May

10

Call for Submissions: Beethoven Festival

Upcoming Exhibits  Posted by / 0 comments
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Call For Submissions:  Beethoven Festival

Competition is open to Chicago-based artists only.

The musical legacy of Ludwig van Beethoven has remained unsurpassed for nearly 2 centuries.  Over the years, Ludwig has retained a reputation as one of the most admired, controversial and revolutionary figures in music history.

The inaugural Beethoven Festival took place in 2011 to celebrate the life and legacy of this most beloved universal composer.  Each year, an aspect of Beethoven’s personal and musical life is chosen as the theme of the festival – driving its musical and artistic program.   In 2013, the theme is Love, taking Beethoven’s notorious Immortal Beloved letters and romantic ballads as a starting point.  After all, it was Beethoven who said:  “Love demands everything and that very justly…”

We would also like to touch upon issues of modern love along with issues of ancient love. Beethoven was always going for women who were basically unattainable either due to social status (they were above his social station as aristocrats) or married, usually unhappily, but he nevertheless wanted them…  Modern love issues that are very du jour are questions of marriage rights for all, cross-cultural love, cross-racial love, cross-everything. We also ask ourselves what the purpose of love is, and how it can be an all-consuming thing not just romantically, but creatively for the artist. Beethoven ended up remaining single his entire life because he was, in the end, too committed to his art to live any other way.

As part of this 3rd Annual Beethoven Festival, we are inviting artists living and working in the greater Chicago area to apply for inclusion in the Festival’s art exhibit.  Selected artworks will be hung in a curated exhibit within the music venue where audiences will be able to view them for the duration of the Festival.

 Submission Guidelines

  • Submit one email to submissions@tincaart.com with the following attachments:

  • 1-3 images of artworks – image attachments must be smaller than 500 KB and titled “lastname_firstname_title.jpeg”

  • list of artworks with details including title, year, media, size

  • brief Artist Statement discussing how the works relate to Beethoven and the Festival’s theme;

  • artist CV

  • Format subject line as: “Submission – Last Name, First Name”

  • Only complete submissions will be considered

  • All submission materials are due August 1

  • Artists selected for exhibition will be notified by August 15 and will be required to deliver and consign artworks to the Festival by September 1.

  • Artwork in any medium is permitted and encouraged for submission.

For more information about the Beethoven Festival, please explore www.internationalbeethovenproject.com, the non-profit organization behind the Beethoven Festival, and www.tincaart.com, the Curator behind the annual art exhibit of the Festival.  Facebook is also informative for most up to date information:  http://www.facebook.com/BeethovenFestival

Inspiration on the 2013 Love theme of the Festival:

http://home.swipnet.se/zabonk/cultur/ludwig/beeim.htm

http://www2.carleton.ca/fass/ccms/wp-content/ccms-files/Wright-Essay-Beethoven-Immortal-Beloved-28-June-2012.pdf

May

02

Highlights from Zona Maco, Mexico City

Highlights  Posted by / 0 comments
Mexico City 2013

Mexico City was nothing like I imagined it. I was expecting a loud, gritty, dangerous place. Everyone I spoke to emphasized over and over again how I will likely get kidnapped by going… and these are not ignorant people. It seems to be the reputation Mexico City has to the outside world. The city I found was more romance than danger. It was more chic architecture than grit. And, it was a spacious, serene, beautiful space where traffic was more civilized than any European country I’ve ever been to.

Zona Maco Art & Design Fair didn’t leave quite as good of an impression as the historically rich city it calls home, but there are a few pieces worth mentioning:

Javier PEREZJavier Pérez
En el Filo, 2012
baryta paper, digital gelatine silver print
84 x 57.5 cm (33 x 23 inches)
from Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art Vienna

I was really taken by this Javier Perez image of a woman standing on a pair of butcher knives in nothing by a pair of stilettos. It speaks to the precarious position of women as our role in society and culture shifts. Perez’s work has been collected by major museums around the world, including one close to home: the MAD in New York City. His most famous piece is probably Corrona, shown at the 2011 Venice Biennale.

 

 

Ray SmithRay Smith
Series: Talk to me Pablo
162 x 91 cm (64 x 36 inches)
Oil on wood
from Lucia Lara Gallery in Mexico

 

These are the perfect blend of classic and modern – a contemporary artist’s take on Picasso. Coming from someone who loves Picasso but will never own one (there are too many contemporary artists to support to spend millions on one piece by Picasso), I find this ode to the master genius. Ray Smith has made some impressive work over the years (he’s in his 50s), which has been exhibited in galleries around the world and a few small museums.

 

 

Beth Katleman, Folly, 2010
10 feet by 18 feet by 14 inches, porcelain, wire, steel rods and heat-shrink tubing (Edition of 12)
from Todd Merrill Studio Contemporary in New York City

Beth Ketleman Folly

This “3D wallpaper” is elegant and titillatingly dark… Made using found tchotchkes, Katleman re-casts the figures and places them into a cinematic storyboard – in this case about killing babies. The irony is found in the beauty of the piece. As the artist explains: “porcelain suggests luxury, refinement and royal provenance. While one flea market treasure seems a little sad, a florid profusion of them is cause for celebration.” The exuberance and refinement of Folly are astonishing to behold. Most importantly, Christian Dior has one.

 

Rodrigo de la SierraRodrigo de la Sierra
Acto Reflejo, 2013
Bronze
146 x 70 x 20 cm (58 x 28 x 8 inches)
from Il Ponte Contemporanea in Rome, Italy

 

This series El Mundo de Timoteo warms my little heart. I look at it and start giggling at how happy and sweet it is. Around the time of the economic collapse in 2007, the artists has created an entire world and story around a character (artist’s alter ego) affectionately named Timo who reflected the turbulence and hope of the globe. While the piece is just for fun… I do have to credit the high technical and artistic quality. Also, the philosophy about the likeness of being the artist works with is profound and serves as a metaphor for contemporary society.

 

Andrea Galvani, Death of an Image #2, 2005
110 x 163 cm (43 x 64 inches), Edition of 5
from Marso Gallery in Berlin and Mexico City

andrea galvani

Andrea Galvani’s work is truly impressive. It presents alternative realities, some are more abstract, others more fantastical. On a practical note, the artist’s resume speaks for itself: Young artist who is being looked at by galleries, curators and museums around the world. Even the Whitney Museum loves this piece and exhibited it in a young artists show a few years back.

Mar

25

Scope NYC 2013 PRESS Wrap-Up

Past Shows  Posted by / 0 comments
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“The Headless Horse That Rocked Scope” - Huffington Post

“I was especially impressed by the work of Justin Orvis Steimer who was hard at work on his ongoing pieces (he uses the energy of the space he is at to influence his pieces).” - Douglas F Maxwell

“As you approach Scope, you get the sense that it is going to be a good show. There is a headless, blinged-out horse rotating on a platform at the entrance to the venue. Despite the metal spikes jutting out from its side, its statuesque, bejeweled elegance makes you glad you decided to attend and eagerly anticipate the offerings inside.” - Arts Observer

Thoughts from Tiffany Jin:  It’s hard to miss a life-size rotating horse, especially one that is adorned in acrylic rhinestones and sitting on a mirrored base. Andrea Stanislav’s Vanishing Points garnered much attention from the crowds of iphone-equipped people, anxious to add a filter and upload this sparkly creature to instagram.  This paparazzi treatment continued inside to Tinca Art’s “Rock & Roll” themed booth, with glitter text work, an over-scaled fox, and live-painting to further satisfy the viewer. It is important to note that though the works by Stanislav, Gail Stoicheff and Justin Orvis Steimer have that immediate, almost eye candy appeal – there is much more within and behind them than glitter, beasts and denim.

Because much of our culture is programmed to see only on a superficial level, Stanislav interrogates such issues through the use of unexpected, repulsive materials like glitter and rhinestones.  Will the viewer turn away in disgust, or will (s)he ask Why the bling?    The answer lies in our relationship with beauty and value, that thin line between utopia and dystopia is what Stanislav walks.  Once free to question, we move deeper into the exhibit and ask again, Why is Stoicheff – with her pure abstract painting background – now finding her way to these foxes and isolated body parts?  Why is Steimer choosing to paint his denim canvas live at Scope?  For artists’ intent, read here.

MORE ONLINE PRESS

Huffington Post

ArtsObserver

Cartwheel

Leah Harmuth

This Week In New York 

BrightestYoungThings 

 Art F City

Max-Art

Steve Giovinco

Inside New York

Dec

30

Justin Orvis Steimer . Live Painting at SCOPE Miami 2012

Past Shows  Posted by / 0 comments
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During the six days of SCOPE Miami Art Fair this December, artist Justin Steimer painted live a 84 x 50 inch canvas he made from sails he sewed and stretched by hand.  Painting live provides access to an incredibly intimate process that is seldom shared with the public.  As the only artist painting live, Steimer’s presence at the fair was received as a gift by the thousands of onlookers who stopped to chat with him, me, or simply to watch the mesmerizing brushstrokes of his beautiful artist.  The piece sold unfinished on day 3 of the fair to a collector who trusted that the final result would be even better than the incomplete state he first saw the piece in.

Steimer works on found objects, crafting his canvases from materials including bed sheets, wood, muslin, most recently sails, and at one point, even an ironing board.  Steimer embraces the physical, tactile nature of painting as a counter balance to the digital world.  He bought these particular sails from a fishing village in Staten Island.  They belonged to the seller’s great grandfather who owned a racing sail boat.  Steimer cut, sewed and stretched the sails into three canvases — finishing them off with elegant cherry wood frames.  The sails were left in their raw state, showing off their history, tears and stains. He then painted two of the pieces in his studio prior to the fair, but saved the third as a blank canvas onto which he would document Scope Miami 2012 .

A purely abstract artist, Steimer explores the process of of scribbling which has been his obsession since childhood. By opening up the mind to allow the surrounding energy, time, space, thought, location and emotion to pass freely through the body, a visual documentation of life at that moment is recorded.

Interestingly, I heard one woman say to him: “You look just like your pieces.” His response: “Well, it’s all really the same thing.”

 

 

 

 

 

Nov

11

Chernobyl by Diana Thater

So Worth Seeing  Posted by / 0 comments
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Went for a walk around the Chelsea galleries yesterday.  Diana Thater’s video installation at David Zwirner was by far the most impressive work out there.

In Chernobyl, Thater juxtaposes pastoral scenery with destruction both apparent and implied, and in the process highlights the relationship between Western industrial civilization and the regenerative potential of nature left to itself. It mirrors a tension between the natural environment and mediated reality that can be seen throughout the artist’s work. The shape of the installation copies that of the movie theater in Prypiat. The work is made from a video re-creation of the theater with images of the zone of alienation layered over it, asking the viewer to see the world in the theater and the theater in the world.

The 6-or-so projectors are arranged to play images in a 360 degree formation.  In certain locations, the viewer’s shadow interferes with the projection, making her shape part of the work.  I watched soldiers, artists, conservation workers and horses dance around my shadow, begging my imagination to consider what I would feel if I were standing in the center of the radioactive zone.