A careful selection of works that provide a sense of the multifaceted world of contemporary photography. A collection that tells the real and imaginary in all its dimensions through looks and attitudes.

Artistocratic Affordable Art Fair will take place in Rome, at the Macro Testaccio – The Pelanda, one of the most important buildings in the city’s industrial modernity and originality of its facilities. The art event, traveling from New York to Rome, has the aim of promoting contemporary art in an unconventional way, involving a wide audience and encouraging new collectors.

Girl, Priest, Forest. Inkjet digital print with pigment on cotton paper with dibond mount; cm.14x21; 2009

Group show Nathalia Laue

New sculptures by Frances Lansing within the exhibition to be held in Frankfurt at Nathalia Laue Gallerie & Edition Arndstrasse 51, 60325 Frankfurt/M until 29 September 2012.

The importance of animals in Bosch’s paintings and their interaction with man have to do with a very special way of looking at the world. It brings to mind some issues concerning the role of animals in the world today. The primatologist, Frans De Waal, from the same town as Bosch, has written about empathy and its evolution in animals. (A good book on the theme is “Primates and Philosophers” by Frans De Waal).

However, the subject of this small work can be narrowed down to… joy.

Den Bosch Boy, cm.94x75x25, Bronze, 2012

“Amedeo Porro Arte Moderna e Contemporanea”

during the Art First in Bologna.

Pavillion 16, Booth A45 Quartiere Fieristico di Bologna

Open to public: from Friday 27th January until 30th January

Hours: Friday to Sunday, from 11:00 until 19:00

Monday, from 11:00 until 17:00

FaunTable (detail) 90x130x35 cm. Bronze 2012

On occasion of the centenary of the birth of the Master of Bagheria,  Frances Lansing and 25 other artists (painters and sculptors) will show their work with three works by Renato Guttuso

Faun Table study in clay 90cm.x 140cm. x35 cm.

Here is a table I made commissioned by a friend who lives in the Crete Senese.
The fundamental idea of project was to make an object that could have a role in every day life that would show individuality, warmth and affection. We decided on bronze because it is a medium, which has a very long life and also represents a tie to ancient art found in this territory.

Etruscan settlers are always treated as mysterious figures but one thing about them we definitely know from the artifacts found in Etruria is that they had a warm, witty and sensual connection to the rituals of daily life. Pots, candelabra, bowls, mirrors, furniture are decorated with anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures in playful narratives.

There are five hares distributed on the table because they are attributes of Pan. They have to do with fertility (of imagination), of the senses, of individuals caught up in the dance of nature. They also may represent the eager willingness of five diverse individuals to converge in delight and lighthearted pleasure. (I imagined a child searching for the hares and having trouble finding the last one hidden in the back where he listens from his burrow.)

The structure of the table, made with the hollow canes used since Etruscan times for venting during a process of lost wax, have been merged using bees’ wax and the joints reflect the finger position at the time of putting it together – before fusion in bronze. I think this is the warmest sign that can exist in sculpture, that is the print of a hand. It has to do with time, foreseeing by thousands of years the moment in photography when light from one millisecond is captured permanently on a silver surface so that it becomes the absolute authentication of a moment of light. In this case, a moment of touch.

It is hard to tell if the nymph is listening to the faun in a dream or if she is awake. This is not too different from how we feel about music or art when we are moved by it. However, the music of the faun requires a listener in order for it to exist – and it may not be important whether she is awake or dreaming.

I think for the table to be complete it requires a carafe of wine and a few fluted glasses slightly wobbling on the meadow of its surface.

Frances Lansing, Secret font, encausto cm. 90x75, 2010

Some paintings and sculptures by Frances Lansing will be exhibited at the Monaco Art Fair.

Frances Lansing, Testa Fauno, bronzo cm. 12x9x10, 2009

At Nathalia Laue | Gallery & Edition stand 25/26
14-22 May 2011
84th edition of Art and Antiques Fair Monaco of Bavaria

Large landscapes by Frances Lansing will be displayed by Amedeo Porro at the Bologna Art Fair

Dwarf collection

Artists have a natural affinity for collectors. This isn’t just for obvious reasons, that the collector plays an essential role in getting the work of art out of the studio where it can take on a life of its own. There is something even more basic that the two have in common. The artist is a spontaneous collector; in his everyday life he constantly accumulates and arranges things that for some particular reason resonate for him.

By “collector”, I don’t mean someone who merely amasses a great number of objects within a specific category.  I know there are so-called collectors who, through various agents are able to fill entire warehouses with valuable pieces.  There are men and women (but mostly men) who seek to increase their worth, either financially or socially, by purchasing works of art whose futures look bright in the art market.  In a few years they will be able to make a profit.

The true collector has a different sense of time. He is interested in a continued present tense. His collection is defined by what he has been able to put together of a diffuse past. He is a protagonist; his motivations have more to do with the process of discovering a piece and the eventual steps in acquisition or accumulation than investment concerns.

Spontaneous collection

The story of discovering  and finally possessing something becomes an important part of the piece’s identity. The collector’s insight can be exciting, his ability to see curious similarities between ideas and objects adds new meaning, new directions to explore. This kind of collector is a poet. His relationship to everyday life is intense and direct. From earliest childhood he (or she) has developed the habit of picking up things and putting them in his pocket.

Gathering certain items is away to materialize memory The basic value of an object derives from how it fits into the collector’s personal system of reference, his memory and his associations. In the end, the true collection is, in itself, a work of art.   Its character is closely entwined with the personality of its creator -  his consciousness, his decisions, his ordering of limited sets, repetitions and an (often imagined) system of representation in space.

Bathroom collection

Linus Pauling said that you aren’t going to have good ideas unless you start with a lot of ideas and some sort of principal of selection. What results from this reordering may be a fresh narrative for the past, an insight into the story of art as a fertile territory. What the collector knows better than the art specialist, historian, critic, is that a written version is only part of the account. A rich and vibrant story can be told by the retrieved objects themselves.

In memory of Giovanni