Artists to Watch -- Vanessa McKnight

Vanessa McKnight

Producing a photo-realistic representation can be a very non-contemporary venture for most artists, lacking the edgy and heterodox elements that define so many painters of the contemporary canon. There are those, however, who capture the quivering and discreet kinesis of events so carefully that the result pushes the boundary of one's perception.  Through her varied works, Vanessa McKnight places herself among those whose talent and forward-looking aesthetic have given them such liberty as to paint what they see, without being illustrators.  Like Richter's or Rosenquist's, McKnight's images seem to shift ever so slightly when looked upon, as if the subjects were allowed an imperceptible micrometre of movement within their permanently fixed place.

The draw of McKnight's work is further augmented by the scenes she has chosen to paint.  Often capturing moments anticipating an explosive burst or a highly stressed yet silent epiphany, the emotions and events conveyed lend to a sense of tremendous tension -- the subject only restrained from action by the mere fact of it being bound within a two-dimensional artifact.  The style and renderings of McKnight's works seem to be used only to the end that they give life to what we see -- no extraneous or pretentious strokes are made -- and thus the artist is hiding behind the curtain while her production independently exists before us, qualifying her implied belief that, as Oscar Wilde states, "To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim."

For further viewing visit: vanessamcknight.com.

Artists to Watch -- Justin Craun

Justin Craun

Justin Craun skirts the periphery of his medium by committing his talents to meticulously tousled visuals engendering at once elements of cubism, surrealism and photo-realism.  His multiple-personality attack on the canvas clues the viewer into a self-imposed conflict of intent within the painter, showing that he is not satisfied in simply producing highly skilled, surreal, photo-realist renderings of snap-shots on canvas.  To the contrary, as his own first critic, he seems to turn on his creations and elevate them to the kinetic pieces we see. Carefully deranging features and thus magnifying their haunted qualities, Craun unveils dark truths about his subjects through distortions which come across as x-rays of the skinless anatomy of life itself.  Glowing eyes, exposed enlarged teeth, insouciant children colored in negative -- these are the sufferings, slings and arrows of Craun's people presented in bold palettes some critics find objectionable.  Nevertheless, like so many controversial artists of the past, Craun is beautifully corrupting the specific -- his paintings -- for the sake of purifying the general -- art itself.  

For further viewing visit: http://www.fredericksfreisergallery.com/artists/craun/index.html.

Artists to Watch -- Kate Clark

Kate Clark

Not considering the elusive technique used in crafting her mangy and patched creatures, Kate Clark has endued with static life beings embodying what may be the end result of humanity's fate according to Darwin -- the physical dominance of mankind's beastly nature capped by his face fraught with disbelief at what natural selection has dealt him.

The sculptures beg the question: What is the relationship between man and beast?  In all but contemporary thought, nature was the feared and man was its victim.  However, we are now the aggressors as a species, destroying habitats and forsaking ecosystems by virtue of the mere spread of civilization.  Perhaps Clark is then, in turn, telling a different story. One of the sensitivity and awareness of animal -- hinting, through the carefully rendered and intense gazes, that the so called "beasts" of Earth are more "human" than Homo sapiens themselves, being the present day martyrs of man's latest communal crime -- the comprehensive usurping of our stead.  The feared or disrespected beasts of old are now the victims of the broken pact of symbiosis, and thus in Clark's sculptures a face of humanity is shown on the taxidermied and sacrificial body of our fellow mammals.

In terms of their finish and in spite of their moral inferences, Kate Clark's creations wear girlish stylings of glamorous, glittery embroidery around the stitches of the patched faces. In doing so, the sculptures venture deeply into the grotesque, a feature that Thomas Mann posits is the "most genuine style" of the modern. If so, it is the formative style of the contemporary and Clark's pieces make efficient use of it.

For more viewing visit: http://www.kateclark.com .

Artists to Watch -- Thorsten Brinkmann

Thorsten Brinkmann

German artist and peruser of thrift shops and junk piles, Thorsten Brinkmann makes gripping and serious imagery using items one would otherwise overlook in digging through the leftovers of consumerism's wasteful obsolescence habit.  In passing a lamp shade, an old strip of shag carpet, some tacky shawl or the random mop while shopping at one's local Salvation Army, would the collective impression of these mostly worn and dated objects inspire the authentic aura of royal portraiture, or, say, Arthurian knights preparing for battle?

In his series Portraits of a Serialsammler, Brinkmann unexpectedly pulls it off.  I almost walked past Brinkmann's large photographs at Scope Miami 2007.  The effect of Brinkmann's series is, if viewed peripherally, as intimidating and alienating as the portraits of renaissance royalty.  However, upon closer study, the Saxon figure "in the carpet" comically emerges from its antithetical aesthetic as not much more than a guy with a wastecan on his head and discarded 1970's costumery draped over his shoulder.  As the layers start to peel the masterful comic subtlety of the work begins to unfold until one sees -- beneath the once king, knight or Vermeeresque peasant girl -- the true artist winking at you like a ghost from behind the image.

For further viewing visit: http://www.kunstagenten.de/Neue_Dateien/01_artist/brinkmann/brinkmann_workoverview.html .