Beth Caverner Stitcher : Ferel Humors

 "There are primitive animal instincts lurking in our own depths, waiting for the chance to slide past a conscious moment."

"The sculptures I create focus on human psychology – stripped of context and rationalization, and articulated through animal and human forms. This body of work was developed in an effort to understand how my own desires, fears, and insecurities have shaped my sexuality.

For this work, I collected stories from individuals who were willing to confide their most intimate experiences relating to gender identity, fantasies, fetishes, and abuses. I wanted to understand how these complex private experiences haunt our public personas.


The portraits created for this exhibition found their genesis in these shared personal accounts; I took their stories in and merged them with my own. The figures which have emerged use their animal body language in an effort to communicate their human natures:  coy, desperate, lonely, and full of both fear and an unspoken longing." - Artist statement for the series 'A Modest Proposal'

Images from the series, 'A Modest Proposal'

A Necessary Delusion, 2006

Do I dare eat a peach?, 2006

The Fallacy of Virtuosity, 2006

         The Voyeurs, 2006

_________________________________________________

From the series, 'On Tender Hooks'

A Rush of Blood to the Head, 2009

"Following from my work on the exhibition, “A Modest Proposal,” in which I explored aspects of human sexuality, I still felt that I was struggling to understand and relate to certain aspects of gender identity.  I remembered reading an account of an antiquated view of homosexuality as being described as ‘aberrant and unnatural behavior caused by a rush of blood to the head.’  The phrase ‘a rush of blood to the head’ was also used as a legal defense to describe ‘a crime of passion’ for which the person could not be held accountable.  It made me think about the desire to ascribe anything other than ‘accepted normal behavior’ as a fault of one’s own irrational body…an excess of blood in the body. " 

All Text From the Artists Website: www.followtheblackrabbit.com

 A Second Kind of Loneliness, 2009

Every 8 seconds, a breath is released  

   from the goat's mouth, causing the 

 pinwheel to spin slowly.

Humiliation by Design, 2009

The handle to the right  

   turns the cast iron gears, 

 slowly rotating the figure

 on the center shaft  

Roger Reutimann : Morte di Venere

The Death of Venus Sculpture.

"Art has become more of a commodity and investment tool; something that people by and hope it will be worth more in the future. In my sculpture the skull symbolizes those changes of cultural ideas and values. The shell from which she emerges is now closed, resembling a coffin. The Ferrari red auto paint is a representation of out fast living times of glitz and glamour yet to some degree the figure itself represents old traditions." - Roger Reutimann

Botticelli's The Birth of Venus
http://www.rogerreutimann.com/

Julia Randall : Tongue & Mouth

from Lick Line

Lick Line #1

2002, colored pencil on paper, 16"x12"

 Click here for more images from the "Lick Line" series

Lick Line is a series of disembodied mouths floating in space. Rendered in exacting detail, the tongues protrude and beckon the viewer to come close. The mouth is the body's critical site, where we eat, speak, kiss and bite; it is both ferocious and tender. We see the mouth and tongue all the time, yet they are highly intimate. Seen as a group the mouths undulate and bounce. Like many voices talking at once, they strangely invade our space with humor and perversity.

from Lovebirds

Lovebird # 5

2005, colored pencil on paper, 30” x 22”

Click here for more images from the "Lovebirds" series

The Lovebirds take the fetishization of animals to the extreme. Various exotic birds are depicted with heads and beaks that have morphed into mouths and tongues. Reminiscent of wind-up toys redesigned for human pleasure, these wacky and disturbing hybrids leave the world of Audubon, and tweak our desire to capture and consume exoticism.

from Lures

Lure # 4 

2007, colored pencil on paper, 22” x 30”

Click here for more images from the "Lures" series

The Lures are drawings of mouths and tongues on the move; the rapid motion is suggestive of speech, biting, and sexual signaling. Glimpses of moist lips, tongues and teeth hint at the potential ferocity of sensual flesh. Isolated in space, the mouth in motion becomes a visceral spectacle.

from Decoys

Decoy #7

2007, colored pencil on paper, 29"x 41"

Click here for more images from the "Decoys" series

The "Decoys" are surreal riffs on genetically modified plants, and hint at the perils of human intervention and biotechnical "advances" in the natural world. Nature has signed up in the service of seduction, for the purpose of entrapment. Sex play, violence and scientific exploration all merge in hybrid botanical drawings, that are at once beautiful and disturbing, erotic and fanciful.

from Lick Line

Lick Line #26

2004, colored pencil on paper, 16” x 12”

from Lovebirds

Lovebird #1

2003, colored pencil on paper, 22"x 30"

from Decoys

Decoy #6

2006, colored pencil on paper, 46"x34"

from Blown

Plumgum

2011, colored pencil on paper, 24"x 18"

from Blown

Bubblemouth #2

2012, colored pencil on paper, 62"x 45"

Click here for more images from the "Blown" series
Bubblegum initially connotes innocent, cheeky pleasure, yet the fragile skin of gum also points to the susceptibility of the body, and the dreaded passage of time. Bubble gum is an insignificant, disposable material, and the pleasure taken from its flavor is fleeting. The bubble is a vessel that holds our breath, for a brief moment, in a physical form. Seen as a group, the inflating/ deflating bubble imagery is a visual manifestation of breathing. They are decidedly anthropomorphic, and can appear abject, fragile, and as vulnerable as the human body.






Articles and Reviews on Julia Randall's Artwork
All text from: JuliaRandall.com
Jeff Bailey Gallery
625 W27TH ST (11th & 12th Aves)
NY, NY 10001

Martin Eder : Undressed Rather Than Nude

Populated by naked young women and saccharine fluffy pets, Eder’s semi-surrealistic paintings exude an engaging perversity. His scenarios have a nightmarish feeling and explore the uneasy relationship between fantasy and reality. ‘My paintings are actually battle scenes,’ Eder has said. ‘They are filled with murder and they are incredibly bloodthirsty.’

The loaded sexuality of the girls in his paintings and the feeling of exploitation these inspire, come coupled with the painterly dexterity of their making. 

Eder paints from photographs that he has taken, which together with his deployment of technique and illusory devices positions his persona at the centre of the narratives. 

Brought up in Catholic Bavaria, he has spoken of a ‘fundamentalist form of dedication’ that drives the dark symbolism and fervour of his works. His women are painted in styles that variously recall Botticelli, Cranach, Renoir and Manet, yet his subjects are undressed rather than nude. 

‘I’m deliberately exposing myself to criticism that it is exploitation,’ the artist explains. ‘But on the other hand, isn’t arousal, if it’s present at all, a rebellion against death?’

Martin Eder was born in 1968 in Augsburg, Germany, and lives and works in Berlin.

All above Text taken from: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Website

Purchase works on ArtNet 
Further Reading: Wikipedia: Martin Eder

Johannes Kahrs : Beheld

Kahrs takes a photo, a video projection or a film still as the starting point of his drawings and oil paintings. He catches fragments of images of politics, show biz, and advertising to reform, re-interpret, and further fictionalise the represented idea by shifting tones and gradations of grey and black pastel, leaving contours blurred. As he experiments with the original from of the image, he detaches the picture from its original meaning. Hence, he finishes with an almost unrecognisable representation and completely new recording of reality. His work is suggestive and impressive, yet particularly ghostly and mysterious. 
Text From the Luhring Augustine Gallery Website

Johannes Kahrs lives and works in Berlin.


Luhring Augustine
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