Saturday, October 26, 2013

A review of my recent exhibition by John Goodrich

Elizabeth Bisbing & Mariángeles Soto-Díaz, Sept 3-28, 2013



Elizabeth Bisbing
Knapweed 
2012
gouach, collaged paper
14 x 11 in


Mariangeles Soto-Diaz
Color Felt Translation 6
2013
silkscreen, acrylic and gouache on wood
18 x 24 in




Connected, and Still Personal

These days we’re nothing if not connected. And so is our art; one of the most salient features of contemporary art is the drive for inclusiveness—for the dismantling of the last barriers between art object and viewer, using new technologies, novel mixtures of media, and site-specific installations.
 

When reduced to a recipe, however, the inclusiveness can actually work to exclude the kind of complex and intimate expression we expect of more traditional art. Two solo installations at Soho20, however, succeed at engaging the viewer personally even as they exploit new trends and technologies.
 

Venezuelan native Mariángeles Soto-Díaz turns to new media to analyze personal perceptions. A CalArts alumna, she has put her MA in Aesthetics and Politics to practical use, building through the social media a database of individual responses to her query: what color represents your current status? The string of replies (many in Spanish) are printed in a paragraph on one wall, and reappear in fragmentary form in the backgrounds of small wood panels featuring triangles painted in the relevant colors. The panels in turn are connected by zigzagging lines of small, similarly colored felt triangles that connect gallery walls and floor. The effect is more arresting conceptually than pictorially—considered independently, the panels are closer in spirit to the decorativeness of Vasarely than the poetry of Klee—but the artist’s will to engage vitalizes the installation, as does her layering of the paradoxes of high-tech culture: the global extraction of very individual predilections, and their translation from the optical to the verbal and back.
 

Elizabeth Bisbing’s collages and animations explore perceptions of nature in more personal fashion. A series of a dozen collages presents an intriguingly updated version of old-fashioned botanical studies. Delicately cut-out bits of colored paper, layered with the blunt physicality of collage, convey the exuberance of individual flowering plants – thistle, knapweed, tansy, and others—down to tiny veins and stamens; subtle shifts of color evoke the luminous turnings of petals from light to shade. Another series adds a mixture of the innocent and the sinister, combining the flower motif with images of the artist’s childhood alter ego (“Little Betty Jane”) and her encounter with giant insects and other monsters. A natural outgrowth of her collages, two of the artist’s stop-action animations are also on view. The storylines of these videos, both depicting a little girl emerging from and finally subsumed by nature, may not be groundbreaking, but they possess a poignant intimacy of description and technique. For good measure, the installation includes a site-specific work: a collage of a hibiscus plant with four small Betty Janes (constructed originally for the animation “The Swamp”), clambering up one of the gallery’s walls.

Mariángeles Soto-Díaz and Elizabeth Bisbing at Soho20 Chelsea, Sept. 3-28, 547 West 27th Street, www.soho20gallery.com


Soho20 Chelsea
547 West 27th Street
www.soho20gallery.com    

This review is published on 
City Arts website: 

And John Goodrich's website - "On View At" 
http://www.onviewat.com/index.html                        


Thursday, September 19, 2013

Current Exhibition


Elizabeth Bisbing
More life than still 
September 3 – September 28, 2013




You can view The Swamp and Metamorphosis from this exhibition at: https://vimeo.com/user7571015/videos

547 W. 27th Street, Suite 301
New York, NY 10001
(212) 367-8994
(212) 367-8984 fax
Tues. – Sat. 12 – 6PM




The Swamp from Elizabeth Bisbing on Vimeo.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Upcoming Exhibition




It’s About You and Me:
Exhibition to Explore Autobiographic Traces,
Hidden Boundaries, the Interconnections Between Identity and Self

NEW YORK – ABC No Rio is pleased to present It’s About You and Me, curated by Monica
Hardmeier. The exhibition features four artists whose work utilizes their own bodies as material and
theme. Through video, photography, performance, collage, and other media, Elizabeth Bisbing,
Theresa Byrnes, Martine Fougeron, and Ann Hirsch examine contemporary social structures,
mechanisms of representation, and identity and background.

The exhibition opens FRIDAY APRIL 19 and runs through MAY 9.
The opening event on April 19 will include at 8:00pm a performance of CLOTHED, a new work by
Theresa Byrnes. Ms. Byrnes describes the piece, “CLOTHED explores the relationship between
painting and photography, action and documentation. Is the artist’s work the subject or the artist person
the subject? Or do they reveal each other? In CLOTHED that contemplation is the subject.”

On Sunday April 28 at 4:00pm there will be a public presentation at which the curator and artists
will discuss the show.

It’s About You and Me is part of ABC No Rio’s “in Exile” programming, and is the first of two
exhibitions to be held at Bullet Space in the spring of 2013.

It’s About You and Me
April 19 – May 9, 2013
Opening: Friday April 19 at 7:00pm
Viewing Hours: Sundays 2:00 — 4:00pm
Wed & Thrs 5:00 —7:00pm
ABC No Rio in Exile at BULLET SPACE
292 East 3rd Steet
(bet. Aves C & D)
212.254.3697
ABC No Rio is a center for art and activism, known internationally as a venue for oppositional culture. ABC No Rio was founded in 1980 by artists committed to political and social engagement and retains these values to the present.
It’s About You and Me funded in part with support from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and the New York State Council on the Arts.
It’s About

Friday, February 8, 2013

New Photos of Wildflowers

Here are some of the images of the wildflowers.  You can see that these photos are much better than my scans.








Saturday, October 20, 2012

Drawing idea

I just had an idea to draw on mylar - placing the mylar over a collage.  


Thursday, June 28, 2012

Wildflower studies

 I have been up at the Catskills renting a house with Richard and some friends.  These are some of the studies I have begun of the local wildflowers.  They are in an 11 x 14 inch sketchbook.  I thought that would be best - for speed and safety.  

It is not an easy thing to do - make a painted paper collage of a flower.  The flower is much more life than still.  It may be blooming or the petals could be falling off.  Some flowers open only in the afternoons - other for just one day.  They really are constantly moving - if only to get more sunshine.  

A lucky thing happened in that the woman living a couple of houses by is a master gardener.  She has been helping me with my identifications.  I had my wild basil misidentified as motherwort.  

There are about 23 of these pages thus far.  I do not consider them complete or resolved - finished.  But, I am enjoying doing them.

Wild Basil


Field Daisies

 Bladder Campion
 Dame Rocket
Self Heal
Wild Geraniums

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Work in Progress

I guess,  my interest in botanicals is partly seasonal.  Here are three in cut paper -  in the method I share with Mrs. Delany.  I don't know what I will do next.  Will they be on black paper?  Will there be other collaged elements?