Self-Portrait With the Combat Nymphos Of Saigon | Chris Cran | Oil and acrylic on canvas | 54.5" x 84" | 1985
Chris Cran, my father-in-law, and one of Canada's most celebrated artists, has launched a new website featuring his work in painting from the early 80's up until the present day.
Jose Parla with his painting “Gesture Performing Dance, Dance Performing Gesture.”
Carol Vogel profiles my friend Jose Parla's new work in the New York Times:
For New Theater, BAM Commissions a Really Big Painting
A decade ago, when the Brooklyn Academy of Music restored its landmark exterior, the Brazilian photographer Vik Muniz decorated the scaffolding of the building’s second, third and fourth floors with images of a giant gingerbread house. It was a colorful confection: melted sugar outlined with giant jelly beans and slithering Gummi Worms recreated the building’s arched windows; giant M&M’s became its frieze.
Now, to enliven its newest theater – the Richard B. Fisher Building – which was unveiled in June and officially opens Sept. 5, the academy has asked the Brooklyn artist José Parlá to create its first permanent commissioned piece of public art for an interior space.
“Gesture Performing Dance, Dance Performing Gesture,’’ a painting measuring 37 feet by 7 feet, incorporates collage, acrylic, oil, ink, plaster and enamel and is slated for completion around the end of the month. The painting will cover the back wall of the lobby, which is visible from the street.
“This particular work will be informed by dance, movement and gestural communication,’’ Mr. Parlá said in a statement.
I hung out with Jose Parla a few nights ago, and before we went to dinner, we spent some time in his studio where I was lucky enough to see some of his fantastic new paintings.
Yesterday I went up to Albany with my partner Laura to visit Phil Frost’s painting studio. We toured the massive industrial work space and got a sneak peek at the hundreds of works that he is simultaneously painting. He has made some very beautiful pieces that are very much worth checking out.
It's great to see another one of my guys written up in T. Here is a question and answer of Jose Parla, talking about his work and new show.
What One Artist Just Felt Like Doing One Day
by: Gary Michael Dault
I ask painter Chris Cran - whose shimmering, graphically delicate but exacting paintings deal with a myriad of subtle optical issues - if he thinks of himself as a visual satirist? I figure all that allusiveness in his pictures - to optical art, to pop art, to photography, to portraiture - pegs him not only as a virtuoso manipulator of genres, but as their gleeful analyst and demystifier.
He doesn’t deny it exactly, but points out, with a certain Cran-ish wryness, on the phone from his studio in Calgary, that “there’s the pleasure of them too.” For a painter whose work seems so elaborately planned and carefully worked up, it’s disarming to hear him stress that part of his practice “is simply asking myself what I feel like doing today.”
Here's a shot of two of our large scale drawings just prior to the opening of our exhibition at the Land of Tomorrow Gallery.
Radiant Emblematic Structure » Computer Generated Graphics, Silver Tape, Silver Leaf, and Ink on Archival Paper | 60” x 30”
We've just completed a new drawing, Radiant Emblematic Structure, for our upcoming exhibition at Land of Tomorrow.
My partner Stella is painstakingly painting silver leaf on another drawing for our upcoming show.
Computer generated background
Hand painted tesselations
These two images show part of the process of a drawing we are currently working on for our upcoming exhibition. The first shows a detail of the computer generated background produced in Maya and the second shows the painstaking work of hand painting each surface tesselation.
Deliverables Invitation
DELIVERABLES presents four large scale drawings from the New York based architecture studio Bureau V. As a response to the waning use-value of the physical drawing in contemporary architectural practice, these documents seek to establish new values for the architectural deliverable outside the functions of presentation and construction. Each drawing is an original document created through processes such as computer-generated graphic content, hand drawing, applique, painting, and collage.
Opening: Friday April 10,6-9PM
Land of Tomorrow Gallery: 527 E 3rd St. Lexington, Kentucky 40508
TM is a Renaissance Master.
Chicken Twin Detail
Chicken Twin Detail 2
Some details from our new XV drawing, Chicken Twin
Starting With The Universe | Mixed Media on Archival Paper | 15' x 8' | 2008
I love this detail.
We’re trying to wrap up the drawings we’re presenting tomorrow. Will be a late night…
Gyan painted a portrait of me in a bear costume. Better yet, I think she went on a date with each of these guys.
Self Portrait with the Combat Nymphos of Saigon | Chris Cran (1985)
Chris Cran is brilliant and hilarious and dangerous. One of my new favorite people.
