4/11/2006

Gina Magid

18 comments:

Painter said...

Gina Magid
@FEATURE INC 530 W 25TH ST NY NY 10001

zipthwung said...

Is this a joke by way of a dream journal? Nights in white satin?

I feel like I know what shes going for because Ive been there and I've seen a lot of work like this. In art school.

Positive-negative, figure-ground, loose-tight detailed-open - these are some but not all of the painters bag of tricks. Anyone who goes to art class is taught these.
There is nothing stylisticly new in this work, especially in Chelsea.

SO what is unique about this particular painting?

The hypnopompic/hypnogogic state between waking and dreaming? The narrative?

Pretty thin.

Objectness - tell me more. For me luann or birch plywood is old hat. Paint clowns with sand glued to the board with sugar.

Or something.

zipthwung said...

I like the movement-depth though. I allways like space. I love flying dreams.

dubz said...

what kind of paint does she use?

Painter said...

Good Question W.W.

Ocean Dusk
Oil paint, acrylic, pastel, charcoal & collage on Wood Panel
60" x 48"

no-where-man said...

feature is so stylized

fairy butler said...

i enjoy the materials in gina's work. it's very direct. the mix of the decorative/pretty with a kind of forcefulness - unfussiness. Her paintings feel like talismens to me - searching for just the right juncture.

fairy butler said...

beautiful work.

dubz said...

just went to see but the gallery was closed for photography. bummer.

Max said...
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Max said...

I was at the opening and have to say that the paintings work better as a group than on their own, and also (of course) that they look much better in person than in this jpeg.

I found Magid's works to be really interesting to look because the process seemed so oddly formulated when you see them. She has (on her canvases), strange areas of open stitching and an apparently anarchistic method of mixing and layering different materials that serves to naturalize the objects that are made. This may be very self conscious, but it reads effectively, lending a subtle feeling of spiritual struggle to the works - as though they were created via a process of ritual rather than constructive logic.

I was kind of distracted at the opening, so I couldn't get in a good long look, but Gina's overriding theme seemed, at first glance, to be about spirit animals. There was a feeling (as has been noted by other posters) that Gina was struggling to bring these animals out of dream, and leaving traces of their non-temporality along side them. She may be trying to create a painting that can give us that same sense awe that we would feel in the face of an animal like an owl in real life - a feeling that the animal is at once alien and very close to us. Many primitive cultures thought of animals as belonging to the spirit world, and I think that Magid is trying to find a way to connect this feeling to us.

no-where-man said...

i was going to say something snarky having walked thru the show, until i went thru ur blog wod zar xam, and realized i must be on a different page, what is the The concept of the failure of "nature art? are photography, LCD screens and digital printing not emotive medium?

Max said...

well... no-where-man, I'm not saying they (LCD screens and digital printing) are not emotive... but I don't think that they are on the same level as drawing and painting (yet) in terms of accessing certain possibilities of the mind... As for your question on the failure of nature art.. that one I'll need my notes for... ;)

I have to leave "work" now and get on the road to Boston for some R&R, but if you post those questions on my blog I'll def. answer more completely. Or at least try!

zipthwung said...

hey wod I hope you arent suggesting art fashion is going to turn from ironic detatchment and adolescent posturing.

I fear the day when the uncanny sublime becomes the rule again. It was bad enough the last time you know? And the time before that. I've been pulling stakes from the hearts of fashion victims for years...

grunvilde - yeah, art is a lump of putty that fills the gap in the logs between you and the wendigo.


OwwwwooowwwoooOOOOOOO!

Its a fine wine.

operation enduring artist said...

i am interested in the ambiguity of the image...however i feel the choice of groung is somewhat arbitrary and ill considered.

in all of the images i can find it is difficult to get a handle on the paint quality so i will refrain from commenting on that.

again as an image it is somewhat compelling.

oh, the text...feels a bit timid...neither here nor there, if she is using the phrase 'ocean dusk' as the title it need not be in the piece? or it need be there in force.

zipthwung said...

"so uniquely f***ed up that it is unrecognizable."

If its unrecognizeable how come I can name it, hit it into the far court and still blow a kiss to the ball boy?

more talent in my little finger than...

Mountain Man said...

I love them. Stuttering half thoughts layered and colliding. There is a haphazard idealism - an acknowledgement of the failure of coherence while still striving for something beautiful and transcendent. I don't mind the photographic reference - it makes sense within her collage-like juxtapositions of imagery.

Max said...

would it be so wrong to go to the friggin zoo and draw some from life?

I'm tired .. but let me at least try before the next peice goes up...

In trying to capture the modern experience of our relationship with these animals, for most of us, drawing from life would be antithetical. We city folk don't see owls and deers face to face any more. Our experience with them is tempered by cartoons, google searches, album covers, Urban Outfitters and Animal Planet. If Magid is trying to define the space between us and these animals (as I think she is), it seems more appropriate to draw from a source one step removed than to draw from life.