Nov 3rd, 2020 • 8 minute read
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The Guest Curation: Nadia Kaufhold
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We are thrilled to welcome Nadia Kaufhold an Art in Res artist, Interior Design consultant, Lifestyle blogger, and Creative Director as this week's guest curator. Nadia is a self proclaimed metropolitan polymath who wears many hats and is all about creating a thoughtful home and lifestyle -- and that, of course, includes art!
So let's see what we can learn from an all around design guru like Nadia in this week's curation of some of our Art in Res artists and artworks!
Nadia's Curatorial Statement
Art which feels like it’s about to jump off the page always makes an impression on me. There is a tension to this type of work –– which comes in many forms and variations –– which sets it apart. The pull and push and torque created through color, depth, layering, materials, mood, amongst other things, makes the pieces come alive.
Each piece chosen here is captivating for different reasons. However I have put them together because each one speaks about an idea illustrated as a snapshot, left for contemplation, either whilst depicting a physical movement or an emotional state. Like an elastic band about to be snapped, each piece invites us to the next place or the place just prior to what is illustrated (suspended in time) in each piece.
Dimensionality plays a role –– and as you will see these are 8 very different pieces doing something similar, by way of tension, creating that moment when you wonder what happened before or after what is in front of you.
Passant
The tension in this image is striking. The vulnerable nakedness of her body juxtaposed against the taut musculature of her body. Is she dancing? Is she lifting herself up after a fall? The body beams with light invoking a kind of inner resurrection against an opaque background, highlighting duality in the living form, bridging the gap between the softness of the human flesh and the strength with which it is capable of moving through the world. Anytime you can see movement in a painting there is tension: the stillness of the medium against the idea of motion.
Carly Bodnar is a painter of flesh and the figure. Her recent work explores the way the natural body intersects with the conflicting demands of society.
Brush Strokes
Here the artist’s subtle play of shadows on a black backdrop creates lightness. The brush strokes he invokes show perspective and offer a three dimensionality to the painting. The pieces are small and seemingly weightless. The element of tension is in the softness of the fall and yet, using bright colors and deep tones, in stark contrast to what would otherwise be considered a soft fall, that of feathers perhaps, usually in paler tones in more ethereal settings.
While in the midst of achieving his degree in Fine Arts & Graphic Design, in Ukraine, Igor started his career as Graphic Designer. However, reiterating the same patterns and color blocks was not satisfying his mission for creative exploration. Once he moved to New York at 21, he found this priority fulfilled by pursuing painting. Now, in his home studio in Ridgewood, New York, the artist actively experiments with different mediums and investigates other methods of expressing himself.
A blue bird day
This artist speaks about exploring his inner duality. One of minimalism and simple structure versus one of chaos and immense depth. I can relate to this. He speaks of negative space. And this painting is all about that - the way in which negative space can speak volumes.
In negative space lies a dialogue about choice. The tension is in the choice. To choose to be silent. To remove the noise of color and shape and honor this place of simplicity and silence. Grey is a neutral color. A good choice for silence. It is powerful. It is not about what you see but how it makes you feel about all that you don’t see.
Scott discusses his process, “Working in my studio in Pittsburgh PA. I try to find the peace within myself and explore my internal duality. This duality seems to always be in conflict. One of Minimalism and simple structure and one of chaos and immense depth. Using this approach I consider myself a minimalist abstract expressionist, using acrylic on canvas, bold rich colors and limited color pallets to convey my art.”
Dream bird hatching
I absolutely love this one. I particularly love how the sculptural art is complete only by the shadow play of its components. The material folds creating the shapes behind them completing the figure of the bird, transmutable at different times of day with the way the light hits it. The smooth silken metal against the earthy ruches of the fabric create tension in their contrasting textures. This one is poetry in motion.
Susan Stainman is an interdisciplinary artist, focusing on sculpture, installation, and social practice. She is a graduate of Brown University with a degree in American Studies and the Slade School of Fine Art in London for Sculpture. The artist has had solo exhibitions at AIR Gallery in Brooklyn, Point of Contact, Lock Haven University and Black and Graze in New York City. Her work is held in universities and private collections nationally and internationally. Stainman lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Somewhere
I was drawn to the surrealist temperament of this painting. There are aspects of it which feel flat and then suddenly, in parts, there is depth. You can’t tell when it goes from 2D to 3D and back again. Therein lies the magic. Quite early surrealist in its color, shapes and mood but gentler and softer. Where is she sitting, is she floating? Is the backdrop a dream or a stage?
Born in Brooklyn. Nikki was a musician most of his life. In 2014 he decided to teach himself painting by diving in headfirst with the approach of learning by doing. Embracing the unknown and trusting his intuition he has been producing many works both haunting and decorative.
In Dark
Lily Gold’s paintings are painted on recycled brown bags. This one is a textural piece which plays with depth of field using finish and shine of materials rather than color and hue. The gold in the center feels like the point where light hits the dark tunnel from which the figure emerges. But then again, the shiny black shapes in the center left and right could also be wings, shape shifting the perspective of the figure as the eye moves across the piece.
Lily Gold is a queer, fourth generation New Yorker and, for now, is still living in Brooklyn. She is a choreographer, performer and visual artist, working in modes of movement, sound, painting, sculpture, and installation. Her paintings are visceral, textural topographies stitched from recycled paper bags, onto which she paints.
Memorized Emotions
This is a painting which looks like a digitally crafted piece. Painstaking and masterful in its detail, what struck me the most was the Title. Once you take a closer look at what is actually happening you notice the static, repetitive overlay of one pattern on another equally static and repetitive pattern. An intricate set of dots, lines and subtly undulating shapes which could resemble fingerprints, on a grid of rigid squares punctuated with colorful horizontal strokes. Memorized emotions indeed. This painting invites the viewer to wonder if these overlapping shapes could feel fluid at all, as if going somewhere, with the potential to morph into something else, or whether this is it, a stuck emotion, forever snapshot as such. It really does feel like someone took a picture of what a memorized emotion could look like.
Rebecca Kaufman’s paintings address the autonomy of perception using the ancient technology of painting to reflect on the addictive visual technologies that we rely so heavily upon today. She currently lives and works in San Francisco teaching art to kids and adults and volunteering at Root Division, a nonprofit arts organization.
Untitled
Born 1972, New York City, Sam Schonzeit has degrees in religious studies and architecture and both of these disciplines inform his work. Born and raised in New York, his studio is in several rooms in a warren of an old house in Marfa, TX. From one of these rooms he can gaze out over ranchland and up to Mount Livermore, the fifth highest peak in Texas (8,378ft).
About Nadia Kaufhold
Nadia Kaufhold is an Art in Res artist, Interior Design consultant, Lifestyle blogger, and Creative Director.
In 2010, after a ten-year corporate career, she started the process of fine-tuning her life, and creating a more thoughtful home and lifestyle. An interior design consultancy was born of that period, equal parts creation, observation and inspiration. Her blog, a visual diary of her inspirations and recommendations, is the result of many years of honing her art of living, that of a pared down, luxe aesthetic, with a deep affinity to natural materials and products, and sustainable and ethical design.
Nadia has collaborated with individuals and companies on residential and commercial interior design projects throughout the US, and her work has been published in many noteworthy publications including, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Surface Magazine, Design Milk and more. She is currently collaborating on her first capsule collection of home-ware products.
Curation by Nadia KaufholdVirtual installations courtesy of ArtPlacer