MAGDALENA HUTTER: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY VICTORIA CHAINE MENDRZYK
|
|
Magdalena Hutter is a German photographer and documentary filmmaker. She has traveled many countries to work on her reportages and photographs, covering places as diverse as Kosovo and Latin America or Los Angeles and Isley in Scotland. Looking at her work, I wondered whether she perceives herself more as a photographer or as a reporter.
|
|
|
|
RON CROWCROFT: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
In an increasingly sleek and streamlined art world, it's good to feel a blast of genuine eccentricity every so often. Ron Crowcroft's hilarious and melancholy conceptualism is a tonic for the browbeaten. Maybe it's the sort of thing that might have been made anyway, before trickster pioneers like Nauman, Baldessari and Beuys drew public attention to what could be done with simple means and a willingness to look like an idiot.
|
|
|
|
RIMAS K. SIMAITIS: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY GEORGIA HAAGSMA
|
|
In his sculptural installations, Rimas K. Simaitis addresses the topic of disposability and the incapability of the modern day man to create a sustainable environment. Intrigued by the human impulse to reach for the highest summit and to attain great heights of prosperity, he offers a way to entertain, generate and grow some environmentally aware thoughts to overcome this cultural urge to conquer.
|
|
|
|
ANNE SONGHURST: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
|
|
Anne Songhurst's luscious oil-on-board still lives are beautiful homages to genuine maturity. Songhurst is one of a few self-taught artists whose work clearly benefited from being untouched by art school training, in which contemporary art schools tend to teach artists how to think rather than how to paint. Songhurst's lovely, lush images carry within themselves and beautifully present all the connotations associated with the still-life tradition that she follows.
|
|
|
|
ALEX BURDIAK: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY CHARLOTTE BONHAM-CARTER
|
|
Alex Burdiak's recurring integration of steel and latex in one piece is the first thing that stands out about his work. With each material carrying a long lineage of social, cultural and art historical significance, Burdiak seems to be playing with expectations established by his predecessors, including Eva Hesse and Richard Serra.
|
|
|
|
ALADDIN GARUNOV: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANGELA MARISOL ROBERTS
|
|
Aladdin Garunov's work relies heavily on cultural and textural juxtapositions. In many of his pieces the spiritual vocabulary of the east, represented by fragments of hand-knotted carpets from central Asia or copies of Byzantine mosaics, strikes an uneasy balance with the strident materials and textures of Western modernism. Together they represent a tactile point of intersection at which cultural and spiritual codes intermingle, change and are eventually diluted.
|
|
|
|
ROBERT LANG: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
Robert Lang's paintings take some unpicking. In them, photographic sources, transcribed in swathes of streaky paint, lose their clarity, like Polaroids de-developing. Figures appear in snatched fragments or at a distance, engaged in ambiguous outdoor activities - digging, camping, starting a fire - ahistorical actions that nonetheless allude to something post-nuclear, something apocalyptic.
|
|
|
|
ADRIAN WONG: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY GEORGIA HAAGSMA
|
|
Adrian Wong uses ancient rituals to accentuate the dark corners and eccentricities of metropolitan existence. After having experienced a wave of misfortunes, in which nearly all his possessions got stolen and his health badly damaged, the artist, who originally trained as a research psychologist, decided that a cleansing ritual was needed to get back in tune with the positive powers of the universe.
|
|
|
|
YOUNES BABA-ALI: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY CONSTANCE GOUNOD
|
|
Younes Baba-Ali's sound installations demand to be heard before they remain to be seen. Having trained as a technician and musician, he naturally developed an affinity for sound and its propagation within space. In all of his work, Baba-Ali seeks to directly confront the visitor to its haunting presence, turning him into a participant of the piece and making him reconsider previously familiar objects.
|
|
|
|
ROBERT FLYNN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
Robert Flynn's pitch-black graphite-and-charcoal drawings of plants and seedlings fade into shadow at the edges of the paper as though photographed in a nineteenth-century studio. Their backgrounds, too, have the colourless blankness of a drop cloth, casually bringing to mind family portraiture, a passport photograph, a head-shot.
|
|
|
|
DANA OLDFATHER: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
Dana Oldfather is a self-taught painter whose work was awarded 2nd place in the 2008 9th Annual National Young Painters Competition, selected by the New York painter and art critic Peter Plagens. "Throughout my career as an oil painter", she says, "I have maintained a feeling for the monumentality of the human form. I aim to reflect attitude, indifference and sometimes despair, through the recreation of the figure and abstraction as a collaborative expression." 
|
|
|
|
MONICA GOLDSMITH: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY LEANNE GOEBEL
|
|
Monica Goldsmith explores notions of time and consumption in her "Subdivisions" and "Abacus" series. Bringing forth strands from Modernism, particularly hard edge geometric abstraction, Goldsmith explores the transitory nature of seen and unseen states, rooted in physics and time. She uses the abacus, a counting device, to explore variables while capturing a flickering moment and suspending it in stasis. 
|
|
|
|
ALICE LANG: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY RACHEL MULVANEY
|
|
Alice Lang's soft sculptures evoke both the body and nature, through their associative and suggestive qualities. Unable to define the specific associations the works create within the boundaries of objects from life, they inhabit the unsettling domain of the unfamiliar. These unidentifiable shapes remain as nameless organic objects, inert and motionless, yet suggesting life and growth.
|
|
|
|
DNASAB B: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY GEORGIA HAAGSMA
|
|
In a world increasingly dominated by wi-fi, e-news and digital social network sites it is maybe not unnecessary to wonder what kind of ecosystem an iPod would flourish best in. Or what the sex-life of two buzzing wireless networks could be like. Necessary or not, New York based artist [dNASAb] has made it his mission to visualise the organic waveforms that carry the data from phone calls, emails and twitter updates.
|
|
|
|
TOBY CHRISTIAN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY DARIA DE BEAUVAIS
|
|
"What you see is what you see." In 1964, this phrase by American artist Frank Stella exemplified the minimalist movement, and became Art History. Today, young sculptor Toby Christian seriously questions this quote. In fact, for most of his works, what you see is especially not what you see: a pebble is made of marble, a buoy is made of bronze, etc.
|
|
|
|
AIRYKA ROCKEFELLER: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY CONSTANCE GOUNOD
|
|
Castles used to have this strange purpose in the world where they were built by men for men, sometimes to protect, others to defend, often to impress or intimidate each other. As trapped in some kind of time capsule, they now carry an increasingly mythical self-fictionalization, reinforced by the commodification of their image.
|
|
|
|
ERIK BERGLIN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
Erik Berglin fuses that set-up and sprint in works that are part performance, part photography. In each work, the artist prepares a digital camera on a ten-second timer, usually choosing a backdrop of post-war architecture with a handy aperture or ridged surface for better purchase.
|
|
|
|
ANNE VAN AS: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
|
|
The woodland creatures in Anne Van As's paintings emanate gentle beauty and subtle grace, much like the paintings themselves. Van As uses a slim range of colours in her oil canvases but she achieves compelling shades of meaning and emotion. The deer, rabbits, squirrel and wolf she paints dominate her canvases like giants, yet they still appear vulnerable because of their meek expressions and soft bodies. 
|
|
|
|
LEON DUNIEC: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY CAPUCINE PERROT
|
|
Leon Duniec, a student at ABK Maastricht, uses materials such as plaster and cardboard to create small-scale three-dimensional objects that look like preliminary models of unrealised sculptures. The forms are simple, reductive and roughly made. The surfaces are left untreated. The colour palette reflects these materials, chalky white, grey plaster and beige cardboard.
|
|
|
|
DAVID BIRKIN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
David Birkin's work is informed by the history of photography and its relationship to performance in contemporary art. By combining long exposure techniques with a conceptual methodology, his practice incorporates a specific performance into the image-making process and defines it within the parameters of that event. 
|
|
|
|
MARK SELBY: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY MARIANNE MULVEY
|
|
Mark Selby works with sculpture, film and installation, concerned with the functionality and disfunctionality of domestic design. In recent sculptural works Selby questions how communication between subjects is interfered with and problematised by the very technology that seeks to improve and proliferate our possibilities to connect with each other. Working with solid structures and materials, his sculptures investigate that which constantly slips away: the meeting of two minds, and what passes between them. 
|
|
|
|
JOSHUA LEVINE: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
|
|
For many of us today, avocado, nut brown and harvest gold shag rugs have come to signify the 1970s. Years from now, future generations will recognize a room with a hunter's trophy and antlers as a hipster signature of the early 2000s. What does this really say about our own era? Artist Joshua Levine offers one possible answer. His mixed media sculptures take an ironic swipe at urbanites who decorate their walls with replicas of dead animals, or the parts of the actual animals themselves, and also create compelling surreal works to replace the deceased deer on sophisticates' walls. 
|
|
|
|
APPAU JUNIOR BOAKYE-YIADOM: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY LEIGH ROBB
|
|
Appau Junior Boakye-Yiadom takes the readymade as his starting point but brings it into performative play, often with paint or liquid such as plaster or spray paint. He sets up situations of everyday objects that are activated during a brief performance; the aftermath and the photographic or filmed record of it all form part of the work. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click 
|
|
|
|
MISHKO PAPIC: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
Taking as his subject the British Museum's Benin bronzes, Mishko Papic paints the objects as objects, faithfully recording a fraying of thin bronze, a warped corner. Each of his images is lit in the raking light of the conservator's studio. It's scientific, purposeful but never obvious. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online, click here.
|
|
|
|
DICKSON SCHNEIDER: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
|
|
The fashion models posing in front of historic paintings in Dickson Schneider's series of oil on canvases seem intended to express paradoxical relationships between art and fashion. Are they supposed to juxtapose the lasting significance of great art with the timeless distractions of chic, pretty young women? Click here to see more of Schneider's work registered on Saatchi Online. 
|
|
|
|
TOBIAS DE HAAN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY GEORGIA HAAGSMA
|
|
De Haan's work shows a fascination for architecture, city planning and the changes that take place in the urban landscape. He combines this with an outrageous imagination and a meticulous execution of his self-taught painting technique, which is controlled and well managed without losing its liveliness and movement. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
PATRICIA HAGEN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
Patricia Hagen's clusters of multicoloured lifeforms huddle at the bottom of tawny photo-studio backdrops. "Scatter", "Adrift", "Array": the titles of her paintings are vague stabs at the nature of these strange little conglomerations, like the uncertain scribbled notes of a scientist faced with weird bacteria in a petri dish. And it's the pseudo-science of pre-war Surrealism that comes most to mind when looking at her work, most obviously Yves Tanguy, with whom Hagen shares a kind of laconic regard for pictorial niceties, giving her tumid and perforated forms a feathery chiaroscuro and fungal weight. 
|
|
|
|
FOCAR GROUP: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY KERSTIN NIEMANN
|
|
FocAR is a group of artists which have gathered around the common will to produce and share artistic gestures within urban and rural spaces. They operate like a team of urban observers that capture architectural elements to look upon its use and meaning within the urban landscape. To see more of their work registered on Saatchi Online click here.
|
|
|
|
MEQUITTA AHUJA: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
Miquetta Ahuja describes her drawings and paintings as 'works of Automythography' in which she explores the symbolic significance of blackness and the social implications of Black hair. 'In response to the history of Black hair as a barometer of social and personal consciousness', she says, 'I make the image of hair both corporeal and conceptual, giving it psychic proportions.' To see more of her work registered on Saatchi Online click here.
|
|
|
|
SCOTT RICHTER: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY BEN STREET
|
|
The sculpture/furniture crossover art of Scott Richter has a rich history. Like several of his predecessors, Richter takes on the homespun associations of domestic furniture and leavens its emotional import by loading it down with layers of fat, sloppy, dribbly paint. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click here.
|
|
|
|
JOOLS JOHNSON: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANGELA ROBERTS
|
|
Technology, and our love/hate relationship with it, is one of the main themes of Jools Johnson's work. The installations reuse every single nut, bolt and screw of old computers and reconfigure them into objects of strange yet familiar beauty. The result is a group of meticulous dioramas that bear witness to the information that we collect and then discard. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
PAT COLELLA: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
|
|
Pat Colella's subjects might be unknown to her viewers, but her pastel portraits present recognizable and appealing personalities. The fifty-eight year old Long Island-based artist explains her creative
ambitions as: "my art is a statement about creating three-dimensionality in a representational yet expressive way." To see more of her work registered on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
ROBYNNE LIMOGES: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
Whether taking photographs of architecture, interiors or the human form, Robynne Limoges's main interest is light. 'I am obsessed with light as metaphor,' she says, 'and with the philosophical equation of just how little light is necessary to dispel darkness.' Her series entitled 'Figure as Dream' was made by shooting into the reflective surface of a mirror or polished glass so that each photograph captures not what she is standing in front of but what is behind her. The emotional intensity in these photographs is accentuated by the high colour contrast in each picture and by the dreamlike haziness she creates. To see more of her work registered on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
FRAN RECACHA: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ANA FINEL HONIGMAN
|
|
Fran Recacha's crisp Symbolist paintings would be captivating jacket art for authors ranging from Ayn Rand to Paul Auster or even Ian McEwan. The Barcelona-based artist creates gracefully molded figures engaged in dream-like scenarios open to expansive narrative interpretations and poetic depths. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
YURY TOROPTSOV: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITICS' CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
Yury Toroptsov was born in 1974 in a small rural community near Vladivostok, and left Russia in 1998 to study in New York. In 2003 Toroptsov, a consultant to the United Nations, decided to change his profession and follow his long-time passion - photography, which he now does from his home in Paris. His most recent series, "The House of Baba Yaga" (2008), shown at Paris Photo in 2008, was made when he revisited his family house in a small village in Far Eastern Russia, which brought alive childhood memories and Russian fairy tales. 
|
|
|
|
EYAL PINKAS: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY LEIGH ROBB
|
|
Eyal Pinkas is an Israeli photographer and video artist based in Amsterdam. In his recent work, the artist takes everyday objects such as chairs and mattresses and dexterously manipulates them into fantastical yet elegant compositions, which he then photographs. To see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online click here
|
|
|
|
ELIA CANTORI: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY DARIA DE BEAUVAIS
|
|
Elia Cantori is a young Italian artist registered on STUART and currently studying at Goldsmiths College in London. The work in question, which consists of a perfect sphere with a doorknob and a key, brings to mind the urban poetic works of Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco and famously bizarre tale of Lewis Caroll's Alice in Wonderland.
|
|
|
|
MARGARET O'BRIEN: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY CONSTANCE GOUNOD
|
|
Margaret O'Brien manipulates domestic objects drawn from the everyday to create technically impressive and emotionally effective installations, which activate certain characteristics of psychological dysfunctions creating a sense of anxiety and spatial disorientation. To see more of her work on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
AYAD ALKADHI: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
Ayad Alkadhi uses Arabic calligraphy and powerful figurative imagery to create narratives concerning the themes of religion, politics and culture. His recent paintings engage with the war in Iraq and the psychological, emotional and social ramifications for the Iraqi people. Works by Alkadhi are currently on view in an exhibition by Iraqi artists in exile at the Station Contemporary Art Museum in Houston until 1 February 2009. You can also see more of his work registered on Saatchi Online by clicking here. 
|
|
|
|
AMY ELKINS: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY ALIX RULE
|
|
Amy Elkins' 'Wallflowers' series animates all the old questions about what a portrait reveals. Each of her works engages its subject on his own terms. Some of them, young and beautiful and tattooed, are photographed against baroque wallpaper in Brooklyn. Others are shot against real sylvan backgrounds in Elkins' native New Orleans (craggy and a bit less young, and also tattooed). Rather than appropriate the mannerism of traditional portraiture, Elkins recharges it. 
|
|
|
|
SALLY NOALL: SAATCHI ONLINE CRITIC'S CHOICE BY REBECCA WILSON
|
|
Sally Noall's series entitled 'Dorothy's Shoes' alludes to two films whose visual imagery have become deeply embedded in our collective psyche: Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Birds' and 'The Wizard of Oz' starring Judy Garland as Dorothy. She invites us to consider why certain images and objects take on particular significance in our lives, why there is a certain nostalgia imbued in these iconic cultural landmarks, and what 'our cultural objects' reveal about us, our identity, our memories and our yearnings.
To see more of Sally Noall's work registered on Saatchi Online click here. 
|
|
|
|
|
