The Object Direct

Mike Hein, rock in the woods, 2008, plexiglas, 35” x 24” x 7”

The Object Direct, curated by Matthew Fisher, opens this Thursday the 2oth at Heskin Contemporary. It includes a few artists who have appeared here in the past. In the next post, I'll have an interview and more work from one of them, Mike Hein (above). For now, see the artist list and press release for The Object Direct below:

Pat Brennan, Stacy Fisher, J.J. Garfinkel, Dan Gluibizzi, Mike Hein, Jim Lee, Dustin London, Saira McLaren, John O’Connor, Meridith Pingree, Rudy Shepherd, Mark Stockton, Cindy Stockton-Moore, Charlotta Westergren, Mitchell Wright

For the artists in this show, it's both who shot J.R. and who shot Mister Burns. Equal parts the Pepsi Generation and New Coke, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Regan, the Challenger explosion, the first Gulf War and President Bush. Art today cannot be reduced to an "ism" or single movement. Books entitled Painting People and group surveys such as USA Today remind us that art has gotten so large that what binds it together are simple comparisons and geographic groupings. These artists are apart of a single generation whose works features a strong presence of the hand.

These fifteen artists know the 1970s. They know the 1980s. These years formed their foundation for understanding both the real world and the art world. They are also not afraid to allow for the inaccuracies of their hand be apparent. For them, the concept of object exists in the artworks finial state, not in the process in which it was made. These younger artists differ from the idea of object-ness that was apart of the definition of 1970's LA Finish Fetish. Then, artists like John McCracken, Ken Price and Ed Ruscha allowed for 'object' to manifest its self in the form of perfect fabrication and machine surfaces. This removal overshadowed their presence in the creation of their art works. The artists in The Object Direct, permit the trace of their hand to be apart of the final piece. Reminding the viewer of the process in which an idea went from mental to physical, creating a directness and accessibility between artist and viewer that was shunned before.