Manuela Leal
Kalashnikov Close-Up, 2007
58 × 78 Inches (4 parts)

 

I haven’t seen this work in person. I saw it on Manuela Leal‘s RSS feed for her website. Yes, I still actually follow via RSS every artist on ArtCat. I have emailed with her about this series of work in the past, and learned a few things about where these come from.

These are color pencil and spray paint on inkjet prints. The images come from various war-related foreign videos on YouTube. I watch the videos and take stills from the computer screen with a digital camera. I then print the images, have layers of spray paint and then color pencils on top… I have been interested in war images and in “rebuilding” images of war and bombed, decimated buildings and places for a while now…

On YouTube, these videos are often posted as “responses” to other videos, as “justifications” (i.e.: a documentary on Croatian concentration camps will be posted in response to a serbian nationalistic video, and a video of a foreign mujahideen on the side of Bosnians torturing Serbian soldiers will be posted in response to a video on the massacre of Bosnians in Srebrenica by Serbs…).

I recognize that detached from language (they are often in languages I cannot understand), these images of war (and often propaganda) are posted, watched and commented on by people to whom images still carry immense urgency and power – they need to be seen…

I would like to know if” art” could still envision another reality, if by “altering” images one can offer the possibility – even if fictional – of change…

Sarah Braman
Jody Wants to Know More about Lasers, 2007
Plexiglass, furniture, and paint
31 × 36 × 36 inches

 

Here is another work from the show I mentioned Friday. Sarah is one of the artists who runs the excellent Lower East Side gallery CANADA.

Carrie Marill
Whooping Crane, Endangered, North America
Kokia Drynarioides, Endangered, USA
Monkey Puzzle, Threatened, South America
Baishanzu Fir, Endangered, China
Brown Pelican, Protected, USA
Eurasian Wryneck, Endangered, Eurasia
Hawaiian Crow, Extinct in Wild, USA
Whiskered Tern, Threatened, Europe
Arizona Leather Flower, Threatened, USA, 2007
Gouache on paper
30 × 22 inches

 

If you’re reading this right now in Los Angeles, you can head on over to Carrie Marill’s show opening tonight at sixspace. Caryn Coleman of sixpace was cool and together enough to be IMing with me right before the opening, and sent me a link to some images. Having just watched a PBS show about John James Audobon, I was particularly struck by these beautiful images of “gouache-on-paper paintings depicting threatened or endangered flora and fauna existing in an imaginary world.”

I was not surprised to see Walton Ford interviewed on the TV show about Audobon.

Michael Yinger
all i know is that i don’t know nothin’, 2007
mixed media
approx. 10 × 20 feet

 

This work is part of an exhibition curated by gallery artist Ryan Schneider closing today, so head on over! There are a number of great installations in the show. Michael Yinger is from Indiana, so note that he chose white trash to make up that state. Priska told me she had asked him about the cigarette butts used for Washington state, as we both agreed it seemed an odd choice. He said he just liked the way they looked, and Washington was a big state.

Related: Heart As Arena did a post on the show.