A: is for Art that Steps out of the Box!

At the bridge art fair, one artist stood out among the masses. Maxim Wakultschik belongs to a new generation of Russian artists who embrace expression and experimentation. His current work could be categorized as NeoPop, though there is a realism that keeps you hypnotized. Currently living in Germany, his mediums extend to painting and sculpting. His newest series embraces the emotionality of faces caught within time encased in boxes, like still goth portraits. It is a mixture of reality and unreality. A serious face, but with humor hidden somewhere within. Others are actually three-dimensional objects with two faces showing a duality. Alternating light cycles, allowing the beginning and end of a narrative filled with opposing ideals of chaos and order. There are portraits of the actors Angelina Jolie and Tommy Lee Jones more real than on celluloid. As I stood there captivated by this imaginative take on a shadow box, all I could think of was this would make the perfect gift for the person who has everything. Move over Andy Warhol. This new vision is 2000's answer to the self portrait and yes, he takes commissions. There was a time that this was how an artist made their living. Status was gleamed by what famous painter of the time immortalized you for all to see. This is reminiscent of a holographic embodiment. I look forward to the Maxim of what Mr. Wakultschik comes up with next year.

Currently at Morgan Lehman Gallery located at 317 10th Ave (between 28th & 29th) is Judith Belzer: The Inner Life of Trees. Belzer investigates and reveals our relationship to trees and nature by de-generalizing it, pressing closer, and shifting our perception and expectation of it. Throughout history, trees have played an ever-present role as an emblem of our shifting cultural values and concerns. Belzer depicts abstract, unexpected, and detailed views of these trees and their surfaces forming a new relationship. It is so common to pass right by nature, without taking the time to experience it, or even consider our relationship to it. During these times of mounting worries about the degradation of our local landscapes, an intimate engagement with nature, a recognition of the active part it plays in our daily experience, seems particularly urgent. Judith Belzer lives and works in Berkeley, California so it is natural with the Redwoods that dominate that area her insight can show us a new way to relate both to nature and ourselves. There is a ebb and flow to life and the barrier between nature and humanity is then and that is a F.A.C.T.