Artist Research

Ryan Trecartin

1. The artist’s background (personal, artistic, and social contexts)

Ryan Trecartin (b.1981, Webster, Texas) is an artist and filmmaker currently based in Los Angeles.  He studied at the Rhode Island School of Design, graduating with a BFA in 2004. Trecartin has since lived and worked in New Orleans, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Miami.  In 2006, the Wall Street Journal included Trecartin in a selection of ten top emerging US artists including Dash Snow, Rosson Crow, Zane Lewis, and Keegan McHargue.  More recently, in 2009, Trecartin was the recipient of the inaugural Jack Wolgin International Competition in the Fine Arts, the world's largest juried individual fine art prize, awarded byTyler School of Art; he received the New Artist of the Year Award at The First Annual Art Awards, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and he was awarded a 2009 Pew Fellowship in the Arts. 

His work is featured in the Saatchi Gallery collection and has appeared in many museum exhibitions including The Generational: Younger Than Jesus at The New Museum in New York, Queer Voice at the ICA in Philadelphia, Between Two Deaths at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, and the 2006 Whitney Biennial, as well as in recent solo exhibitions at The Power Plant in Toronto, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, among others.  He is represented by New Galerie in Paris.

2. The big idea and key concepts (what is the work about?)

Consumerism and a critique of modern culture, internet societies and reality-tv lifestyle

3. Boundaries (Media, subject matter, visual form, techniques)

Trecartin's work is mainly video production with an aspect of theater involved in the display of these video in context.

4. The key artwork(s) (include title, year, medium, and insert links if needed)

K-CoreaINC.K (section a) 2009, video production

5. The artist’s art making practices

·      Knowledge (how does the artist acquire knowledge?)

By dissecting our cultural boundaries and critiquing the way in which they are formed

·      art making problem (how to investigate and express the idea?)

o   Technical strategies (i.e. limit color choices or only use secondary colors)

Crazy, sporadic behavior, nonsensical 

o   Conceptual strategies (i.e., play as a conceptual strategy for experimenting, pretending, an risk taking)

Tracartin embeds us in foreign world of, queer disjointed behavior that is directly influenced by reality...only a super over the top acting.

6. Choose one artist above to develop new teaching strategies which incorporate technology into an art lesson (at least use some forms of technology learned in class, such as digital media ‐blogging, animation, movie and image making for art making).

Grab a piece of modern culture and create a mocking version of it.  Some things may include Facebook, cellphone use, elections, and political process.

Martha Rosler

1. The artist’s background (personal, artistic, and social contexts)

Martha Rosler is an American artist. She works in video, photo-text, installation, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler’s work is centered on everyday life and the public sphere, often with an eye to women's experience. Recurrent concerns are the media and war, as well as architecture and the built environment, from housing and homelessness to systems of transport.

2. The big idea and key concepts (what is the work about?)

Her work in “Bringing the war home: House Beautiful” is about the juxtaposition of our modern, consumerist society, funding and at the same time not recognizing the wars in our world.  It is about oblivion. 

3. Boundaries (Media, subject matter, visual form, techniques)

Rosler uses various techniques by collaging images together to create and interesting and uncompromising image.

4. The key artwork(s) (include title, year, medium, and insert links if needed)

Bringing the War Home: House Beautiful was completed once during the Vietnam War and reprised during the war in Iraq.  It involves collaged images that create visual tension and garner further explanation.

5. The artist’s art making practices

·      Knowledge (how does the artist acquire knowledge?)

By dissecting our cultural boundaries and splicing war imagery she creates and interesting paradigm for our current world status.

·      art making problem (how to investigate and express the idea?)

o   Technical strategies (i.e. limit color choices or only use secondary colors)

By using catalog and magazine imagery she puts us into a home environment where all is comfy and cozy.  The War imagery shocks us out of this environment.

o   Conceptual strategies (i.e., play as a conceptual strategy for experimenting, pretending, an risk taking)

She creates a dispossessed and disenfranchised felling by smashing our social norms and bringing the war to our homes. 

6. Choose one artist above to develop new teaching strategies which incorporate technology into an art lesson (at least use some forms of technology learned in class, such as digital media ‐blogging, animation, movie and image making for art making).

Find two dichotomies and create a digital image that puts these things in direct conflict with each other.

Cory Arcangel

1. The artist’s background (personal, artistic, and social contexts)

Cory Arcangel (born May 25, 1978) is a Brooklyn, New York artist who makes work in many different media, including drawing, music, video, performance, and video game modifications, for which he is perhaps best known.  Arcangel often uses the artistic strategy of appropriation, creatively re-using existing materials such as dancing stands, Photoshop gradients, and YouTube videos to create new works of art. His work explores the relationship between technology and culture.

2. The big idea and key concepts (what is the work about?)

His work is about repetition in a digital age.  Most of his work deals with the ever repeating pattern of our technology, namely gaming and technology as a whole.

3. Boundaries (Media, subject matter, visual form, techniques)

Arcangel is limited to a digital media pattern of work.  His subject matter varies from repetition to try and fail types of work.  He uses hacked video games, sound, digital performance, and basic photoshop elements to create his work

4. The key artwork(s) (include title, year, medium, and insert links if needed)

One example is Super Mario Clouds (2002), a modified version of the Super Mario Bros. video game for Nintendo's NES game console in which all of the game's graphics have been removed, leaving only a blue background with white clouds scrolling slowly from right to left. 

5. The artist’s art making practices

·      Knowledge (how does the artist acquire knowledge?)

Through the systematic examination of our digital culture and regression as a society

·      art making problem (how to investigate and express the idea?)

o   Technical strategies (i.e. limit color choices or only use secondary colors)

Arcangel simplifies our media down to it’s smallest portion as an exploration of the overall media itself.

o   Conceptual strategies (i.e., play as a conceptual strategy for experimenting, pretending, an risk taking)

By erasing the functional part of video games, Arcangel takes the most interesting and interactive part out of our hands and allows us to disconnect and enjoy the media in a different manner. 

6. Choose one artist above to develop new teaching strategies which incorporate technology into an art lesson (at least use some forms of technology learned in class, such as digital media ‐blogging, animation, movie and image making for art making).

Using a website like Sploder.com create a video game that consists of at least three levels, is visually interesting, and challenging.