Artist Shout Out: Kit Leffler

“Chameleon Car Graveyard” –  Four-colour serigraph, 77 x 102 cm

“Bernard Matthews” – Four-colour photo litho, 42 x 59 cm

Kit Leffler is a collagist, photographer, incredible printmaker and an all around great person who The Rathaus is lucky enough to call a friend.  She graduated from the University of Kansas with an Expanded Media degree in 2007 and is currently working on her MFA at the Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.

According to Patriothall Gallery, home to Kit’s latest show Second Nature, which opens today, April 22:

Leffler’s works question the natural and artificial through appropriation, alteration, and manipulation of digital images –recalling the worlds of advertising and science fiction. Through this process she encourages viewers to examine our perception of and role within the natural world. This exhibition features multiple new series of printed works by Leffler, including Mirage, Meat Entrepreneurs, and Genetic Bottleneck. Three of the works included in the exhibition were executed at Belgium’s prestigious Frans Masereel Centrum during a two-week residency in which Leffler took part during March 2011.

Leffler’s practice implements visual anthropology as a way of investigating the human experience of the natural environment: it is her interest that the works generate discussion between viewers rather than preach a political stance. Her process juxtaposes imagery liberated from many diverse web image locations: ranging from machinery manufacturers to scientific databases to Blogger travel blogs. However, not all of Leffler’s imagery is appropriated from the web: some images are Leffler’s photographs taken during travel or in studio and some are donated for use, as is the case with Simon Buckhaven’s image in one of the Meat Entrepreneurs series.

After hearing a Radio 4 broadcast about the barrister/entrepreneur’s invention the Crustastun, Leffler was inspired to include Buckhaven in a portrait series that recognized major contributors to the food/meat industry and highlighted the ethical ambiguity of the corresponding machines. The Crustastun is a device that humanely expires shellfish with a quick electric jolt rather than slowly boiling alive. Due to Leffler’s interest in this topic, a dialogue has been created between the two and Buckhaven has kindly supplied Leffler with his photographic image for the portrait’s creation. This work will be exhibited for first time during Second Nature.

The public is invited to meet the artist at the opening reception on Friday, 22^nd April from 7-9 pm. The show runs until the April 30.

“Mirage (2)” – Four-colour serigraph, 77 x 102 cm

“Cornelius Van Der Lely” – Four-colour photo litho, 44 x 66 cm

See more of Kit’s work here

Artist Shout Out: George Boorujy

“Fugue” – ink on paper, 38″ x 50″

“Lincoln” – ink on paper, 38″ x 33″

According to an interview with George Boorujy:

I want people to look at the world around them and see the things they overlooked before. To “re-see” them. By presenting something very common – so common that it’s lost any power as an image – in a new way you can try to get people to see it again. And maybe see it truly.

For example the portrait of the deer. Deer have become, and maybe always were, such a ubiquitous symbol to use in art. Especially lately in “hipster” art (I think as a sort of shorthand for white-trash cred. But what the hell do I know…). I was trying to depict a deer in an unconventional, human and confrontational way. Same goes with the Abe Lincoln portrait. Lincoln has become such an icon and a symbol that it’s hard to remember that he was human. I wanted to present him as what he was – a human animal.

I’m trying to reach anyone I can – anyone who looks at the work. In general I hate art created for artists or those in the art “know”. It’s so elitist and self-referential for that matter, that it immediately leaves me cold. Even if it is smart. That attitude of, “are you cool enough or schooled enough to even know what this is about?”, really puts up a wall between artists and the public and leads to things like every non-artist beginning a comment or insight they may have with, “I don’t know anything about art but…” “This wall also keeps people from learning more about art and leads to the dismissive “my kid could do that” school of thought.

“Religion (La Paz)” – ink on paper, 36″ x 50″

“Ponghorn II” – ink on paper, 38″ x 50″

“Moraine” – ink on paper, 38″ x 50″

See more at Boorujy’s site

Artist Shout Out: Urs Fischer

Urs Fischer was born in 1973, in Zurich, Switzerland.

Artist Statement (via Whitney Biennial 2006):

Urs Fischer’s artistic practice is founded on a consideration of the nature of substances, the act of making, and the unpredictable processes that can result from combining the two. With an extraordinarily wide range of materials—Styrofoam, clay, mirrors, fruit, wax, wood, glass, paint, sawdust, and silicone, to name a few—he resuscitates art historical genres such as still lifes, nudes, portraits, and landscapes in potent sculptures that reflect the complexity, wonder, and banality of everyday life. His works reverberate with material transformation and decay as well as with poetic internal collisions and contradictions that cause his sculptures to oscillate between seeming beautiful or ugly, elegant or awkward, graceful or burdened.

See more of Fischer’s work here and here

“Noisette” – mixed medium, 2009

“A Place Called Novosibirsk” – aluminum/epoxy resin, 2007

Watch: “Parra – Short for Paranoid”

Via Hypebeast.tv:

The name Parra should resonate with any person relatively well-versed in the realm of street culture. With an influence spanning art, sneaker design and even more recently, furniture, the Amsterdam-based artist has had the uncanny ability to make many things he touches into a solid hit. We focus on the efforts of Parra in the past and more recently as well as his background.

Artist Shout Out: Augustina Woodgate

According to Augustina Woodgate:

Hand-sewn and designed rugs made from recycled teddy bears. The process starts with the departure of the loving life Teddy Bears have when they are in the hands of their owners.The rugs not only reference the personal histories of the toy’s owners, but investigate the rug as an object organizing and displaying memories and lineages. In Eastern Cultures, the oriental rug centralizes the living space in pattern, operating beyond utility to depict the spiritual and mental world in woven form.

“Royal” -  stuffed animal skins, 9′ x 7′, 2010

“Rose Petals” – stuffed animal skins, 8′ x 7′, 2010

Artist Statement:

I aim to create art that fosters exchanges between people rather than encounters between a viewer and object. Through these exchanges, meaning is elaborated collectively, rather than in the space of individual consumption.

My artistic practice investigates how stories, rituals and traditions transform our relationships with the objects and places around us. I create responses to social narratives through situations that unveil the tensions between the natural-becoming-unnatural, and the unnatural-becoming-natural. My work discovers illogical, surreal scenarios from otherwise realistic or “normal” settings, revealing unconscious transience in beliefs and behaviors between these two worlds.

Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, I now make my home in Miami, FL.

“Sand Castle” – human hair, 2′ x 3 ‘ x 3′, 2008

“Myself” – human Hair, wooden brush, 7″ x 5″, 2007

See more of Woodgate’s work here

Thanks to Kit Leffler for the tip. (Sorry it took so long.)