Shadows on the wall; dramatic, pastoral to abstract!

[Asher Kelman]

A grab shot from today .Best regards,
Michael

Zwei Schatten​

You have a keen ee for humor! It's always there, just you seem to find it or it finds you!


Asher

 

[Michael Nagel]

Asher,

thanks. I was waiting for the shadow of the statue to appear at the right place (the upper shadow).
The person adding the second shadow was just right, but I missed the best position by the fraction of a second.

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Michael Nagel]

Three more - two involving bicycles.

Obvious:

Bike+Shadow​

Less obvious:

Ein Schatten seiner Selbst​

Not a wall, but I think it fits:

Licht​

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Maggie Terlecki]

Michael, the second one is actually brilliant. The shadow almost looks like it is in motion.

 

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Michael, the second one is actually brilliant. The shadow almost looks like it is in motion.

I agree with Maggie, the quality of light is very nice, and the shadow parked against the curved wall works very well here.

Cheers,
Bart

 

[Michael Nagel]

Maggie, Bart - thanks!

This was actually the most difficult one. The bicycles were illuminated by the headlights of a car moving out of a parking lot. There was no second chance, so I had to be right first time.

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Michael Nagel]

I think that many of the people who are here know deep in themselves that they will never get this kind of "approval", that is the real meaning behind a signature like "I am not an artist".

There is another twist to it, at least from my point of view:
For me it is an expression of deep skepticism towards the established Art Market and related phenomena.
I feel closer to Dada here.

I had the occasion to talk to a few artists who do not share the popularity of the big names and I saw their struggle. It is not easy to get some visibility and accessible galleries (for them) sometimes tend to favor popularity (stronger: hype) over quality as it guarantees more visitors.
The human factor plays a (not so small) role as well in this area...

This is also the reason why I posted some information about Agnès Pataux - I think her work is not valued enough.

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Michael Nagel]

Just a few additions to above:

I mentioned struggle for the less popular artists. This has several elements. In order to be able to sell, you have to please to your customers. So id you need to make a living from your art, you have to tailor what you make to the taste of your customers to be able to sell it. Economical calculations determine the price - you have to cover the material price and see how much you can add to it that helps to pay your food and rent. The margin can be pretty small...

The economy is currently not exactly what many of us would call flourishing. The market is a buyers' market, so an artist has to please and - unless we are talking of the big names with many fans among the Champagne sipping brigade (Thank you so much Tom for that striking image) - cannot ask for a very high price.

To please - this means several things:
You have to build an image of you and your work and constantly improve it. There is no place for fooling around and exploring new areas while doing the best to learn and improve upon - some nice errors which help to open your eyes and see new paths to explore. Well - you can do it, but not publicly. Everything to be shown publicly has to be verified against your image, style whatever you think you represent and any new path has to be explored first secretly and checked before you make it public to not scare away current customers.
That's not what I call freedom within Art.

So do I want to have to consider the above for being an artist? No!

I am quite happy with my playful approach and not having to care about occasional bad photos.

So let's have some more fun:

Tür-Lampe-Fenster​

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Asher Kelman]

.....
So let's have some more fun:Michael

Tür-Lampe-Fenster​

Michael,

With a title, "Tür-Lampe-Fenster", the pretty women will be filling the champagne glass for a second round! This is delightful. I'd not worry about checking everything against your public facade today, just don't post low prices as that is suicidal. Your work is of the quality needed. Having several styles for different subjects works too. In the photography of Catherine Opie, her portraits seem like descendants of 17th century painters while her landscapes are even more abstract than French expressionists.

I have a dream of bipassing the blocks to access to buying public. Hopefully our planned exhibition will materialize and be a small but definite start in that direction.

Asher

 

[Michael Nagel]

A recent find - smartphone snap:

Shadow Ladder​

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Michael Nagel]

One more for this old thread:

Schatten​

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Asher Kelman]

Three more - two involving bicycles.

Obvious:

Bike+Shadow​

Less obvious:

Ein Schatten seiner Selbst​

Not a wall, but I think it fits:

Licht​

Best regards,
Michael

Michael,

I noticed you were browsing here. Great. now I get to visit a street and a cemetery. The second bicycle picture is more interesting as with this and the picture of the shadow on the tombstone together, we get to think about the people who we might have met and now are no longer here, before us.

So we have a mixture of both solid reality and transience in both. This does seem connected to your growing collection here.

The picture with the actual bicycle is for this, at least, a distraction. It really adds little more and takes away from the sense of "missing someone" present in the tombstone and the shadow of the cycle alone.

Asher

 

[Bill McCarthy]

Late to the party, but Pataux's work is wonderful. Thanks Michael, for the intro.

 

[Michael Nagel]

Hi Asher,

So we have a mixture of both solid reality and transience in both. This does seem connected to your growing collection here.

The picture with the actual bicycle is for this, at least, a distraction. It really adds little more and takes away from the sense of "missing someone" present in the tombstone and the shadow of the cycle alone.

Thanks, but when you look at the series, the first has its place. Think of the series as be - leaving - gone. So the first symbolizes 'be' as it is there with its shadow, the second is the shadow remaining thus 'leaving' while the last could be seen as 'gone' - a shadow (no longer from a bicycle) on a tombstone.
Everybody's imagination is different, but your approach brought up this line of associations in my head.

Best regards,
Michael

 

[Michael Nagel]

Hi Bill,

Thanks. It was my wife who offered me her book 'Mon Irlande' which sparked ma interest for her work.
The book is sitting right now at a little more than arms length from me in the bookshelf.

Bets regards,
Michael

 

[Asher Kelman]

A great thread.

Bump!

 

[Antonio Correia]

 

[Antonio Correia]

 

[Asher Kelman]

Antonio,

Glad you are not making everything monochrome!

Interesting shapes texture and color. Are these "birds marks" actually the heads of nails in the second picture?

Asher

 

[Andy brown]

Very cryptic Antonio.
I suspect the work of a crab.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Very cryptic Antonio.
I suspect the work of a crab.

These are supposed to be on walls, LOL!

Asher

 

[Antonio Correia]

For the first picture I do not know which kind of animal did the job.

Perhaps a crab, yes. May be not. I do not know.

But the second track is the way made by a paguru early morning, low tide.

Photographed in Havelock Island, Andaman, India - Radhanagar beach.

Here work done by crabs. Small and speedy !

 

[Asher Kelman]

For the first picture I do not know which kind of animal did the job.

Perhaps a crab, yes. May be not. I do not know.

But the second track is the way made by a paguru early morning, low tide.

Photographed in Havelock Island, Andaman, India - Radhanagar beach.

Here work done by crabs. Small and speedy !

It's interesting that the radial spread of the excavated sand is so clearly piled in lines. Do these happen at once or does the cdab rotate as it excavates? Are the number of radial lines typical of a particular species?

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Here work done by crabs. Small and speedy !

Well, Antonio, you got me so stricken by this natural beauty!

I had to know about this clever artist! It turns out that the little crab cleans of organic debris from sand grains. The cleaned up sand is dropped off as little pellets behind them. Read more here.

Asher

 

[Andy brown]

I know we're getting a little off track ( I always think that's a good thing and perfectly natural for a good thread to wander about a bit) but I really like the bubbler crab artwork.
Antonio, thanks for posting these, we have a similar species here in Australia- the soldier crab, they also come out at low tide and create sand balls. They seem a bit less ordered and their work is hard to photograph as I usuall find it on estuarine islands which require swimming to reach. Anyway, I'll be sure to keep an eye out for artistic compositions.
The crabs themselves are quite cute, purple and blue and pink and in their thousands.

 

[Andy brown]

 

[Asher Kelman]

Welcome back, Andy!

 

[Asher Kelman]

What are these odd shadows from on the right? Is that some primitive frond plant?

Asher

 

[nicolas claris]

B&W or colors?

Well, it all depends…

Shadow may be grey:

or colored!

Baccarat (and Ercuis & Raynaud) stuffs shot some years ago…
More here

 

[Andy brown]

Welcome back, Andy!

Thanks Asher.

The shadow is definitely from a primitive frond plant, well picked Asher, It's from a cycad (Macrozamia communis) and you don't get much more ancient than that.
Wet day with a brief brightening of the sky to produce the soft shadow.

p.s, note the lovely fresian face just below the shadow