At left, 2015 photograph of CHILD prior to conservation treatment. At right, CHILD after treatment in January 2016. All images courtesy of MoMA, New York

Bruce Connor’s sculpture, CHILD, done in 1960 in response to the execution of Caryl Chessman, has been quietly falling apart for 50 years. It has long been thought to be outside of restoration abilities. It has now been restored, and is on exhibit. The full story of the restoration is fascinating, and I’m glad to see this disturbing and thought provoking piece back in the public eye.

Since its acquisition nearly half a century ago, the exhibition Bruce Conner: It’s All True marks the first time CHILD has ever been exhibited at MoMA. Details of the restoration are here.

Via The Creators Project.

Oh, this remarkable artist creates works to gasp at, to get lost in, and for worlds to start spinning and telling stories in your imagination.

© Alfred Basha. All rights reserved.

© Alfred Basha. All rights reserved.

© Alfred Basha. All rights reserved.

© Alfred Basha. All rights reserved.

Visit the wonderful worlds of Alfred Basha.

Fine Art Club is bringing the Gallery experience to the internet. Right now, they are featuring Rachel Libeskind.

The Ghosts of un-resolve weigh like heavy fog upon the quiet roads of the American landscape.

We can all feel it, the haunting of our countrysides, the blessed alleyways of our cities, the defunct industrial structures that echo with the vibrations of a parallel present, which really is the past.

It Was A Common Night is a cross section of this moment. It is a visual effort to articulate the shared nostalgia for something that never was, and the collective repression of what actually was. The past and future converge at a vanishing point that is impossible to see in the present. America evades us, like a cowboy in the night.

From The Creators Project:

It Was a Common Night, Rachel Libeskind’s ongoing exhibition at Fine Art Club, consists of a series of oil on paper works depicting scenes of an older America at night. Shadowy, horse-mounted figures, ominously lit houses, and hovering crows populate the works along with a stark title and date at the bottom, providing each work with a sense of formality and truthfulness that is ultimately farcical; these are fictional scenes, as interpreted by Libeskind.

“I find there is a pervasive myth about the ‘American Night’—this landscape where the pilgrims and the pioneers manifested their destiny, sleeping under nights, defeating the native people,” Libeskind tells The Creators Project. “This landscape has been sold to us many times, in childhood books, in spaghetti Westerns; the sweet cool air of the dark American night soothes us to sleep with a promise of tomorrow in which all our dreams await us.”

Yet Libeskind does not wish to promote this myth with her own form of fiction. Instead, she confronts a wrongful legacy head on: “To me, this really is a myth, a well constructed one—the American Night is deeply haunted. The American Night is where black men are brutally tortured and lynched, the American Night is where conscious or unconscious women are raped and left for dead,” elaborates Libeskind. “The dates and titles of the works in It was a Common Night are there to evoke historical moments—from the Revolutionary War, to the Civil War, through the terror of the Jim Crow era. Those dates are there to remind us that the American Night has been haunted since it was created.”

About Fine Art Club:

The platform operates in an artist-to-artist format, meaning that the previously featured artist decides whom Fine Art Club will show next. Previous exhibitions, along with accompanying studio visits and 20-question segments with the artist, remain archived on the platform for everlasting viewing, a facet that would be impossible to replicate in a traditional galley.

Artists the world over have been (rightfully) up in arms since last month’s unfortunate Brexit decision, marking the UK’s decisive return to retrogressive and xenophobic politicking. While England remains turbulent and distressed, artist and hoverboarding painter Ed Nash has been equally affected, despite his somewhat removed and unusual position.

Born and raised in England but currently based out of Nashville, the artist’s national identity was already a complicated one. His homeland’s departure from the EU has only managed to further sever his national identity. “Living in the US, I am detached from the decision making process and to a large extent detached from the decision making process and to a large extent detached from the realities of its effect, so it is perhaps surprising how emotionally affected I was,” Nash explains to The Creators Project.

As a response to Brexit, Nash has created MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY, an enormous eight-by-four-foot flag of the UK. Its rugged, craggy surface is meant to resemble the texture of volcanic rock, a metaphor for the UK’s recent political happenings.

The flag itself is made of a combination of UV pigment, paint, glue, and real lava rock, a tricky fusion that Nash tells us required much experimentation to properly resemble lava and still look like the UK flag from a distance. MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY is also equipped with remotely controlled LEDs in the white parts of the flag, which resemble a sort of S.O.S. distress beacon when activated. Now that the UK is decidedly on its own, who will come to its aid in time of crisis?

View more of Ed Nash’s paintings and sculptures here.

Via The Creators Project. This work is one I wish I could see in person.