LES Studio Program Artists – Spring 09

Christopher Clary 

“At an early age homos learn how to project what others want, so being isn’t so much a natural state but a conscious act. ” Christopher Clary exposes such moments of intimacy, sadness, humor, lust, even boredom for the camera in his portraiture turned striptease. Whereas the printed image is covered up and sometimes fragmented using family albums. So in action, a flipbook remains in a perpetual state of becoming.

Image courtesy of the artist

Mike Estsbrook

My work uses dark psychological and political themes as a source of personal expression. I express these things in a language that is psychedelic, monstrous and funny. Most of my work falls into two basic types: Works that play with the appropriation and subversion of politically loaded materials or images, and those that are an expression of my own personal visual language. I employ a wide range of media in all of these works, but in general, the first category is more often painting, video or animation, and the second category is mostly drawing.

Image courtesy of the artist

Min Oh

Let me tell you Min Oh’s three secrets in public. First, she picks up little particles of everyday life — finding moments where our reasonable and unreasonable parts work together. Second, she weaves stories with them — the stories with two qualities conflicting, but at the same time, keeping weird balances — sweet but disturbing, naive but violent, rational but personal. Last, she bothers people to make them laugh with her stories.

Image courtesy of the artist

Oraib Toukan

“There is only one way left to escape the alienation of present day society- to retreat ahead of it”
Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, 1975.
The Middle East Auction is set in 2012 and will be auctioning off Middle Eastern countries as whole-nation purchasable territories at 99-year leaseholds.  The project is based on researching, studying and appropriating the language of the property development market, of contemporary art auctions, and of working with an economist at the Bank of England to arrive at real data. The rise of the corporate real estate market and its associated language and imagery prompted this project.

Image courtesy of the artist