Michael Leon

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There isn't much I can say about this gentleman because I only just discovered him accident on ffffound.com. Michael has managed to fully pique my interest with his extremely varied multi-media works. He seems to traverse a carefully planned path between conceptual art and commercial graphic illustration and photography without resorting to hoary positive/negative pop cliches. He can make a chin stroking sculpture for gallery clients and then with absolute ease design shirts for Nike. Be a dear and check out his website. If you don't find at least one thing to like on it then i'll make my next article about Edwin Landseer.

http://michaelleonstudio.com/web/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Mia Makila

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I first came across Mia's work via that contemporary art book I reviewed called The Upset. It seems after some cursory research that she is often labelled as a horror or gothic/lowbrow artist, however the first thing I immediately thought of when staring at the painterly abomination called Grimreaper (last image) was 'bad' painting. Mia definately deserves to have the humorous and perversely child-like aspect of her work analysed, its not all about angst and madness you know.

Like Armen Eloyan or George Condo, Mia gives a strangely nostalgic reminder of a time when cartoons could get away with being violent, its an alien sensation to most people of the 00's to have something other than media equivelant of baby food visually and audibly spoon fed to them. Theres also a hard sexual element to her work (particularly her paintings) thats about as subtle as that Funnelgirl meme. The ejaculatory splatters of white and pink paint are a harsh jibe at the myth of the heroic masculine painter, but they also give the works an unpretentious appearance as they ruin their own status as fine art objects. They invite abandonment and waste.

Some of her most unpleasant works are her altered antique photos. Presumably brought from flea markets and such, Mia violates the tenderness of these anonymous people by scrawling fanged visages over the individuals faces and surrounding them with phallic and blasphemous symbols. They remind me somewhat of Anna Barriball's ink and graphite altered photographs, only instead of cool and calm appropiation we have instead demented vandalism. We know Mia is an lovely, decent and law abiding person but theres very little in these alteration works to seperate them from the genuinely defiled artefacts of some lost vagrant soul. I admire an artist that can transcend taboos and ingrained expressive transgression in order to create something laudable.

http://www.miamakila.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Katie De Sousa

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I usually avoid deviantART if i'm brutally honest, don't pretend you don't know why. However I actually came across something there that to my delight (and relief) wasn't specifically designed to rape my eyes and traumatize my childhood. Katie De Sousa (username yumedust) is one of the most accomplished 'magic-realist' artists i've come across wether she realizes it or not. Her best works take the two-dimensional appeal of anime, Disney, even pokemon and other such superflat wonders and somehow (I can only assume by using magic of some variety) she renders them in slightly fleshy and more grown-up style. She makes make-believe believable. You can see this best in the first and third images above. Although that being said my favorite of those four pictures is last one. It reminds of Victor Alimpiev's video piece Is It Yours? that I mentioned in this blog. I could imagine bringing these two works together in an imaginary exhibition and people instantly grasping the visual/thematic connection.

http://www.katiedesousa.com/

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Magic And Politics

Everybody likes some free noise music don't they? If so please take a listen to this artist. His/her (theres very little information about this individual, at least none I could find) album Self-Portrait As A Miserable Beast which features cover art by 'bad' painter George Condo is a tour-de-force of power electronics and seemingly modern art inspired strangeness. Some of the tracks (like 'Search For Skoffin' and 'Multi Media Installtion Of Male Violence') sound like highly distorted death and black metal songs layered unsympathetically over one another. Some of them (like 'Fountain Of Light' and the title track) have a much subtler though no less effecting ghostly quality that I suspect have been recorded in reverse. Some of the tracks (like 'The Form' and 'Depicting Totenkopf') are so abstract and bizarre they defy description.
I hope he/she releases more in the future but for now i'll have to be content with this.

http://www.last.fm/music/Magic+And+Politics

Darren Bader

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Not to be confused with Daren Bader, Darren Bader is a criminally overlooked artist on my part who just so happens to be in Phaidon's Younger Than Jesus publication. Seeing as i've browsed that book obsessively i'm not sure how I missed him, but miss him I did. In this article I hope to rectify that. The images above are taken from two of his exhibitions, the first pair of his installation Cat (2004) and the second pair from as = poaching the poachers (2007) shown at the Rivington Arms.

Its hard to quantify what it is I like about these accumulations of objects. Perhaps its because he uses some surprisingly under-used materials such as DVD packaging (see third image) or kitchen utensils unimbued with iconographic art history or context. Perhaps its his seeminglu totally unrestrained love of appropiation and his method of arranging it to suggest a totally open narrative. Theres no way you can look at his installations in full. To do so only gives a vague sensation of conmnectivity, or perhaps a place, outside the conventions of public or private use. Speaking of the private/public these arrangements don't seem to be aiming to provoke or push their viewers. It melds familiarity with the illogical and gently invites dialogue. The rooms exhibiting his work seem to have potential beyond their function of storing art. They look as though they could of been decorated and adapted by an individual half conciously without needing to consider the aesthetic qualities. This unknown inhabitant might lack furniture or refinement but he or she puts it to good use. Surrealist interior design perhaps? :p

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Gabriel Hartley

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Continuing in the Bloomberg New Contempories vein that I initiated with my last blog about Daniel Pasteiner, this artist became one of my other favorites from 2008. Some of his most interesting and numerous works are his altered postcards. Theres something terrifically nightmarish about the pulpy abstract painted structures superimposed over otherwise lovely images of natural landscapes and picturesque buildings. They could be biological or architectural, or scarier still both - invasive places of habitation that grow over and around whatever surface or being they happen to land on like some macroviral eruption. They remind me of Aaron Curry's From Dwellers (In Vulgar Space) series.

Whilst his postcards suit the Fallen Over cannon and thus my love of readymade/appropiation best, some of his most eye popping works are his sculptures. Like the postcards they remind me of the huge oozing nameless things that Lovecraft fans daydream about. However the inherantly 3dimensional nature of sculpture makes them look like extraplanar animals frozen in our corporeal material universe. They don't look so much made as they do preserved.

http://www.gabrielhartley.co.uk/cv.html

An Introduction to Fallen Over

Daniel Pasteiner

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An old favorite of mine from Bloomberg New Contempories 2007* This first piece I ever came across can be seen in the topmost image and its entitled Noland. Lots of sculpters like to suggest movement or growth in their works, the impressive thing about this materially unheirachial is that during its creation it did just that. Its a frozen explosion of a 'done-in-one-go' creativity. Other noteworthy pieces are his architectural combines made of LED lamps, aberrant shelves and various fancy detritus. And his shrink-wrapped oil paintings of simplistic shapely patterns that hover gently between child-like COBRA style impulsiveness and minimalist tidiness.

Daniel seems to be interested in how paintings, readymades and mega modernist sculpture (you know the kind) have almost analgamated together in the 00's, how the borders between them have gone a bit soft. He seems less concerned with making dogmatic artistic statements and as he put it ~ "Visual pleasure is the key to my process." For an appropiation junkie like me his artwork is akin to ingesting Tibetan morning grass. Take time to check out his incredibly enigmatic single page website at http://www.danielpasteiner.com/public.html.

[*If you've read the New Contempories 2007 publication you might have noticed how much i'm essentially ripping their judges writing style off. I like to think of myself as a bargain basement critic.]

An Introduction to Fallen Over

I'm back baby! / This week i've mostly been reading

Hello my fellow appropiation fans. I'm sorry I haven't updated this blog for a while but i've distracted by very un-FO genres lately like sci-fi art, lowbrow, gothic, anime, etc. It didn't seem right that I fill this blog with lovely artwork when you've come to expect (if not crave) sculptures made of expanding foam with taxidermied dugongs sticking out of the top. Things will be returning to normal in due course. In that time I have been reading some very good books.

The Upset

A HUGE book filled with aesthetically pleasing artists that I tend to overlook. In here you'll the the freshest and most interesting painting, caricature, digital art, graffiti and graphic illustration of recent years from artists who have difficulty being exhibited in fine art establishments. If only there were more democratic and eclectic galleries in the world ran by people who were willing to show visual artists alongside multi-media or conceptual ones. Contains some of my favorites like Ray Caesar and Daniel Richter.

Art & Ideas series: Conceptual Art

Well written and digestible book on what can easily turn into a very dry subject in the wrong hands. Filled with quotes artists, critics and even contextualized lyrics the author feels relates to the feelings and philosophy during concept arts heyday in 1970's. Can you envision Phaidon ever getting it wrong?

I've also been reading Vitamin 3D also published by Phaidon a lot more thoroughly and its turning up some interesting and overlooked artists, expect some future articles here to be about them. I also returned the Victor Alimpiev exhibition in the IKON Gallery, Birmingham. This time I actually remembered to go into the tower room and watch his uncharacteristically short video piece Is It Yours?. In it a young lady appears to be manipulated puppet like via the camera operators hand from a height. Its one of his more disconcerting and disturbing works for the girl crashes to the floor whenever the hand slackens the invisible connection between them, and she rise limply like a marionette when the hand tenses. I did buy a book called Russian Art in Translation which has some interesting images and articles within, but seems a bit thrown together and half-arsed to be brutally honest.

So never fear Fallen Over lurkers The blogs not dead, it just went on a small rambling trip retracing Robert Long's walking pieces. Thats bound to impress some of the more land art types that might visit the site. Cheers!

An Introduction to Fallen Over