"Green Crocodile Hermes" by Biliana Velkova - FRESH PICK Edition 21

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And do so in style with "Green Crocodile Hermes" by Biliana Velkova whose work examines consumerism by exploring motifs of glamour, brand names and celebrity culture. Velkova searches for ways to fit these references into her everyday reality, incorporating photography, drawing, performance and social interventions into her art practice. As a teen, Velkova immigrated with her family from Bulgaria to Canada, basically transplanted from a Communist, childhood upbringing directly into Western, youth culture. Such profound culture shock provides an unique perception and fascination with consumerism, in both its shallow and far-ranging, socio-cultural effects.

Biliana Velkova has her BFA from Concordia and is a MFA candidate at the University of Saskatchewan, 2010. She is currently working on using performance and multi-media to blend the line between art, advertising and commodity to another level; producing a body of work that utilizes tools actually used in marketing campaigns, including video ads, poster campaigns, and “product launch” performances. Reminiscent of celebrity marketing campaigns that use a popular icon to create a brand name, this work challenges this phenomenon with the creation of “media-hype” around an unknown persona that is devoid of any famous trademark. This project questions how and when a common person becomes a brand, thus blurring the lines of art, commodity, and social identity. Biliana Velkova is represented in Vancouver by the Jeffrey Boone Gallery, www.jeffreyboonegallery.com.

"Reconfigured Grid Painting No. 1" by Jeff Depner - FRESH PICKS V1E16

This month we have been happily driven back to abstraction with "Reconstructed Grid Painting No. 1" by Jeff Depner. This artwork is part of an ongoing discourse exploring compositional structure through the relationships between colours.

Concepts of math, science and colour relationship in art have been quite literally defined in the cubist works of Picasso or Braque, and etherically in the neoplasticism of Piet Mondrian and more currently in the mind-bending op art works of Bridget Riley. In an attempt to create something unique, artists cannot help but be influenced by previous art forms and the conversation of contemporary art cannot help but draw on past discussions. Historians like John Gage and Martin Kemp have added thorough text to the visual discussion, yet it never ceases to delight the eye when contemporary artists delve into the chat. Depner’s work suggests a digital cubism although entirely hand done with the energy of his brushwork evident in his original paintings. His obsession with the grid and colour balance or imbalance to flesh out meaning resonates with time and place. And while the grid is not new in art, Depner’s reconstructions pay homage to the ongoing discourse.

Using the grid as a framework, Depner's 'reconfigurations' use color, form and surface to address the visual, physical and psychological. The color harmonies are intuitive and are used in conjunction with pattern, rhythm and variation to invoke a sensory experience which hovers somewhere between language and the senses. Each color and form is linked inextricably to the next forming clusters of color chords. These chromatic relationships are used rhythmically to allow colors to travel across the picture plane vertically, horizontally and diagonally. As a whole, these units combine to create a sort of 'abstract sign,' operating separately from speech and writing patterns with the intention of seizing the viewer on an unconscious or automatic level.

Jeff Depner graduated from the Illustration and Design program at Capilano College in 1998 and is currently represented by the Jeffrey Boone Gallery in Vancouver BC Canada. For information on original paintings, please see www.jeffreyboonegallery.com.

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"Sunday May 7, 2006" 2007 by Anna Plesset FRESH PICKS V1E5

"Sunday May 7, 2006" is the provocative fifth edition in the first FRESH PICKS volume. This contemporary trompe l'oeil oil painting is part of a series by the artist, Anna Plesset, that involves isolating and recontextualizing cut-out headlines from newspapers.

Anna says that her work "is a response to the anxiety of modern life. By working on multiple ongoing painting and drawing projects, I attempt to domesticate the surplus of objects and signifiers that we continually navigate on a daily basis: newspaper headlines, email subject lines, bus tickets, dates, found objects, time, etc. At first glance, my paintings and drawings appear to be deliberate, ordered, precise, and resolved; in a sense they seem to tame the very objects and signifiers they contain."

Her work has a strong focus on time and its many dimensions. In her various ongoing projects, some of the issues she has been addressing include: how narratives evolve, ways to account for the passage of time, how to address her own productivity and artistic output, and how our perception of objects, signifiers and artwork itself changes over time.

A key project in this exploration of time is a series of daily drawings that that she has been working on for over three years. Since March 2005, she has recorded the days she works in her studio by filling out standard timecards and making one drawing each day she goes to her studio.

Now Vancouver-based, Anna is originally from New York and received her BFA from Cornell University. In 1999, she was named Artist of Promise by the Cornell Council for the Arts and received the Faculty Medal in Art for greatest promise of future achievement. Since relocating to Vancouver in 2003, she has exhibited her work in New York, Chicago and Vancouver.

Now Vancouver-based, Anna is originally from New York and received her BFA from Cornell University. In 1999, she was named Artist of Promise by the Cornell Council for the Arts and received the Faculty Medal in Art for greatest promise of future achievement. Since relocating to Vancouver in 2003, she has exhibited her work in New York, Chicago and Vancouver. She has recently been included in the show “Hybrid” at Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art and is preparing for a solo show with Vancouver’s Jeffrey Boone Gallery in 2009. For more information: www.annaplesset.com.