About the Author

Jake Weigel is Assistant Professor of Art, Sculpture at California State University - Stanislaus. He has been Studio Coordinator of Sculpture at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado and previously worked at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, Texas as Gallery Director and Lecturer of Sculpture. In addition to independent writing and curation he also exhibits throughout the United States.

Buster Graybill

August 13, 2018 || Jake Weigel

Buster Graybill
Informalism
Street Gallery, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art [link]
May 25 – September 8, 2018

Informalism presents an informed aesthetic of a rural American vernacular embracing high-brow aesthetics through populist materials and actions. Grounded by the Lawn Chair Strapping paintings, a further look reveals requisite playfulness of a sculpture created from brightly colored arrows buried deep into a dense foam mass. Calmly posed clay trap thrower becomes a mischievous drawing implement leaving random marks on a canvas and broken pigeons across the floor. An exhaust system becomes an abstracted form referencing truck culture. With this contextualization, Graybill transcends sentimentality, proffering honest visual references to working-class objects mediated through theories of Minimalism and Pop Art.

~ Jake Weigel
images courtesy of Teri Mumm at Utah Museum of Contemporary Art

[Read more…]

Annie Vought

October 2, 2017 || Jake Weigel

Annie Vought
a sketchy outline
Jack Fischer Gallery, San Francisco, California [link]
August 12 – September 30, 2017

Annie Vought offers a fresh approach to papercutting traditions without compromising personal sensibilities. Further achieved through repurposed paper from her father’s sketchbooks and written letters, Vought generates a new vernacular and stream-of-conscious poetics decipherable for only brief moments in time. Intimacy exists in scale and clandestine conversations started by the artist, as whispers of thoughts and barely existing with more negative space than physical paper. Lacking words altogether in several pieces, these contain non-verbal communication as dynamic rhythms attempting to convey messages where Vought reveals the futility of complete comprehension in language through playful gesture and serious investigation.

– Jake Weigel
images courtesy of Jack Fischer Gallery

[Read more…]

Haris Epaminonda

June 16, 2017 || Jake Weigel

Installation view: Haris Epaminonda, Vol. XXII, Aspen Art Museum, 2017. Photo Credit: Tony Prikryl

Haris Epaminonda
Vol. XXII
Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado [link]
March 10 – May 28, 2017

Haris Epaminond’s Vol. XXII challenges classic Western logic, proffering a recontextualized, non-linear perspective towards overlapping histories of civilizations. Spanning centuries, the minimal elements become artifacts inextricably essential to a larger, contemporary ethos based in art and architecture. The physical objects manifest memories from expanses of various Mediterranean and Asian identities, simplified to dominant typologies like encyclopedic chapters. Truncated columns, fractured marble, frescoed walls, vases, and symbolism allude to specific cultures while remaining tacitly universal and innately human. These parallel spaces are strung together, reflecting onto each other by mirrors throughout the gallery in the construction of this newly discovered place.

~ Jake Weigel
Photos: courtesy of Aspen Art Museum, 2017. Photo Credit: Tony Prikryl

[Read more…]

Hippie Modernism

January 20, 2016 || Jake Weigel

Clark Richert, View of Drop City, “The Complex” in El Morro, outside Trinidad, CO, Circa 1966. courtesy of Walker Art Center

Hippie Modernism: The Struggle For Utopia
Curated by Andrew Blauvelt
Walker Art Center [link]
Minneapolis, Minnesota
October 24, 2015 – February 28, 2016

“Hippie Modernism” offers an engaging combination of sociopolitical, economic and aesthetic inquiries of the 1960’s and 70’s without the pejorative use of terms. Pragmatic, intuitive and political methodologies for a new age include perception-shifting headgear, inflatable architecture, temporary cities on islands, educational literature, “truckitecture”, and negative utopias. Heineken developed bottles for building materials and Info-Gonks were 1968’s Google Glass. The exhibition demonstrates with prescient physicality the creative, freethinking nature often dismissed as a “hippie pipe-dream.” As evidenced in overwhelming detail at the Walker, the era’s core values are still a driving force in current politics, architecture, art, and design.

~ Jake Weigel
images courtesy of Walker Art Center

[Read more…]