Most who try this end up plummeting and just make more cute kitsch that goes no further than sentimentality. Working with these lowbrow pop culture components is a tightrope walk, difficult, dangerous, and rarely pulled off. It’s a mix just this side of visual nausea, for those of us with delicate sensibilities, but perfect for those who like their art a touch more brut. But to me, it suggested rougher subject matter to come and that promise has been delivered.īarford functions on that very dangerous edge where cute, kitsch, and sentimentality all come together. It was “cheeky” to use a word that translates poorly outside England. His early work was not that radical and could have been dismissed as saccharine. Looking back, I am surprised that I enjoyed the work. Happily, he has since won over most of his critics. If the fame extends beyond clay’s hermetic world into the visual arts mainstream, skepticism often turns to hostility. But in the ceramics world success, because it is rare, is viewed with deep skepticism and if it comes too soon, it is considered unearned. Indeed, I first saw his art in the once great Wallpaper magazine. The art and design media quickly adopted his work and broadcast it widely. It’s not as easy as it seems.Īt first, he was a controversial artist. (Sorry, Barnaby, I expected someone just a little effete.) That told me something about his work that I had not fully expected. I was surprised, he was much tougher than I expected, he had a glint in his eye that suggested that he would be someone to avoid in a pub brawl. I have known Barnaby Barford since his career first tore loose after leaving the Royal College of Art, London, but only via the phone and correspondence up until we met in person last year. The whole was then assembled and printed to form a collective print centered on the Hampton Roads community.Īll in all, the new Multiplicity gallery opening was a huge success! Many patrons came out to view the new artwork, try some tasty food from North End Catering, and the smooth sounds of a saxophone in the atrium.The survey exhibition Barnaby Barford (he is too young for a retrospective) at the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, Virginia (September 12-December 29, 2013) is an excellent exhibition, gem like and modest in scale, as suits the generally small scale tableaux. Steve Prince, of One Fish Studio, is the current artist in residence and collaborated with community individuals toward a common goal: creating a 3′ by 30′ woodblock print: Gestalt: Whole to the Part to be exhibited in MOCA’s Fleming Gallery alongside the Multiplicity exhibit. Prince defines Gestalt as “a configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its part.” Steve Prince created one-third of the woodblock print the other two-thirds of the blocks were cut into multiple jigsaw pieces and subsequently made by community members into individual artistic creations. These prints are the result of collaboration between the artist and professional printers who help realize the artist’s vision.” Multiplicity brings together a selection of prints by artists for whom the idea of multiplicity in its many forms provides a touchstone for their artistic expression. Implicit in their work is a challenge to rarity and uniqueness as determinants of value. They explore repetition, pairing, and variations on a theme as artistic strategies. According to the MOCA website: “Many of the artists in this exhibition have expanded the idea of multiplicity beyond editions of identical impressions by creating series, sequences, and images that comprise numerous parts. Multiplicity is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum and brings together more than 80 prints from current modern artists such as Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, Martin Puryear, Susan Rothenberg, just to name a few. There are so many things to love about living in Virginia Beach, especially since we have so much art and culture at our fingertips! For the Multiplicity Gallery Opening at Virginia MOCA, it was amazing to see the work of so many interesting artist, as well as art from people right here in the Hampton Roads community! Multiplicity
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