For the Surface Interruption project: Joe Ryckebosch made these collages from found photographs and colored tape. He preserved the original focal point and figures of the photo, but added these flat graphic lines and dots to change how our eyes move through the picture. He makes us pay more attention to the focal points of these discarded images.

The top image is by Kelley Walker, the next two by Elad Lassry, the bottom three by Dieter Roth. I am really interested in all three of these images that I found on the Contemporary art Daily blog. A lot of the art on that blog is really new to me, and it takes me a long time to digest new art enough for me to able to react to it, so I apologize for not having much to say about more contemporary painters. Most of this blog has been about painters that I've been looking at for a while now, or realist paintings that I think I can understand more immediately. This kind of art though, I feel like I need to read a lot about the artist's intentions and think deeply about it before I can form an opinion on the work. These images were striking to me though and I hope to write more about them soon.

Aleksandra Waliszewska used to do large, more traditional oil paintings, but she abruptly changed to start doing 1-2 of these small gouache paintings a day. In that Deb Sokolow pod cast we listened to in class, she mentioned how she was frustrated with how no one was really taking a stand in her class. That is why these paintings are so powerful to me. I don't always like to look at them. They are dangerous, disturbing, hard to look at, but they seem genuine. Aleksandra doesn't seem like she's doing this just to be hip and edgy artist. I think they talk about a shadowy side of childhood that maybe we all can relate to. I don't know. Here is a link to a page that describes her work better than I can:

http://womenfiredangerousthings.blogspot.com/2010/05/aleksandra-waliszewska.html

Gerhard Richter, Andrew Wyeth, Antonio Lopez-Garcia. These are three of my favorite realistic paintings, I actually just recently discovered all three of these artists. Wyeth in particular is one whose work I had seen a lot, and so I never looked at it enough to be knocked out by it like I am now. I read an interview with Caleb Weintraub where he said that he always felt that he and Edward Hopper shared the same heart. That is how I feel about Andrew Wyeth- I think he painted my heart a long time ago. So many things that I feel a need to say have already been said so well, I just hope to study his work to find if there is anything I can add so I don't just try to repeat what he did. Its kind of the same thing with Lopez- Garcia and Richter.

Dario Robleto. This is another artist that I was introduced to by a band. Yo La Tengo used some of his work as album artwork their new record. I was unable to find them online, but Dario has also done some sort of "fake album cover" pieces that are really cool. At any rate, I think all of his work is deals closely with the music that he loves; for example, he uses like T Rex or Nina Simone records that he'll melt down into workable plastic that he then uses to build parts of his sculptures. The information encoded on the record that gave it its original value is completely lost, but Robleto is counting on the idea that there is some kind of spirit in the materials that survives that destructive process. He is battling materialism with art; our ignorance of the history and meaning of all of the materials that surround us and that is the kind of thing that I have been looking for in art my whole life. I don't think I've ever seen someone do it so clearly and straightforwardly. I think all of his sculptures are really attractive on their own, but you really get his work when you read the title of it and the materials used to make it. Then you find out that there is this really meaningful story in the materials, this long history that may have began centuries ago, and this makes me want to investigate the make up of any of the objects around me. There is surely a story that is just as enlightening in my 4 dollar toaster or the shoes I'm wearing.

Korin Faught is an artist from LA who's paintings feature a single model painted several times in different poses in a single painting, interacting with each other, as if they are twins or triplets. They are posed inside mostly plain white interiors, bathed in natural daylight. Perhaps she is saying something about the multiple personalities that we all have, the way that we interact with ourselves when we are alone. They are just painted so beautifully and realistically. What I really am interested in is the way she paints the natural light that fills the rooms and interacts with the white walls. There are so many subtle and beautiful color shifts that happen to white when it interacts with light, and for me this is the real subject of her paintings. The top two images here are stills from the movie Silent Light, directed by Carlos Reygadas. I included them because Faught's paintings just reminded me of Reygadas's films so much. I see his films more as a sequence of slowly moving paintings than movies. Again, this movie really focuses on how daylight colors white walls and white clothing. Some of the scenes are so slow and still that the daylight seems to change within a single scene; you can see just how different the people in his movies are from moment to moment. I actually became aware of Korin's work from an interview with Adam Jones from the band Tool. Rock music has really been the gateway for me into the visual arts. I found out about a lot of the artists I like from bands like Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, Tool, Sonic Youth, etc. mentioning them in interviews or using their work as album art.

I want to talk about the Ryan Schneider lecture a bit. First of all, I can really see the influences that he mentioned in his paintings: Bonnard, Hockney, Cezanne, Matisse. I also am glad to hear an artist who is successful and much more advanced than I remark that he wants to see more expressionism, less intellectualizing/ reasoning about

every formal decision a painter has made. That validates some feelings that I have had lately at shows or just looking at stuff online. His paintings do invite me to fill in the blanks, as he said he hopes they do. I want to bring all of my own emotional baggage into them to flesh out the characters.My favorites were the outdoors ones he did, I think it's because they remind me less of Matisse or Bonnard; the indoor ones look pretty familiar to me. He talked about how insecure he was with modeling forms and painting the figure when he resumed painting after college, and that gives me hope when I see how successful his paintings are regardless.