Thursday, October 27, 2016

A signature piece: Rick Valicenti’s “A Wheel of Fortune—Round and Round”


From the exhibition: (maybe) THIS TIME
Rick Valicenti
Loyola University Artist-in-Residence, 2016–17
Ralph Arnold Gallery
11 October – 26 November 2016

Chicago based artist/designer Rick Valicenti’s Wheel of Fortune—Round and Round installation artwork seems to be a hybrid and hyperbolic time piece with a subtle note of George Nelson’s modern clock designs. The light rays emanating from the center hint at Bernini’s Ecstasy, while the centralized casting of a “death mask” accents the vanitas genre without the moralizing. The piece is a roulette and metaphor for all the small deeds of civility. Photograph above used with permission.

Wheel of Fortune 2016
Industrial Felt
60 x 60"
Fabricated by West Supply
Unique

Round and Round 2016
Polished Aluminum
72 x 72"
In collaboration with Taek Kim
Fabricated by West Supply
Unique

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Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Michiko Itatani: hi-point contact at the Zhou B Art Center, Chicago


Michiko Itatani
Redon’s Garden painting from Moon-light / Mooring 2007
96 x 154 in. (243.84 cm x 391.16 cm)
Oil on canvas
Michiko Itatani’s solo exhibition “hi-point” is currently on view at the Zhou B Art Center, Chicago. photograph by versluis 2016

I was mesmerized by the Dripstone wall of the Wallenstein Palace in Prague and the White sand sea of Jisho-in in Kyoto. Both stopped my breath momentarily when I saw them for the first time and my eyes were trans-fixated. The Baroque of the West and the Dry landscape of the East are human achievements of the early 17th Century. 

 
I am fascinated by these parallel achievements in different places at the same period. Both demonstrate to me their extreme development of a concept and their contradictions. Their extreme development seems to be toward the opposites: West went to additive, ecstatic and anthropomorphous, East went to reductive, meditative and symbolic. West commands physical and emotional participation, while East commands abandonment of them.
In my most recent body of work, “Cosmic Theater II”, I am presenting my personal parallels in two series of work. One is HyperBaroque and another is Moon Light / Mooring. These are my two parallel fictions based on the human desire to reach out into the mental and physical space beyond our reach. One is looking out and another is looking in.…

—Michiko Itatani (statement is from her website

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