Silent Dredge, 2008
Tiffany Bozic
Currently showing at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery: "A Complicated Dominion: Nature and New Political Narratives," featuring the work of Tiffany Bozic, among others:
Our dominion is complicated and comes with profound responsibility. Humankind has become adept at leveraging natural resources and scientific advances to not only ensure our survival, but also to support and spread various political agendas. Along the road we have developed life-enhancing technologies and become more widely informed about the necessity of our participation in conservation and preservation efforts, while on the other hand we have seriously damaged the earth and performed atrocious acts of inhumanity. Looking forward, it is abundantly clear that we must manage long-term strategies for sustainable development and make sure that decisions about how we control the earth's resources, wildlife, and each other are not our undoing.
Bozic's work is reminiscent of watercolor, but actually consists of translucent acrylic washes on wood panel. The delicate realism of her style, which would be right at home in a children's book, at first masks the disturbing rawness of her portrayal of contemporary Nature. Bozic is unafraid of death, decay, sex, or deformity. In fact, she seems to relish surprising the viewer with scenes that can be read either as brutal, unedited natural history - or as sly commentaries on human practices.
No One's Fault But My Own
Tiffany Bozic, 2008
The Best Intentions
Tiffany Bozic, 2005
I think Tiffany's work is incredible - although I may be prejudiced because it overlaps my own themes and style. Watching this video of her work (from her website) actually made me itch to be in the studio. I have to make time to do some painting. . . soon.
A Complicated Dominion runs through August 16. Via Right Some Good.
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This is beautiful!
Marvelous work. Thanks for shining a light on these.
Thank you so much for sharing this artist's wonderous work with us. Love it.
I love her work also! You might find it interesting that much of her recent work came out of the artist in residence program at the California Academy of Sciences. Through the artist in residence program, artists get to puruse the academy collections for a year with a curator who acts as a personal science mentor. Artists incorporate the experience into contemporary art pieces which are put on exhibit at the academy. She has another kind of partnership there as well, being married to the curator of Birds & Mammals at the academy!
I like some of her paintings very much, and her work continues to strengthen. Indeed, I hope to one day exhibit with her.
I don't care for the video, however. It is beautifully produced and edited, but the producer fawns over the "creative process" in a way I find distasteful and pretentious. And, although I agree implicitly with the statements Bozic makes, the breathy delivery of her observations seems intended to generate maximal gravitas, and thus distracts not only from her strong work, but from the very substance of her voice-over. The lesson: making a video about artwork is tricky business.
Leave it to you to be extremely nitpicky about video art, HH. :) You're right, but I guess I didn't view the video as art at all, but rather as a simple, borderline naive documentary of how the artist perceives her own work process. Some of the things I say to myself in the course of composing a piece or seeking inspiration are pretty darn naive too - it's hard to sound literate and critical when struck by the beauty of a natural object. I've often felt frustrated that my immediate creative impulse "sounds" like a gushy teenager, and the more controlled and insightful layers only seem to emerge and/or develop with time. But maybe that's just me. :)