Machines have a history of generating identity formations with significant social implications. Buffalo is known as the “City of Light” because the electricity produced at Niagara Falls at the end of the 19th century made it possible to introduce street lamps, which stimulated its industrial boom. The illuminated urban environment transformed social interactions. Everywhere, electricity produced new work forces and identity formations—including stereotypical assumptions about aptitude and engagement. Recognizing this is crucial to understanding the work presented in Difference Machines:…Read More
By Grant Klarich Johnson In Amanda Valdez’s First Might, passages of quilting, oil painting, and embroidery floss combine to create canvases in which craft and art’s textures synthetically blend. This pastiche mode arrives in the highly tactile surfaces of large works like my sister (2018), featuring pinwheel-patterned, quilted borders that frame an image of a monumental vase rendered out of luscious swaths of Kelly green and emerald embroidery floss, balanced beside blocks of solid slate grey paint. In Lover’s Link…Read More
Read on Brooklyn Rail. RUSSELL TYLER: Radiant Fields By Jason Stopa, June 3, 2015 DENNY GALLERY | MAY 3 – JUNE 14, 2015 Russell Tyler’s solo show, Radiant Fields, effectively combines three major painterly characterizations of space: the cinematic, the theatrical, and the digital, with surprising result. A brief look at contemporary abstraction reveals similar, but varied, interests. Painters likeade Guyton and Avery Singer reflect the digital impulse. Both artists, to varying degrees, are dedicated to mimicking image-making software techniques and their capacity to flatten and compress information. The…Read More
