Interview with Painter Lui Shtini

by Brian Fichtner

One of my favorite exhibits currently on view in Chelsea, "New Paintings by Lui Shtini" at Van De Weghe Fine Art serves as yet another reminder that painting, in the right hands, is far from dead. Shtini's paintings bear the precise strokes of an obsessive while his subject matter betrays the predilections of a unsettled mind.

Or, perhaps not. The paintings on view, stylistically reminiscent of Magritte (though shrugging off any surrealist trappings), may elicit unease but they do so by serving as a mirror for our own psychological baggage. ("Bambi," 2008, pictured right.)

The following is an interview conducted the week before Shtini's opening, his first solo show of many I imagine.

What are some of your influences?

Lately I've been focused on older painters, not because of the subject matter but because of the way they treat color. Initially, I was very influenced by Morandi, Francis Bacon and Magritte at a certain level, but I hate Dali. I hate him. I don't want to have anything to do with that. I'm trying to keep the work from simply being a surrealism thing. I'm trying to almost focus on this moment of truth/not truth; this moment of imagination clashing with reality.

How do you decide upon your compositions? Do you work from sets?

I don't. Everything just comes together. It starts with one conversation, where an image or an object somewhere kind of strikes me. It sits there in my head for a while. Then, I find myself thinking about it and thinking about it. There's a reason why, but I can't place what that reason is. As it sits there, it's being built up with other elements that I absorb over time. Within a few months, I'll have a solidified image of the thing I want to make.

Then starts the process of deciding how big the canvas will be. What I'm trying to do also, in order to make the paintings look very real or to feel like they're real, is to make them almost the size they would be in actuality. So if I'm painting a chair, I will paint the chair almost the exact size as a real chair.

Complete interview and more images after the jump.

New Paintings by Lui Shtini
Through 11 April, 2009
Van De Weghe Fine Art
521 West 23rd Street
New York, NY 10011 map
tel +1 212 929 6633

Adam Kalkin: Shipping Container Architecture

by Jacob Resneck

Would you live in a shipping container? Until firms like Lot-ek, retailers like Freitag and architect Adam Kalkin started turning them into chic examples of creative re-use some years back, most wouldn't consider the question seriously. Kalkin's efforts stand out for drawing on the strengths of sturdy construction while also representing a new level of luxury that comes with an affordable price tag, in some cases even under $100,000. With the ongoing housing crunch and talented architects marketing home solutions, shipping container-as-prefab construction may be making a comeback.

To get a taste of Kalkin's repertoire, check out Fast Company magazine's gallery of some of the architect's more impressive examples. Also available from Amazon or Stout Books, the book "Quik Build: Adam Kalkin's ABC of Container Architecture" gives an overview of 32 od his projects.

Adam McEwen: Switch and Bait

by CH Contributor

by Kelsey Keith

Adam McEwen is irreverent, witty, and whip smart (like any British artist worth his salt) and "Switch and Bait," his latest show with veteran gallerist Nicole Klagsbrun, is no exception. The exhibition, which opened last week in an auxiliary space in New York's Chelsea district, was slyly promoted with a press release detailing the process of machined graphite. "Graphite's specific properties, such as stability under high temperatures, make it essential to the steel industry, the solar electrical industry and the missile manufacturing industry, among others," it reads. The mystery began.

Windows obscured, visitors enters a raw warehouse space with rows upon rows of "fluorescent" lighting. Next stop is a smaller, square room, empty but for a centered podium displaying what looks to be a credit card. Here's the trick: the lighting tubes and millimeters-thick card in the installation were fabricated by McEwen out of solid graphite. In a novel twist, McEwen personalizes every credit card purchased with the buyer's name. Two extra samples at the gallery allow for holding the pieces to fully realize how resilient the material is despite its delicate weight. Graphite is, after all, carbon-based and cousin to the diamond.

Adam McEwen's past work includes a series of obituaries written about living celebrities, haiku-like text messages taken out of context and framed and a realistic oil painting of an air conditioner. Irrevent? Why, yes. McEwen hopes the air conditioner painting will be hung high on a wall, near the ceiling, of a fancy house with central heat and air.

Switch and Bait
Through 18 April 2009
Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery
520 West 20th Street
Chelsea, New York City map
tel. +1 212 243 3335

We Love Magazine Library

by Karen Day

Whether you're looking for an out-of-print vintage edition or feel like browsing the pages of the publishing world's fine examples of glossy glory, Tokyo's new We Love Magazine Library has something for every stripe of magazine junkie. The library/exhibit features magazines from around the world, and covers everything from fashion, culture, design, photography, art, architecture—name it, it's there. Feel free to peruse the massive collection of magazines or if you find one that really fits your fancy you can easily subscribe at the subscription and information counter.

We Love Magazine Library
Through 14 March 2009
B3F Space O at Omotesando Hills
Tokyo, Japan
tel.+1 81 3 3497 0293

Naked City Spleen Photo Series

by Lost At E Minor

Miru Kim is known as the "naked urban photographer," a fearless artist who walks around naked in abandoned urban locales in cities such as New York, Paris and Berlin. She has photographed various familiar urban settings, such as abandoned subway stations, tunnels, aqueducts, factories, hospitals and shipyards. Her series, Naked City Spleen, is a dissection of places built and forgotten and somehow exposed by the naked body of the artist. She also founded Naked City Arts, a not-for-profit art concern in downtown Manhattan, helping young artists to further establish their careers.