CONTEMPORARY ART REVIEW

SUMMARY

C o n t e m p o r a r y A r t R e v i e w

Using pure pigment to build up layers of paint on each canvas, Klaus Grape creates highly textured, sculptural mixed media compositions. As he builds up layers in his work, Grape introduces varying pools of interest, pulling the emphasis on the composition from large splashes of color to bumps and mountains of diverse materials. Each piece is packed with bright, saturated colors and substances that shine or slip out from under the paint, reacting in different ways to appear both spontaneous, natural, and, at the same time, carefully constructed. At times, geometric patterns emerge to reveal an unexpected regularity among the tumult of color and structure. Each work becomes a relief with its own logic and tangible environment. From pebbles to splintered glass and fabric, and even Swarovski crystals, Grape imbues each canvas with its own particular combination of forms. Working from Munich, Klaus Grape creates works that account for a freedom inherent in art. Nature and time mingle in each of the paintings, each unique combination suggesting a different landscape and history in its layers an materials.

Special Issue

As a life-long artist, I have worked in many mediums including painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and mosaic art. Combining my experience in all these mediums I have focused on mosaic art as my primary direction. Mosaics are an ancient and beautiful medium, long used in places of learning and worship. The historic and enduring quality of mosaics challenges and inspires my work while offering vibrant decorativeness and fascinating detail. Taking mosaics from a representational approach to an abstract art form using color, movement and impact is the goal for my recent mosaic work. Recently, I have been working on 3 dimensional human forms, mosaicked in art glass, stones, sea creatures, glass eyes, semi precious stones and brass bullet shells.“ The Tribe” are human forms chosen for their inherent beauty and shape and their intriguing presence.

For Gail Factor, painting is a means to access serenity, a calm soul. Artists throughout history have created bodies of work in an effort to solve their personal aesthetic dilemma. Laid at the feet of Factor’ s quandary is a life’ s work. The unrelenting impulse to create something of beauty and personal truth has resulted in five decades of focused and committed painting; a daily offering of sorts, whereby the act itself generates luminosity and eradicates darkness.

Harmonizing rich color, tone and texture, Factor strives for pure abstraction, but as images emerge, the past often makes an unwitting appearance. Memories surface and integrate into the visual field. With only slight reference to the tangible world, she takes the viewer along on a journey through an altered reality, the unknown. She is after a synthesis of it all. Reaching for an archetype of her life experience, in paint.

Art is to the eye, as music is to the ear.

I choose the materials I use according to the work I am going to make. If it is a traditional sculpture like a head of a boy, than the material is going to be bronze. I do all the work involved in the process, from the clay model to the patina on the finished sculpture. If it is an installation in the desert, then most of the materials are exist on site and I have to add the materials which serve the idea of the artwork. Some years ago I found a dry riverbed with very deep cracks. I widened three cracks, picked two tiny flowers and put them in two of them and poured some water into the third. A face of a man appeared on the ground. I took a picture and sent it to an exhibition " The Paradox of Water ".

Raúl Moyado, using Google Street View technology, created a series of virtual paintings that manage to expand the two-dimensional boundaries of traditional pictorial medium. Google Maps through its social networks mentions his artworks, describing it as a hack that allows you to see unknown artistic realms. That experiment evolved into the Mobile Cyclorama project. A virtual reality painting series that refers back to a precursor pictorial medium of immersion technologies: panoramic painting. Opening this paintings with a smartphone and using a virtual reality headset, it virtually takes you inside of the painted landscape to live the experience of being inside of a cycloramic painting. This painted landscape becomes the means for internal search which explores the artist’ s memory and subjectivity. Such pictorial space can only be discovered with the movement and action of the viewer around the virtual space.

As an international artist and designer, I am fascinated by the splendid cultures and great architectural achievements. After years of world travel, this project contains fifteen abstract photographs captured on four continents. This growing body of work reveals the exquisite beauty of architectural design in natural light, the geometric transformation of space, and the magnificent cultural identities. As a Chinese woman artist living in the Western world, I am aware of art, literature, philosophy, and mythology from both cultures. My understanding of Chinese philosophies has shaped my thinking and conduct. The prudent and contrary-minded Taoist beliefs, the attachedtothe-earth reality of Confucianism, and the sudden enlightenment and intuitive insights of Zen are the foundation of my life. On the other hand, Western culture has inspired me and opened new ways of thinking. Developing a personal visual language that expresses universal ideas, I create artworks for the stories and aesthetics of each image, and for making visible those concepts which reflect my personal experiences.