Oct 27th, 2020 • 8 minute read
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The Bi-Weekly Curation: Spooky
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It’s the most wonderful time of year -- Halloween. It’s the season of the spooky and the creepy; spiders crawling through the shadows, witches taking flight. It’s a magical time, inspiring in us all that chill of the unknown. Collectively, we find a thrill in that innocent pleasure of imagined evil, imagined fear. And each fall we take a walk down memory lane to the simple joys of childhood, from pillowcase trick-or-treat bags to handfuls of candy in the darkness with our very best friends.
This week, artist and curator Mel Reese brings together a collection of Art in Res pieces that celebrate the spooky. Scroll through the post to see Mel’s placement of each piece, as well as how the selected works come together in a thoughtful, coalescent collection. Make sure to also catch Mel’s helpful educational tips on curating your own collection!
As the days get cooler and we all hunker down, it’s the perfect time to make our living spaces as cozy as possible. Is there any better way to enjoy art than with a cup of tea in hand? Placing stunning new artwork on your walls is a meaningful and personalized way to bring warmth into your home.
Now let’s put on our costumes and scroll onward –– happy browsing!
Foggy Evenings
Fall may be the very best season. There’s enough sunshine left to be warm in the day, but when night falls, the air goes chill, cool and mysterious fog settles into our everyday landscape. The feeling of true autumn becomes inescapable. And there’s no one better to turn to for a landscape piece than Art in Res veteran Carrie-Ann Bracco. In this stunning painting, Madre de Dios, Blue Trees Silhouette, we see that perfect depiction of late fall fog. The dark silhouette of naked trees against the warm grey envelopes you in this encompassing, vibrating eeriness. Brilliant flecks of subtle red at the bottom of the composition invite the viewer into the forest’s depths and darkness. There’s inescapable beauty in the stillness of the fog, the heavy quiet. A calm that overwhelms, promising the thrills of darkness.
Carrie-Ann Bracco's art has mostly focused on remote and endangered landscapes. She has traveled to unique places to inspire her artwork. The paintings from these experiences attempt to convey the ethereal quality of these mythic and fragile landscapes. They also illustrate our explorations into the unknown and our tenuous co-existence with the natural environment.
Slime
If you’re a 90s kid like me, this deliciously rendered painting by Nikolina Kovalneko immediately evokes that iconic gooey oozy slime of the classic Nickelodeon show “Goosebumps” and the equally unforgettable “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” The shows were deliciously bad, ultra campy, and yet so fantastic. They were innocent scares, good old fashion Halloween horror stories for kids. And, because of this, green slime has been used to emulate a child friendly caricature of horror. It’s not blood red, not gory, but it’s still gross and funny. Frightening and surprising at the same time. It is immediate nostalgia of innocent fear, a lighthearted childhood Halloween experience.
Nikolina's work is about humanity’s fragile connection with nature. Through her dreamy rainforest inspired paintings and projects focusing on reforestation, the artist strives to increase the world’s awareness and expose the consequences our everyday actions have on the environment. Nikolina Kovalenko was born in Moscow, Russia in 1987 and currently lives and works in New York City.
Magic
With his otherworldly haunting style, photographer Robert Cameron Connelly’s piece Ephemeris #7 is the epitome of dark magic in all its glory. With a fiery glow surrounding the black abyss, gnarled hands and floating masses, we are brought to a place where satanic energies abound. The image evokes the haunting, dark mystery of witches and wizards, demons of darkness. Together with Connelly, we become entranced by the illusion of wicked spells, the sexiness of evil and the thrills of our dark imagination.
Robert Cameron Connelly is an Austin, Texas based experimental large format photographer who often employs processes that meld analog photography with painting. His recent work explores the mythos of humanity and existence, rendering his own contemplations of self and self's unfathomable role in this cosmically infinite space into immersive images.
Psychological Horror
Emotional.Haircut by Gregory Malphurs is a painting that aptly depicts the emotional struggles one faces when confronted by fear. The image alone is a perfect depiction of the feeling of horror. The blurred, double-exposed, yet meticulously rendered face of a young woman surrounded by a vacuum of darkness is a succinct portrayal of all of us during our moments of fear or loss or depression and anxiety. It scares us all to our very core. We see ourselves reflected in the rich paints -- spooked by a mirror of our own psychological horrors realized.
Malphurs says this about the piece: “Inspired by the work of photographer Maxine Helfman this is a portrait that explores isolation in these desperate times. A double-exposure of sorts, the composition is blurred indicating motion as if her head is turning. Unexpected colors & frenetic brush strokes layered in heavy impasto bring a vibrant energy to her face that plays in against the stark darkness around it.”
Gregory Malphurs lives and works in Long Island City, New York. Haunting and emotional, his work explores our spirituality striving to understand the subconscious. Seeking to expose the inner self by revealing all the things we try to hide away, Malphurs creates inside-out portraiture. Less concerned with depicting physical likeness, his work shines a spotlight on psyche seen through a lens of distortion and fragmentation. His subjects are mirrors in which we see reflected all that is inside us.
Full Moon
Ah, the full moon. The tall tales and fables we read all tell of the evils we might encounter on the eves of the full moon. And this year we have Halloween on a full moon. What could be more magical? In this fiery Moonscape 01-07-2020 painting by Andrea Caldarise, we get to experience the dark thrills of the perfectly eerie full moon in late October. The glowing sphere bounces light through the shadowy darkness and billowy clouds. We half expect to spot a witch on her broom, the flap of a bats wings–– is that a distant cackle we hear? Or is that a werewolf's howl?
Andrea Caldarise is a painter and collaborator inspired by happenstance conversations and memories. Caldarise's art explores the psychological connection between places and people. Caldarise has exhibited her artwork in Philadelphia, New York, and Rome, Italy and she lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Darkness
More than anything, as humans we fear the unknown. The dark void under our beds, the cobwebbed corners of the attic left unseen. What lies in wait for us in the darkness? What do we see reflected out? In this meticulously drawn rendering of Flares and Fawn by Becca Shmuluvitz, we catch a glimpse of what might be lurking in that night.The glowing eyes reflecting the flickering light of explosion in the night are creepy and filled with paralyzing fear but then we realize that deer are harmless. We remember that oftentimes our imagined fears are greater than the threats that actually exist. Smuluvitz says about the piece, “Completed in quarantine, done out of curiosity about a burst of light and smoke. Something about explosions in stillness.”
Becca Shmuluvitz is a Brooklyn born artist working out of Westchester, NY. Becca's work involves images of an imagined pre-historic/post-apocalyptic landscape. She uses this world as a backdrop to express ideas of solitude, survival, and rebellion as well as current personal and collective anxieties. Becca also seeks to elevate drawing as a medium. The use of graphite, a basic and elemental material, allows her to achieve a granular, palpable atmosphere in her work.
Fear
Repulsion and fear are the two words that immediately come to mind when I see this beautifully rendered drawing Moni II by M Moore. Moore is artfully skilled at capturing a human in a raw, emotional state--we feel we instantly understand who Moni is. We see ourselves in the portrait, a visceral state of repulsion, fear, and almost nausea. What makes the subject react this way? What does she fear? Could it be us, the viewer? Are we alone...or is there something behind us...ever lurking?
Artist and critic Jaclyn Conley says about M. Moore’s work, "Above everything else, art is assigned the task of empathy. In her work M. Moore presents individuals not as objects or types but as living things... In a range of essential media Moore manages to enforce and prioritize an individual within the mechanics of representation. The media and the artist are never dominant and we are granted an access that makes possible a unique and genuine exchange between individuals outside of both time and place. These are moments that are beautiful and hard, challenging and hopeful.”
Creeping Shadows
As the sun sets, the full moon rises, and the shadows grow, receding into the creeping darkness. In the solemn blueness of Gosha Karpowicz’s The Shadows of Blue II we are reminded of the cooling, creeping darkness of late October - the majesty of the blue hour. When we take in the piece, we feel that familiar cooling in the air, the rustle of the breeze. We’re transported into the memories of joyful times in the dark evenings spent walking through our neighborhoods with friends while out trick-or-treating, eager for whatever we may find.
Gosha Karpowicz grew up in the countryside of Communist Poland and defected to live and paint where freedom of expression thrived. Gosha says about her work, “My paintings explore human, emotional, always multi-layered experience. They are an invitation to pause. In a world where stillness is rare, they rely on the moments of quietude, contemplating the interactions of color fields and the relationships of spaces in between them.”
Bringing it Together
We all love a good scare, a solid thrill, a perfect chill. And Halloween is the best time of all to embrace that human desire. In each of this week’s selections we are reminded of the spooky, delicious thrills of the late October season. Carrie-Ann Bracco and Gosha Karpowicz remind us of the simple seasonal pleasures of soft cool breezes and foggy landscapes. Simultaneously, Nikolina Kovalenko and Robert Cameron Connelly evoke our childhood fascinations with gross goo and magical creatures. Going ever deeper, with Gregory Malphurs and M Moore we face the psychological thrills of staring deep into the darkness. And heading further into night, we rejoice with Andrea Caldarise and Becca Shmuluvitz illuminating us to the light found within even the darkest of places.
With these new viewing tools in hand, happy collecting!
Curated by Mel ReeseZhuzh by Emily Berge
Virtual installations courtesy of ArtPlacer