Conceptual Expressionists, part 2

Becky Beasley - Buan, Night (Level 1) (acacia hardwood, black glass) 2006

Brian Kapernekas - Owl (mortor, pigment, straw, horsehair, twine, wood and nails) 2007

Laura Judkis - Phobia Box (wood, latex paint) 2013

Helen Mirra - Forest, vestige of; which doesn't actually look vestigal at all, 74 (shipping pallet, wool blanket) 2007

Roger Hiorns - Untitled (atomized passenger aircraft engine) 2008

William Pope L. - Correct (from the Semen Picture series) (c-print) 2005-2006

Abraham Cruzvillegas - The Invincible (rock, feathers, and mixed media) 2002

"at hand"

perhaps one is a set of drawings that i will exhibit together - made on and with stuff that i have around. [but this is also how i almost always make drawings, so perhaps this is just a blanket name for my drawings.]

conceptual expressionism

I have decided to do something about the fact that I am drawn to expressionist art (meaning that emotional affect is often the first response one has to the artwork) by finding a way for me to try to use it in my work. This is a quality that I not only admire, but would like to include in my work. This seems pertinent because I have been stating, for some time now, that my work is about the fear and anxiety (emotions) caused by climate change and the hype around it. If this emotion is important for me, then why are my pieces often foregrounded in cool/conceptual remove? This might be a question that leads to a dead end, it may be just another thing I incorporate into my work, or it may be a new direction.
Either way, I am using this post to begin to describe what I mean by "conceptual expressionism" by including artworks that I feel like are parents to how I would like to find my "expression." Broadly, I define contemporary expressionist art as artwork that initially presents viewers with emotional affect first, while longer reads lead to conceptual depth and emotional complexity. It should also be said that (given my interest in fear, anxiety, and death) that most of these works have some relation to the concept of the abject.

Josh Tonsfeldt - Perpetual Summer (tire and fruit) 2011

Bill Conger - the night sweats (wall paper, foil, plastic latex paint) 2009

Michael E. Smith - Dave (helmet shell, pigeon) 2013

Richard Hawkins - Scalp 3 (Remember the wonderful days when "the abject" had the ability to "corrode" hegemony?) (rubber mask, painted paper, pencil and paperclips) 2011

Richard Hawkins - Scalp 13 (Remember the wonderful days when "the abject" had the ability to "corrode" hegemony?) (rubber mask, painted paper, paper clips, shoebox) 2012

Oscar Tuazon - I gave my name to it (steel plate and fluorescent lamps) 2010

Isa Genzken - Hospital (Ground Zero) (artificial flowers, plastic, metal, glass, acrylic, spray-paint, mirror foil, MDF and casters) 2008

Tracy Thomason - Untitled (spray tanner, and presence on paper) 2008

Li Gang - The Big Dipper (tbc) (stones and glue) 2013

Kelly Jazvac - Plastiglomerate and Plastic Samples (detail) (conglomerate rocks gathered on Kamilo Beach with geologist Patricia Corcoran, Hawaii, and ceramic stands) 2013

Jay Heikes - Creeply (dyed porcupine quills and driftwood) 2011

Sterling Ruby - Ashtray 72 (ceramic) 2010

Richard Nonas & emotional objects

"Language and culture are tools to take a complicated world and make it understandable, break it up and categorize it, understand it. But there are things language can't say easily that I feel the need to say. So in every culture we find that there are built-in escape valves: religion on one hand, art on the other. The production of art, in my mind, thinking as an anthropologist, is a way of saying the things that can't be said directly, or evoking the complex emotion between the named emotions, or combinations of the named emotions that themselves don't have names. Perceptions and emotions, those are categories that need to be broken into, or skewed, and art is an acceptable way to do it, a way that you are not punished for. The only visual art that interests me is the art that is conveying something that it would not be able to convey directly with words."

When was the first time you had the impulse to create an object that conveyed something without words?
"Before I worked in Mexico, I was in north Canada. I brought back a sled dog. And I found myself picking up pieces of wood for him to play with. One day I picked up two pieces of wood, and there was real emotion there, and not story, no narrative, no reason for that emotion. I could describe the emotion, not in a single word, but there was real emotion. Not fake, not conceptual. But it was just two sticks. I thought, Wow, maybe it's possible to communicate abstract ideas directly with objects, in a way you can't with words. I got really excited, trying and making things, but I never thought about art. Then, two or three months later, a friend of a friend came to my apartment and said, 'You idiot, it's called sculpture!'"
- from a Scott Indrisek interview with Richard Nonas for Modern Painters, September 2014

Richard Nonas - installation view of Between Old Times: Sculpture for a Changing Castle-for Bronilow Malinowski (birch logs, each three fee long) 1991