Review | Nadia McGrath's artw...

Generated on 2020-11-18 17:57:39

Result #1

Nadia McGrath's artwork explores alcoholism and its impact on families, represented through paintings, sculptures, and short videos. She examines the experiences of alcoholics and their families through her family’s experience with the disease. In addition to charcoal, pencil, plaster and watercolors, she uses more unconventional materials such as alcohol inks, broken glass and damaged plaster casts to convey distortion or broken glass to capture the essence of being shattered or fragmented. Through her work, Nadia wants viewers to reflect on the notion that “alcoholism is a family disease” -- affecting not only the alcoholic, but everyone around them as well. <|startoftext|>The exhibition Hymietown was a deceptively simple affair: twelve single-panel paintings on canvas, about seven feet square. They were hung on the wall in a neat row. A large selection of the artists work, which included paintings from the 80s and 90s, was displayed in a vitrine placed on the floor. The first thing one saw on entering the gallery was a series of sixteen paintings titled Thirty Years of Love and Loss, 1998–2001, which shows the artist as an emaciated, alcoholic, skunky, grinning, hairless, green-eyed, but feminine-looking model. The paintings portray men with deeply seductive faces, but no figures. At the same time, the figure seems to be a modern-day Siren, an annoying, overbearing instrument of control. This image was echoed by a series of drawings of women and children from the same period, which were also on display. The drawings depict a group of children, who are depicted as deviants. The drawings look like a family snapshot, but the subjects are facsimiles of several individuals in a long line of succession. In one, a naked girl looks at a man with a pigtail. In another, a girl smiles at a man, who is staring into a mirror. Another girl, who seems to be wearing an elaborate wedding gown, lies on a bed, in a posture of erotic submission. In another, two boys sport bandannas and apron tops that reveal their genitals. The artist seems to be looking at the viewer, who stares into a mirror as if she were viewing her own reflection in a glass. In one piece, a woman in a red bathing suit holds a bottle of wine in front of her, as if it were a prop. The figures are shown in a frenzy of activity.

Result #2

Nadia McGrath's artwork explores alcoholism and its impact on families, represented through paintings, sculptures, and short videos. She examines the experiences of alcoholics and their families through her family’s experience with the disease. In addition to charcoal, pencil, plaster and watercolors, she uses more unconventional materials such as alcohol inks, broken glass and damaged plaster casts to convey distortion or broken glass to capture the essence of being shattered or fragmented. Through her work, Nadia wants viewers to reflect on the notion that “alcoholism is a family disease” -- affecting not only the alcoholic, but everyone around them as well. <|startoftext|>For her second solo show at this gallery, New York–based artist Rinsa Grasberg filled the gallery with a cacophony of sounds and images, including a video in which she was performing, and drawing on a number of the artists drawings from her portfolio. The video, which was projected on two adjacent walls, had the effect of a chasm between the sound track and the video that Grasbergs voice-over repeatedly punctuated with her poetry, which she also performed. As a result, the piece was a kind of heady, Melodramatic Dreamworld in which the artist, who is a member of the band Gorgona, and her daughter, which also includes the artist, both appeared and disappeared, or, as in the video, all of the pieces in the gallery were there.The video, set to a slow, choral rhythm, interspersed with a brief narration, first began with the artists recollection of her familys history with alcoholism. She tells of her own struggles with the disease and its treatment. She recounts how her parents passed away from alcoholism while her mothers was in a nursing home. She describes the dramatic effects of her mothers struggles with her illness, and how she wanted to do something to help her parents cope with it. She also describes the excruciatingly painful process of recording the voice-over, which began with a series of frantic attempts to make the voices fit her mother perfectly. Finally, Grasberg wrote her mothers last will and testament, which she made with her daughter. After a while, the words became too obvious, and she stopped recording the voice, which she found unbearable. Grasberg also recorded her mothers voice while she was still in her nursing home, and this also contributed to her mothers recovery.

Result #3

Nadia McGrath's artwork explores alcoholism and its impact on families, represented through paintings, sculptures, and short videos. She examines the experiences of alcoholics and their families through her family’s experience with the disease. In addition to charcoal, pencil, plaster and watercolors, she uses more unconventional materials such as alcohol inks, broken glass and damaged plaster casts to convey distortion or broken glass to capture the essence of being shattered or fragmented. Through her work, Nadia wants viewers to reflect on the notion that “alcoholism is a family disease” -- affecting not only the alcoholic, but everyone around them as well. <|startoftext|>Gloria Maiolino, whose recent exhibition at the Wörringerhaus Zurich was titled Salò di mezzo tempo (Time is a Place), has explored the theme of time and place in her work since the mid 70s. Although she has depicted a number of people, including her husband and two of her children, she has never depicted them in such detail. With this exhibition, she has produced a large number of portraits that do not consist of the artists self-portraits, but rather of photographs she has taken in public places—such as a beach or a park, or the front page of a newspaper—and they depict these people in unusual poses.The exhibition, then, is a retrospective, consisting of images that Maiolino has made in various media. Her recent paintings of a nude couple in a bathtub, for example, are accompanied by press photos of the couple taken by Maiolino, and they can be seen as documents of a simple, dramatic encounter. The subject of the paintings is no longer the person depicted, but rather the photographer. The works also express a certain awareness of the romantic nature of the relationship between the person in the image and the photographer. In fact, it is precisely this awareness of the romantic that informs this work.Salò di mezzo tempo, 1998, the newest and most complex work in the exhibition, is a single-color photograph of three women, who are dressed in white bathing suits, and who stand with their arms almost outstretched. Each woman holds a red umbrella; they are surrounded by umbrellas. A large yellow umbrella sits on the third woman's back. The umbrellas reflect the three women's natural beauty, and they contrast sharply with their pale skin and small breasts. The pose of the pose is that of a committed embrace. The images are of the three women in a position of intimacy, but also of a moment of submission.

Result #4

Nadia McGrath's artwork explores alcoholism and its impact on families, represented through paintings, sculptures, and short videos. She examines the experiences of alcoholics and their families through her family’s experience with the disease. In addition to charcoal, pencil, plaster and watercolors, she uses more unconventional materials such as alcohol inks, broken glass and damaged plaster casts to convey distortion or broken glass to capture the essence of being shattered or fragmented. Through her work, Nadia wants viewers to reflect on the notion that “alcoholism is a family disease” -- affecting not only the alcoholic, but everyone around them as well. Museums of modern art are often full of the presence of various kinds of contemporary art—from painting to sculpture to video to installation to performance. It is impossible not to recognize in Brussels-born, French-based artist Joseph Beuys that the most appropriate venue for an exhibition like this one is not an art gallery but a museum. Bregenz, Austria, is a city that has historically been more or less in front of the camera, and Beuys has taken this fact as a point of departure for his work.Since the early 1990s, Beuys has created a series of videos based on the experiences of alcoholics. While some might see this work as a critique of the consumption of alcohol, this is not really the case. It is in fact only the absence of a specific subject, and for that matter, of a particular context, that makes this kind of work possible. Nevertheless, Beuys still uses alcohol as a means of escape and as a means of expression. The artist has always sought to investigate the question of presence.The first room of Beuys retrospective, curated by Germano Celant, was filled with his most recent works, which were also shown at the Universität der Künste. These are works that refer to alcohol and become a way of being present. The work of these artists—with the exception of a handful of pieces in which Beuys uses photographs, a few paintings, and a video—is built on the theme of presence, and it presents an unsettling ambience. The videos consist of multiple perspectives that appear to be shot from different angles. They are accompanied by a sound track composed of the voices of friends and colleagues. The shots are sometimes cropped at the end to leave only the actual perspective of the person in the video visible, and, at times, the video is zoomed in on to the left and the perspective of the person in the video appears blurred.

Result #5

Nadia McGrath's artwork explores alcoholism and its impact on families, represented through paintings, sculptures, and short videos. She examines the experiences of alcoholics and their families through her family’s experience with the disease. In addition to charcoal, pencil, plaster and watercolors, she uses more unconventional materials such as alcohol inks, broken glass and damaged plaster casts to convey distortion or broken glass to capture the essence of being shattered or fragmented. Through her work, Nadia wants viewers to reflect on the notion that “alcoholism is a family disease” -- affecting not only the alcoholic, but everyone around them as well. <|startoftext|>This show, which originated in Vienna, followed a five-month, five-city tour through Germany. The Austrian capital is home to a vast expanse of flat, earthy country, covered with little green, brown, and yellow billboards, which are erected in the center of town. A few years ago, Müntermann criticized the citys enthusiasm for art as a way to promote the virtues of development. The plazas and leafy boulevards of the Boulevard are literally made of a single-purpose material: green. Almost every city has been transformed into a garden of different kinds, as if to remind you that you arent the only ones that live in the garden. Some of these signs have a history as graffiti, others as contemporary architecture. Here, however, they became simply the postcard for the kingdom of the avant-garde, transformed into a place of celebration.A small sign that hung from a white fence to the left of the entrance to the gallery read DIE IHMER KNEELER! This slogan is repeated in many places around the city, and is repeated again and again. The signs are also reproduced in various forms, including paper, on which the words are drawn in white and black and black-and-white and in green, red, and yellow. The word FREEDOM appears in blue and green, and the word FREEDOM in red and yellow. This repetitive, parallel, almost perpetual, and almost desperate message forms a kind of paganism. This is the same freewheeling, self-referential art that was also present in the show at Galerie d'Arles, in which Kuehns signature art was also present. Like Freeds picture-postcards, Kuehns signs are made of paper, but instead of being painted, they are printed on white paper.