Petah Coyne is an American sculptor and photographer that has been working professionally for over 20 years. She received her Bachelors Degree from Kent State and her Masters as well as an honorary PhD from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Her work can be seen in various permanent collections all over the country, including the Whitney, Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art.
-Sculptures
She is most known for her large-scale sculptural installations, which combine varying materials including hair, silk flowers, ribbons, dead fish, taxidermy animals and most famously a special wax among other materials. They are large in scale and often take on feminine shapes.
The wax is specifically made for Coyne by a chemist and does not melt below 180 degrees. They are built from steel understructures, but Coyne intentionally makes them seem “incredibly delicate and to have that feminine sense of appearing soft and seductive. But as a number of women have shown, we have an internal strength and drive that is hard to fathom.”
The Scottsdale Museum of Art has said of her work: "Coyne belongs to a generation of sculptors—many of them women—who came of age in the late 1980s and forever changed the muscular practice of sculpture with their new interest in nature and a penchant for painstaking craftsmanship, domestic references and psychological metaphor."
Though Coyne’s work is highly feminine, it does not provoke or ask questions concerning social or media issues, but rather issues related to personal associations and childhood memories. This sculpture specifically, relates to her memories of what she thought it would be like to become a woman, stating she thought it beautiful and extravagantly festive like floating on air.
-Photographs
Though she is most famed for her wax sculptural pieces, she was academically trained as a photographer and printmaker.
Her most recent exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art features a career retrospective, including her photography, which largely consists of ghostly images of Buddhist monks and children, which seem to portray a sense of loss and melancholy.
Dan Graham
Dan Graham is an American artist and writer that began his career at 22 as the Director of the John Daniels Gallery in New York City exhibiting the work of Sol LeWitt, Robert Smithson and Donald Judd. He actually curated LeWitts first solo show. After the gallery space closed he wanted to make work himself. The gallery was only open for about six months. He is self-educated, with no post-high school degrees or formal education. He finds importance not just in the physical artwork, but also from a critical point of view and contextualizes his own work within essay format. His work crosses various media and is heavily influenced by social changed from the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam War and Women’s Liberation Movement. His work is highly conceptual.
-Photographs
Much of Graham’s photo works are text-based images that found their venue space in magazines. His most famous body of work “Homes for America” consists of straight on images of New Jersey homes and neighborhoods accompanied by essay. The photographs are technically simple and portray the ordinariness of the subject matter, however with the added context of Graham’s essay, dwells on his eras depersonalized home, which no longer reflects personal tastes, but rather the beginning of the era of the housing development cookie cutter and criticism of mass production. He never says if this is a positive or negative thing, but calls the homes beautiful.
This reminded me of our talks on how our media consumption in today's era has depersonalized the way in which we communicate with one another.
-Film/Performance
Graham also used film and performance to capture his interest in social environments. His most well known performance Performer/Audience/Mirror consists of an audience in a dance studio facing the mirror and Graham while watching as he verbally articulated his own movement and expressions as well as the audiences as they are scrutinized in the mirror.his is meant to encourage the audience to see themselves as individuals and as integral members of their community, the mirror representing a confusion of public and private boundaries.
Perhaps what he it known best for are his “pavilions,” which are made up of steel and glass based sculptural installations play with the viewers perception of space by way of glass/mirror that is both reflective and transparent as well as creating two-ways mirrors and fish-eye effects that play with the viewers optics as they walk around them. He has had them commissioned in institutions all over the world, including Germany, Japan and Berlin. The pavilions are meant to operate as structures that investigate the encounters between people and how we perceive ourselves as depending on ones position or the light, you may see only yourself, or other people.
Kiki Smith
The daughter of minimalist artist Tony Smith, Kiki Smith has become one of the most influential artists of today in her own right. Her work is highly feminist and socio political and explores the themes that address philosophical, legal, social and spiritual aspects of human nature as well as treatment of women and the body. She is in numerous collections worldwide and has been shown in various one-person shows at the Walker Museum, Smithsonian and the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London, among many others.
-Sculpture
While Smith works in varied mediums, she is well known for her sculptures of varying degree of the human form, this was amplified in the early 1990s with the height of AIDs and the death of her sister from the disease. It brought up questions of how the human body functions and can so easily be mutilated. She works primarily in bronze and beeswax but also used other materials such as paper mache and plaster. Her sculptures explore varying subject matter from folklore, art history, science and primarily feminism. Her work challenges of female identity and stereotypes. In this piece, for example she portrays the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, however in Smith’s version she has Red emerging from the wolf, a symbol of over coming his power on her own, not needing a huntsman to save her.
In contrast, she also creates wax sculptures that ask questions about physical abuse. The figures are meant to show the physical fragmentations caused by abuse as well as the psychological ones. In this controversial piece Tail she creates a woman crawling across the floor excreting either feces or intestines. This is meant to represent the pain of abuse that come from inside and eventually escapes.
-Sculpture
While Smith works in varied mediums, she is well known for her sculptures of varying degree of the human form, this was amplified in the early 1990s with the height of AIDs and the death of her sister from the disease. It brought up questions of how the human body functions and can so easily be mutilated. She works primarily in bronze and beeswax but also used other materials such as paper mache and plaster. Her sculptures explore varying subject matter from folklore, art history, science and primarily feminism. Her work challenges of female identity and stereotypes. In this piece, for example she portrays the tale of Little Red Riding Hood, however in Smith’s version she has Red emerging from the wolf, a symbol of over coming his power on her own, not needing a huntsman to save her.
In contrast, she also creates wax sculptures that ask questions about physical abuse. The figures are meant to show the physical fragmentations caused by abuse as well as the psychological ones. In this controversial piece Tail she creates a woman crawling across the floor excreting either feces or intestines. This is meant to represent the pain of abuse that come from inside and eventually escapes.
-Prints
Her other body of work she is highly known for her is her prints. She creates these on very thin papers with that look delicate and feminine. Her drawing style is intentionally sketchy and labored, creating a sense of girlishness. A theme found in much of her work is the relationship between Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. In these series of prints she explores this relationship as them becoming intertwined, and eventually becoming one entity.
Her other body of work she is highly known for her is her prints. She creates these on very thin papers with that look delicate and feminine. Her drawing style is intentionally sketchy and labored, creating a sense of girlishness. A theme found in much of her work is the relationship between Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. In these series of prints she explores this relationship as them becoming intertwined, and eventually becoming one entity.
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