Welcome to Visual Hierarchy, an online visual playground. Gathered here are pictures I make. Visual Hierarchy is a laboratory. Research is done in a wide variety of mediums.
Jason Lanka’s massive drawings and photos are now on display in the Atrium space in the Union. They will be up for several weeks. Here are some images of his work and some information about his work.
Boundary; something that marks or fixes a limit (as of territory). The line that divides one area of land from another.
The space at which our culture comes in contact with the environment inspires my creative work. Much can be understood about the nature of how our society defines its role and place within the natural world by the observation of this boundary.
I seek to address the demarcation of our species’ relationship with the land. Am I of the land or in the land? Each piece made within a lineage of exploration has set out to answer this question. Our identity as people and a nation are so often defined by our place within our environment and how we view our relationship with the natural world.
Kate Brandt Pink opens at the University of Wisconsin Union Art Gallery tomorrow (friday march 5th) from 5-8pm
MILWAUKEE—KATE BRANDT PINK, an international group exhibition, will take place at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from March 5, 2010 to April 2, 2010 in the Union Art Gallery. The art in the exhibition confronts power roles, gender, race, fame, and class issues within the perspective of the greater arts community. It opens with a reception from 5-8pm on Friday, March 5. The exhibition is free and open to the public.
In 1960, neo-Dada artist Yves Klein made a splash at an exhibition by using nude female models as living paintbrushes, making work with his signature color, International Klein Blue. UWM artist Kate Brandt comments on, confronts, and even exorcises the ghost of this “legendary” artist with a group exhibition of visual performance artists all of whom use her self selected shade of pink. In their work, these contemporary artists address ideas of gender, power roles, race, fame, class issues and more in a variety of mediums, including live performances (at the opening reception), photography, sculpture, video, and painting.
Artists include: Kate Gilmore, Ryan Trecartin, Franko B, Stuart Semple, Heather Warren-Crow, Kate Brandt, Kimberly Brandt, Cassandra Smith, A. Bill Miller, Emily Walley, Kristen Olsen, Naomi Shersty, Sarah Holden, Anna Helgeson, Richard Mutz, and many others.
***Heather Warren-Crow invites viewers to participate in her work by documenting her opening night performance using cell phone cameras. Please make her dream come true by posting a short video to YouTube and emailing the link to art_gallery@uwm.edu
Your video will become part of a playlist that will be exhibited at the Union Art Gallery.
The gallery I work at (UAG) has a pretty badass show going on currently called Flora/Fauna. If any of you are in the Milwaukee area or are passing through, definitely check it out. I did a post on Roxanne Jackson awhile back, some of the work in that post is worth looking at. Here is what we have in the show:
At the artist talk before the opening of the show Roxanne discussed the ideas surrounding her work. Transformation from man into creature or beast is a recurring theme as well as animal hybrids. I agree with Roxanne in that such a transformation is a fantasy, that we are already beasts, yet we often fear our animal nature in desperate attempt to feel superior. I don’t care so much for her works with wigs, but her ceramic heads and animals are fantastic. They draw on goth and horror aesthetics. Being a metal head I find much of her work exceedingly, specifically the black heads with jaws pushing out of the human mouth.
Kako’s usage of paper started in a happenstance sort of way. She’s always been using paper as a drawer, but many years ago she just sort of started cutting it one night. What ensued was a series of beautifully crafted and composed artworks. A large theme in her work is life and death. Life needs death and death life. To depict this she uses imagery of plants, insects, eggs, a skull, and faces. In her work “Totem” (the red paper cut outs above) are a string of narratives composing her own totem pole of sorts. Clown imagery is drawn from her mother’s interest and collection of clown dolls. The other narratives are privately inspired and we can only conclude them in our imagination.
Kako Ueda and Roxanne Jackson focus on physical nature and human nature in abstract and inventive ways. They share an interest in dualities, such as nature and culture, light and dark. In their work, the natural world is intricate, fascinating, grotesque, frightening – something to be drawn deeply into and sometimes shocked by.
New York artist Kako Ueda constructs her work from intricate hand-cut paper which references, in part, paper cutting from Japan where she was born. Minneapolis-based Roxanne Jackson works three-dimensionally with clay to form large compositions of human/animal hybrids.
I found Stuart’s cartoon to be very powerful. Cartoons sometimes humor me, sometimes they amaze me in their artistic craftsmanship and creativity. Some cartoons however actually move my soul. This is is one of those: Click on the image
When Hieronymus Bosch passed away August 9, 1516 his artistic spirit was separated from his soul as it ascended into heaven (god granted him passage for his amazing paintings). Trapped on earth his artistic spirit traveled many places and one of those was within the artwork of Mia Makila (<— check out her website).
Mia’s work is captivating to say the least. It is grotesque, elaborate, raw, detailed, piercing, colorful, and dark all at once. That is just what I see (and I like it), what do you think? Here are some of her most appealing (or repelling) works in my opinion:
Cal Lane is an artist I recently Stumbledupon. Her work is awesomely crafted and her concepts are strong. The aesthetics of her work draw me in and captivate. I would love to see her work in person and be able to examine it from all angles.
From her artist statement:
“I like to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance – as well as a clash – by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials.This manifested in a series of “Industrial Doilies”, pulling together industrial and domestic life as well as relationships of strong and delicate, masculine and feminine, practical and frivolity, ornament and function. There is also a secondary relationship being explored here, of lace used in religious ceremonies as in weddings, christenings and funerals.”
I found this piece to be pretty humorous and different compared to her other works:
Mark Napier created this site back in 98′ which shreds websites. You can shred a website by typing in the url here. This is Visual Hierarchy all shredded up!
We find glory in the conveniences of the machine. It’s precision and efficiency is something unknown to man. Man who sleeps, man who eats, man is forced to make judgments, to make adjustments, the machine simply works, accomplishes, achieves. This clear mirror is obvious, man is to machine, what animal is to man. There is a shift that must take place. Man must become like machine. In life, in sleep, in art. We, the new futurists exclaim EMBRACE the nature of machine. Accept its rigidity, its simple contours, its efficient action.
We will first make ourselves like a machine through our artwork. It has been known for centuries that mans motives, mans objectives, mans destiny exists first in art. To integrate the machine into man, we must make art the focus of the machine. Art will function. Art will accomplish a mean, not just serve as a petty point of discussion. Art will permeate the minds of the masses, spreading the machine.
Ah but the common man will not see the glory of the machine! What goal worthy of accomplishing has not met resistance! We must embrace the challenge. We must spread the glory of the machine. It will begin in the galleries. The first display, a saw, a clock, its gears keeping time to our coming glory! It will be ridiculed. The resisting forces will exclaim “but your work, it is nothing more than tools, than props, a decadent abstracted statement at best!” What do the masses know! Decadent, abstracted, this is their perception of our meaning! What meaning do we find in art, none in their terms! Our art does not comment upon the human condition. It CHANGES the human condition. Its action destroys the past barriers; it destroys the notion of humanity by every decent standard!
The movement will spread. It must, the utility of our movement will be seen by the pragmatic. It will spark the minds of the next generation, the leading generation! We will seize what is ours, our art will be seen in every avenue of the earth!
New futurists. You must embrace the machine at all costs!
Do you not know the evil we will endure through failure! Man will continue to live, nothing more than a beast! Scavenging on the waste of the land, consuming the products of machine but rejecting machines glorious nature! Come forth my generation, and become, the chosen generation.
Current Talk