Full-Time faculty member Nora Krug is a member of SPRING, a comic magazine created by a group of women illustrators from Berlin and Hamburg. SPRING is exhibiting original art work from their most recent, 300-page, issue, entitled “Happy Ending”, this Saturday in Berlin, Germany. For those visitors who check in from overseas, please join the group for the opening at:
Gallery Neurotitan
Rosenthalerstraße 39
Berlin, Germany
8 p.m.
Congrats, Nora!
DAVID SANDLIN “SLEEP O’HISTORY”
Bongout Galerie
Torstrasse 110
10119 Berlin
Opening Friday 28. May at 7 pm
Exhibition 28.5 – 10.7
Bongoût Gallery is proud to present New York artist David Sandlin in his first exhibition in Berlin. He will be showing his books; new paintings; “puritanical novelty items”; and a collection of drawings from his 2006 book, An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality. This will be the first major showing of Sandlin’s artist’s-book opus A Sinner’s Progress, an eight-volume series comprised mostly of large-scale hand-printed books, including his most recent work, Slumburbia, a nine-metre silkscreened panorama of sloth and indolence in sumptuous hand-separated color silkscreen.
David Sandlin floats between the worlds of painting, printmaking, comics, and artist’s books. Since he began his career in the 1980s, visual narrative, usually nonlinear, has been a core component of his work. He uses it as a structural device to build content and express ideas while still being able to experiment with form, using symbolism and allegory to amplify his social commentary. Sandlin’s books range in form from complex hand-bound silkscreened editions to offset pulp-style comics—each volume’s form in service to its content to some extent. “The book rather than the single image is the ideal medium for me to explore content and experiment with form,” says Sandlin.
Eccentric modernist painters like Beckmann, Ensor, and Guston have inspired Sandlin’s explorations into the mythic/transformative utility of personal history. His love of words and literature also draw him toward narrative: “I was born in Northern Ireland and moved to the USA, to Alabama, when I was a teenager—both places steeped in the narrative-literary tradition—so I’m not surprised that I need to incorporate words into my images. I love the wordplay used by Irish and southern American artists like James Joyce, Flann O’Brien, Flannery O’Connor, and Hank Williams.”
Other works in the exhibition reflect Sandlin’s love of narrative. “The Sleep of History,” a large work on canvas, is part of his ongoing series of epic paintings. Drawings upon which his abecedarium, An Alphabetical Ballad of Carnality, are also on display as a 22-metre-long panorama. He will also be showing components of “The Pur-Ton-o-Fun Co. Reading Room,” a multimedia installation piece based on A Sinner’s Progress.
David Sandlin’s work has been displayed in galleries and museums worldwide, and his comics have been published by Fantagraphics and Cornelius Editions and have also appeared in many anthologies, including Raw, Strapazin, The Ganzfeld, and The Best American Comics 2009. He is currently preparing to start his next book, a graphic novel, as a Fellow of the Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars, at the New York Public Library, in NYC.
DAVID SANDLIN “SLEEP O’HISTORY”
Bongout Galerie
Torstrasse 110
10119 Berlin
Opening Friday 28. May at 7 pm
Exhibition 28.5 – 10.7
[vodpod id=ExternalVideo.855171&w=425&h=350&fv=clip_id%3D5804418%26server%3Dvimeo.com%26autoplay%3D0%26fullscreen%3D1%26md5%3D0%26show_portrait%3D0%26show_title%3D0%26show_byline%3D0%26context%3Duser%3A1046853%26context_id%3D%26force_embed%3D0%26multimoog%3D%26color%3D00ADEF%26force_info%3Dundefined]
The 2009 Pictoplasma Conference at the House of World Cultures in Berlin brought together character designers and enthusiasts from around the world. “Poems for Pictopia” is a short glimpse of some of the highlights of the conference and the accompanying exhibition “Prepare for Pictopia”. This rad video ALSO features our very own program chair Steven Guarnaccia, plus Alumni AJ Fosik and Motomichi Nakamura!
Editor’s Note: Please enjoy this selection of photos taken by friend of the department, Lasse Krug. They were taken at the “Ugly is Beautiful” exhibition at the Pictopia Festival in Berlin this past March. Thanks, Lasse!
Editor’s Note: This guest entry comes from Illustration Senior Roxie Vizcarra, who participated in the Pictopia/Pictoplasma Festival in Berlin, Germany this past March.
When the Illustration Department invited me to help represent them at this year’s Pictopia Festival (part of the acclaimed character design organization Pictoplasma), I was excited to be able to visit a city I’ve never been to, especially one with some much history as Berlin. What I didn’t know at the time was that there couldn’t have been a more perfect location for Pictopia to take place. It’s impossible to go very far without encountering some form of art that incorporates strong character design.
I spent a couple of days watching over Parsons’ exhibition, Ugly is Beautiful, at the Collegium Hungaricum, which also featured work by other Pictopia Character Walk artists. The set-up for the show was long and tedious, but in the end it was worth the effort as everything looked fantastic, and I can attest to the fact that most people who came by to have a look were rather impressed by the variety of unique characters Parsons students have to offer.