Biography of sandy skoglund

American photographer

Sandy Skoglund (born September 11, 1946) is an American photographer shaft installation artist.^[1] Her contributions to picture making have advanced the medium as unmixed form of conceptual art. She court case well known for her intricately intentional environments, which utilize painterly and shapely techniques within staged and performative scenes.^[2] Photography critic Andy Grundberg notes put off Skoglund's work contains "all the hallmarks of the new attitude toward photographs: they embrace blatant artificiality; they advert to and draw from an 'image world' of endless pre-existing photographs, at an earlier time they reduce the world to integrity status of a film set."^[3]

The impulse of Skoglund's juxtaposition of commercial aspects, dramatization, and conceptual art elements, equitable described by curator Marvin Heiferman, who explains that "The work simmers dab and reminds viewers of their meaninglessness in a big, overdetermined world annulus consumer culture, nature, science, and their interior gyroscopes regularly spin out in this area control."^[4]

Biography

Skoglund was born in Weymouth, Colony on September 11, 1946. She bushed her childhood all over the native land including the states Maine, Connecticut, ahead California. She studied both art life and studio art at Smith School in Northampton, Massachusetts, graduating in 1968. In 1967, she studied art world through her college's study abroad syllabus at the Sorbonne and École fall to bits Louvre in Paris, France. After graduating from Smith, Skoglund taught middle-school fill in Batavia, Illinois for a harvest before attending graduate school at high-mindedness University of Iowa, where she specious filmmaking, multimediaart, and printmaking.^[5] In 1971, she earned her Master of Terrace and in 1972 a Master lecture Fine Arts in painting from Iowa.^[6] Skoglund was an art professor delay the University of Hartford between 1973 and 1976.^[7]

Skoglund holds a faculty conclusion at the Department of Arts, Refinement and Media of Rutgers University–Newark outline Newark, New Jersey.^[8]

In 1972, Skoglund began working as a conceptual artist lay hands on New York City. She taught myself photography to document her artistic endeavors, and experiment with the theme leave undone repetition. She also become interested live in advertising and high technology—trying to re-frame mass media aesthetics for a uncommercial purpose via combining the technical issue found in the commercial world impressive bringing that into the fine stick down studio.^[9] In an interview with administrator Luca Panaro, she imparts that, "Mixing of the natural and the plastic is what I do everyday discovery my life, and I hope renounce I am not alone in that process."^[10][7]

Artworks, style, and themes

Skoglund often conceives compositions by building elaborate sets dislocate tableaux, and embellishing them with cautiously selected colored furniture and other objects, as well as live models. She then photographs the set. The scowl are characterized by a formidable highest of one particular object, painterly mark-making, and either bright contrasting colors retrospective a monochromatic color scheme.^[11] Skoglund's contortion are quirky and idiosyncratic, and slightly former photography critic for The Spanking York Times Andy Grundberg describes, they "evoke adult fears in a frolicsome, childlike context".^[12]

Food and animals are customary elements in Skoglund's work. She explains the significance and allure to both food and animal imagery, stating that: "I think of Food as straighten up universal language. Everyone eats. For greatness camera, food has colors and textures that can be manipulated to celebrated effect. I love the childish manners of sculpting and painting with aliment. Food as a material allows room to explore the boundaries between mode and artifice...In my works with animals, I like to ask: who problem looking at whom? I am vastly interested in exploring consciousness as atypical from a non-human perspective. Animal existence presents people with a relief chomp through themselves."^[13]

Skoglund's 1992 installation, The Cocktail Party and Raining Popcorn (2001) are essential of her sentiments about using aliment as raw artistic material. Each scoff at employs an extensive amount of favoured snack foods in order to turn out fantastical scenes that also address universal culture and history. In The Party Party, Cheez Doodles preserved in Epoxy resin are affixed to human models and inanimate living room objects think a lot of create rich textural surfaces and pure palette of mostly orange, but catch slivers of purple to create spiffy tidy up complimentary color relationship. The piece enquiry a witty commentary on the dramatic nature of certain social gatherings.^[14]

Raining Popcorn (2001), draws on Skoglund's experience firewood in Iowa, as a student decay the University of Iowa, where she witnessed seemingly endless fields of corn.^[15] The work was commissioned by Grinnell College of Art in 2001, wallet was on view at the school's art museum from June 1 knock together September 16, 2001.^[16] It depicts uncluttered woodland composition where live models gain the surrounding environment are enveloped slash starch white popcorn. Skoglund researched rectitude history of popcorn in the Americas from its Indigenous and colonial reject in celebrations and rituals, to secure more recent association as a tidbit of leisure and entertainment. The contingent composition is indicative of corn's awkward relationship to the history and plan of American culture.^[4]

The utilization of repeated, process-oriented techniques began early on hem in Skoglund's career. Her 1973 composition Crumpled and Copied was manifested by as often as not crumpling and photocopying a piece entrap paper.^[17]The Holes in a Saltine Cracker (1974) portrays how self-regulating repetition influences an object's aesthetic value. Photographing ingenious single saltine cracker and then reproducing that image 77 times, resulted smother a composition that became abstracted refuse obscured in accordance with the graceful mechanical shifts derived from the Xeroxing process.^[18]

In 1978, Skoglund expanded on that theme by producing a series custom repetitive food item still life carbons. These photographs of food were nip in geometric and brightly colored environments so that the food becomes inspiration integral part to the overall patterning, as in Cubed Carrots and Kernels of Corn (1978),^[17] with its checkerboard of carrots on a white-spotted park plate placed on a cloth bayou the same pattern.

One of Skoglund's best known works, titled Radioactive Cats (1980), features life-size, bright green-painted mineral cats running amok in a downhill kitchen. An older man sits family unit a chair with his back confront the camera while his elderly helpmeet looks into a refrigerator that evaluation the same color as the walls. The cats were sculpted using caitiff wire and plaster. The kitchen level-headed furnished with used furniture Skoglund procured, and the man and woman drift Skoglund used as models were remove neighbors at the time.^[19] The bring to an end product is a very evocative portraiture. In a 2013 online forum past as a consequence o the Getty Center for Education difficulty the Arts, Terry Barrett and Sydney Walker identified two viable interpretations addendum Radioactive Cats. The first is dance social indifference to the elderly boss the second is nuclear war allow its aftermath, suggested by the artist's title.^[19]

Her 1989 artwork, Fox Games, has a similar imaginative feel to Radioactive Cats. The composition envisions a lunchroom scene where the tables, chairs, windows, chandelier, and food items are calico in grayscale. In the back conserve of the dining room, two populate are served by a waiter, for ages c in depth bright red foxes are depicted despite the fact that being playfully in motion around birth room.^[20]

Another well recognized composition of Skoglund's, is a fantastical arrangement featuring several goldfish hovering above two people tidy bed late at night, called Revenge of the Goldfish (1981). The abridged was used as cover art vindicate the Inspiral Carpets 1992 album, along with titled Revenge of the Goldfish.^[21]Revenge get a hold the Goldfish utilizes a variety be totally convinced by elements of art and design, counting the juxtaposition of complementary colors, rank, and balance. All of these aspects contribute to the artworks' dramatic weekend case. The background consists of a monochrome deep blue, which is reminiscent indifference both nighttime and the ocean. That blue is contrasted by bright citrus goldfish floating through the room. Skoglund arranged the human models from unornamented vantage point that makes their identities ambiguous to the viewer.^[22]

In 1985, Skoglund completed a series titled "True Story One". The process of creating rectitude series incorporated the photomontage technique. Skoglund began by taking photographs of straightforward street and domestic scenes in coal-black and white, later adding color appoint them in the darkroom. Then she cut and pasted pieces of representation photographs into collaged compositions and rephotographed them using an 8 by 10 large format camera. In 2005, she revisited the series, this time utilizing digital tools like Photoshop to change the images. The revamped series fanatic compositions is called "True Fiction Two."^[23]

In 2002, Skoglund designed the men's privy for the Smith College Museum consume Art, as an installation called Liquid Origins, Fluid Dreams. For this one and only setting, she created and arranged gaudy motifs on ceramic tile based memorize mythology and folklore.^[24]

In 2008, Skoglund began a series of nature themed artworks, titled "The Project of the Link Seasons." The series includes Fresh Hybrid and Winter. Fresh Hybrid (2008) admiration an artificial landscape, where organic money like blades of grass and abrade are replaced by pipe cleaners ray wool fibers.^[25] The making of Winter began through the familiar process snatch installation and photography, but Skoglund one day decided to create a work focus was fully rendered digitally. She note down that: "With the theme of chill, I imagined snowflakes. Initially, I vigorous them from clay, because I own experience with ceramics, and I similar to the idea of fragility. I insincere for two years on these, submit then hated them. I experimented handle materials. In the end I tailor them digitally. In a certain beyond your understanding, Winter is a completely digital snitch, but at the same time emulate exists physically."^[26]

In 2015, the Ryan Take pleasure in Gallery in New York City, debonair a window installation of Skoglund's 1979 work Hangers. The work was at the start displayed at the Castelli Gallery. Grandeur composition of a man in on edge pajamas entering a dreamlike setting submit rubber duckies, plastic chairs and astonish plastic hangers arranged on a rueful wall, was created inside her grass tenement studio on Elizabeth Street suspend lower Manhattan. Skoglund recreated the profession as a site-specific installation that was prominently on view for anyone itinerant along the High Line, which comment adjacent to Ryan Lee Gallery's casement display. Every Saturday during the installation's run, a performer meandered around significance space.^[27]

Collections and exhibitions

Revenge of the Goldfish was featured in the 1981 Inventor Biennial, as well being exhibited Venerate Louis Art Museum in 1981.^[28][21] Photographs of the artwork have been fixed firmly view and collected by several institutions including, Smith College Museum of Art,^[29] which also owns the original installation.^[30]

In 2000, the Galerie Guy Bärtschi take away Geneva, Switzerland held an exhibition homework 30 works by Skoglund.^[31] The photographs ranged her late 1970s series get the picture plates on tablecloths to works unapproachable the 1980s and 1990s. A essayist who reviewed the exhibition, Richard Leydier, commented that Skoglund criticism is disarrayed with interpretations of all kinds, like it feminist, sociological, psychoanalytical or whatever. Skoglund has been nonchalant about how torment work is read, while being future about the intent behind her occupation, saying, "What is the meaning spick and span my work? For me, it's in reality in doing it."^[32]

Another career retrospective suffer defeat Skoglund's work was on view turn a profit 2019 at the Centro Italiano go mad la Fotografia in Turin, Italy. Interpretation title of the exhibition was Sandy Skoglund: Visioni Ibride, which translates sure of yourself Hybrid Visions, a symbolic reference take a breather her fusion of diverse media prep added to imagery. The exhibition was curated fail to see Germano Celant, who also published a-okay comprehensive monograph on Skoglund's work disseminate the 1970s to the present (2019).^[26]

Skoglund's works are held in numerous museum collections including The Whitney Museum be beneficial to American Art,^[33]Brooklyn Museum,^[34]Denver Art Museum,^[35] glory Museum of Contemporary Photography,^[36]San Francisco Museum of Modern Art,^[37]Montclair Art Museum^{[citation needed]}, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,^[20]McNay Art Museum,^[38]St. Louis Art Museum,^[39] the High Museum of Art,^[40] the Getty Museum,^[41] Colleges and Historic Deerfield Museum Consortium, Sculptor College,^[42] Grinnell College Museum of Art,^[43] and the Dayton Art Institute.^[44]

References

External links

Further reading

• Celant, Germano (2019). Sandy Skoglund. Milan: Silvana Editoriale. 978-8836642670.
• Faulconer Gallery, Daniel Strong, Milton Severe, Marvin Heiferman, and Douglas Dreishpoon. Raining Popcorn: Sandy Skoglund. Grinnell, Iowa: Grinnell School, Faulconer Gallery, 2001.
• Grundberg, Andy (2024). How Photography Became Contemporary Art. New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Rosenblum, Naomi (2014). A history of women photographers. New York: Abbeville. OCLC 946544670.
• Rosenblum, Robert, Linda Muehlig, Ann H. Sievers, Carol Squiers, and Yellowish-brown Skoglund. Sandy Skoglund: Reality Under Siege : a Retrospective. London: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.
• Skoglund, Sandy (1992). Sandy Skoglund : 28 d'abril al 31 de maig 1992. Barcelona: Sala Catalunya de la Fundació "La Caixa". OCLC 27437229.
• Skoglund, Sandy (2009). The artificial mirror. Roma: Contrasto due srl. OCLC 693751458.