For the current issue of
culturehall's FEATURED WORK , I selected images from four artists who whose work employ unique surfaces and conceptual methods drawing from their interest and experience in various media.
Karen Azoulay combines sculpture, painting, photography and performance to create hybrid conceptual works. Her theatrical installations, which often involve an interaction between the artist and objects she has made in a studio, reference mythology and classical painting and conjure a heightened sensory atmosphere. Fire, water, light, rock and other elements create rich color fields and a mysterious sense of a symbolic significance.
For the her recent series of ink-and-wash drawings which were exhibited at
Nature Morte Gallery in Berlin earlier this fall,
June Glasson staged photo shoots based on images from a 1860’s publication,
Sins of New York, depicting women engaged in scenes of violence and revelry. The influence of fashion, illustration and decorative art can be seen in these charged images that question the limits and acceptability of female behavior in urban society.
Moscow-born artist,
Leeza Meksin, uses a variety of paints and textiles in her paintings and installations to create complex and metallic surfaces. Spandex predominates in her list of materials and can be found both stretched over the surface of her paintings and also within her large-scale sculptural pieces. Selections of her work were exhibited this fall in a group show at
Thomas Erben Gallery in New York and in a solo exhibition at the
Abington Art Center in Philadelphia.
Craig Prehn, an artist with roots in Detroit and Chicago, has ventured west and now resides in San Francisco. His most recent series of drawings,
An American Western, examines the mythology and stark beauty of the western journey. Prehn, whose background is in photography, collects and views found snapshots of the American vernacular as inspiration for these simple and evocative pen-and-ink sketches.
In The Water (3), by Karen Azoulay
She Caught It Hot, by June Glasson
Splayed Rack, by Leeza Meksin
Glasses, An American Western, by Craig Prehn
