Top 10 Oct 30

Top 10: List by Jon is back as usual with 10 little links that made me go grrrr over the last week.
Hope there will be room for a couple of ohh's and ahh's in there for you as well.

Enjoy.

Mr. J

1. Ori Gersht

Gersht’s photographic process uniquely incorporates specific environmental conditions with an awareness of memory, experience, and embedded history. There is a defined relationship of this in how the photographic medium is engaged. With an understanding of the chemical and physical limitations of film, of which Gersht is never shy to push the boundaries of, that often turns out to be a more dimensional and resonant vehicle for portraying a mechanism of meaning through the imprint of time, light, and phenomena that perhaps expose the capacity and limitations of human memory as well.

Where Gersht’s work has often been an exploration of his personal origins, it is always through his departures into new and sometimes revisited landscapes where, along the way, are found the means and conditions of making his images. At times the passing motion of a train window’s vantage or the evaporating dew on the camera lens, there is always a specific notion of how these places were encountered and how the resulting pictures of them come to be, not in the mere passivity of the camera’s frame, but with a physical engagement with the place and its conditions.

Ori Gersht was born in Tel Aviv, Israel in 1967. He now lives and works in London.

See more work by Ori HERE

2. Jörn Kaspuhl

Jörn Kaspuhl is a freelance illustrator that was born and raised in Northern Germany.In 2002 he moved to Hamburg and started the Education in Illustration at the Department of Design on the University of Applied Sciences, where he graduated in October 2008.

See Jörn's portfolio HERE

3. J Bennett Fitts

Nationality: American
Birth Year: N/A
Birth Place: Kansas City
Current Region: N/A
Represented By: Quality Pictures

See more work Fitts HERE

4. Berlin Block Tetris

Sergej Hein is a moving image, animation and fine arts student currently studying at the University of East London. His "Berlin Block Tetris" is a fantastic addition to a growing body of homages to the classic video game: there's human Tetris, Tetris on a skateboard at night, Tetris against a building, and now what might be called Soviet-era architecture Tetris. It took Hein two weeks to make this clip.

5. Balint Zsako

Hungarian-born illustrator and artist Balint Zsako creates beautiful images. Be sure to check out his incredible collages—they're otherworldly, hypnotic and compelling. Crafted from elements that skirt along the edges of the familiar, Zsako creates dreamlike vistas and interiors, as elements from western art history are carefully re-articulated into new mysterious forms.

See more work by Balint HERE

6. Sam Weber

Sam about Sam:
I was born in Alaska, and grew up in Deep River Ontario, Canada. After attending the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary, I moved to New York to pursue illustration and attend graduate school at The School of Visual Arts. My studio is in Brooklyn. I’m married to Jillian Tamaki.

See more mork by Sam Weber HERE

7. Nicholas Hughes

Nicholas Hughes is a London based artist who works mainly within his immediate location whether that be - central London, the British coastline, Switzerland or Germany. His work has recently been shown at ‘Landscape’, the 5th International Photo Festival in Seoul 2005, Paris Photo at the Carrousel de Louvre 2005 and at ‘Earth’ The Houston twentieth Biennial Fotofest in 2006. He has a solo show at the Photographers’ Gallery in London from September – November 2007. He has pursued a career as a photographic artist since obtaining a first class Bachelor of Arts degree in 1998 followed by a Master's Degree from the London College of printing in 2002. His work is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery in London and by Gana Art Center in Seoul and has been featured in numerous publications, including Next Level, Hotshoe International, the Photographer and the British Journal of Photography, and is held in photographic collections worldwide.

“Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but starts again when we are alone.”

See more work by Hughes HERE

8. Monica Cook

Monica Cook paints beautiful and disturbing portraits of women. Her figures are brilliantly painted, with breathtaking skill; Cook excels in rendering the subtleties of the flesh and details of light, tone and surface. Painted with an eerie intensity, Cook's figures compel the viewer to study them, often surreptitiously, as there is a strong sense of invading an extremely private moment. We look, albeit sideways, with fascination at the beauty, humanity and complexity of these portraits. The recent work includes drawings in ink on mylar as well as the canvas oil paintings. Additional figures, male and female, have been introduced into the imagery of previously single female figures in a neutral field, resulting in intensely mysterious, rich and tantalizing tableaux.

In Seeded and Soiled, Cook’s nude women continue to be engaged with gorgeously rendered erotic food in scenes that elicit a range of emotion in the viewer from mesmerized hilarity to horror. The atmosphere in the current paintings however, has been altered from that of the prior works. The sense of pensive isolation of the previous solitary nude figures has been fractured and energized, as multiple figures, both clothed and nude are now interacting with each other, as well as with the food that they are consuming and playing with in sensual abandon. What is more, it is not solely the fact that some of the figures are clothed while others are nude that expand the implications of these utterly curious images, but the oddity of the garment itself - a captivatingly incongruous uniform vaguely reminiscent of an earlier era – and the fact that every clothed figure is wearing exactly the same uniform. To add to the surreality of the situation, all the women appear to be the same person, nude or clothed, tortured or enraptured, emaciated or corpulent. The artist has dubbed these nude and clothed women the “Nakeds” and the “Officials”. Whether locked in battle as in the exquisitely precise drawings, or enjoying a sort of truce while sporting side by side in slippery, shining food as in the paintings, the Officials and the Nakeds play out the eternal paradox of existence as they, in the artists’ words “wrestle with debauchery and virtue, control and liberation, logic and absurdity – the beauty and repulsion inherent in each of these extremes and the magnificent struggle in our search for balance”.

Marcia Wood Gallery is pleased to announce the second exhibition at this gallery of paintings and drawings by Monica Cook in a solo exhibition titled Seeded and Soiled. The Georgia-born artist graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1996 and now lives and works in New York, where she recently concluded a residency at the School of Visual Arts. Since 1992, Cook has exhibited in museums and galleries throughout the US and Canada, as well as in the Netherlands, Israel, France and Switzerland. Publications include Art in America, Le Figaro, Elle Magazine, and New American Paintings. She has also exhibited at art fairs with Marcia Wood Gallery in London, Miami and New York.

See more work by Monica Cook HERE

9. Neozoon - Furcoat "UpCycling"

"UpCycling" is a project highlighting the last cycle of the products life.
pretty neat way to use fur-coats to create street art animals.

Check out more animals from Neozoon HERE

10. Cat Ladies

One constructs a shrine to a dearly departed feline friend. Another opens her home to more than 100 of them. These are just two of the eccentric characters in this quirky cinema vérité-style documentary about "cat ladies." Turning a compassionate lens on four feline-friendly gals, filmmaker Christie Callan-Jones goes beyond cat lady stereotypes to explore the emotional needs that drive the deep connections between these women and their cats.

Starring: Not Available
Director: Christie Callan-Jones
Genre: Documentary

Visit the official movie site HERE