Tag: Brooks Salzwedel

Artist Talks with Brooks Salzwedel and Seth Armstrong Sunday December 16th at Lancaster MOAH

Join The New Vanguard II featured artists Brooks Salzwedel and Seth Armstrong this weekend, Sunday, December 16th for talks with these at Lancaster MOAH.

Brooks Salzwedel’s artist talk will take place at 1 pm followed by Seth Armstrong’s talk at 2 pm. The New Vanguard II will be on view until December 30th and this is a great opportunity to view the exhibition and learn about the works of these talented artists.

Brooks Salzwedel 

Born in Long Beach, Salzwedel creates translucent landscapes that shift in and out of solid and ethereal states. Like fluid worlds suspended in a cycle of perpetual haunting, the imagery often feels loosely real but undeniably hallucinated and invoked. His works play with the depiction of these unhinged natural and hyperbolically unnatural physical states, combining sparse terrains with fictional mountain ranges and shadowy, diaphanous atmospheres. His mixed-media drawing-based works are created using a combination of graphite, mylar and resin, tape, colored pencil, and ink.

Seth Armstrong 

Los Angeles-based painter Seth Armstrong creates paintings that seize time, near-cinematic moments of suspended or implied action. Some offer vast views, and others contracted intimacy, moving freely in and out of public and private spaces to create ambiguous vantage points. Known for paintings that self-consciously capture the act of looking – whether as a voyeur in trespass or a participant in the landscape – Armstrong captures the simultaneity of the city as a place of endless, contingent narratives, jarring interruptions, and suspenseful pauses.

In Lil’ Baja’s Last Ride, Armstrong combines his patented interest in the grittier recesses of urban life with his penchant for humor and a good inside joke, dedicating the exhibition’s title to his recently retired car, the unsuspecting casualty of a freak fire in the MOAH’s parking lot.

Exhibition on view October 20 through December 30 at:
Lancaster Museum of Art and History
665 W. Lancaster Blvd.
Lancaster, California 93534
www.LancasterMOAH.org

Interview with Brooks Salzwedel for “Rut in the Soil” at Lancaster MOAH during “THE NEW VANGUARD II”

Brooks Salzwedel’s exhibition “Rut in the Soil” is on view now through December 30th at the Lancaster MOAH during “The New Vanguard II” 

Can you explain your creative approach when developing your installation/solo for the New Vanguard II?

In my most recent work, I present landscapes, some imagined, some inspired by our national parks, touched by man in various states. In many pieces I’ve enclosed the landscapes in a border of negative space by use of graphic shaped rectangular boxes mimicking a foundation, more specifically the borders we put on land; from national parks, city parks, backyards, gardens, to countries and states. By setting the scenes in these shapes it alters the seemingly limitless boundaries of nature and our behavior with it.

Within the pieces are moments that are personal to me, hidden within the trees and brush one will find oil rigs, fire pits, pills, rainbows, animals, palm trees, and other various images make the piece personal to my experiences and create a greater narrative when pieced together.

In 100 years from now, what do you think will be said about the New Contemporary art movement?

I think the current New Contemporary movement is thriving with so many different types of work and materials. It will be seen as a change in the relationship between artists and galleries, artists and other artists, galleries and other galleries, and collaborations. It will be a time of blurred lines between artists’ original work and people altering those works via social media and computer-generated imagery to create their own works. Technology is still relatively new in the art world, that seems to be shown a lot more in artists’ work as well.

What does it mean to you as an artist to have your work be shown at a museum?

To have a solo show in a museum has been one of my top goals since I was a young artist. I never thought it would happen at such an early stage of my career. I feel as though I am able to offer the world feelings they may not have felt before in a space that is made for the viewer to focus on the work and what it means rather than what it is or will be worth.

If your body of work had a signature cocktail or drink, what would it be made of and called?

It would have to be Oaky, strong, and dark. Maybe an Old Fashion. A dark, wood colored whiskey, with a cold cube in the center and it would need a small object, a stir stick in the shape of a nail to combat the natural taste and feel of the liquid.

Favorite part about Lancaster, or something you learned about Lancaster during your time there working on your install for the New Vanguard II?

It’s a surprisingly comfortable, easy drive from Los Angeles. It’s close enough for an easy afternoon and far enough that the museum is able to take risks on the exhibitions, have more fun. Also, the Blackbird Air Park is quite a treat.

There are a lot of amazing artists in the exhibition, and this question may be difficult to answer, but which artists in this show would you want to collaborate with on or steal an artsy secret/technique from that you want to use too?

I’m not much of a freehand painter, I’m meticulous and detailed and on quite a small scale compared to some other artists. I’d like to collaborate with one of the mural, graffiti artists, maybe Jeff Soto. Not only did we graduate Art Center within a couple of years together I’ve always had a connection to the work, the plants and weathered look in some of his work. I notice Soto has a few larger works, and murals, so the grand scale of his work would push my comfort level.

BROOKS SALZWEDEL
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The New Vanguard II at MOAH Lancaster

This past weekend The New Vanguard II opened at The Lancaster Museum of Art and History, in collaboration with Los Angeles’ Thinkspace Projects. The museum exhibition includes a dynamic group exhibition of works by international artists working in the New Contemporary art movement, with featured solo projects by artists Sandra Chevrier, Seth Armstrong, Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker, and Brooks Salzwedel.

Thank you to the awesome community of Antelope Valley who came out and celebrate these talented artists who are defining the new contemporary art space.

The exhibition is on view now through December 30th.

Full Gallery After the Jump

Continue reading The New Vanguard II at MOAH Lancaster

THE NEW VANGUARD II at the LANCASTER MUSEUM OF ART & HISTORY Coming This October

THE NEW VANGUARD II
October 20 – December 30, 2018
Curated by Thinkspace Projects

Sandra Chevrier | Cages and the Allure of Freedom
Seth Armstrong | Lil’ Baja’s Last Ride
Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker | Suzy is a Surf Rocker
Brooks Salzwedel | Rut in the Soil

(Lancaster, CA) – The Lancaster Museum of Art and History, in collaboration with Los Angeles’ Thinkspace Projects, is pleased to present The New Vanguard II, a dynamic group exhibition of works by international artists working in the New Contemporary art movement. The highly anticipated follow up to 2016’s successful first iteration of The New Vanguard, on view in tandem with this year’s POW WOW! Antelope Valley will feature special solo projects by artists Sandra Chevrier, Seth Armstrong, Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker, and Brooks Salzwedel.

A sequel to what was in 2016 the most extensive presentation of work from the New Contemporary movement in a Southern Californian museum venue to date, The New Vanguard II, in keeping with the first, will present a diverse and expansive group of curated new works. The group show will include new pieces by ABCNT, Adam Caldwell, Alex Garant, Alex Hall, Alexandra Manukyan, Amy Sol, Andrew Schoultz, Benjamin Garcia, Brian Mashburn, Carl Cashman, CASE, Dan Witz, Drew Merritt, EINE, Ekundayo, Ermsy, Esao Andrews, Evoca1, Fernando Chamarelli, Fidia Falaschetti, Fintan Magee, Helen Bur, Hueman, Hula, Huntz Liu, Jaune, Joel Daniel Phillips, Jolene Lai, Juan Travieso, Kaili Smith, Kathy Ager, Kikyz1313, Laura Berger, Lauren YS, Lonac, Mark Dean Veca, Mars-1, Martin Whatson, Masakatsu Sashie, Meggs, Michael Reeder, Milu Correch, The Perez Bros, PichiAvo, RISK, Robert Xavier Burden, Robert Proch, Ronzo, Saner, Scott Listfield , Sergio Garcia, Seth Armstrong, Snik, Stephanie Buer, Super A, Super Future Kid, TikToy, Tran Nguyen, Van Arno, and Yosuke Ueno.

Alongside the focused solo presentations by Chevrier, Armstrong, Barker, and Salzwedel, the exhibition will include site-specific installations by Andrew Hem, Dan Witz, HOTxTEA, Isaac Cordal, Jaune, Laurence Vallieres, and Spenser Little.

A movement unified as much by its diversity as its similitude, ‘New Contemporary’ has come to denote an important heterogeneity of styles, media, contexts, and activations over the course of its establishment since the 90s. Unified in its fledgling beginnings by a founding countercultural impulse searching for its own nomenclature, the New Contemporary movement’s shifting and inclusive designations have offered alternative narratives over the years to those popularized by the dominant art establishment and its conceptual predilections.

Though stylistically disparate, the work belonging to this rapidly expansive movement reveals a desire to reference the popular, social, and subcultural domains of contemporary experience, grounding, rather than rarifying, imagery in the familiar. Looking to the urban landscape and the kaleidoscopic shift of individual identities within it, these artists use the figurative and narrative to anchor their work in the accessible and aesthetically relatable. A fundamentally democratic stance governs the ambitions of this new guard, ever in search of novel ways to expand rather than to contract.

Sandra Chevrier | Cages and the Allure of Freedom
The Montréal-based Canadian artist creates mixed-media works that explore identity as a locus of competing imperatives and complex contradictions. Drawing parallels between the assumed invulnerability of the superhero and the impossible demands placed upon the contemporary individual, Chevrier creates literal and metaphoric masks by combining comic book imagery assembled from found and imagined sources. Her dystopian spin on the iconic figure of the superhero looks to reveal the flaws in the staged extroversion of the superficial veneer.

In Cages and the Allure of Freedom, her first significant solo museum presentation, Chevrier will be showing three life-sized, hand-painted sculptural busts for the first time alongside new two-dimensional works in acrylic, graphite, china ink, and pastels.

Seth Armstrong | Lil’ Baja’s Last Ride
Los Angeles-based painter Seth Armstrong creates paintings that seize time, near-cinematic moments of suspended or implied action. Some offer vast views, and others contracted intimacy, moving freely in and out of public and private spaces to create ambiguous vantage points. Known for paintings that self-consciously capture the act of looking – whether as a voyeur in trespass or a participant in the landscape – Armstrong captures the simultaneity of the city as a place of endless, contingent narratives, jarring interruptions, and suspenseful pauses.

In Lil’ Baja’s Last Ride, Armstrong combines his patented interest in the grittier recesses of urban life with his penchant for humor and a good inside joke, dedicating the exhibition’s title to his recently retired car, the unsuspecting casualty of a freak fire in the MOAH’s parking lot.

Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker | ‘Suzy is a Surf Rocker’
A Huntington Beach native based in Southern California, mixed media painter Craig ‘Skibs’ Barker creates imagery inspired by print media and the graphic sensibilities of 80’s SoCal punk and surf, the subcultural terrain shaping the 80’s in which he grew up. His works feel surreal and partial, intentionally stylized to the point of decontextualization. By framing figurative subjects with an element of voyeuristic ambiguity, Barker’s compositions have the intuitive spontaneity of a Polaroid and the deliberate staging of a stencil. Familiar and far, they feel strange in their proximity.

Brooks Salzwedel | Rut in the Soil
Born in Long Beach, Salzwedel creates translucent landscapes that shift in and out of solid and ethereal states. Like fluid worlds suspended in a cycle of perpetual haunting, the imagery often feels loosely real but undeniably hallucinated and invoked. His works play with the depiction of these unhinged natural and hyperbolically unnatural physical states, combining sparse terrains with fictional mountain ranges and shadowy, diaphanous atmospheres. His mixed-media drawing-based works are created using a combination of graphite, mylar and resin, tape, colored pencil, and ink.

Exhibition on view October 20 through December 30 at:
Lancaster Museum of Art and History
665 W. Lancaster Blvd.
Lancaster, California 93534
www.LancasterMOAH.org

Taking place as part of POW! WOW! Antelope Valley
www.PowWowWorldwide.com