Ocula Conversation Jess Johnson: Worlds Within Worlds Geometric patterns, anthropomorphic characters, architectural spatial environments, and relics of the ancient world appear throughout Jess Johnson's artworks.Johnson's solo art-ventures began in drawing, but her long-term collaborative relationship with animator Simon Ward brings her drawings to life in videos and virtual reality. The animator has...
Ocula Conversation Melati Suryodarmo: Performance Art as Trigger In 2012, Melati Suryodarmo opened Studio Plesungan in her native Surakarta, also known as Solo, the historic royal capital of the Mataram Empire of Java in Indonesia. Suryodarmo had returned to Indonesia from Germany, where she studied Butoh and choreography with Butoh dancer and choreographer Anzu Furukawa, time-based media with avantgarde...
Ocula Report Lagos Biennial 2019: Stories from Africa’s most Populous City 15 Nov 2019 : Jareh Das for Ocula Under the direction of Folakunle Oshun, the second edition of the Lagos Biennial (26 October–23 November 2019) includes works by over 40 Lagos-based and international artists, architects, and collectives. Curated by architect Tosin Oshinowo, curator and producer Oyindamola Fakeye, and assistant curator of photography at the Art Institute of...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Roy Lichtenstein’s early appropriation of the aesthetics of American popular culture made him integral to the development of Pop Art. A student of the work of Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, and Paul Klee, Lichtenstein incorporated elements of contemporary art theory and popular print media into his painting. In 1961 he began to replicate the Benday dot system used in mass-circulation printed sources such as comics, newspapers, and billboards; this would become a signature element of his painting and sculpture. By mimicking this industrial method and appropriating images from high and low culture, his work realized a broader accessibility that had not yet been achieved in contemporary art. Some of his most recognizable series evolved from imagery drawn from popular culture: advertising images, war-time comics, and pin-up portraits, as well as traditional painting genres such as landscapes, still lifes, and interiors.
Gagosian 
Related Press Roy Lichtenstein: 1961 to 1965 Gillian Pistell : 1 November 2019 In the autumn of 1961, performance artist Allan Kaprow arranged a meeting between Roy Lichtenstein and Ivan Karp, director of the influential Leo Castelli Gallery in New York. The purpose of the meeting was to show Karp four of the new 'comic book paintings' that Lichtenstein had recently made. The paintings, The Engagement Ring (1961), Girl with...
Related Press Say hello to my little zine! The NY Art Book Fair takes over Moma PS1 ARTNews : 19 September 2016 The NY Art Book Fair draws a huge crowd every year, and so it wasn’t a surprise that there were lines everywhere at this year’s edition—lines to get into the bathroom, lines to see certain booths, lines for the KAWS signing (the longest line of all), and lines simply to get into the fair itself. But those lines moved quickly, and...
Related Press Tate Modern's Switch House Art Agenda : 23 June 2016 “When racism and sexism are no longer fashionable,” the Guerilla Girls asked in 1989, “what will your art collection be worth?” Predicting that “the art market won’t bestow mega-buck prices on the work of a few white males forever,” their printed notice listed 67 female artists (several of whom are now on...
Related Press 8 Artist Haunts of Long Island and the Hamptons Paddle 8 : 28 July 2015 Malcolm Gladwell claims that "you can learn as much–or more–from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.” If the walls of these coastal homes could talk, we would be endlessly entertained with stories from the private lives of art power couples, from Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner to...
