Developing the Conceptual Framework of Your Artwork

James Gortner

James Gortner

Workshop Description

MAY 16 – 17
Saturday – Sunday,
10:00 am – 4:30 pm
Fee: $ 290

Instructor present each day
Enrollment limited to 12 students
Please request supply list

This workshop, using critiques and group exercises, will introduce students to unlocking potentially compelling theoretical or conceptual elements inside their artwork and art practice. We will discuss three archetypal ways contemporary artists make their art more conceptual: identity based art practices, process based art practices, and art historical based practices. Among other artists, we will case study our very own ASL alumni, Ai Wei Wei, Louise Bourgeois, William De Kooning, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, and Robert Rauschenberg. Exploration of how these makers of art were able to break through, and make work that compelled the art world to listen.

About the Instructor

Painter James Gortner attended Hawaii Pacific University, Honolulu Academy of Art, The Art Students League of New York, and received his MFA from Columbia University. His paintings feature reversed found wall and floor paint, as well as assemblages of transformed objects and paintings by other artists. Gortner paints into these assemblages aggressively both using, and organizing a variety of traditional painterly hands ranging from abstract to hyper-realistic. Gortner’s work has been featured at the Fisher Landau Center for the arts (LIC), Mana Contemporary (Jersey City), Lyons Wier Gallery (New York), Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery (Connecticut), and The Pool Gallery (Berlin). His work has been written about in the Hartford Courant, Men’s Journal, The Berliner, and in New American Paintings. Gortner belongs to the collections of the Eileen S. Kaminsky Family Foundation, Jimenez-Colon Collection, and the Wooster Street Art Collective and the private collection of President Jiang Zemin of China and actress Reese Witherspoon. He lives and works out of New York City.

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