Aussie friends, get to this show if you're near by. Mark Whalen does some incredible work. Just check out the 2 new works below. Pretty sure you're going to like this show, no doubt.
Hypnagogic portraits. I never set out to create a specific picture, I just keep abusing the same process until one appears.
Influences?
Tudor sumptuary laws, Style Wars, The Sweeney.
Cheese burgers or tofu burgers?
Bacon rolls
Working routine? Music? Time of day?
I've been painting full time now for just over a year. Radio 4. I get up early and paint until it's finished. Then go over it the next day when I realise it's not. Then often ruin it on the third day.
Federico Saenz-Recio was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1976. ~He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
As a response to the innate human effort to control, categorize and organize the uncertain forces of nature
and random phenomena, Federico's paintings and sculptures are mathematical analysis of Abstraction. ~view more
Vancouver based Russell Leng, who we mini interviewed this past summer, emailed over some recent works. He's showing at San Francisco's new gallery, Hungry Man Gallery this upcoming summer.
Video on London based David Shillinglaw who, besides blogging some London-ness for Fecal Face from time to time, is also an accomplished artist himself. Listen/ see what makes him tick.
Shillinglaw’s work moves between street and studio, from small hand made books, to paintings on canvas, and large scale wall murals. David has enjoyed applying his fine art practice to a number of other contexts, which range from theatre set designs, to album cover design. Past commissions include illustrations for The British Council Annual Report.
Charles Martin, who we mini interviewed last week, emailed over these two new works. They're great. Check out more of his work and read our interview w/ him. Charles studies currently at Cooper Union in NYC.
Wasn't going to write an intro for Ron English because if you're here at Fecal Face you should already be well aware of this iconic artist. If you need to know, read his bio below.
Thanks to Daniel Rolnik (danielrolnik[at]@gmail.com) for conducting this great interview for Fecal Face.
One of the most prolific and recognizable artists alive today, Ron English has bombed the global landscape with unforgettable images, on the street, in museums, in movies, books and television. English coined the term POPaganda to describe his signature mash-up of high and low cultural touchstones, from superhero mythology to totems of art history, populated with his vast and constantly growing arsenal of original characters, including MC Supersized, the obese fast-food mascot featured in the hit movie “Supersize Me,” and Abraham Obama, the fusion of America’s 16th and 44th Presidents, an image widely discussed in the media as directly impacting the 2008 election. Other characters carousing through English’s art, in paintings, billboards, and sculpture include three-eyed rabbits, udderly delicious cowgirls and grinning skulls, blending stunning visuals with the bitingly humorous undertones of America’s Premier Pop Iconoclast.
How do you teach yourself other artist’s techniques?
Trial and error. I had a gig painting landscapes a long time ago at one of those production houses where they taught me a lot of techniques. I also worked for a few different artists, so I had to learn how to mimic their styles.
What artists did you work for?
I did some paintings for Rohhny Decone, Larry Rivers, Marcus Darvy. When I first moved to New York in the 80’s I was a ghost painter. Yeah, it’s a good job to work and you get paid.
Was it frustrating to be a ghost painter because people wouldn’t actually know it was you who was the painter?
Oh yeah. It’s funny because I always get what I wish for, but it’s kind of like the old genie in a bottle thing – I wish that I could have people see all my paintings and the paintings I would make [for those artists] would end up in museums, it’s true. I always forgot to ask “could I sign them” but it’s not really your thing. It’s like if you go on tour with the Rolling Stones and you’re the bass player, you’re not really in the band and you don’t think you’re in the band –maybe after 30 years or so you think you’re in the band like Ron Wood [guitar]. It’s funny because it’s someone else’s art, they’ve built their own language, and if you went to art school there’s a certain amount of that stuff that you can just do. Their art was more about their concepts and I did it because I wanted to learn a lot of techniques.
Would you purposefully choose to work with certain painters whose style your wanted to learn?
Well Mark was probably the ultimate situation because initially there were only 3 other painters working with me, but later there were like 40. Guys were coming in from Russia and Poland, people who were trained as master painters and knew all the technique. And even from day one Clark Decarro was a classically trained painter from Canada, so he showed me how to make glazes, but it’s interesting to do something with someone sitting right next to you and where you can say “Why is this not working” and they’ll be respond by saying “here’s what you’re doing wrong”. They’re all there with you and I think that’s the best learning environment - when you can’t overcome something and there’s someone to show you how to do it right there. There are always bumps in the road, eventually you can figure it out on your own, you can read books, there are a lot of things you can do. If you want to get somewhere you’re going to get there, but it’s always nice to have a set of directions.
Do you have assistants help you with your paintings?
I have two assistants. One assistant comes in one day a week and stretches the canvasses and the other guy pretty much does everything - like all those weird houses with the comics all over them that are in the paintings. He puts together the houses and then puts the comic book collages on them and then he’ll set up the shot. When we were at Art Basil last week painting a big mural he took lined up and shook all the spray paint.
It’s kind of like being a surgeon and saying “Hooker Green ASAP” it really allows you to move like a motherfucker because you just reach your hand out and somebody’s putting whatever you’re asking for in your hand instead of you having to find it and shake it.
I mean all that time it takes to do that stuff slows us down and the fact that they are doing all that for us is just amazing.
Do you do anything to your spray paint cans to get them to behave in a certain way?
Sometimes they put too much pressure in the cans, so you turn them upside down and relieve some of the pressure. If you turn them upside down it just sprays, it doesn’t release the paint. And, as soon as you’re done spray painting you turn the can upside down so paint wont dry in the tip and ruin it. It’s also good if you want to do fine lines to make the pressure [in the can] super low. You never quit learning, you just don’t.
Do you read books on new painting techniques?
One of my friends learned a lot of his techniques from reading books, but I’m just not much of a reader.
We met a young skater named Charles Martin, an interesting guy studying at SFAI, through our friend Henry Gunderson. Charles would stop in the gallery from time to time, and the last time he came through he told us he was off to NYC to study at Cooper Union where his brother also studys. Getting into Cooper Union is no small feat. They're one of the most selective schools in the U.S. Well known for their art and science programs, C.U. admits students based on merit alone and provides each with a full-tuition scholarship. A FREE top rate highly demanding education.
Into his first year at Cooper Union we wanted to see what Charles was working on and know how he was handling the big city and the school's heavy demands.
Charles in his studio space.
How is Cooper Union going? Is it as tough as people have said?
We get a lot of homework; we have a lot of classes. Most of our time goes to school. The toughest part for me has been time management which is a large part of what it seems we’re supposed to learn in this first year. People who can’t keep up get the boot. There are a lot of distractions in Manhattan, that if you can fall victim to, it only makes it harder. I heard some things before coming here that proved to be complete lies in my situation. It gets really nerve wrecking at times, but no pain, no gain.
You're a Bay Area guy. How is the Big Apple treating you?
It’s a lot different than San Francisco. If I could change one thing it would be the winter. I grew up in Buffalo, NY so I’m pretty accustomed to snow, maybe even TOO accustomed to the snow; me and old man winter have a love hate relationship. New York has been really overwhelming, but I am definitely enjoying myself.
Besides schoolwork, what have you been up to?
This semester I have less foundation classes so I’ve been able to paint a lot more. From January fourth to 18th was winter break, so the school was open but NO ONE was here. It was AWESOME I just got to come to my studio everyday and make work, no assignments. I’ve been reading about black history and other radical organizations that make it their business to fight whatever injustices they face. I also have a book about Einstein and a couple of memoirs. When I can I work on my apartment. I just got some rolls of film, and I found out that my school has a color processor, so I'm going to check that out. There’s a yoga studio really close that I've been trying to take advantage of.
Kokoro Studio (682 Geary St here in San Francisco) emailed a few images from thier current show with Chilean artist Ignacio Murua. The show Bomba 4 continues through Feb 24th.
Kokoro Studio has been open a little over a year showing local and international artists. Hours: Tue-Sat 1pm-7pm
Ignacio Murua lives and works in Santiago de Chile and Brooklyn, NY...
He is inspired the Chilean yellow press newspapers that publish images of ideal female bodies as the "women of the week." What the popular culture esteems as perfection, Murua translates as uncomfortable and grotesque. By its denial of the familiar, flawed (normal) body, such perfection is encountered as a deformity. Murua uses a unique process of "painting without using paint" to contrast the disturbingly artificial perfection with smeared and dripping strokes. He works quickly to manipulate the wet pigment of a freshly printed photograph, causing the very substance of the image to be distorted, obscured, erased, or washed away. Remaining is a blurred silhouette, the suggestion of a posture that replaces individual identity. In a global society preoccupied with age and beauty, the work of Ignacio Murua disregards time, wiping out both perfection and its potential for decay.
If you're in Oakland, check it out or, at least, enjoy a few works Adam emailed over the other day. Brilliant work from this SFAI MFA grad. --> FM is at 483 25th Street, Oakland, CA.
Brooklyn based Matt Relkin emailed over some of his newest works.
A GATHERING- acrylic on panel- 12"X12"
THE HORSES- acrylic on panel- 12"x9"
He writes about the new work on his site: "I’ve really been trying to expand my Black Tower universe, to branch out into other realms & dimensions, to explore hidden corners of this slowly evolving world I’ve been attempting to create. I haven’t been dwelling on meanings with these new paintings, just allowing the images to take shape from simple sketches and ideas in my head. I’m coming to realize that these pieces are all connected whether I want them to be or not. I’ve been enjoying the actual act of painting, the physicality of it, allowing the planning and conceptualization to take a back-seat to the final image. There’s a new feeling of freedom in the whole process of these current works, where I’m almost subconsciously allowing the painting to materialize on it’s own, my hand & brush becoming nothing more than the vessel through which the paint applies itself to the panel."
UNEXPLAINED FORMATION 1- acrylic on panel- 11"x14"
An Unexpected Guest, oil on panel, 18" x 24", 2010
How would you describe your work to someone?
Detailed, slightly absurd, bizarre narratives.
Influences?
I spent a lot of time at the Chicago Art Museum when I was younger. I found the works
of the 17th century Dutch masters particularly interesting; I would try to dissect the
paintings layer by layer in my mind. I figured that magicians must have made them. I
wanted to be a magician too.
Long time Fecal Pal and fellow Ohioan, Tiffany Bozic opens her first NYC solo show Confiding to Strangers November 11th @Joshua Liner Gallery. We stopped by her studio a couple weeks back to have first look at her paintings before they were crated and shipped off across the country. Enjoy the photos and video.
Tiffany is lucky enough to get to travel to parts of the natural world very few ever have. Her husband, Jack, is a scientist who studies small mammals and birds. Africa, Papa New Guinea, far off uninhabited islands in the South Pacific, Tiffany has experienced what few others have... The last couple years of travel are evident in her new works below.
Seattle based Robert Hardgrave'sRapture Suit made of leftovers from failed paintings- on display with new paintings in December at David B. Smith in Denver. Like the new works. ~check the video
Our 10 year anniversary show has just ended, and we have a few works still available like this patchwork painting by Jim Houser below featuring four 3 dimensional overlays. *click image for larger view
-- Jim Houser, In Decline, acrylic on wood panel, 24“x24”
I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...
I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.
It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.
Hit me up if you have any ECommerce related questions. - trippe.io
I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.
SF skateboarding icons Jake Phelps, Mickey Reyes, and Tommy Guerrero with the 3 SF Giants World Series Trophies
When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.
Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading
"Six Degrees" opens tonight, Friday Jan 16th (7-10pm) at FFDG in San Francisco. ~Group show featuring: Brett Amory, John Felix Arnold III, Mario Ayala, Mariel Bayona, Ryan Beavers, Jud Bergeron, Chris Burch, Ryan De La Hoz, Martin Machado, Jess Mudgett, Meryl Pataky, Lucien Shapiro, Mike Shine, Minka Sicklinger, Nicomi Nix Turner, and Alex Ziv.
"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on
As we work on our changes, we're leaving Squarespace and coming back to the old server. Updates are en route.
The content that was on the site between May '14 and today is history... Whatever, wasn't interesting anyway. All the good stuff from the last 10 years is here anyway.
Opening tonight, Friday May 23rd (7-10pm) at Park Life in the Inner Richmond (220 Clement St) is Again Home Again featuring works from the duo Jacob Mcgraw-Mikelson & Rachell Sumpter who split time living in Sacramento and a tiny island at the top of Pudget Sound with their children.
Jacob Magraw will be showing embroidery pieces on cloth along with painted, gouache works on paper --- Rachell Sumpter paints scenes of colored splendor dropped into scenes of desolate wilderness. ~show details
NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?
The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.
Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON
Los Angeles based Alison Blickle who showed here in San Francisco at Eleanor Harwood last year (PHOTOS) recently showed new paintings in New York at Kravets Wehby Gallery. Lovely works.
We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...
If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.
Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.
Nate Milton emailed over this great short Gator Skater which is a follow-up to his Dog Skateboard he emailed to us back in 2011... Any relation to this Gator Skater?
Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.
In a filmmaker's thinking, we wish more videos were done in this style. Too much editing and music with a lacking in actual content. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.
FFDG is pleased to announce an exclusive online show with San Francisco based Ferris Plock opening on Friday, April 25th (12pm Pacific Time) featuring 5 new medium sized acrylic paintings on wood.
Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.
San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.
Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.
Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.
The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.
With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding
I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle
While walking our way across San Francisco on Saturday we swung through the opening receptions for Kirk Maxson and Alexis Mackenzie at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in the Mission.
Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.
Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.
For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.
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