Bernhard Fuchs is a photographer living and working in Dusseldorf, Germany whose solo show “Autos” just wrapped up at Jack Hanley Gallery in NYC. The series is unexpectedly powerful as a result of the way Fuchs treats his subject (automobiles), with a great deal of care and consideration. As a result each truck reads like a richly-developed character in a novel – quite a feat for a photographer of machinery.
“On my bicycle tours, time and again, I saw passenger cars, busses, and trucks which just stood around. I think my first reaction was to look for the absent owners…
…Since I hardly ever saw anyone, I stayed alone with the situation, and a relationship to these vehicles began to develop as I would not have expected it…
…The car in the landscape had an impact on me, similar to the impact of actors on a stage, and since then I began to collect their wit and their tragedy.” – Bernhard Fuchs
Today I created my very first treasury on etsy and wanted to share it with you all. I am constantly inspired by etsy’s community of artists and makers – there are SO many creative souls out there!
Lately I’ve been finding lots of cool industrial-modern items like anzfer farm’s driftwood lamp and forest bound’s recycled linen duffel bag. (Speaking of… I’m replacing my work bag with this awesome tote! It kills me that it has ‘Troop 4’ written on it from when it was previously used by a boy scout troop.) Back to the treasury… I hope this little collection inspires some of you too.
Perhaps it’s because I’m a city dweller, perhaps it’s because I live near “the wastelands” (i.e. the undeveloped land along the Gowanus Canal), but I love industrial landscapes. They’re a modern, less explored subject; one that many of us can relate to personally. It’s the familiar, the mundane, the ugly and the annoying. It’s the blinking neon sign across the street, the partial view of the elevated train track, the trucks and vans dotting your neighborhood. But by way of the artist, these city views are startling and at times, beautiful.
January 11th, 2010 · 2 Comments
Shane Neufeld is a Brooklyn-based artist and architect whose beautiful, painterly Truck Series was inspired by the industrial surroundings of his Gowanus studio. What started out as an exercise, capturing the comings and goings of trucks at the nearby big box parking lot, turned into a large-scale series spanning four years and forty-something paintings.
It might seem an odd choice of subject, especially for someone as strongly rooted in the traditional approach of oil painting, as Neufeld is. In trucks, Neufeld found a more freeing subject that has allowed him to explore the aspects of painting that excite him while being able to leave behind a good deal of the rest. Trucks are easily recognizable while also abstract. As Shane says, “their simplistic form… through a variety of changing perspectives, had the potential to generate a series of complex and varied compositions.”
As an unorthodox subject, trucks are relatively free of cultural associations, and thus allow Shane to convey his message through fundamental ideas of form, light and color. Shane states that trucks “…defy categorization and are not historically charged subjects – i.e. they do not evoke the same traditional cultural responses as that of a landscape or a figurative work. Relatively free of cultural clichés, the distinct quality of the space becomes a theatre for light and shadow, composition and geometry.”
Every artist struggles with the intended and unintended implications of the subjects they choose. Shane successfully tackles this issue by choosing a subject that is entirely ordinary yet modern and fresh in the context of painting.
Several paintings are currently available through the artist.
