There is a new media term in town,  CONVERGENT ART.  This description distinquishes mixed-media computer process art, that mostly results in a digitally printed finished product, from DIGIART.  Digiart is work is conceived, produced and resides on a computer in its final form.  Digiart could include interactive gaming and video.

Once upon a pre-computer time, mixed media referred to wirj made with combinations of media such as watercolor, gouache, acrylic, pencil, charcoal and so on.  Using Convergent to describe new computer mixes, the category Mixed Media retains its original meaning, as do the related descriptives Assemblage, for work that moves into 3-D, and Collage, that indicates 2-D papers and materials.

Thanks for the descriptive Convergent go to Barney Davey an art marketing expert with lots of experience in print publishing. I heard Mr. Davey discussing the state of the art market on a podcast (Jan. 31) with Jason Horeis (Xanadu Gallery, Scottsdale) and was so struck by the clarity of the term I asked him to describe it in an email to be sure I understood what he has in mind.

He wrote back, " The definition is not precise. In general, it takes into account that digital art, digital painting, photography and scans of original art, etc., often are put through multiple processes to get a finished piece art. Most often the final digital files are output through a digital ink-jet printer, and then sometimes further embellished. I think such a complicated process needs a more accurate descriptive like convergent media, as opposed to digital art.

If you find this a useful term, feel free to Converge.          -Claudia Vess



link to the podcast: http://www.xanadugallery.com/wordpress/index.php/podcast-recording-available-lets-talk-art-marketing-and-art-business/

Barney Davey blogs at (www.ArtPrintIssues.com).  His is the  of How to Profit from the Art Print Market.

Gallery B, in Bethesda, is showing four artists:  Andy Unger, Donna K. McGee, Emily Lane, and Frank Cappello.  

Unger's beautifully drawn charcoals engage right away.  The intricacies seem to promise a final theory of being, but the intrinsic spatial relationships perpetually shift with our moving eyes.  A few of the works based on Chinese calligraphic writing, use an unusual monotype silkscreen method that results in a single Zen print. 

The other three artists are involved in landscapes.   Lane's easel size paintings of underwater plants are in bright, Florida colors.  The thickly applied paint pushes towards you, perhaps giving the being seen as we swim by.

Cappello who teaches music and plays jazz, takes a loose, expressionistic.   These landscapes begin to have a have a psychological side but don't yet feel comfortable in their skin.  Unfortunately they compete with each other and with the muted and suggestive landscape by McGee on the same wall, making it difficult to sink into any one of them to appreciate their individual moods.  

If you drop by during open hours, W-Sat 11-6pm, you will have the chance to talk to one of the artists.   Every show brings a surprise, Gallery B is operated by the Bethesda Arts & Entertainment District Board in partnership with the exhibiting artists.                                                                     -CV

I VISITED ART COLOGNE IN APRIL OF 2011, ONEOF THE LONGEST RUNNING ART FAIRS IN EUROPE.  HERE IS A REIVEW, CONCENTRATING ON WORK ON PAPER THAT WAS PUBLISHED IN JOURNAL OF THE PRINT WORLD.  Claudia Vess


The 45th annual Art-Cologne exposition held April 13 to 17 featured 200 galleries from 23 countries including 45 from Germany and 13 from the USA and had a renewed buzz.  The fair  renewed its support for "young" galleries and artists, emphasized talks and discussions in an Open Space forum with seating and artist books were displayed in cases in keeping with the 2011 theme of knowledge, books, stories and texts.  A retrospective of Belgian artist Pammenko's aircraft structures, including a Flash Gordon "Backpack", greeted visitors in the atrium.   The mix of sculpture, painting, installation, mixed media and work on paper was what might be expected from a large, international art fair. While there was not a kitchen sink, there was a wonderfully amusing stack of giant pots and pans sculpture by Robert Therrien (Gagosian & Spruth Magers/Berlin,London), which can be seen in the Vernissage-TV video coverage of the fair on YouTube.  

A majority of the galleries included works on paper;  sometimes they were tucked away.  An amusing, graphic baroque rendition of Amanda Lear's My Alphabet by Julian Goethe (Galerie Daniel Buchholz/Cologne) was on the wall.   "A stands for anything and B for bionic and Bach".   Book resculptor Carlos Garaicoa (Barbara Gross/Munich) used a copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason to create "Reason" (6x87x107cm).   Pages folded out and out were cut into diminishing frames until the centers were finally crumpled for the trash.  (photo)

Some of the exhibits could be mistaken for museum holdings. Smaller German Expressionist prints were available starting at EUR 10,000.   An Eric Hechel print of horses in a pasture that everyone seemed to linger on was priced at EUR 25,000 (Henze & Ketterer/Bern).   

Unexpected delights included two exquisite prints and a drawing by John Cage (Margarete Roeder/NYC).  The aquatint was made of 18 rectangular plates of various sizes individually inked and printed side by side filling the paper and creating an embossed white line at the plate borders.   Superb German works on paper (Penck, Baselitz, Bohrmann, etc,) collected by Fred Jahn (Munich) starting in the 60's were to be seen as well as younger artists collected by Matthias Jahn who also has a gallery in Munich, with the same careful eye.

Adding buzz, selected new artists had exhibition space and competed for an award. The reason to go such an art fair is, of course, to find something previously unknown.   Notable were deeply saturated watercolors, "Basic Attacks for Solving Situations", in banded "oscillating" patterns by Johannes Weiss (Lena Bruening/Berlin)  Paper was also integral to some installations  Artist-made wallpaper reproduced the wallpaper in a photograph of the young Eric Satie then hung on the wall.  In proximity, a remix of a Satie recording was playing only the blips and pops on a record player.  Walls built from corrugated and smooth lengths of paper woven into industrial-size textile 'fabric' set off a paper loom churning out the same material.  The installation by Michael Beutler (Baerbel Graesslin/Frankfurt am Main) slyly referenced the textile trade fairs held in the same building. 

Contemporary artists using printmaking as a primary media included Peyman Rahimi (Eva Winkler Galerie/Frankfurt) who combines images of vintage photographs and photos from old newspapers, and silkscreens them with acrylic and lacquer to create a new vintage appearing image in which the sitter appears to moving, perhaps conversing with the photographer until it is time to hold still.   Like a time capsule, the sense of the past living concurrently in the present is captivating.  In photography, Aitor Ortiz succeeds in visualizing spatial intrigues reminiscent of Piranesi's Carceri in his Amorfosis series of 2008 on aluminum (Galerie Stefan Roepke/Cologne).  The view in #006, looks through a seemingly impossible filigree of scaffolding.  Light streams through arched church windows that create the experience of a palpable mystery.  An offset cross shape of sky created by the upper reaches of enclosing scaffolding in 004, evokes a powerful sense of man's inability to reach that divine state which appears just out of reach. 

Few galleries featured only and or large paperwork. "Unto this Last" a woodcut triptych by Andrea Buettner (Hollybush Gardens/ London) of "St. Francis sermonizing to the birds" (two sheets @ 180x120cm), flanked by "Tears" scattered on a black field and an enormous loaf of "Bread /Pebble".  Part of an ongoing interest in convergences of artmaking and religious practice, the series, "The Poverty of Riches", Buettner selected the woodcut media because of associations with manual, daily labor. The overall contextualization seems more significant than the individual works which seem experiential witnesses of the artist's investigatory process.  "Haus mit Raumkristallen" a series of small drawings of suburban houses (21x 30cm) by Torsten Slama had wall power (Galerie Vera Gliem/ Cologne).   Octahedral crystal shapes with yellow tints indicating energy centers hover above the roofs of houses rendered in an architectural style with brickwork details.  The drawings radiate a utopian uber-calm and surreal unease, a solitary bicycle is seen inside an open garage, crystalline pyramids rest in manicured lawns with flowerbeds, surpassing his paintings in intrigue.

The expanded Art-Cologne was a huge success.  Sales were brisk.  A Tom Wesselmann painting "Smoker" sold for EUR 2.3m, and a drawing for EUR 42,000.   An Art-cologne press release reveals more sale information.  There was almost too much to see. The convention center is easy to reach by public transportation and during the fair a variety of cafés on site offer refreshment.  For printmaking cognoscenti, Cologne offers the additional pleasure of a visit to the Kaethe Kollwitz Museum and its an extraordinary collection perhaps the most complete anywhere.  

                                                                 (CCVess, All rights reserved. )

While the idea of the (e)merge art fair (Sept 22-25) is a good one, it was a challenge for both exhibitors to display art and for visitors to see it.  The hotel rooms the Skyline Hotel in SW Washington are small and the corridors narrow, resulting in a somewhat claustrophobic experience seeing art displayed against wallpaper and laid out on bedspreads. The dim lighting added to the challenge.  

One of the best adapters was Honfleur Gallery (WDC) who brought in large plywood panels to create walls against which their art could be seen.  A number of the exhibitors splurged taking two rooms and/or had the beds removed;  Goya Girl (Balt) set up tables to show prints.  The Jose Bienvenu Gallery (NYC) effectively created a gallery space by covering the walls and furniture with cardboard, creating an art environment where art could be seen and appreciated.  

The DC Portfolio of digital prints by Washington based artists, produced by David Adamson, was striking even displayed in the dark, underground parking area open to exhibitors.  Without potential display walls, exhibitors had the opportunity to shape their own spaces. Art Whino gallery created a space reflecting the personality of its National Harbor gallery while Art Surge, from Wisconsin, was giving away artworks donated by artists displayed on tables and a wire art-booth wall, for free.  The dim transition stairway space was perfect for the neon work by Craig Kraft also a homegrown artist.  

The installations by individual artists in the garage, were among the more interesting.  Camper Contemporary, a white-walled gallery installed inside a camper van by director Calder Brannock, set up a portable office to represent the enterprise.  Brannock, a recent art graduate, organizes excursions for six to a dozen artists to inspire new art and then exhibits the results.  Narrative texts in the form of roadside historical plaques on view nearby, was one such successful result.  Large fans helped to make the parking garage hospitable, a technique also used at Artomatic's former Hechinger location in Tenley.

All in all, despite the pre-jurying exclusiveness, the international participation, and the press coverage, the (e)merge art fair lacked the robust intensity, energy and wonderful surprises offered by the locally created Artomatic events, one of which opens in Frederick September 28th.  Despite some works of note and the opportunity to network, the overall impression of e(merge) was disappointing.  The art installations in the conference room lacked inventiveness and risk, and galleries had a difficult time exhibiting their personalities.   It will be interesting to know whether (e)merge will emerge commercially viable.         

For more information see the (e)merge web site, and The Washington Post review by Philip Kennicott, September 14th, 2011 in Style.                            

-Clare del Notte