Jeff Koons

Jeffrey "Jeff" Koons (born January 21, 1955) is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects—such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces.

Koons' work has sold for substantial sums of money including at least one world record auction price for a work by a living artist. The largest sum known to be paid for a work by Koons is Balloon flower (Magenta) which was sold at Christie's London, on Monday, June 30, 2008 (Lot 00012) in the Post-War & Contemporary Art Evening Sale, where it sold for £12,921,250 or $25,765,204.

Critics are sharply divided in their views of Koons. Some view his work as pioneering and of major art-historical importance. Others dismiss his work as kitsch: crass and based on cynical self-merchandising. Koons has stated that there are no hidden meanings in his works.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Koons)

Balloon Dog (yellow), 1994-200

High chromium stainless steel with transparent color coating

121 x 143 x 45 in.

Puppy, 1992

variety of flowers on a stainless steel substructure

12.4 m

Michael Jackson and Bubbles, 1988

Porcelain/Ceramic Blend

42 x 70.5 x 32.5 in.

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeious was a French-American artist/sculptor who is famous for her spider sculptures titled "Maman." They were inspired by her mother's cleverness, protectiveness, and abilility to "weave" their family together, much like a spider and its web. Much of her work is abstract, conveying the themes of anxiety, betrayal, and lonliness. She often sculpted with marble, wood, plaster, latex, paint, and bronze. She also liked to play with the human form and its need to be nurtured and protected. Her art is referred to as being "pshycologically charged" and often conveys ideas of fear and uncertaintity. She was born on December 25, 1911 and died at the age of 98 on May 31, 2010.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/arts/design/01bourgeois.html

Rowan Smith

"Born in 1983 in Cape Town, South Africa. Smith completed his BA in Fine Art at the Michaelis School of Fine Art in 2007, with a body of work for which he was awarded the Michealis Prize for top graduate. He has appeared in a number of group exhibitions, most recently Objects of the Revolution presented by Dominique Fiat Galerie in Paris. In 2008, Smith presented his debut solo show, Future Shock Lost at Whatiftheworld to both critical and public acclaim; with the artist being hailed as one of the country’s ‘Bright Young Things’ in the continent’s leading art publication Art South Africa Magazine. The artist’s work is also included in the prestigious Hollard Collection in Johannesburg."

(http://www.co-opjoburg.com/program/2009/11/05/rowan-smith-if-you-get-far-enough-away-you-will-be-on-your-way-back-home/)

"For, like the idea of outer space, the notion of The Future is in itself filled with nostalgic yearnings and anxieties. Why do we long for the future of the 1950s, buying toy tin robots with alarming zest? Why is it that when we think of the future, we still imagine a place of flying cars and household robots, fantasies we have been holding onto for over a century? How do we posit any individual identity when we know ourselves to be merely a speck of dust in the cosmos?

All of these are the questions that Smith posits in his work. Using the language of outdated retro-cool technology and handcrafted sculptures, Smith presents a series of works that subtly, sadly investigate a nostalgia for the future and an insatiable and unanswerable lust for something outside of our everyday experience."

(http://www.nyartsmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=575553:the-ghosts-of-future-pastthe-work-of-rowan-smith&catid=166:international&Itemid=723)

Rowan Smith
Dot Matrix Loop 2007
mixed media

Rowan Smith
Extensions of the Universe 2007
acrylic on board, cane, imbuia, maple, African rosewood and iroko

Rowan Smith
Detail of ‘1/2000th-of-a-supernova 2008
 camera flashes, timer circuitry

Anish Kapoor (born 1954) is a sculptor.

Kapoor was born in Bombay in India and moved to Britain in 1972. There he studied art first in Hornsey and later in Chelsea. He has lived in Bristol since then, though frequently makes trips back to India, and has acknowledged that his work is inspired by both western and eastern culture.

In the early 1980s, Kapoor emerged as one of a number of British sculptors working in a new style and gaining some international recognition with their work (the others included Tony Cragg, Richard Deacon, Anthony Gormley, Bill Woodrow and Richard Wentworth).

Kapoor's pieces are often simple, curved forms, usually monochrome, and frequently brightly coloured. Powdered pigments sometimes cover the works and sometimes lie on the floor around the works as well. This practice is inspired by the mounds of brightly coloured pigments Kapoor saw on his visits to India.

From the end of the 1990s, Kapoor produced a number of very large works, including Taratantara (1999), a 35 metre-tall piece installed in the Baltic Flour Mills in Gateshead before renovation began there, and Marsyas (2002), a large work of steel and polyvinyl chloride installed in the Turbine Hall of Tate Modern. In 2000, one of Kapoor's works, Parabolic Waters, consisting of rapidly rotating coloured water, was shown outside the Millennium Dome in London.

Kapoor represented Britain in the 1990 Venice Biennale, and the following year he won the Turner Prize.

http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Kapoor_Anish.html 

Cloud Mirror

Cloud Gate

Marsyas

Joseph Cornell

Untitled
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Untitled
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Object

He was first and foremost a collector. He loved to scour old book shops and secondhand stores of new York looking for souvenirs, theatrical memorabilia, old prints and photographs, music scores, and French literature.
He had no formal training in art and his most characteristic works are his highly distinctive `boxes'. These are simple boxes, usually glass-fronted, in which he arranged surprising collections of photographs or Victorian bric-à-brac in a way that has been said to combine the formal austerity of Constructivism with the lively fantasy of Surrealism. Like Kurt Schwitters he could create poetry from the commonplace. Unlike Schwitters, however, he was fascinated not by refuse, garbage, and the discarded, but by fragments of once beautiful and precious objects, relying on the Surrealist technique of irrational juxtaposition and on the evocation of nostalgia for his appeal (he befriended several members of the Surrealist movement who settled in the USA during the Second World War). Cornell also painted and made Surrealist films.
http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/cornell/

Tom Friedman

Untitled-paper figure lying down

There-paper cube splat
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Untitled-toothpicks

material
he gets his art supplies from drugstores, candy stores, the human body, and the supermarket.
friedman relentlessly invents intricate objects out of a range of household materials, such as styrofoam, masking tape, pencils, toilet paper, spaghetti, toothpicks and bubble gum. his work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both
beautiful and playful. friedman's ability to transform common objects into something new, his devotion to material perfection, the way he conceptualizes the action of the artisan, enables him to elevate the ordinary to the status of art.

mental and physical manipulation
Friedman's art it is linked to 1960s conceptualism, arte povera and minimal to land art. but his vision and working method goes beyond these historical precedents creating its own unique visual language. that of the minute and microscopic, in which his investigations focuses on the smallness of things. all of these works are informed by a centred internal logic that reveals the tacit systems at work in our daily lives through which we funnel our physical and mental realities.

sculptures balancing in a precarious equilibrium may appear paradoxical, because of the unusual materials they are
made from: a ring of plastic cups; a dense mass of pencil sections, or the sculpture obtained by wedging some 30,000 toothpicks in order to create a fantastic geometric construction that recalls the
structure of a starburst. 'a mentality based on atoms and tiny infinitesimal fragments,' according to germano celant, cuator of the exhibition 'leaning toward the sublime, magical atmosphere of a science fiction film by lucas or spielberg.'

http://www.designboom.com/portrait/friedman.html

Carlos Barela

Carlos Barela was born in Taos, New Mexico. He is the eldest grandson of one of New Mexico's most famous woodcarvers, Patrocinio Barela. Carlos carries on the tradition of carving bultos and santos from rare, aged cedar wood. The rich colors and curved branches of the cedar are the beginning of beautiful sculptures.

All of Carlos' carvings are created with handtools., Carlos has received numerous awards from the Spanish Colonial Arts Society. In his four years of exhibiting in the Spanish Market, he has been awarded two ribbons, the latest one given for "most innovative design" judged against all art forms in the show. Currently his work is traveling to museums throughout the United States.

Artist Statement

As a woodcarver, I form a partnership with nature. The wood speaks to me through its form, shape and grain. I release what's in the piece of wood. I don't dictate, but rather manipulate its nature to achieve the spirit within.

[http://laplaza.org/~santero/artists_CarlosBio.html]

"Adam and Eve"
wood sculpture

"Michael Archangel Slayan Satan"
Hand carved juniper, 18.5" high

"Saint Francis"

Hand carved juniper, 27" high

Andy Goldsworthy

Incredible serpentine tree roots

Iris Leaves with Rowan Berries

Autumn Cherry Leaves


Andy Goldsworthy is a brilliant British artist who collaborates with nature to make his creations. Besides England and Scotland, his work has been created at the North Pole, in Japan, the Australian Outback, in the U.S. and many others

Goldsworthy regards his creations as transient, or ephemeral. He photographs each piece once right after he makes it. His goal is to understand nature by directly participating in nature as intimately as he can. He generally works with whatever comes to hand: twigs, leaves, stones, snow and ice, reeds and thorns.

"I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue."

"Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature."

"The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below."
http://www.morning-earth.org/artistnaturalists/an_goldsworthy.html

Conrad Freiburg

Conrad Freiburg was born Champaign, IL in1978 but was raised in Quincy, IL along the Mississippi River. Freiburg has a fairly extensive education. In 1995, he attended the Kansas City Art Institute as a part of the studio program there. Freiburg also went to the Glasgow School of Art in 1999 for their Exchange Program, where he was a part of the Sculpture Department. On top of all that, he attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Conrad Freiburg's clever contraptions require audience participation, but viewers' actions can sometimes lead to destruction. The artist's exquisite handiwork doesn't exist for its own sake — it always serves a set of ideas. For his second exhibition at Linda Warren Gallery, Freiburg reflects on the Declaration of Independence and the fate of our freedoms, with 13 antiquated-looking gadgets translating the document's clauses into sculpture. Meanwhile, an installation featuring small wood forms (representing individuals and the masses) and a hand-cranked "voting machine" gives visitors the choice to raise or lower concrete blocks — thereby demolishing or preserving Freiburg's creations.

(http://flavorpill.com/chicago/events/2008/9/5/conrad-freiburg-a-great-daydream%20 and

http://walnutinkgallery.com/freiburgcv.html)

The Slipping Glimpser, 2006

ash wood, wire, metal and rope kinetic sculptural installation

140 h. x 280 x 672 inches

..than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed, 2008

oak, poplar, concrete, hammer, wire, rope

24" x 14" x 8"

Treehouse 1, 2002

dracina marginata plant, wood, string

6’ h. x 3’ w. x 3 d.

Photos/Information: http://www.lindawarrengallery.com/artists/freiburg/index.shtml

Gilbert and George

Gilbert Proesch was born in San Martin de Tor in Italy, his mother tongue being Ladin rather than Italian. He studied art at the Wolkenstein School of Art and Hallein School of Art in Austria and the Akademie der Kunst, Munich, before moving to England. George Passmore was born in Plymouth in the United Kingdom, to a single mother in a poor household. He studied art at the Dartington College of Arts and the Oxford School of Art, then part of the Oxford College of Technology, which eventually became Oxford Brookes University.

The two first met on 25 September 1967 while studying sculpture at St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, one of six colleges in the University of the Arts, London. The two claim they came together because George was the only person who could understand Gilbert's rather poorly spoken English. In a 2002 interview with Daily Telegraph they said of their meeting: "it was love at first sight". They have claimed that they married in 2008.

For many years, Gilbert & George have been residents of Fournier Street, Spitalfields, East London. Their entire body of work has been created in, and focused on, London's East End, which they see as a microcosm. According to George, "Nothing happens in the world that doesn't happen in the East End."

Whilst still students Gilbert & George made The Singing Sculpture, which was first performed at Nigel Greenwood Gallery in 1970. For this performance they covered their heads and hands in multi-coloured metalised powders, stood on a table, and sang along and moved to a recording of Flanagan and Allen's song "Underneath the Arches", sometimes for a day at a time. The suits they wore for this became a sort of uniform for them. They rarely appear in public without wearing them. It is also unusual for one of the pair to be seen without the other. The pair regard themselves as "living sculptures". They refuse to disassociate their art from their everyday lives, insisting that everything they do is art.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_George)

The Red Sculpture, 1975

Thumbing, 1991

Mixed Media 169 x 142cm

The Singing Sculpture, 1969

Ivan Limas

"Limas, who lives and works in the Santa Fe Art Colony, is a life-long Angeleno. He spent his childhood growing up in various parts of LA like Compton (and later La Merada) and says it had a big impact on his life. while some of the kids he grew up with were into the gang culture or graffiti art, he stuck to drawing comics, but his drawings eventually moved him to explore ideas in culture, and experience.

'A lot of my work is about defiance, exploration and self-perception.. cultural perception.'

He talks about visual signifiers, like those communicated through items like a common bandanna. the bandanna having many meanings in different cultures, and he thinks about where the bandanna originated from, whether it’s from Mexico,Spain or somewhere else. his hope is to “contextualize it into contemporary dialogue.”. He has created a series of 3 bandannas with ironed transfers that might hint different places to different people. Discussion of the pieces range from the language expressed in the wearing of bandannas, the color significance in gang culture, or any number of things.

He wants his work to be available to everyone, not restricted to any one group. Bringing the idea of an item that’s not necessarily considered art and having people think about it in a new way, or bring their own experience to the interpretation. whether it’s a synthetic ostrich skin-encased vacuum cleaner or a video installation of Ivan cutting off his own tongue."

(http://colalexgallery.com/2010/10/meeko-on-main-art-shows-closing-at-5th-and-main/)

Fighting Cattle 2007
Wood, wire, paper, and poster clippings.

Untitled (Elephant) 2010
Wood, wire, paper, paint, and sage.

Untitled 2007
Bandanas

First and second photos: http://durdenandray.com/artists/artist10_ivan/index.html

Gerardo Latino

Gerardo Latino was born and raised in Managua, Nicaragua. He is renowned for his intensely detailed paper sculptures, an art form that dates back to 1769 in England, from where it spread to Spain and the rest of Europe. A Fort Lee, NJ resident, Latino designed Pablo Picasso's daughter Paloma’s handbag catalogs. This year, he had his first group exhibition in Hackensack, NJ, directed by Sara Colombino, President of ICAL (Institute of Culture and Art of Latin America).

Latino also recently exhibited his paper sculptures and paintings at Bergen Community College and at Hackensack’s Johnson Public Library. He is working on a paper sculpture mural of Picasso’s “Guernica”, which will premiere at ArtsEcho Galleria in September 2009, before being exhibited in Barcelona, Spain later that fall.

(http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gerardo-Latino/102357441805)

The Old Grasshopper

Scorpion

Einstein

Guerra De La Paz

"Sunt" 2008

"Dueling Snakes" 2006

"Eden" 2003
"Guerra La Paz" is a duo of Alain Guerra and Nolando La Paz, two cuban born Miami based artists. They create sculptures out of recycled clothing, using "textile layering." They like to experiment with dimension and unconventional materials. They are inspired by, "an essential familiarity with the ready-made and archeological qualities that found objects possess- and depicts the significance of mass-produced refuse in our society." They like to create work with a universal message and "find ways to reinvent historic and classic icons while still commenting on contemporary culture."

They are also very inspired by the small businesses that used to thrive in Haiti. They got access to a lot of discarded clothing and now use that clothing to create stories that speak of "enviornmental issues, mass consumption, and disposability." They see themselves as vehicles guided by the garments "essence and silent histories."

http://www.guerradelapaz.com/bio/bio.html