CraveOnline heads to North Beach and visits PULSE Contemporary Art Fair, highlighting some of the most creative and compelling work from the show.
James Rieck
© James Rieck. Flared Bell Bottoms, 2015.
Lyons Wier Gallery, Booth N-107
“ColorSafe”, the latest work by James Rieck catches the eye with is warm, easy breezy colors, it’s groovy turn-of-the-1970s styles, and it’s charmingly nostalgic vibe. With a focus on color and pattern, these vintage-style images suggest the middle-class dream of White America in its last hurrah, a time when the progressive dreams of the 1960s became fodder for catalogue clothing companies. Rieck conceptualizes these idyllic moments via the loaded content about race and class that ensues.
Image Credit:
Annie Kevans
The 9 models from the series “The Muses of Jean Paul Gaultier”, 2014 © Annie Keans
Since graduating from Central St. Martins in 2004, when Charles Saatchi bought her series of 30 paintings of dictators as young boys (‘Boys’), Annie Kevans has entered the art world to great success. Kevans has recently collaborated with Jean Paul Gaultier to produce a series of 32 paintings depicting his muses, including Kate Moss, Madonna, David Bowie and Amy Winehouse. Danziger Gallery is showing nine muses from the series, each 16 x 12 inches, oil on paper.
William Powhida
© William Powhida, “The Critique of Irrational Judgement”, 2015
Art critic-turned artist William Powhida knows a thing or two about the language of art and the way it controls the industry. Creating large-scale sculptures of a page torn from a notebook that addresses critical issues in contemporary art, Powhida beautifully integrates the act of criticism with the work of art itself. For “The Critique of Irrational Judgement”, on view at Gallery Poulsen, Powhida provides a bullet-point list, each a round in his arsenal, taking well aimed shots at the marketplace, reminding us of the commercial nature that underlies so many transactions taking place this week.
Cristina Córdova
De mi isla salvaje (from my wild island), 2015 © Cristina Córdova
Ferrin Contemporary, Booth S-113
Known for her ceramic and mixed-materials figural sculpture, Cristina Córdova uses her art to explore issues of race, gender, identity, family, and beauty through portraiture. As Cordova observes, “Through my work I seek to generate figurative compositions that explore the boundary between the materials drive, sensorial experience of an object and the psychological resonance of our involuntary dialogues with the self-referential. I am driven by the primal act of imbuing an inanimate representation with a sense of presence, transforming it into the inspired repository of our deepest longings and aspirations.” The result is one that is intimately felt and deeply powerful.
Fahamu Pecou
© Fahamu Pecou. Breathe, 2015
Lyons Wier Gallery, Booth N-107
Visual/performing artist and scholar Fahamu Pecou’s work combines observations on Hip Hop, fine art, and popular culture to spectacular effect. Exploring the contemporary representation black masculinity in music and art, and how it effects the reading and performance of black masculinity as a whole, Pecou challenges our assumptions by subverting the known. One painting, simply titled “Breathe” reminds us of the weight bearing down on black men as mere act of existence is taken, by so many, as a threat.
Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer, curator, and brand strategist. There is nothing she adores so much as photography and books. A small part of her wishes she had a proper library, like in the game of Clue. Then she could blaze and write soliloquies to her in and out of print loves.
