My Favorite Pieces from the 14th Annual LA Art Show at the LA Convention Center, January 25, 2009

CHRISTINE PALMA

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” –Theodor Adorno

My Favorite Pieces from the 14th Annual LA Art Show at the LA Convention Center, January 25, 2009

February 10, 2009 at 5:59 pm · Filed under Art

This photorealistic painting of a pile of The Wall Street Journal newspapers on a bookcase by Steve Mills and the concave intaglio-like sculpture by Yong Deok Lee were my overall favorites from the LA Art Show. Please scroll down for comments and other photos.

Steve Mills

(detail)

Steve Mills

Wall Street Journal 2

Oil on Aluminum Panel

42″ x 59″

The creamy paint treatment on aluminum panel intrigued me. Why use aluminum panel?

Ross Merrill, chief curator of conservation at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC, writes in American Artist:

The most stable painting panel is an aluminum panel, such as Dibond (made by Alcon), that consists of a polyethylene and aluminum-skin core. Dibond does not respond to moisture or temperature changes, is exceptionally rigid, and is lighter than plywood.

From Wikipedia on Photorealism:

As a full-fledged art movement, Photorealism evolved from Pop Art^[1]^[2] and as a counter to Abstract Expressionism^[3]^[4] as well as Minimalist art movements^[5]^[6]^[7] ^[8] in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States.^[9] It is also sometimes labeled as Super-Realism, New Realism, Sharp Focus Realism, or Hyper-Realism.^[10] The Photorealist genre is predominately made up of painters.

Photorealist painting cannot exist without the photograph. In Photorealism, change and movement must be frozen in time which must then be accurately represented by the artist.^[14] Photorealists gather their imagery and information with the camera and photograph. Once the photograph is developed (usually onto a photographic slide) the artist will systematically transfer the image from the photographic slide onto canvases. This is done by either projecting the slide or grid techniques.^[15] The resulting images are often direct copies of the original photograph but are usually larger than the original photograph or slide. This results in the photorealist style being tight and precise, often with an emphasis on imagery that requires a high level of technical prowess and virtuosity to simulate, such as reflections in specular surfaces and the geometric rigor of man-made environs.^[16]

20th century photorealism can be contrasted with the similarly literal style found in trompe l’oeil paintings of the 19th century. However, trompe l’oeil paintings tended to be carefully designed, very shallow-space still-lifes, employing illusionistic devices such as the use of shadows to cause small objects to appear to exist above the surface of the painting. (Trompe l’oeil literally means “fool the eye.”) The photorealism movement moved beyond this illusionism to tackle deeper spatial representations (e.g. urban landscapes) and took on much more varied and dynamic subject matter.