Tag Archives: Stux Gallery

More graphite: James Busby at Stux

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Wingspan, 2012

James Busby also uses graphite to create a monochromatic palette in his works. Busby’s Wingspan: New Works exhibition up at Stux Gallery through March 17 shows many large, textured graphite panels. Wingspan, above, shows the artist manipulating the wet graphite over white gesso to create a beautifully textured surface. The lines are painstakingly hand tooled.

Disc 2, 2011

The artist’s previous work in graphite was smaller, like the work above. Busby used a layer of graphite that he then ground down to a smooth sheen as a surface. In works like this, the colors that come out so clearly in this photograph are more subdued and vary depending on the angle you look at them. After moving to a larger studio, his work also got bigger. Cart, below, show him “framing” one of his polished graphite surfaces with a cart he found in this new studio, already covered in flecks of fiberglass. 

Cart, 2012

The texture of the fiberglass somehow migrates to Busby’s large newer works. I greatly prefer the traces of the human hand left in the mark-making of works like 3 Panel, with its expansive 96 x 144 inch surface.

3 Panel, 2011

Lydia Venieri: The Last Conflict

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Can a cornucopia of fake flowers, shiny things, dolls, dolphins and unicorns escape being twee? The Lydia Venieri exhibition The Last Conflict: Retrospective: Sculpture, Video, and Photography is, as the title suggests, a mixed media installation that occupies the majority of Stux Gallery’s space that begs the question.
Her bubble sculptures, supported by tree trunks or suspended from the ceiling, depict hyperbolically natural flora and fauna. The materials mix the organic (moss, wood) and plastic. The miniature ecosystems seem like the baubles of fairies from a bad production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Authenticity is hardly the point, however.

The exhibition also featured satin digital color prints from the artist’s “Planet Exodus” series. In them, wide-eyed dolls pose like models.

Their large eyes reflect the manmade surroundings, and suggest a (fake?) innocence in the face of natural devastation. The worlds Venieri portrays in the dolls’ eyes, and in the video installation as well, suggests the world of man in conflict with the natural world.

That message comes differently from the mouths, so to speak, of the little plastic people that Venieri employs.

Rather like a Japanese Lolita, Venieri’s exhibition tweaks twee on the nose, and manages to seem coy about the darkness underlying her plastic arts.

Up through June 25th at Stux Gallery.

Anna Jóelsdóttir: Near Chaos

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There is turmoil in the world, too many dots to connect; we are many outsiders floating around lost centers. I want my work to reflect that near chaos. – Artist Statement

Of the openings I went to in Chelsea last night, I saw a lot of more, or less, successful toyings with geometric shapes and color (nostalgia much?). What a relief then, to come upon Anna Jóelsdóttir’s show priest chews velvet haddock at the Stux Gallery.

For this exhibition, the Chicago-based Icelandic artist produced mylar installations, paintings, a really extraordinary journal, and a big game of pick up sticks. While that may seem like quite a range of objects, they were very much unified by a stark, sprawling, detailed aesthetic that was precise yet evocative. It was too crowded to get a good installation shot last night, so I pulled the images above from Stux’s website. The artist folds, cuts, and otherwise manipulates the painted mylar into a variety of complex forms. The mylar shows her typical thin streaks and spurts of color on a white background.

When the Bough Breaks

Jóelsdóttir’s paintings, also on white backgrounds with pulsing color connected by thin lines, create poetic yet direct images. Somehow even where there is chaos and tension, there is also a sort of peace. I’m not sure how well these paintings reproduce here, but seeing them last night I was struck by how refreshing and clean the white background was, and how well the artist used the thin crawling lines to explode the space. They felt very personal and immediate. I like how they reconcile what ought to be opposite characteristics, like emotion and coolness, and strength and delicacy. They’ll be up through the New Year if you have a chance to go by, and I recommend you do. More about the artist on her website.

Bent Horizons