Contest Entry #1

“3rd Annual Naturally Nude”
Application Deadline January 22nd 2010

Ciao Gallery of Jackson, Wyoming is pleased the opportunity to participate in our 3rd annual “Naturally Nude”, an exhibition of exceptional nudes. This show is open to all artists in any mediums. Traditional renderings as well as unique interpretations. This exhibition opening takes place on Valentine's day eventing and has become one of our most popular events for the gallery.

THursday Idea blog #9

new artist statement.
i think a really helpful piece of the process to figuring out where my project is at has been having to write a new artist statement for the project to be presented after the midterm at the research presentation. It absolutely needs some cleaning up but i do feel that it has helped ot form solidify the new ideas of the continuing project.

The concept of my work is to create images that hijack the visual language of fashion photography in an effort to explore the relationship between consumers and the social and economic situation in which they act. The experience of economic coercion reaches every person that engages in the western consumer landscape both directly and indirectly. Foucault suggests that our internal relationship to coercion leads us to desire the ability to coerce. Advertising has a long tradition of working towards controlling the choices of consumers and in turn western economic powers have a history of exploiting those who produce goods. In participating in the current consumer environment the consumer is complicit in this exploitation. The youth obsessed world of fashion photography and the advertising it produces seeks to create a mental environment of desire in the viewer, thus moving the consumer to desire the objectified contents of the advertising and while asking them to engage with a system of coercion that produces the objects featured.

In pursuit of my concept I have created images that seek to use the visual language of youth targeted fashion advertising to suggest the coercive relationship that forms as a result of participation in the current economic environment that produces the goods to be sold to those youth targeted by these ads. The elements of the consumer object, the coercive object and the objectified person form a visual language that I hope will bring the viewer to question the relationship of the objects pictured and lead them to examine their relationship to those interactions.

Monday Artist BLOG // Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin
" In my photography, historical statues, costumes and architecture become symbols of that which confines us. I am expressing the desire to break through these structures. I portray subjects that seem to disappear into these structures and become transparent. The subject is released from social constructs and he is free."
from the artist statement

In the images Liu Bolin produces he makes himself become part of the back ground. the back grounds he chooses are of special significance as they embody aspects of the communist specter. trains, graffiti of mao's statements construction equipment and the pedestals of great statues never constructed form the objects with which he blends in.

It is the specter of communism that keeps the work of artists like Liu Bolin Underground to some extent. havign had his studio shut down he makes work that is both a commentary on his outsider status and feelings toward society as well as creating material images of protest against the state that surpresses his aciton.

Monday Artist BLOG // Richard Kern

Richard kern
(from the wiki)
Richard Kern (born 1954 in North Carolina) is a New York underground filmmaker, writer and photographer. He first came to underground prominence as part of the underground cultural explosion in the East Village of New York City in the 1980s, with erotic and experimental films featuring underground personalities of the time such as Lydia Lunch, David Wojnarowicz, Sonic Youth, Kembra Pfahler, and Henry Rollins in movies like "The Right Side of My Brain" and "Fingered." Like many of the musicians around him, Kern had a deep interest in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence, and perversion and was one of the leading lights of Nick Zedd's coined Cinema of Transgression.

Kern is now a photographer featured in every VICE magazine. a section called "shot by kern" regularly appears in both video and still form on VICE magazine's website.

In searching for the right color palette to add just the right amount of flash and saturation to my photographs i've been looking at photographers like Kern and McGinley its important for me to try and find the best of the photographers that ride the line between fine art and commercial work and the artists that exist in both worlds. while Kern is more known for his erotic and nude works i feel that he is recognized by the same realms as McGinley, so much so as he is featured in one of the best known fashion and youth targeted culture magazines. I've also been looking for clues as to how to more appropriately light the photographs and am leaning toward the soft whites and golden magic hour colors. maybe shooting with a flash bouncing off of a gold reflector would be most appropriate.

thursday Idea blog #8

I will definitely be reshooting for the final. while i may use a few images from my previous shoots i will be refining my process to include a tripod to secure a specific vantage point. i want that vantage point to be from slightly above and down the point of view of the person arresting the subject as opposed to the more straight on near ground level shots i've been taking. something cin between the images included at the top of this post. I think if i am making it more about the relationship to the consumer it should include slightly more about the consumer and if its relating to fashion photography i should also include more of the subject while still leaving the identity exposed only by way of the objects and materials they are wearign and choosing to show the world as their outward appearance.

Artist Blog Ryan McGinley

What interests me about Ryan McGinley's photographs in relation to my project is the often warm yet unsaturated tones of his color palette. While sometimes he will go about employing a cooler color palette such as in the wrangler ads they are always tones that are without specific spark bright flashy color. I chose to show the pictures above due to the fact that his fine art photos more often than not feature persons who are mostly naked if not sparsely dressed.

not only do i enjoy his color palette and wish to employ it further in my own, i also feel an affinity with his working method. Specifically in the project, i know where the summer goes.

“It’s really a world–you have to remember that. People look at photographs and believe them as truth and they always will. People look at my photographs and think this is real–this life exists. Even if they know that it doesn’t”

[S]kateboarding is a lot like photography because skateboarding is about making something out of nothing. You’re using the urban landscape as a playground and you’re making ideas for doing skateboard tricks–using a handrail or some yellow curb on the sidewalk–and photography is about the same thing for me [ . . . ] You have to sort of create these scenarios to shoot, these ideas to work, and you have to use the world as the backdrop for your photograph.

i like this quote as he refers to a similar working mode as my own. rearranging reality into fantastic situation that do not exist too far from the truth that speak to specific experiences.

from a Time magazine article speaking mostly to the youth centered nature of his work.
"Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime. Young and beautiful is as fleeting as a camera snap--and thus all the more worth preserving."

i think it is worth noting how while he has only done a few print ads they work in the same way as his fine art works. youth centered and obsessed, illustrating an emotional state of being a young adult. there is no shift in the subject matter the fine art works the same as the advertising seeking creating attractive objects and an attractive situation all manufactured in the same method as you would find an advertising shoot executed.

Thursday Idea blog #7

In attempting to figure out where i'm going with the other less lethal weapons in my projects i've been considering how they relate to the objects used by protest groups against institutions, buildings and representatives of state power. Maybe a side by side comparison of relating objects in diptych form would be a good way to present them. paint bombs or glitter grenades compared to tear gas, gas masks to bandannas, whip cream pies compared to pepper spray, signs to batons. One image contrasting the vibrant colors and energy of actions such as funk the war against the dark and more uniform color palette of the police force.