Shahzia Sikander

Divine Circle, 2003. Acrylic on wallDimensions variableInstallation view,Conversations with Traditions,Seattle Art Museum, 2003.Plush Brush series, 2003 (one from a set of four)Ink and gouache on paperon wasli paper15x12"Private Collection.

The Fabric Workshop. Work on paper (gouache hand painting, gold leaf, and silkscreen pigment). 80x66 inches (framed). 2005-6.

51 Ways of Looking, 2004. Ink and graphite on paper 12x9." Courtesy of the artist and Brent Sikkema, New York.

51 Ways of Looking, 2004. Ink and graphite on paper 12x9." Courtesy of the artist and Brent Sikkema, New York.

Packaged Paradise , 2003. Acrylic on wall. Dimensions variable. Installation view, Platform, Garanati Contemporary Art, Center, Istanbul Biennial, 2003.

Shahzia Sikander was born in 1969 in Lahore, Pakistan. Educated as an undergraduate at the National College of Arts in Lahore, she received her MFA in 1995 from the Rhode Island School of Design. Sikander specializes in Indian and Persian miniature painting, a traditional style that is both highly stylized and disciplined. While becoming an expert in this technique-driven, often impersonal art form, she imbued it with a personal context and history, blending the Eastern focus on precision and methodology with a Western emphasis on creative, subjective expression. In doing so, Sikander transported miniature painting into the realm of contemporary art. Raised as a Muslim, Sikander is also interested in exploring both sides of the Hindu and Muslim “border,” often combining imagery from both—such as the Muslim veil and the Hindu multi-armed goddess—in a single painting.

http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/shahzia-sikander

Shirazeh Houshiary

Playground

2004

5 meter cube with suspended yellow fabric

Resonance

1995

120 x 120 x 36 cm. cast lead and gold leaf

Isthmus

1990

340 x 220 x 90 cm. 340 x 500 x 90 cm. patinated and polished copper

Altar: St. Martin in the Fields

2010

window

Christmas Tree

1993

fir tree, gold leaf

"Presence is like light - how can you describe it? Light can be only experienced, it has presence. This work also has a presence and has only to be experienced, it has presence," is how Shirazeh Houshiary, a Turner Prize winner, has described her work. She is a Iranian-born artist who moved to London in the early 1970s to study and work. "In Europe she is well known for her sculptures in which she investigates spiritual principles and abstract forms." [1] My favorite piece after researching is "Christmas Tree," an inverted Christmas tree representing the "intention to move away from traditional notion of tree decorating and focus on its natural qualities." The gold leaf on the roots represents the light and to "focus light upwards away from the branches." [2]

1.Lehmann Maupin http://www.lehmannmaupin.com/#/artists/shirazeh-houshiary/

2.Shirazeh Houshiary http://www.shirazehhoushiary.com/

Robert Gober

Untitled
2003-2005
Dimensions variable
Installation view, Matthew Marks Gallery, 2005

Untitled ,1992
Dimensions variable
Installation view, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1992
Untitled leg
1989-1990
Beeswax, cotton, wood, leather, human hair
11 3/8 x 7 3/4 x 20 inches; 29.5 x 20 x 51 cm
Distorted Playpen
1986
Painted wood
26 x 66 x 42 3/4 inches; 66 x 168 x 109 cm
Untitled
2003-2005
Dimensions variable
Detail, Matthew Marks Gallery, 2005

Robert Gober is an American sculptor who has an uncanny ability to place random everyday appliances into works of art. Examples such as plumbing fixtures, urinal, sinks and doors all incorporated into a somewhat theatrical scene. Personally, what caught my eye, was the half man torso sculptures and foot sculptures because they represented such realism that it was sort of eerie.

Kane Kwei

Rabot (1997)
Enamel paint on wood



Truelle (1997)
Enamel paint on wood



Hors bord Yamaha (1997)
Enamel paint on wood



FILET DE PECHE BLEU (1997)
Enamel paint on wood



Oignon vert (1993)
Enamel paint on wood


Kane kwei was born in 1954, Teshie, Ghana. He originally was trained as a cabinet maker, but makes coffins. He "upholds his father’s tradition of decorating coffins in a manner which reflect upon the life of the deceased"(CAACART website).

http://www.caacart.com/pigozzi-artist.php?i=Kane-Kwei-Samuel&bio=en&m=67

jeff koons

Jeff Koons is an American artist very popular and known to make steel balloon animals.Koons mirrors society’s obsession with popular culture and negates simple divisions between appearance and reality, surface and depth, and art and commodity. With roots in Pop, Conceptual, and Minimalist art, Koons models his sculptures on consumer products and manipulates store-bought items to dramatize mass-produced cultural objects while exposing the subtleties of marketing. But unlike his 1960s predecessors, Koons’ agenda is to address people’s psychological investment in consumer objects and how these objects are designed to seduce.

Xenobia Bailey

Xenobia Bailey

Mothership 1: Sistah Paradise's Great Walls of Fire Revival Tent, 2002. Cotton and acrylic yarn, metal frame, electrical tape, shells, 10 x 5 x 5 ft. (304.9 x 152.4 x 152.4 cm).

Inspiration Vibration Station, Number 1, 201

One Nation Under a Groove, Bit by Bit, Little by Little at Logan Airport's Terminal A through January 2010

Paradise Under Reconstruction in the Aesthetic of Funk, 2000

Meditation Prayer Rug (Year: Unknown)

Xenobia Bailey was born in Seattle, Washington.  She studies Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington.  She later became interested in craftsmanship and sounds of culture dealing with Africa and Asia.  Xenobia soon after created mask for Black Arts West which was an African American community theater.  She then applied to Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York in 1974 and was accepted.  Xenobia graduated and received her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Industrial Design.  She soon learned how to crochet by her teacher Bernadette Sonona.  Xenobia Bailey began to make and sell colorful crotched hats, prayer rugs, and other items and continues to do so til this day.

Sources:

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/sistah_paradise/


http://www.artknowledgenews.com/Xenobia_Bailey.html


http://www.vermontstudiocenter.org/xenobia-bailey/

Antony Gromely

Exposure, 2011, Steel

Aperture XVII, 2011, Steel

Fuse, 2011, Wood

Cumulate II, 2011, Aluminum

Abstract, 2011, Wood

Antony Gormley was born in London in 1950.  In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Antony Gormley has made sculpture that explores the relation of the human body to space at large, explicitly in large installations.  Gormley challenges the viewer by presenting an opening of power through the suspension of moral and spatial coordinates.  I liked Gormley because he used natural materials and geometric shapes.  I think these two concepts are what helps his work thrive in that it is recognizable many different  ways.  My favorite piece is Aperture XVII there is a level of raw detail that really makes me want to examine the piece further.  it makes me feel like it isn't done at first glance but with further examination we can tell that there is major spatial and conceptual design behind it.

Maurizio Cattelan

"A perfect Day"
1999
color photography, plexiglass, aluminum

"We are the revolution"
2000
polyester resin, wax, pigment, felt suit, metal coat rack

"Ave Maria"
2007
polyurethane, steel, clothes, paint

"Bidibidobidiboo"
1996
taxidermized squirrel, ceramic formica, wood, paint, steel

"L.O.V.E"
2011
white Carrara, marble, roman travertine

"We"
2010
Wood, fiberglass, polyurethane rubber, fabric

"Stephanie"
2003
Wax dummy, synthetic hair, metal

"Frank & Jamie"
2002
Wax dummy, clothes, shoes

Maurizio Cattelan was born in Padua Italy, in 1960. He currently works in New York and Milan. He did not attend art school, he decided to teach himself the foundations of art and worked various jobs outside of the art field. His art mainly consists of the combination of sculpture and performance, he bases many of his pieces off humor and irony. "Best known for his facetious art productions, which are as surprising as they are unsettling, Maurizio Cattelan is the ultimate side liner artist, poking holes in art, art history, monumentality, and nationalism"


http://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/maurizio-cattelan/

Mariko Mori

"Dream Temple" - 1999

Installation; 3-D projection and Dichroic Glass,

"Entropy of Love" - 1998

Color Photograph on Glass

"Burning Desire" - 1998

Color Photograph on Glass


"Mirror of Water" - 1998
Color Photograph on Glass

"Pureland" - 1998

Color Photograph on Glass

Marijo Mori has been described as, "arguablely the most visible Japanese artist in the West today". Mori is a Japanese video and photographic artist. She was born in 1967 in Tokyo, Japan.

http://www.artnet.com/magazine/features/itoi/itoi11-20-01.asp

Gabriel Orozco

Cats and Watermelon

Four Bicycles (There is Always One Direction)

Mobile Matrix

Black Kites

My Hands Are My Heart

Gabriel Orozco was born in Mexico and studied at La Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. He then continued his education in Madrid, Spain. He uses video, drawings, and installations in addition to his photographs and sculptures, allows the audience's imagination to explore the creative associations between ignored objects in today's world. He is also known for using all-ready made art.

I think he artwork is really interesting. I don't think a lot of his work relates to spirituality, since he is spoken about in that chapter. His Black Kites does relate to life and death, black and white are used to convey this. I really like how he used a skull to get that point across, especially since that's what you are left with after you die (clearly not right away though). I also really like his piece, My Hands Are My Heart. I don't know what is about it that attracts me so much. I love how the first part of it is the hands around the clay molding it to be the heart that is shown in the second part.