect beauty to The Great Oak, the central image of which is a drawing of a sturdy tree, already complicated by the digital echo of itself, counterpointed by ghostly figures leaping at its base.”

…

“So when you wander around the show at the misnamed Art on Paper, or if you’re lucky enough to have one of these works on your wall, you can choose. Do you just want to enjoy the playful nature of a piece such as Twin City — whoah! Here comes the flying cow again! — or do you want to meditate on the nature of the loop, which ‘without origin or telos … interweaves the work’s time with the spectator’s as rhythm rather than succession’?”

“I know, you’re a 21st-century art lover, so you want it all — profundity and plasticity, facile conversation piece and deep worth. Greedy. But with this work, you can have it all and, in true hypertextual style, leap from moment to moment, constantly recreating desire and satisfaction, in much the same way as the looped video constantly re-enacts the pleasure of watching.”

Read the entire article.

Archives

22 January 2010 by nathaniel

Passing Between: Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger at Gallery AOP, Johannesburg

Kinnickinnic, 2009, lithograph + LCD with video, 255 x 355 x 50mm

Kinnickinnic, 2009, lithograph + LCD with video, 255 x 355 x 50mm

GALLERY AOP (Art on Paper) presents

Passing Between
A collaboration incorporating traditional printmaking and contemporary digital, video and networked art
by Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger

30 January – 27 February 2010
Opening Saturday 30 January from 12:00 to 16:00
Opening address by Prof. Christo Doherty, Wits Digital Arts, at 12:30
The artists will be in attendance at the opening

Walkabout on Saturday 6 February at 12:00
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue and DVD

Nathaniel Stern and Jessica Meuninck-Ganger approach both old and new media as form. They permanently mount translucent prints and drawings directly on top of video screens, creating moving images on paper. They incorporate technologies and aesthetics from traditional printmaking – including woodblock, silk screen, etching, lithography, photogravure, etc – with the technologies and aesthetics of contemporary digital, video and networked art, to explore images as multidimensional. Their juxtaposition of anachronistic and disparate methods, materials and content – print and video, paper and electronics, real and virtual – enables novel approaches to understanding each. The artists work with subject matter ranging from historical portraiture to current events, from artificial landscapes to socially awkward moments.

Jessica Meuninck-Ganger is a Milwaukee-based artist. Her prints, artist’s books and large-scale mixed media works have been exhibited in the USA and in the rest of the world. She received her MFA in Studio Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2004 and is currently Head of Printmaking at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA.

Nathaniel Stern is an installation and video artist, net.artist, printmaker and writer. He has had solo exhibitions at various museums, academic institutions, and commercial and experimental galleries worldwide. He obtained his PhD in Art & Technology from Trinity College, Dublin in 2009 and is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Visual Art, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA.

Jessica and Nathaniel met at their first University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee Visual Art Faculty Meeting in August 2008, became fast friends, and decided to begin collaborating whilst on a trip to the Milwaukee Zoo with their kids a few months later.

44 Stanley Avenue  Braamfontein Werf   Johannesburg
Tuesday – Friday 10:00 – 17:00  Saturday 10:00 – 15:00

Archives

09 October 2009 by nathaniel

That’s my art!

Although not mentioned by name, that’s a Compressionist print of mine framed in the doorway, in this article in the art newspaper:

Gallery dedicated to book art opens in Brooklyn

Commercial venture shows growing popularity of the medium

By Andrew Goldstein | Web only
Published online 5 Oct 09 (Art Market)

Central Booking's opening party

Central Booking’s opening party

New york. In tune with a growing interest in print and book art, a new pop-up gallery has opened in Brooklyn’s DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) neighbourhood dedicated to the art form. Called Central Booking, the space is the brainchild of Maddy Rosenberg, a book artist and independent curator who has worked in the field for more than two decades, and hopes to further expose the versatility of the medium to the art world at large.

“My definition of the book is very expansive and inclusive,” says Rosenberg. “When an artist says they’re making a book, that’s my parameter.”

Read on.

Archives

07 September 2009 by nathaniel

Central Booking Gallery launch in Brooklyn, NY!

Central Booking is a new gallery in DUMBO dedicated to the art of the book:

We exhibit the breadth of the various approaches to the form, since the artist book can be anything from a pamphlet done inexpensively on a copy machine to a letterpress codex bound book integrating words and images to a sculptural piece that is an object itself. Brooklyn has taken its position as a major art center in the world and it now has a space where artist’s books from established artists to emerging ones can be seen all in one place and on a continual basis.

A very promising space, in a great area, with a clear focus and a dedication to more experimental understandings of the form. I’ve spoken to one of the curators, and he is keen to foster an undertsanding of the book through print, space, interaction, video and, of course, more traditional books.

Yours truly has a couple of prints on the inaugural exhibition, which has an impressive list. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 6-9PM, 111 Front Street in DUMBO Brooklyn, Gallery 214.

Central Booking inaugural exhibition invite

Central Booking inaugural exhibition invite (click for larger image)

Archives

24 July 2009 by nathaniel

More Compressionism, plus bonus life and art details (in short review)

Wow. I almost forgot I had a blog. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?

I’ve been working on a whole lot of art. Video-print-object things like this, scanner stuff like that, interactive installations like these (actually, mostly been updating a few of these pieces to new versions with openFrameworks, while brainstorming a new piece), and this new mixed reality installation. All will be premiering in various parts of the world, hopefully (some are booked, some are not), within the next year. I’m off to NYC for a few weeks (drop a line if you wanna meet up), but in the meanwhile, enjoy this new documentation image for Compressionism (photo and design by Jesse Egan).

Giverny of the Midwest (scanning lilies in Indiana, photo by Jesse Egan)

Giverny of the Midwest (scanning lilies in Indiana, photo by Jesse Egan)

Compressionism is a digital performance and analog archive, where I strap a custom-made scanner appendage and battery pack to my body, and perform images into existence. I might scan in straight, long lines across tables, tie the scanner around my neck and swing over flowers, do pogo-like gestures over bricks, or just follow the wind over water lilies in a pond. The dynamism of my relationship to the landscape is transformed into beautiful and quirky renderings, which are re-stretched and colored on my laptop, then produced as archival art objects using photographic processes. The above image was taken in South Bend, Indiana, as part of an art camping trip: two days in tents, with lots of tech, working towards a large-scale and gridded work reminiscent of Monet’s MOMA-owned masterpiece. The final piece will be 12 meters wide by 2 meters tall, and completed some time in 2010.

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