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THE UNLIMITED Magazine is a theme-based iPad quarterly that examines contemporary culture through a techie lens. Designed with features that encourage readers to swipe, push, tilt, listen, watch, and participate in,The UNLIMITED is a complete interactive media source. We bring forward the latest revolutionary inventions from across the globe, as well as the brilliant people behind them. We provide the platform for you to create your own individualized reading/viewing experience. 

Each issue of THE UNLIMITED comes with a carefully chosen topic, which we make sure to dissect to pieces. From wearable tech and cutting-edge artists, to unusual cultural events, and novelties in the music field, THE UNLIMITED is an internationally available format that is innovative in nature and timeless in essence.

Artist Profile

Filtering by Tag: artist profile

Walter Robinson

The Unlimited Magazine

Walter Robinson is a New York based artist who has been both a painter and art critic for over 30 years.

What do you feel about art today? What is different today?

Everything is bigger. The art world as a whole suffers from a kind of malaise that to me does not make any sense. It is too commercial, there is too much money, the auctions are bad, there are too many artists, and it is too difficult for them to earn a living. There are all kinds of problems. Museums are controlled by collectors, and curators are compromised. Every year something happens. The art world was always like that, and it is like that more than ever. Every couple of months there is something new for everybody to get excited about. The art world runs on complaints. Nothing but fusses that keep us all going. As Raphael Rubinstein once said, ‘But that’s just chatter.’ The real interesting thing I suppose is the art itself and the aesthetics. I think now were in something that Donald Kuspit would call the modernist end game. For ten or thirty or a hundred years we have been going around and around in circles, same thing. The end game in chess is when there are hardly any pieces left and they make the same moves over and over. It is a very rich metaphor for what is happening now.

Do you think going back these moves were different in the 60s, 70s, 80s when everything was very new and nobody was comparing it to the past, there was no referencing the past so each move meant something?

I remember in the 1970s the idea of doing a painting that overtly referred to another artist seemed taboo. You would not want to do a splatter painting because it would look like Jackson Pollack. You just would not do it. Today it actually seems more interesting to do a splatter painting because it refers to Jackson Pollack. I do not know whether that is me maturing or if it is some material change in the art business. You do know that in the 80s of course there was a bit of a paradigm shift in that it was the invention of post-modernism and all this kind of reference and replaying.

How do you perceive instagram today?

I am so digitized today. I am so about mobile, I have my iPhone and I use it all the time. The way instagram has developed in the last 6 months or a year as a much more focused pictorial community than Facebook, you have long conversations and debates on Facebook, and I do not see that happening so much on instagram. Instagram is more about showing, sort of a way of being there.

Are you inspired by that?

I am a painter, I am old fashioned. Painting is still sort of the mainstream in a way. Even though there are all these new forms. Even in painting you can have a world that is mysterious, esoteric, nomic that the person who looks at it feels like it is too much for them. That is an art critics reaction, what is that I want to find out what it is, I want to explain it. In Freudian terms it is very Oedipal. It is like I have this distance memory of peeking into the crack of the door into my parents bedroom and it was dark and something strange was happening and I did not know what. So the question is do you keep looking or do you run away? That is some kind of art, like what is that? Other kinds of art do not have that effect, I do not think say Jeff Koons quite has the same effect now. A giant, shiny, statue of a balloon dog does not make you wonder what it is or why it is, you wonder how the hell he made it. That is another thing, the secret of fabrication. That is a function. Things I make are pretty straight forward. There is no mystery about a painting of a donut, or a pair of shoes, or people embracing.

The installation in Miami was different than most because you did not just show a few works you showed a whole wall and the experience was larger than each work separately. So what do you have to say about the installation and then when did you start with your still lifes and how did they evolve?

It is interesting the show in Miami, because as an artist you often want to show everything you have done. You want people to see everything, to see the entire range. Often the advice you will get from dealers and collectors is that it is too confusing to do that. That you need to narrow it down and just present a few things and that way it is clearer to the viewer. The thing about the still lifes is all my work is about desire in some way. It is like I can not paint a picture unless my libido is somehow engaged. Either in a sublimated or overt form. After thirty years that rule has gotten kind of loose. The still lifes are of things that provoke some kind of desire. Sometimes they are still lifes that I set up myself, and sometimes I just copy the image off of the package. If it is a still life of a pharmaceutical product, or something that has already been designed by a corporation I like that too because it targets specifically a corporation as a potential buyer, at least it did back when corporations had collections. One of my dealers sold a giant painting of a bottle of Johnson & Johnson baby oil to Johnson & Johnson for their collection. The thing is these products, these still lifes have been specifically designed for their appeal, for their visual appeal, to make people want them and make people respond to them. That is not so different from Cézanne’s apples, obviously apples somehow have an innate appeal. The human appetite is bound to the apple that grows on the tree just like human appetites are bound in a system of exchange to all these commodities.

I first showed the still lifes a couple years ago and I have to give credit to the art dealers at Dorian Grey Gallery because they are the ones who came up with the title for the show which was 'Indulgences'. Indulgences is the name of a Hershey branding campaign for some chocolates, but more interestingly it also has something to do with the Catholic Church and sin and forgiveness for sin. It was part of the schism between the Catholics and the Protestants this issue of indulgences and selling indulgences. When Dunkin Donuts offers you a donut and a coffee they are forgiving you for your appetites. They are saying this is one time when you can break your diet when you can indulge yourself. It is quasi religious, it is the religion of consumer capitalism, which is a happy place. Consumer capitalism is a very happy place, and I am a very happy person. If you look at the paintings from the clothing catalogs, from Macy’s and Lands’ End, everybody is very happy. They are all smiling at you. They are showing you their new outfits. They are selling you, and they are selling you their vision of the happy life. I am totally amused by that.

Then going to the porn selfie-inspired work?

The porn selfies are actually advertisements for massage therapists. When I first started doing them it was right at the big dawn of awareness of selfies. Once something becomes popular the question is do you turn away from it because it is too popular or do you plunge into it because it is so popular? What I liked about this imagery was that it seemed to be homemade. It was a whole language that had developed outside of Madison Avenue or the fine arts. They are advertising themselves, they are trying to sell you on their sexuality. I like all those things that have that exchange with the viewer. Often the picture is holding the viewer because of the way they are holding the camera. I like that sense of dynamic exchange. I thought with these pictures that they are fugitive because they exist on the internet, they are taken from craigslist the adult services section and I thought they would disappear if I did not capture them. That is probably not true they probably do not disappear in fact it seems to be spreading more and more this imagery. You can get Miley Cyrus in those poses, you can get everybody in those poses, but I still like it for its strangeness.

Where do you find your inspiration now, when a lot of people are finding inspiration now in the places you found it the past thirty years?

For someone like me the question is what is your subject? What are you going to paint? It is sort of selfish and simple. For the art world as a whole sometimes it seems this year that in a way we reached a threshold. Sometimes I think that the Jeff Koons show represented an end point. The Koons show aligned the avant-garde and consumer culture as identical. The first gallery the big posters that say, ‘New, New’ and they are selling I do not know what, cigarettes or something. That is what we are into, new new. It is in perfect alignment. I think it will just keep going on like a dog chasing its tail. It is like the end game it will go on forever.

Being an art critic and an artist, how do you manage both of them when you are creating your own art?

Well when I was younger I guess I was little ADD and having only a job, and art magazine, and a studio practice was not enough I wanted to do more. Now that I am a little older I find I am less interested in writing art criticism. I am more interested in just working in the studio because it is more fun. The thing that keeps pulling me back is that I have things I want to say. The problem is now that there are so many people with things to say, and there are so many people saying them. The modern opens its new painting show and there are five major reviews out within the week, and a dozen smaller pieces. Do I really want to get in there and compete for attention and for saying the same thing? I feel like one of the qualities that exists today in the facebook era, is that everybody knows everything already. Not only does everyone know everything already, they know what everyone else thinks and knows already. What do you need a critic to write for? You could say criticism is dead, its finished, caput. You have instagram now, and facebook.

Walter's Website

Eric Helvie

The Unlimited Magazine

Artist Eric Helvie uses snuggies as his canvas, but his work is far from being warm and cozy.  inspired by millions of VISUAL references he creates a LANGUAGE that is unique and VIBRANT, he gave us a look into his latest work. 

The Unlimited - What is the story in your work?

Eric Helvie - An addiction to looking is where it begins. A need to constantly be flipping through imagery, whether its is film, art history, other people’s art. A lot of my work comes from this addiction or this need that I can not control, and the individual works are a distillation of this process. A pure sort of refined comment on thousands and thousands of images.

TU - How do you refer to the snuggie in reference to your art?

eric3.jpg

EH - When I first came across the snuggie I thought this is a completely absurd object and it has no meaning and no cultural value. Then as I continued to look at snuggies for whatever reason I realized that there was all of these layers that I was projecting onto them from my own addiction to looking or seeing. I felt that the snuggies for whatever reason had this quality of being both humorous but also somewhat decadent and even violent in some aspects. If you consider the military endeavors that allowed people to live in the amount of comfort to give them a blanket with sleeves. All of these things sort of coming together, all these layers, make the snuggie for me a perfect example of the distillation of art history and imagery and even politics in some cases.

"I think it is a fascination because of my personal aversion to emotion in the work, and even now as I am saying emotion in the work I cringe."

TU - How do you treat emotion when it comes to your art?

EH - My art has never been focused on emotion, or emotion has never been important to my art. In fact it has been something that I have avoided. I have a distaste for this idea that the artist has to deal with his deep inner psyche through his work, its bullshit and I do not give a fuck about it. I think I view art as work and the best art as just being incredible acts of creating.

TU - And there has never been a time when your emotion crossed into your work?

EH - I need my work, but need is not an emotion. It comes to individual pieces I will say yes I love this painting, but it is more because I have a hard time imagining seeing it leave the studio. Beyond that, when it comes to my painting the thing that tends to be the most powerful presence in the studio is art history and visual references in general.

Kirsten Kay Thoen

The Unlimited Magazine

Artist Kirsten Kay Thoen talks to us about spiritual art, mediation and the inspiration behind her light sculpture. 

Arboreal Prism
2013
Duratrans, plexiglass, brass, LED, electronic components
24 x 24 x 32"

THE UNLIMITED - What is your process and what helps you get into your zone?

Kirsten Kay Thoen - Meditation is a part of my process, daily grounding in this urban complex of New York City is major. It is a way to also try to tap back into these experiences I have had in nature, so that's huge. It is really just sitting with the imagery for a length of time. I have these entire archives so certain images will speak to me and they will start calling forth geometry that I begin seeing. It is an abstract process these forms are not in any way literal but they are more energetic speaking. I begin drawing in my 3D modeling prototypes.

TU - What is your biggest ambitions? How big would you go with your work?

KKT - I have a proposal that I am writing that is definitely very ambitious to get funding for. It is incorporating physical computing to make it interactive. I am seeing this piece that will incorporate solar panels to energize the actual movement of the work. There is new technology that has created translucent solar paneling. I want to try to use it with motors and microcontrollers  to almost unravel over time a cocoon like shape that is very large scale, maybe 10 or 12ft. Then inside as it unravels over a period of time there is a gem like light-structure that has also been energized by the solar panels that is revealed.


 

TU - Whats are challenges, on a day-to-day basis?

Ice Fractal, #1
2014
C-print on Duraflex & plexiglass
21 x 21 x 2.5"

KKT -My ideas are very expansive and they often involve a high level of production and collaboration with fabricators. I have been building that network, but a lot of it is also funding the concepts.  A huge challenge along the way has been that I come from a photography background, not a sculpture background, so I am very self-trained at this point. I have self taught myself 3D modeling and CAD (Computer-aided design).

TU - What is light for you besides just an energy and element in your work?

KKT - I think it is bonds the work with its  energy and the subtle life-like illusion that it creates. I do think it has this functionality to it,  in the way it asserts a little bit more within the space. It has this aura of light around it, this little sort of glow helps to assist in that world that I am creating. I also really like how light plays on perception on all levels like perception of photography, and perception of viewing the work.

TU - How do you feel about digital and instagram? Do you find it draining or inspiring?

KKT - That is actually a part of my work, the ubiquity of imagery in the digital era. I am asserting a physicality in that virtual space,  a physical experience of this media.

In a way I am creating the potential of someone to linger longer with the work. The movement across the wall of 2D imagery in a gallery, the speed of that absorption, is also something I am trying to divert.

 

Instagram @kirs_thoen    /       http://kirstenkaythoen.com

Kirsten works will be a part of "Topography" Group Show at Gallery Nine5, Soho, NYC (Opening reception: Saturday, January 17th, 6-8pm)

Tom Smith

The Unlimited Magazine

Tom Smith is not a digital artist. In his most recent show “Heavenly Bodies” the New York City based artist featured acrylic paintings inspired by the aesthetic of digital art. We sat down with the artist the hear more about his technique and his new video project "Tamala and the Volcano". 

 

THE UNLIMITED - Your work reminds me of digital art but it is not, describe your technique?

Tom Smith - I like for my work to go in and out of those two illusions.

For a few years I was doing collages  on paper that are cut into tiny strips and then glued together, so there is an illusion of it looking like a digital filter.  That was the entry point for me into painting and after doing that process, I took on the challenge of finalizing a painting without slicing it and combining it.

Last January while working in Brazil I started using this illusion of putting two different colors on a paint brush and creating these brush strokes that sort of mimic digital output or a photoshop filter, or pixels even. A lot of the paintings in the show are using that technique, which kind of echoes the process before of a painting that looks like it is digitally created but then when you see it in person you see all of the hand techniques to create the picture.

TU- What inspires you?

TS- I am not necessarily inspired by digital culture in any way. It is not so in the foreground of what I am planning for each painting. I think about it a lot as like building an environment that could be explored in space or in time.

"The light that is in each painting is specifically supposed to remind me of a certain time of day."

Your color palette is vivid and computer like which only adds to the digitized illusion, care to elaborate ? 

I am bit of an idealist, with color especially. 80% of the work that goes into my paintings is color studies. The colors are meant to inspire a certain type of reaction in the viewer as in other forms of entertainment. The color palette could come from a Disney or anime movie, more vibrant than true life but also referencing reality.

Can you tell us about your new piece?

I create these sci-fi surrealist videos that circle around idealism. In this case the idealistic vision of a woman or of a hero. In the video that I am working on now my character Tamala steps into the role of a volcano sacrifice. I shot the video in Iceland and under water on Fire Island. I also worked on a series of stop-motion animations that will be integrated into the piece. The final shoot will happen in New York using a green screen and the video will be released this year. 

Flavie Audi - Supernova

The Unlimited Magazine

She is a French - Lebanese, London based artist who focuses on capturing light and sensuality in a static object. This is an artist profile of one of the most interesting and promising artist today.

What is the key moment you got into glass?

During my last year at the architectural association I was making models in glass and developed my thesis on structural glass. Working by hand freed me from rational, linguistic and digital expressions. I was not only fascinated by the sculptural potential of glass but also by its power to create delicacy, subtlety and mystery, through the fluctuation of light. Since that moment I wanted to find out more about glass. 

"Glass helps me to define an aesthetic of buoyancy, transparency, invisibility, ambiguity and sensuality.

Can you describe the process you go through to create work?

 It starts with a strong intuition about an idea. I try to find my own language in a combination of different disciplines. I work with various makers and craftsmen to execute and materialize my ideas. I embrace simplicity and directness as a positive practice. Reduction and Distillation down to the essentials are fundamental in order to reconstruct, challenge and rebelliously twist conventional rules. By employing a more intimate relationship with the materials, an expression of sensuality and life can emerge. I look for hidden potentials, accidents and discoveries in materials to reveal aesthetic and technical qualities. I spend a lot of time experimenting with materials. Once I find a moment of beauty that intrigues me I investigate deeper, finding ways to celebrate it. My interests lie in creating experiences of mystery with spatial and visual encounters that invite contemplation and meditation. A kind of seeing; a  release. I always think of the spatial dimension and impact of the work in space. 

 Where do you find your inspiration?

It is very different for each project. An idea can be very sudden, appearing from an unconscious link in the mind, or it can happen very slowly and gradually. It is about listening attentively to my intuition, and hearing when ideas arrive. Sometimes I find inspiration in kinetic properties, particularly fluidity and energy. On other occasions inspiration comes from a sense of comfort, excitement or interest that I feel during an encounter or while drawing. The acts of drawing and making are my main inspirational refuge. I find my creative energy in a constant ebb and flow, between designing and making. Most of the times it comes from a feeling of nothingness and clarity.

 

We know you describe your artwork as sensual, would you describe your architectural designs the same way?

There is no disconnection between my architectural, design and art thinking. This desire for sensuality came from a frustration towards minimal, dry, sterile architectural and design environment nowadays. I am irritated by the abuse of the generic minimal Zen aesthetic. I don’t feel that buildings are revealing life and humanity. I think that it would be interesting to combine a sense of simplicity, and more precisely clarity, together with life and sensuality. I try to reach sensuality with color and shapes that are formless and in constant state of flux suggesting indeterminacy and limitlessness. 

"My main driving force in the process is the search for the sublime."

The art of glass making is very old, how do you think you are bringing it into the modern age? Do you consider yourself to be an old school artist when it comes to the digital age and social media?

Originality occurs when you add and combine different disciplines. I have never considered myself to be an ‘old school’ Artist, as I am not attached to only working with ancestral techniques. At the moment I am using analogue processes, but I always aim to challenge and rebelliously twist the conventions of any process. The aesthetic of my work is not classic in a traditional sense. The shapes, the senses of fleetingness and the colors have a certain similitude to a digital aesthetic. The cosmic visual appearance, the tactility of the work and the serendipitous making processes bring it to the modern age. I don’t approach glassmaking with a specific design to be executed but with technical challenges that break the conventional making process.

Glass blowing would generally be considered a masculine craft, by being one of the few women in the field do you feel you are changing that stereotype?

 I am not a glassblower or a craftsman. I put in place the different stages of evolution, bringing together the craftsmen similar to choreography or orchestration.

 

http://www.flavieaudi.com

Peter Tunney

The Unlimited Magazine

This is a collaboration project with The UNLIMITED Magazine, The Tribeca Grand Hotel, and style curator Natalie Kates. These three interactive pieces take you through Peter Tunney's installation within the hotel. The audio is of Peter discussing the works as he walked through the exhibition, and his interview was done in his Tribeca studio.

Artist Profile with Jenna Gribbon

The Unlimited Magazine

Jenna Gribbon's paintings will make you want to talk.

The Unlimited talked to Jenna about her "Conversation" Portrait series.

This particular series of people having conversations is meant to capture a very specific moment in time when someone is expressing something or listening intently. I seem to always return to painting people, and I guess it's because there's nothing more interesting to me than the people of a given time, their presence, and their relationship to their world. It's fascinating how a good portrait can approximate something of that presence, and materialize it into something permanent. I think that the people I know are pretty interesting and worth documenting, and that they are at their most beautiful and themselves when they're deeply engaged. I love being in a room with people enlivened by a good conversation. There isn't really anything better. These paintings create something of permanence out of those moments.

Do you paint from life or photos?

I don’t paint the figures from life. It's important that they come from a photo because only a photo can sort of freeze time that way, capture that one specific moment. Otherwise the scene would have to be set up, and that's not what I'm interested in for this work. However the backgrounds are more fantastical and are often painted from life, or completely made up. Whatever is happening around the figure is meant to be a kind of amalgamated version of their interior world and mine, with cues taken from the conversations. 

In what way do you give each painting its own character?

I had a goal in this series to paint every single one in a different way, and even within each painting to paint in a few different ways. I do a lot of...a kind of channeling of other artists that I like. It's kind of fun to feel like a sort of medium for all of these people in painting history, and think, Oh, I’m going to paint this part as if this person were painting it and then I’m going to be this person when I paint this part. Of course you are never really that person, and then that's where you find yourself. I think it keeps it fresh in a way because I don't get stuck in this rote delivery of brush strokes. Then the paintings become not only about the conversation the subject is having, but my own conversation with myself about paint. 

 

"I think in order to really paint someone well you have to fall in love with him or her a little bit. It's an act of devotion to paint someone's face. Even in the case of a commission, in order to do it well, I have to develop a sort of emotional attachment to the subject."

What is The Oracle Club?

My boyfriend and I started it three years ago. It is a work space for artists and writers predominantly.  We also wanted a place where creative people could go and sit and have a quiet evening and nice conversation, (Which goes back to my interest in good conversation), but be able to sit down and talk to someone and play some records and maybe have a bottle of wine or a cup of coffee without feeling like you’re in some kind of scene-situation or there's music blasting. It doesn’t have to be dinner. It can be people just sitting around. Sometimes people have parties here, and sometimes we have readings, collage class, or concerts, but the day to day is really just a lot of good work happening.

Anyone interested in membership can contact us through our website, and send us an email to tell us who they are and about their interests.

Interview & Photography by Karin Bar 

 

jennagribbon.com

The Oracle Club, 10-41 47th Avenue, Long Island City, NY; 917-519-2594;

go to theoracleclub.com.