AHHHHHH: Enjoy the Relatable Catharsis of Watching 100 People Scream As Loud As They Can

It turns out that watching people yell as loud as they’re able to is almost as cathartic for the viewer as it is for the screamer. The Cut recently filmed 100 folks as they shout with all their might, capturing an array of emotions as they let it all out. Jumping, laughing, and heavy sighs of relief ensue, along with insights into many of their lives and stressors, in what might be the most relatable video on the internet at the moment.

You also might enjoy this film documenting people as they contemplate a ten-meter dive and the work of Bob Ross’s screaming counterpart.

 

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A Granite Replica of a Bedroom Closet Honors Personal and Collective Memories in New York City AIDS Memorial Park

“Craig’s closet” (2023), granite and bronze, 90 x 57 x 28 1/2 inches. Installed in New York City AIDS Memorial Park. Photos by Daniel Greer, © Jim Hodges, courtesy of the artist and Gladstone Gallery, shared with permission

In 1981, the emergency room at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan began to see an influx of young gay and bisexual men with startling weight loss, pneumonia, rare infections, and compromised immunity. Two years later, the HIV virus was identified as the cause of AIDS, which quickly reached epidemic proportions, and St. Vincent’s opened the first—and largest—AIDS ward on the East Coast.

In 2016, a public park became the home to the New York City AIDS Memorial, honoring the more than 100,000 residents who died of the disease, as well as those who lobbied for medical research and access to drugs and fought discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community. Marking a continuation of the memorial’s public art program, a new sculpture by Jim Hodges is both a heartfelt ode to a young New Yorker who succumbed to the illness and an invitation to consider complex histories and personal and collective memories.

“Craig’s closet,” a granite and bronze work that stands like a monolith in the middle of the park, considers the personal, metaphorical, and physical significance of the ubiquitous storage space. It is an exact replica of the bedroom closet belonging to musician Craig Ducote, who shared a home with Hodges until he passed away in 2016. T-shirts and jackets hang neatly next to a stack of drawers, a cane, various containers, and knick-knacks. While the piece references the artist’s personal relationship and memories, the simultaneous universality and specificity of a wardrobe, or objects accumulated over time, speaks to the shared experience of loss.

“Craigs closet” is on view through May 2024, and you can find more on Hodges’ website.

 

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By Engraving Found Plastic Waste Duke Riley Links Extractive Practices Throughout Human History

“No. 382 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023),  painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.5 x 8 x 3.5 inches

In the 1860s, the U.S. government introduced kerosene as an alternative for lighting lamps. Whale oil had previously dominated the market but was unsustainable given the appalling number of animals killed in order to provide power. The country quickly transitioned to fossil fuels, swapping one harmful and extractive practice for another. While whaling had its economic implications, it also birthed a largely nautical art form known as scrimshaw, or engravings in bone or ivory.

Artist Duke Riley is attuned to this history and its modern-day implications. He gathers laundry detergent jugs, flip-flops, and bottles that once held household products once they wash up near beaches and carves incisive allegories and ornamentation into their surfaces. Painted in a warm, grainy beige, the scavenged waste mimics the whale bones traditional to scrimshaw while the artist’s signature wit emerges through the contemporary narratives of oil barons or marine creatures carrying human trash.

 

“No. 363 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023),  painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 2.5 x 4 x .25 inches

Having grown up in New England, Riley frequented maritime museums with his family as a child. These experiences formed his “early ideas of what art was,” and the marine, folk art aesthetic emerged early in his practice—it’s also unsurprising that today, Riley frequently works from a boat docked near Rhode Island. As problems with waste and plastic pollution became more obvious during his visits to the ocean, he saw an opportunity to expand his scrimshaw works. “I was walking down the beach one day, and I found a piece of plastic that I thought was a bone and picked it up. It turned out to be a deck brush handle for scrubbing a boat deck,” he tells Colossal.

This encounter prompted what’s now a growing series of engraved sculptures, many of which comprise the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum. Diverging from the cheerful, bright colors of packaging, Riley distorts the containers designed to promote unchecked consumption at the expense of the environment. “I have always used a lot of found materials,” he shares. “For me, it’s about taking a found material or something that’s discarded or trash and trying to transform it in a way that it’s almost no longer recognizable.”

 

“Echelon of Uncertainty (Bad Guys)” (2022), salvaged painted plastic in wood and glass case, 18 x 51 x 6 inches

Together, the works position plastic waste as relics of our time with the potential to outlast humanity. “When you go to a maritime museum, and you see these different scrimshaw portraits on whale teeth, oftentimes, they portray the people that benefited most from the whale oil industry and that are most responsible for wiping two species of whales completely off the planet,” Riley says. He draws on this tradition, too, carving stylized renditions of Exxon chairman John Kenneth Jamieson or Arnold Schwartz, who founded Paragon Oil which later sold to Texaco, into the hard surfaces.

Whether depicting a hungover couple or a magnate plummeting into the ocean, Riley strives to use satire as a way to make the effects of pollution and the climate crisis more accessible. “Using humor sometimes is an easier way to engage people in things that are too large to wrap your head around. When talking about any sort of difficult subject, it’s a lot easier to (use humor to) talk about something that is painful or challenging and to reach people and not feel like you’re preaching,” he says.

Riley is currently working toward an upcoming show in Los Angeles and on a project centered around fast fashion. You can follow updates and see more of his scrimshaw sculptures on Instagram.

 

Detail of “Echelon of Uncertainty (Bad Guys)” (2022), salvaged painted plastic in wood and glass case, 18 x 51 x 6 inches

“No. 108 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2020),  painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.5 x 4.75 x 2.25 inches

“No. 367 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023),  painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 2.5 x 4 x .25”.

“No. 66-P of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2019),  painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.75 x 7.5 x 3.5 inches

“No. 26 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2020),  painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 12.25 x 7.25 x 3.5 inches

“No. 365 of the Poly S. Tyrene Memorial Maritime Museum” (2023), painted, salvaged plastic, ink, wax, 2.5 x 4 x .25 inches

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article By Engraving Found Plastic Waste, Duke Riley Links Extractive Practices Throughout Human History appeared first on Colossal.

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You Can Now Follow Colossal on Threads Bluesky and Mastodon

As the post-Twitter social world (or post-social media world?) has fractured into a dizzying array of competing platforms, Colossal has set up shop in several new spaces. You can now find us sharing daily art and visual culture updates on the new Threads platform, as well as Mastodon. We’re also on Bluesky, which is still in a closed beta, so you may have to wait a bit longer to start skeeting with us.

As always, we think the best way to follow is through our regularly published newsletters.

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article You Can Now Follow Colossal on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon appeared first on Colossal.

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Scientific Principles and Craft Traditions Converge in Tauba Auerbachs Research-Focused Practice

Tauba Auerbach (previously) wants “to be somewhere that isn’t a hard edge,” within a space that mimics the instability of “The Wave Organ.” Embedded within a jetty of the San Francisco Bay, the sculpture was created by Peter Richards and George Gonzalez in 1986 and captures the sounds of waves as they crash into and fill the pipes, emitting a musical mix of gurgling and gushing noises as the tide changes. The work is designed to highlight the acoustic irregularities of Earth’s elements and is also one of Auerbach’s favorite locations in their native San Francisco.

In a new episode of Art21’s 11th season, “Bodies of Knowledge,” which premiered in late June, Auerbach visits the instrument and explains their interest in natural patterns and processes, physics, and mathematic principles. They harbor a profound curiosity and desire to understand the complex systems that undergird life, many of which they interpret as swirling marbled paper, spontaneous tessellated drawings in marker, and writhing beaded sculptures that evoke biological forms like the rigid composition of a sea sponge.

 

Auerbach in their studio

Auerbach’s New York studio is brimming with these translations, and shelves lining the space are filled with puzzles, organic matter, and small treasures that inspire the artist’s works. They’re interested in how these structures and systems are not just the basis of life on Earth but also of craft and artistic traditions. For Auerbach, research into how pigments rest atop water or how variances in the velocity of the artist’s hand affects a painting is as important as the work itself. “I am quite compelled by things that just barely work. The near–impossibility is key,” they say.

After surveying the artist’s broad and diverse practice, the segment closes with “Auerglass,” an interactive organ-like instrument Auerbach created in collaboration with their friend and musician Cameron Mesirow. Made of glass and wood, the apparatus functions with pedals, keys, and pipes like the traditional design, although it requires two players. Each person has only half a keyboard—four octaves have been divided by alternating notes—and is required to pump air for the other. Physically engaging and rooted in the principles of sound, “Auerglass” is evidence of the artist’s interest in the experiential, connection, and the understanding that “the body is an important thinking tool.”

Auerbach will open a solo show titled TIDE on July 15 at Fridericianum in Kassel, Germany. That exhibition runs through January 14, 2024, and you can find more of their work on their site and Instagram. You also might enjoy earlier Art21 episodes on Wangechi Mutu and Guadalupe Maravilla.

 

Auerbach at “The Wave Organ” in San Francisco

Auerbach in their studio

Cameron Mesirow (left) and Auerbach (right) play “Auerglass”

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Sarah Contis Expressive Ceramic Birds Migrate Through Social and Environmental Issues

Detail of “(Im)Migration.” Photo by Rio Chantel. All images © Sarah Conti, shared with permission

In Latin, memento mori translates roughly to “remember you will die” and has been used as a visual trope employed in art for centuries, often in the form of a skull. In 17th-century Vanitas still-life paintings, other symbols like hour glasses, clocks, extinguished candles, fruit, flowers, or game animals were added as a constant reminder of the fleetingness of life. For artist Sarah Conti, the nature of existence is as much a subject as the avians she sculpts. Existing in delicate balance within their increasingly imperiled habitats, she says, “[Birds] can’t evolve at the rate we are changing the world.”

Surrounded by family members who were avid birders, the artist traces her interest in the feathered creatures to childhood. The more she learned, the more she admired how birds have captured humankind’s imagination. Later on while enrolled at the University of Montana in Missoula, the onset of the pandemic made the school’s studio spaces inaccessible, prompting her to be outdoors more often. She says, “All the time I used to spend in the studio transitioned into time spent in wetlands and woods looking for birds. I had the time and access to see many new species, and it ignited so much interest and wonder in me.”

 

“(Im)Migration.” Photo by Rio Chantel

In 2020, Conti began to think about more about the human impact on the environment, as well as political and social issues, finding that the ubiquity of birds—and our endless fascination with the avian world—presented an apt way to express critical concerns. She hones in on the relationship between beauty and discomfort, highlighting dualities of presence and absence or the seen and unseen. For example, “Lost History of Women” illustrates how ornithological study has generally focused on males, paralleling the way women have been omitted from human record.

Conti shapes distinctive birds from clay, often making dozens at a time for large-scale installations. For “(Im)Migration,” she made 75 pieces in about 75 days, which were then given a surface treatment before being fired in the kiln. While each individual component can stand on its own as an independent work, Conti says, “I am very interested in making installation sculpture as a way to tell a larger story, to talk about the massiveness of these issues, and to make the viewer feel enveloped in the work. I want viewers to think about how it relates to their presence and their role in these issues.”

Audubon recently commissioned a piece that will be featured soon in the quarterly’s ongoing series called The Aviary, and next March, Conti will be a part of Radius Gallery’s 9th Annual Ceramics Invitational. Find more on her website and Instagram.

 

Detail of “(Im)Migration.” Photo by Rio Chantel

Black-necked Stilt, detail of “(Im)Migration.” Photo by Rio Chantel

“A(n Extinction) Fable for Tomorrow”

Detail of “A(n Extinction) Fable for Tomorrow”

Detail of “A(n Extinction) Fable for Tomorrow”

Two details of “A(n Extinction) Fable for Tomorrow.” Left: Common Nighthawk and extinct Eskimo Curlew. Right: Extinct Carolina Parakeets

“Lost History of Women”

Ring-necked Pheasant, detail of “Lost History of Women”

Red-naped Sapsucker, detail of “Lost History of Women”

Redhead Duck, detail of “Lost History of Women”

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article Sarah Conti’s Expressive Ceramic Birds Migrate Through Social and Environmental Issues appeared first on Colossal.

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In Surreal Collages Julie Liger-Belair Explores Home Interiority and the Terrain of Dreams

“The Nowhere Plan.” All images © Julia Liger-Belair, shared with permission

“The house can be a symbol of comfort and refuge from the harsh world. A house, in other words, can be a reflection of everything we hold dear,” says Toronto-based artist Julie Liger-Belair, whose mixed-media collages often center on depictions of home. “But a house can also be a place of fear, oppression, and powerlessness,” she adds. “I’m really obsessed by this duality.”

Liger-Belair augments found photographs, historical portraits, botanicals, and patterned papers with a range of drawing media. During the pandemic, when quarantines enforced boundaries between interior spaces and the outside world, she started to consider what it means to do or show something “on the inside.” This led to incorporating motifs related to living spaces and enigmatic dwellers. Bodies merge with architecture, botanicals bloom from torsos and limbs, and otherworldly landscapes extend into the distance.

 

“Lost with the Dolls”

Drawing on an interest in dreams and surreal worlds, Liger-Belair taps into the realm of the unfamiliar. Each composition is founded on a sense of wonder, examining what we perceive as reality or fiction. She says:

I think that humans have always been drawn to the realm of the implausible, since it’s such a common theme in books, films, and artwork from many different cultures and times in history. I’d even argue that we can understand science as an attempt to discover or glimpse the implausible hidden or embedded in the real. I’m thinking here of microscopic views of cells or even photographs of distant stars. These strange worlds are tangible and are not just to be found in dreams.

Liger-Belair gravitates toward the accessibility of collage and the endless potential to imagine, arrange, and recontextualize new narratives. She often works in series, allowing themes to emerge intuitively. “While the overall storyline may not be totally obvious in any one piece, it’s important to understand that with every work, I’m telling a story to myself,” she says. “In some sense, unfolding that narrative is just as important for me—and perhaps more gratifying—than finishing individual pieces.”

Find more on the artist’s website and Instagram.

 

“Blue Vase”

“Headdress 2”

“When Two Mountains Meet”

“I Am Winter”

“Headdress 4”

“Sometimes to the Left”

“Beasts of Burden”

“Headdress 3” 

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article In Surreal Collages, Julie Liger-Belair Explores Home, Interiority, and the Terrain of Dreams appeared first on Colossal.

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