A powerful work and breathtaking painting: the nature in riot with the elements earth, water, fire and storm. 

This work is inspired by the enormous challenges of the future, which force us to act now.

The artist acted by over-painting an abstract work from 1992 which seemed to him to be „too beautiful, too harmonic, too idyllic“ from actual view of climate change.
Parts of the former painting are still visible, but the bold colours and gestural forms in the style of abstract expressionism of the over-painting dominate the new picture. 
This abstract painting is signed and dated on the front, additionally, titled, dated and signed on the back. It is ready to hang by a hook on the back.


Let's Face The Future And Act Now

Sky House, 2014.
Oil, manila pattern paper, and bolt fabric on birch wood panel, 20 x 20 inches.

Sky House

In this work, three vintage Kennecott Copper Corporation billboard ads show narratives of economic prosperity and job creation that circulated widely during the dawn of industrialization. The billboards sit on top of slag waste piles and have embedded animations that illustrate a starkly different reality. Elements of the poster slowly begin to move in the animation to illustrate the labor strikes, abandoned houses, and environmental degradation in mining towns today.
The visual differences exemplify the disconnect between what was promised to these communities and the material living conditions the towns were actually left with.

Years of Life lost (we are within the waste)

2021
Black ambrotypes in artist's frames, diptych

Lazy Semaphores

NATURE MORTE no.2 à la dérive
STILL LIFE no.2 DRIFTING
Painted wood frame, metal, oil painting fragment, 14 in x 11 in x 0.75 in, 2020
DRIFTS DRIFTING PHASE II Installation Project. Photo: Paul Litherland

The DRIFTS DRIFTING PHASE II installation project proposes a questioning of human and artistic drift, a theme that Anne-Marie Giroux has been exploring since 2014. Taking a critical and mocking approach to the relevance of the very essence of the art object, the artist also questions the relevance of being an artist and most specifically, the importance of being a woman artist. Composed of three-dimensional works developed with traditional mediums and recovered materials, the installation is presented as a still life, fragmented with multiple « self-portraits » of the artist and her art, adrift.

In the continuity of the DRIFT (2014-2018) and DRIFTING (2017-2018) series as well as the DRIFTS PHASE I installation project (2O19), it is during the Covid-19 confinement of spring 2020 that the artist undertook the creation of the DRIFTS DRIFTING PHASE II installation project. In December 2020, she also had the opportunity to complete an artist residency that allowed her to refine the project and create in situ at Galerie ERGA in Montreal. The artist now plans to present the project publicly.

Anne-Marie Giroux attaches great importance to the creative process. One of the peculiarities of the project comes from a desire to push the practice of painting and sculpture further. She challenges herself to compose with the surrounding material in her studio, whether it is with the oil painting fragments that dried and that accumulated, plasters and cements created for previous projects, materials and objects that have piled up in the studio over the years.

Greatly inspired by the work of Duchamp (transposition of the object into art), Ed Rushcha (conceptual aspect) and Mathieu Lefèvre (questioning and relevance of being an artist), she has created a series of three-dimensional works offering a poetic and minimalist in situ that will be able to transform and recompose itself in the spaces that will host it.

Still life no.2 drifting

Through the medium of oil paint my work captures imagery of the everyday in New York City to highlight the dystopian reality of 2020. My practice focuses on the screen as a surface of mediation, protection, isolation, safety, and fear. Together we acknowledge the courage of our essential workers during these unprecedented times, and their protection of and service to the community at large. I recognize the screen as a barrier and charged index that both separates and unites us. This physical boundary functions as a space from which to consider our privilege and reflect upon our position as human beings during these unprecedented times. It is a barrier that mediates the body and incites questions regarding human desire and fear: the inability to touch during a global health crisis and the longing to connect.

Untitled (07/16/2020)

As a textile artist, I use materials, textures, imagery, and senses to evoke place and time. This year in particular, I tried to bring a feeling of comfort back to the isolated existence I experienced in America in the midst of a global pandemic. I wanted to make my home in India almost palpable- within my reach.

Working on the jacquard loom and embedding a textile with spices common in my family’s cooking allowed me to capture the comfort of scent; just the smell of a spice can trigger fond, powerful memories. Now these textiles can envelop a space with the scent of spices, but have also become meaningful objects that can be folded up and taken with me wherever I go, as a reminder of home and the warmth it brings.


Aromatics

Wake up (2020-2021) is a sculpture composed by two plastic containers filled with bee honey. Thanks to infusion equipment connected to the containers, the honey drips on a glass box that covers the body of a taxidermied hare. This artwork rescues two meaningful elements according to its symbolism on the history of art: the hare and the honey.

Wake up

A self-portrait, titled 'Saturating and Sinking Deeper', from the series CALAMITIES- PLASTIC & FAUNA. 

33.1 x 46.8"

Archival Digital C Type Print 

Dibond Mount+ S/Frame 15mm sub frame

CALAMITIES-PLASTIC & FAUNA was JABO's  response to the headlines surrounding the severity of the Microplastic problem that we are all currently living. The headline that vehemently took O'Neill's mind - 'Microplastic's have become discoverable in Human Organs'. 
Throughout the U.K. Lockdown she became relentless with materials and produced a body of work that contains photographs, sculpture and an oral poetic performance. When combined, CALAMITIES-PLASTIC & FAUNA engages with and stimulates emotional response in the viewer by combining a contradiction of jarring, self-portraits and beautiful sea fauna cyanotypes. In order to elicit the disruptive symbiosis between the manmade material, sea fauna and the human - leaning on aesthetic attraction and haptic/ bodily experiences of the viewer to spotlight the severity of the Microplastic problem. 

Saturating and Sinking Deeper

Portrait of a Liberian Girl

What define jewelry? Wearability? Precious material?


Drawing of penis with horse tail hair and human pubic hair.

Tail ≒ pubic hair ...?

PAPERWORX


Since 2003 I have been designing public spaces with posters. The series HELDENREISE and GIPFELTREFFEN were created. With the help of poster art, I create intellectual sculptures that condense in public space and describe a social sculpture in the spirit of Joseph Beuys.

In doing so, I discovered an enthusiasm for the countless layers of illegal advertising posters on the street. The rinds created by constant pasting and changing weather conditions become three-dimensional reliefs on the walls of the housings and serve layer by layer as the canvas of my PAPERWORX.

Then I form the last level myself with fragments of other advertising posters whose motifs or slogans are freed from the products, services and brands, supplement some of my own posters, political motifs, stickers or found objects and overlay the whole thing with paint and color.

The result are three-dimensional objects that use collage and decollage, demolition and tear-out to create an over-image and invite the viewer to discourse.

Advertising strategies are critically questioned and neutralized. The plasticity of the posters is emphasized in its complexity, upgraded and processed sustainably. A symbiosis of contradictions between consumption and culture arises between abstraction and pop art.

Unlike the advertising poster, my poster art is aimed at all citizens. The aim of my posters is not the need for more consumption and the appeal of selfishness, but rather guidance on social responsibility, love, respect and compassion.


OLIVER O. REDNITZ