My Favorite Blogs – Old and New

I’ve had contact with a few other blogs/artists in the past few days and thought I’d do a little blog networking here and post them. The first was a post by my friend Nick (a.k.a. “Statictick”) who posted his written piece “daveDave” (inspired in part by me) on Dennis Cooper’s blog. Included was my recent companion video piece posted here a few weeks ago.

Next, I got a kind comment on my “Recent Submissions” post from Liz Unterman who works at the Center for Photography at Woodstock, where I will soon be taking a class on Fine Art Printing so that I can be better at pretending to be a photographer. Liz has a cool art blog that is a Real Blog (she actually posts regularly, and it’s about other artists and stuff, not just the self-indulgent bullshit that I post).

Anyway, Liz’s blog has some great posts and links and it looks good and is laid out well too (I’m working on making mine not look so lame…) and one of her recent posts was about a photograper named Matt Siber, so I clipped and pasted her post about his work below, but I suggest you go check out her original post on her blog too.

clipped from lifeasanartistinwoodstock.blogspot.com

Matt Siber’s work is amazing. These images help us to understand how the landscape is used to express power & control. By removing the often overwhelming amount of text, Siber has forced us to recognize how much of an impact it has on the way we see and interpret the world.

In addition, these logos- which are floating in space like a religious icon- have been transformed and appear alien-like.

You can bid on one of his photographs at the Photographic Resource Center Auction. Check it out here.

I like Matt Siber’s work, as it relates to my interest in billboards, although he clearly approaches the subject from a corporate/political point of view, rather than an environmental point of view. I guess that reflects his background as a commercial photographer, and if you go to his site, you can see some other work that is essentially table top “product shots” of generic look-alike cleaning products, and is a take on Warhol’s consumer identity works, but I find those works less compelling. Despite their conceptual rigor, I still can’t get past their cold “what you see is what you get” advertising format. I prefer the hint at religious iconography (naturally) in his works like the McDonald’s sign above. The other pic above (and corresponding body of work) is also very compelling, and although it lacks the slickness of corporate table-top advertising, and is essentially a “here and now” presentation, it still is responding to the urban environment, which reflects that urban prejudice prevalent in Leave a comment | Tags: billboards, Conceptual Art, photography | Category: Friends, photography/digital, reviews |