Latest news with #collage
Khaleej Times
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Adrien Brody returns with bold art exhibition 'Made in America'
'I'm a little in a daze,' actor Adrien Brody said at the end of May, the skin around his eyes slightly crinkled, but his gaze soft and present. He'd been up since 5am and had spent most of his day crouched on the ground at Eden Gallery in Manhattan, putting the finishing touches on his collages ahead of the opening of his latest solo exhibition, 'Made in America.' The floors and walls were covered with canvases, themselves covered with old newspaper advertisements, erratic splashes of graffiti and darkly rendered cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe were in attendance. As were the Hamburglar and a toy soldier. In a nearby corner was an empty gum wall, soon to be covered in wads of chewing gum straight from the mouths of attendees in an interactive 'expression of rebellion and decay,' according to the wall text. Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artist. Those mediums converge in a collection of more than 30 works. Accompanied by Brody's soundscapes, the show features large mixed media art in what he calls an autobiographical display of the gritty New York of his youth, and the culture of violence and intolerance today. It's an approach that has been met with some derision both in the art press and on social media. 'Made in America,' on view until June 28, also includes photographs of and by his mother, acclaimed Hungarian American photographer Sylvia Plachy — a role model for Brody, who was never formally trained in visual art. It's been nearly a decade since Brody, 52, last showed his work publicly, at Art Basel Miami. So why now? 'I'm an unemployed actor at the moment,' he said with a half smile. Though it's difficult to picture Brody as unemployed, especially when which his artworks sell for six figures, this isn't untrue. The last film Brody shot was in 2023, 'The Brutalist,' for which he won the best actor Oscar this year, and nothing definite is lined up next. 'I know that if I don't do it now, I won't do it for another long period of time,' he said of the show. 'It's kind of this time to let it go.' Brody has been steadily working on his collages for the past decade. In the fallow periods, yearslong stretches when he wasn't landing the acting roles he yearned for, he turned inward and painted. The method in all of his mediums, he said, is a combination of layering (be it the incorporation of studied hand mannerisms for his character in 'The Pianist' or the added thumps for a recorded track) and peeling back (using chemicals to degrade paint for a visual work; stripping away pretenses as an actor). Brody, who credits his mother as his greatest artistic inspiration, grew up accompanying Plachy on photo expeditions as she chronicled the city's beauty and chaos on assignments for The Village Voice, where she worked for 30 years. In her darkroom, set up in their home attic in Queens, they would talk to each other through the curtain while she developed her photographs, moving the images from tray to tray, swirling them around in Dektol. 'He still associates me with those bad chemicals,' she said, laughing. His father, Elliot Brody, was also a painter but focused on his career as a teacher. It was onto Plachy's discarded photo prints that Brody began painting as a child. 'He used to be the son of Sylvia Plachy,' she said warmly. 'Now I'm the mother of Adrien Brody!' As a teenager, Brody attended Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts for drama, after being rejected for visual arts. 'It was a good thing, obviously,' he said. 'I'd definitely be a starving artist, most likely, if I didn't have an acting career. So it's funny how that happened.' On weekdays he took four trains from his home in Woodhaven, Queens, to get to school, and on his long commute became enamoured with the graffitied walls and etched tags on the plastic windows — a city 'bursting with energy and aggression' of a different time, he said. In 'Made in America,' many works feature a cartoon — Lisa Simpson or Yosemite Sam or Bugs Bunny — brandishing a weapon. It's a depiction of the violence Brody said he grew up with culturally: an American diet of toy guns, video games and McDonald's. 'What we're fed as children is constant imagery of ubiquitous violence,' he said. 'I think that there are repercussions to that, and we are experiencing those.' In Brody's vermin series, oversized black and white images of rats appear to pixelate behind street art tags. People are 'either grossed out by them, or they are antagonistic toward them,' Brody said of the scores of rats in New York City. 'And I always felt like, 'Why doesn't anybody see what they're going through?' Weirdly, I really kind of feel for them.' That compassion, he said, comes from his mother. Plachy's sensitivity toward animals rubbed off on him. So much so that he's had a pet rat. Twice. The first he bought as a child and then gifted to a friend; the second, a few years ago, belonged to the daughter of his girlfriend, Georgina Chapman. 'They're forced to kind of hide and scurry about and forge for themselves, and are being poisoned by this kind of campaign to eradicate them,' he said. 'And people are nasty to them and that always bothered me.' Sitting outside the gallery the day before the opening, Brody looked down at his hands, covered in acrylic paint. 'It's a lot of pressure to reveal this,' he said. 'I've literally been hiding the works.' 'Hiding maybe isn't the right word,' he added, 'but working quietly for a very long time and not showing, intentionally, to kind of develop this and do it at my pace. And so this is kind of ripping a Band-Aid off.'
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Years After Being His Muse, She Hid a Proposal in His Lunch
When Julia Anne Chance met James Walter Greene in February 1996 at her close friend's Valentine's Day dinner party in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, his reputation preceded him. 'Oh, you're Jimmy James Greene,' said Ms. Chance, the name he goes by as an artist — a painter, collagist, muralist and stained glass artist. These days, his tile mosaic, 'Children's Cathedral,' installed late that summer, using drawings by local children, can be seen anytime at the Utica Avenue A/C subway station in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Mr. Greene, 67, who grew up in Xenia, Ohio, graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. He retired as an art instructor in 2016 from PSMS 108 School of Authors in East Harlem. 'The Exchange,' his 'striking collage' of a Black woman laborer seated against a page of newspaper stock market quotes, especially moved Ms. Chance three years earlier at a Kwanzaa pop-up art sale in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, where she met his wife at the time and baby daughter, who were at the party. 'We're all friendly and party-like,' said Mr. Greene, whose two previous marriages ended in divorce. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
New York Times
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Adrien Brody Feels for the Rats
'I'm a little in a daze,' the actor Adrien Brody said last Tuesday, the skin around his eyes slightly crinkled, but his gaze soft and present. He'd been up since 5 a.m. and had spent most of his day crouched on the ground at Eden Gallery in Manhattan, putting the finishing touches on his collages ahead of the next evening's opening of his latest solo exhibition, 'Made in America.' The floors and walls were covered with canvases, themselves covered with old newspaper advertisements, erratic splashes of graffiti and darkly rendered cartoon characters. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Marilyn Monroe were in attendance. As were the Hamburglar and a toy soldier. In a nearby corner was an empty gum wall, soon to be covered in wads of chewing gum straight from the mouths of attendees in an interactive 'expression of rebellion and decay,' according to the wall text. Adrien Brody, the Oscar-winning actor, is also Adrien Brody, the impassioned painter, is also Adrien Brody, the beats-mixing sound artist. Those mediums converge in a collection of more than 30 works. Accompanied by Brody's soundscapes, the show features large mixed media art in what he calls an autobiographical display of the gritty New York of his youth, and the culture of violence and intolerance today. It's an approach that has been met with some derision both in the art press and on social media. 'Made in America,' on view until June 28, also includes photographs of and by his mother, the acclaimed Hungarian American photographer Sylvia Plachy — a role model for Brody, who was never formally trained in visual art. It's been nearly a decade since Brody, 52, last showed his work publicly, at Art Basel Miami. So why now? Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
CBC
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
He had his 1st solo show months before he died. Now, friends are making sure his art lives on
Jos Theriault had just turned 40 when he passed away from diabetic ketoacidosis last June. The Toronto-based artist was known for his collage work, recycling used materials and moulding them into vibrant landscapes and portraits. His images — slightly distorted or blurry — resemble a recollection or a memory of the figures and locations depicted. Despite years of practice, the artist had just received his first solo exhibition in February 2024, shortly before his death. Upon the shock of their friend's passing, artist Shaheer Zazai and curator Sayem Khan contacted Jos' younger sister, Nancy, to discuss giving Jos' art another showing. The result is the exhibition Fragments of Memory, a showcase of Jos' work at the Toronto art fair, Artist Project, this weekend. It is just the second time Artist Project has featured an artist's work posthumously. Nancy still has one of Jos' first drawings, a Ninja Turtle from 1990. He was drawn to comic books, she says, and had an interest in art from a young age. He eventually moved from New Brunswick, where he was born and raised, to Toronto to attend the University of Toronto. But the traditional course work was not for him. He then took illustration at OCAD University. "His style is different," Nancy shares. "It's not typical drawings of individuals or things. He would get critiqued by his teachers, which he always found hard." He completed his schooling and graduated in 2015. Nancy described Jos as a "starving artist" in Toronto. He was interested in the idea of repurposing materials and reducing waste for environmental purposes, but also as a means to save money during difficult times, which were impacted by the cost of his medication. Memory has always been important for Jos' art. He used to do line drawings of "memorable Torontonians," sketching interesting people from memory and posting the portraits on Instagram. He's perhaps best known, however, for his mixed-media works. Jos would painstakingly layer strips of dried acrylic paint to recreate landscapes of spaces in Toronto based on his memories. "Some of these pieces took months and years to make," Nancy says. It's some of these works that will be on display at Artist Project, where all proceeds from their sales will go to help OCAD University students experiencing financial difficulty. Jos' friend Shaheer is an artist represented by the gallery Patel Brown. He currently splits his time between Toronto and Cyprus. Shaheer and Jos both went to OCAD, but they became close through the art scene and shared a studio space on Rogers Road. During the pandemic lockdowns, the pair were in each other's "bubble," making them family, Shaheer says. Following Jos' death, some friends and local artists held a small memorial at the Rogers Road studio, which Nancy attended. Afterward, Shaheer felt Jos' work deserved to be mounted again. Having shown previously at Artist Project, he reached out to organizers with the idea. " To me, it was not right for the paintings — and where he had reached in his practice — to just end there," Shaheer says. "I wanted his practice to live on and continue to where it was headed. His work should have been shown more and I feel like he was at the cusp of that." Sayem worked with Jos at Patel Brown. He was a sales associate, while Jos was lead technician and registrar. Sayem had a brotherly bond with him, which grew as they spent time together outside of the gallery. He was often taken aback by Jos' artwork, he says. He was especially impressed with the carvings he made in linoleum to turn into prints. Although Sayem has taken a lead role in organizing the showcase, he says many people in the community who were touched by Jos' work are helping to put the exhibition together. "This is a very collective effort. I love to think that Jos would've been so warmed and so happy knowing that so many people were willing to do so much for him. Artist Project feels like a really great venue to show and highlight his work." Shaheer shares that Jos was always quiet and reserved, but echoes Sayem's feelings that Jos was extremely connected to his community. Jos was diagnosed with diabetes at 16 years old. Nancy recalls that her brother chose to work at Starbucks for the medical benefits, which helped cover the cost of insulin. After the pandemic, when the coffee chain closed many locations, Jos was impacted and lost his insurance. As a result, he worked multiple jobs to make ends meet while trying to pay for his life-saving medication. "He had to make some choices in his life," Nancy says. "'Do I pay for a meal today or do I pay for my insurance today?' I know at the very end, he really was making the decision between picking his insulin or skipping his medication." When Jos passed away, Nancy asked the coroner to check when he had last used his glucose monitor. It had been weeks. Jos created art around his illness. On a 2010 self-portrait that shows him administering an insulin injection, Jos wrote: "Dear Diabetes, I have a high blood sugar reading. It only says HI on my glucometer, no actual number reading. And my foot hurts. It's my left foot, it's swollen from standing for so long at work. Anyway my foot is in pain, I wonder where the inflamed pressure points connect through my body, a disease temple all of its own. But I'm so very happy to be alive, I've accepted death as a part of life, someday… Probably by you Diabetes, but I'm okay. It's painful, all of it, but I am strong. I can't wait for a cure, but that's unlikely. I look forward to the day with 14,534 insulin injections behind me. Love life, Jos Theriault." Nancy estimates Jos would have been close to that number of insulin injections when he passed. One of his last artworks is a sculpture of his feet made from spray foam. Jos was going to add many needles pricking the feet to show the impact diabetes has on an individual. But the work remains unfinished. "It was one of the pieces that got left behind," Nancy says. She describes Jos as a "gentle giant." Many of his friends have called her to share how kind her brother was throughout his life. The sentiment is echoed by Sayem, who admires how Jos solved problems, brought artist's visions to life and passed this knowledge to those around him. Through the exhibit, Sayem hopes people get a sense of Jos' "warm and inquisitive spirit" and consider how we can work harder to allow people to live gracefully. Shaheer hopes Jos is proud of his own work, and feels that as long as Jos' work lives on, so too does he.
The Guardian
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Women behind the lens: ‘The dream had a quiet strangeness to it'
K e Go Beile Leithlo (I've Got My Eyes On You) is part of a project called Ditoro , meaning 'dreams' in my home language, Setswana. It is a growing body of work exploring archival imagery through the lens of dreams and memory – a space where the past and present blur, where ancestral fragments reappear in unexpected ways and where dreams become portals into untold stories. This piece depicts a dream I had a while back that lingered long after I woke. In the dream, two figures commanded the space: a woman sitting gracefully on a dark leather couch, her white dress billowing around her, with a lace structure rising from her shoulders like wings. She was calm, majestic, almost otherworldly. Beside her stood a tall figure – a man, confident, dressed in white trousers and a flowing blouse, topped with a white hat. An enigmatic guardian or a silent observer. The dream had a quiet strangeness to it. There was a woman peeking from behind the couch; not threatening, but curious. In the dream, I was in deep conversation with the figures in the foreground. Though I can no longer recall the exact words, they spoke in whispers. After I woke, I realised that the two figures in the dream were my maternal grandparents who had passed away many years ago. I could only identify them through family photographs. The dream not only inspired the collage but the entire Ditoro project. To create the work, I used a combination of imagery found in public archives, photographs I've taken and my own family archives. I carefully selected the images based on energy, gesture and expression. I cut, rearranged and layered the elements to recreate the surreal mood of the dream. Each decision – from costume to posture – was intuitive, like following a thread back to something half remembered. Ke Go Beile Leitlho whispers of unseen forces at play, of histories watching, waiting and holding their gaze long after the moment has passed. This work is personal. It's about listening to dreams as messages and using art to make sense of them. Through Ditoro , I'm learning to trust what my inner world is trying to say – and offering those visions back as stories worth telling. Tshepiso Moropa is a collage artist based in Johannesburg. She is one of four winners of the V&A Parasol Foundation prize for women in photography 2025. Her work will be exhibited at a group show at the Copeland Gallery, London from 16-25 May
