Emerging Artists@Art

"Frost" (2007) by Cosme Herrara

In her review for The Times, Roberta Smith writes:

"How Soon Is Now?," a show of amateurish and derivative work by 36 emerging artists, says a lot about the competition among art mediums, the latest trickle-down trends in art-making and the shortcomings of higher art education. In answer to the show's catchy title, for many of the artists here, "now" may never come.

Photo: Courtesy of Cosme Herrera and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

"Lamp" (2007) by Margarida Correia

Ms. Smith writes: The show, at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, is a cacophony of mediums, materials and styles. In this morass of feints at video, photography, sculpture and above all earnestly political, identity-based Conceptual Art, a few paintings spring out like little oases of personal thought, concentration and effort.

Photo: Courtesy of Margarida Correia and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

Giuseppe Luciani's tough, radiant views of backyards and buildings outside his Brooklyn apartment are striking for their flat compositions, strong color and slightly awkward brushwork.

Photo: Courtesy of Luciani Giuseppe and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

Blanka Amezkua appropriates the female protagonists from Mexican comic books, converting their fierce images into large, robust embroideries that exude a fiery wit and are not overly beholden to Roy Lichtenstein.

Photo: Courtesy of Blanka Amezkua and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

The most successful conceptual art here is made by Brian Lund, who reduces the action of movies to a shorthand of abstract scribbles, lines, dots and dashes. The drawings are visually compelling, and you get a sense of movies as a series of conventions and codes, but also as a form of choreography.

Photo: Courtesy of Brian Lund and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

Bill Lohre's "Wet Spot" consists of a series of small painted wall reliefs that you quickly realize depict the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

At left, top, little cutouts of white men in suits are safe and dry. Bottom, shattered houses, debris and non-white people in desperate straits are buffeted by bright blue waves.

Photo: Courtesy of Bill Lohre and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

In Jeanne Verdoux's "Living Room," a projection repeatedly shows a pregnant woman rising from her chair and switching on a lamp. Two cones of yellow light appear and the scene goes dark, revealing that while the woman and her lamp are drawn animation, her chair is made of real wire.

Photo: Courtesy of Jeanne Verdoux and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

"Justin" (2007) by Kelly Anderson-Staley This show suggests that there is no point in spending time on "professional development" if the artistic kind is not well under way. And that kind starts with looking at lots of art, good and bad, from all periods and cultures. Don't go back to your studio until you have something you urgently need to say and a burning conviction that no one else can say it.

Photo: Courtesy of Kelly Anderson-Staley and The Bronx Museum of the Arts

@Source: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/07/25/arts/0725-NOW_index.html