Selections Winter 2002: Realistic Means

Realistic Means featured six artists from disparate regions of the United States and abroad who employ realism as a means of exploring issues like deconstruction, meditation, obsession, and memory. For these artists, the choice of realism is an informed one, untainted by their longing to be validated as skillful, and guided solely by the need to solve and express particular problems at a given moment.

Nuno de Campos was born in Porto, Portugal. He creates elaborately drawn cinematic sequences of apparently trivial details that he focuses on while observing his model. James Dustin was born in Exeter, NH. His subject is light as it is transformed by architecture, which he captures by first building architectural "pavilions" that frame views of the landscape seen through them. Dustin then draws the interior and exterior vistas produced by looking through the framework of his pavilion. Andrew Grassie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He creates hyperrealistic drawings of museum installation photographs. His images comment on the art of presenting art in a public space, and the language of documentation used to make an aesthetic statement. Cynthia Lin was born in Taipei, Taiwan. She draws dust formations in silverpoint, then presents those drawings on shelves, exploring the frontier between order and disorder. Renato was born in Camarines Sur, Philippines. His ballpoint drawings are a means for the artist to establish an intense communication with the objects he encounters in the world. Chris Rush was born in Toms River, NJ. He celebrates and vindicates models in carefully rendered portraits, as he confronts his viewers with the discriminatory values that emanate from the concept of "normalcy."