John Andrews - Artist Bio

Undetermined Specificity

The work develops from the visual milieu of instrumental culture: the graphs, diagrams, video and photographs of science and technology, industry and commerce.

The paintings are made of points placed at the intersections of grids whose intervals are determined by equal biaxial division of the two-dimensional surface. The resulting images map a rational system of discrete units emptied or freed from instrumental utility and significance.

Jacob El Hanani - Artist Bio

a conversation

JB - "Jacob, you said you are interested in the "micro aspect" of drawing, what do you mean by this?"

Jacob El Hanani - "Time and lack of means were two crucial factors in the development of my work. I mean, the abundance of time and lack of money even to buy art supplies. It was natural for me to use ink and paper. My art developed as a reaction to the fast mode I experienced when I moved to New York twenty five years ago. I was born in Casablanca, where the path of life was slower in every aspect. The idea of executing a work in one gesture was completely foreign to my crafts background. My reaction was then to move to "maximal art." In 1972, I started to do my first overall drawings.

There are two forces in the world: the aspiration to go further, to the moon, build high, go fast and a parallel movement of going to the infinitely small, breaking the atom, modifying cells. It was a personal challenge to bring drawing to the extreme and see how far my eyes and fingers could go. Yves Klein used his body. Pollock his shoulder. Agnes Martin the elbow. Morandi and Michaux the wrist. Bruce Marden his five fingers--I basically use my fingertips to draw.

Four hundred years ago the Japanese miniaturized their life with bonsai trees miniature gardens etc. The doubling of the earth population since World War II forced us to introduced the micro-element in all aspects of life.

As much as I try to compete with a computer to make my drawings as perfect as a machine would, I fail because of the human element of imperfection. By using a public form, the square, I'm trying to give attention to the execution which was neglected by minimalism that gave more importance to the idea. When people are confronted with my drawing, I'd prefer to hear them say "How?" rather than "Wow!"

Amanda Guest - Artist Bio

Tiny movements making large gestures.
Smart to be timid in certain situations

A line is marked through a skin of paper onto the wall. It travels, a scaled up version of a smaller drawing in handmade paper, that was made originally from cut strips of paper laid down into sheets of paper.

So the line finds itself enlarged from a line that was not drawn by hand, but laid down- held and released. On the wall, the line is again not hand drawn- now the line is pierced into the wall by banging little brads into the sheetrock. The heads of the nails glint on the outside surface and their sharp ends are hidden- embedded in the soft plaster board.

Then at a certain point in the drawing process, the wall becomes choked with nails- they are slowly eased out/pulled out, one by one, and the line becomes the mark the nails leave behind.

Their scar in the wall can be covered by using joint compound, sandpaper, and paint. When the show is over, this is what happens. But for the duration of the piece, "borrowing" the wall, the line remains the trace of the struggle to find a place. The line clings to the wall in an attempt to move out of the page into the architecture of the room.

Robert Jack - Artist Bio

Quick Notes on the Process of Growth

The works are made up of little more than repetitive marks on a support material, generally paper. Each mark determines the placement of the mark to follow. The single mark is repeated again and again to create the body of the work. The nature of the mark varies back and forth between the will of the hand and the will of the material.

I use pencil, colored pencil, ink, casein, burn marks and cuts. Rarely more than three in combination. Color is very restricted. As there is so little in the way of variation, each element takes on an added importance, as each is all the more apparent and obvious.

Making a work begins with selecting form, density, light-quality, color and its growth process. A dynamic growth is initiated by the succession of marks while the drawing is being built, pulling in and out of equilibrium until a balance is achieved. The growth is necessarily slow, as all stages of its life cycle from conception to fossilization are to be appreciated. It is a quiet process which relies heavily upon concentration and persistence.

Marco Maggi - Artist Bio

Microwave vs. Macrowave

Fast food travels from freezer to microwave. In this journey slow art helps us detect infinite variations in taste, form and color between two different Big Macs. Myopia as the best answer to globalization: by looking closer at daily materials we can personalize the global market.

This new materialism is not historic, it's sensitive. Engraving micrographs on insulation panels, Macintosh apples, aluminum foil or computer paper allows us to warm-up to the likes of Home Depot, Shoprite or Staples.

Genes and planets are too close and too far. A context with insignificant signs, unclear circuits, vague mutations, illegible cycles, cloudy viruses, incomprehensible dolmens and inaccessible codes.

The micro tissue is the encrypted boundary between technology and biology, science fiction and archeology. A pre-Columbian and post-Clintonian fabric with two dimensional textures and three dimensional pretexts.

Actually, the world is in semiotic turmoil, delicacy is a subversive activity and to pay attention is really shocking. We need to move from freezer to microwave.

Ragna Róbertsdóttir - Artist Bio

Lava-scapes

Volcanic eruptions propel particles of lava into the air. The lava splatters and solidifies in flight as it cools to become dark-brown or black rock called pumice. Light and porous, these stones are disseminated over great distances by winds. Near Hekla, one of Iceland's most active volcanoes, Ragna Róbertsdóttir collects these pumice stones, classifying them by color, size and shape.

She glues them one by one, directly on the gallery wall, within strict geometrical boundaries, large rectangles or squares creating a new "archi-textural" element. Often her lava-scapes interact with windows, (with a view to a real landscape) or any other architectural elements she could dialogue with.

The lava-scapes oscillate between serial, systematic construction, austere order and the natural diversity and principles of randomness imposed by the hand-made repartition of the stones on the wall. The light is reflected off the white interstices between stones, while being totally absorbed by the porosity of the pumice, creating a permanent tension and a vibrant field.