Brian Wood (artist)

Last updated
Brian Wood
Brian Wood visual artist New York.jpg
Wood in his New York City studio, 2015
Born1948 (age 7374)
Education University of Saskatchewan B.A. Hunter College, New York M.A.
Known for Visual artist, Photography, Painting, Drawing and Printmaking
Website https://www.brianwoodstudio.com/

Brian Wood (born 1948) is a visual artist working in painting, drawing and printmaking and formerly with photography and film in upstate New York and New York City. [1]

Contents

Biography

Brian Wood was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up on a family farm in northern Saskatchewan (Brancepeth). He received a B.A. from the University of Saskatchewan in 1969 in physics and literature. Shortly after receiving his degree he moved to New York City and made paintings.

Early career

During the next few years, he traveled and worked in Europe, spending much of his time in Greece. Wood made his first painting commission for Lord Byron's Chambers in The Albany in London in 1972 and exhibited his prints at Redfern Gallery, London. Returning to New York, Wood earned his M.A. with concentrations in painting and filmmaking in 1975 at Hunter College. While studying he worked as a studio assistant to the painters Adolph Gottlieb and Ralph Humphrey. At Hunter he met Hollis Frampton and began working in film. He also met Michael Snow and crewed on Snow's film Rameau's Nephew (based on Denis Diderot's 1762 text Le Neveu de Rameau ]. Wood made his first films Clearview and Fixt in 1974-1975. Clearview was first screened at Film Forum in New York in 1975.

Wood's early work was influenced by Hollis Frampton and Michael Snow, and like them, he continued his explorations in multiple media. In 1976 Wood began working with constructed multiple photographs. His very early photographic pieces, "Facing", 1976 (Collection: Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC) and "Array", 1977 (Collection: Museum of Modern Art, NYC) were first exhibited in 1978 at the Whitney Museum (Downtown), New York. Galerie Marielle Mailhot in Montreal gave Wood his first solo show of photographs in 1979, soon followed by several solo museum exhibitions in Canada. Ydessa Hendeles mounted another solo exhibition in Toronto in 1980. The Canada Council awarded Arts Grants to Brian Wood in 1978, 1979, 1980 and 1982.

Artistic career

John Szarkowski, Chief Curator of Photography, began collecting Wood's work for the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1979, installing his photo-construction "Array", 1977 in the permanent galleries where it remained on permanent exhibition into the 1990s. "Array" and other works remain in the permanent collection. MoMA exhibited Wood's work in the 1982 traveling exhibition "Twentieth Century Photographs from the Collection of the Museum of Modern Art", "Big Pictures by Contemporary Photographers" in 1983 and "Color Photographs: Recent Acquisitions" in 1984. MoMA included Wood's work in the publication The Museum of Modern Art: The History and the Collection, with introduction by Sam Hunter, Abrams, 1984. Multiple Images: Photographs since 1965 from the Collection," published in 1993 also included Wood and his work appears in MoMA's 2002 book Walker Evans & Company by curator Peter Galassi.

During the 1980s Wood exhibited paintings, drawings and photographs in many gallery and museum exhibitions in the United States and internationally. In 1984 he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. The Brooklyn Museum showed his work in the group show "Color in the Summer" in 1984. His work entered museum collections including the Brooklyn Museum, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of Hamilton, and many others.

Brian Wood was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1999 in photography and graphics, recognizing his work in printmaking and photography. [2]

Photographer James Casebere writes [3]

Wood's works are biological, anatomical, spiritual and erotic. ... All this work seems to result from a deep internal investigation of the brain via the trauma of the body. And this mind body unity at the core of Wood's work reveals a cataclysmic trauma of spiritual proportions.

Wood's 2014 exhibition Enceinte , includes graphite drawings, ink/photo hybrids, and one early photograph. [4]

Collections

Wood's works are in the permanent collections of: [5] [2] [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography</span> Gallery in Ontario, Canada

The Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (CMCP) was a gallery of Canadian contemporary art and documentary photography. Founded in 1985 and affiliated to the National Gallery of Canada (NGC), it was housed at the National Gallery of Canada, located at 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa.

Roy Arden is a Canadian artist, born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. He also creates sculpture from found objects, oil paintings, graphite drawings and collage, and curates and writes on contemporary art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rebecca Belmore</span> Anishinaabekwe artist

Rebecca Belmore D.F.A. is an interdisciplinary Anishinaabekwe artist who is notable for politically conscious and socially aware performance and installation work. She is Ojibwe and member of Obishikokaang. Belmore currently lives in Toronto, Ontario.

Jin-Me Yoon is a South Korean-born internationally active Canadian artist, who immigrated to Canada at the age of eight. She is a contemporary visual artist, utilizing performance, photography and video to explore themes of identity as it relates to citizenship, culture, ethnicity, gender, history, nationhood and sexuality.

Carol Lorraine Sutton is a multidisciplinary artist born in Norfolk, Virginia, USA and now living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. She is a painter whose works on canvas and paper have been shown in 32 solo exhibits as well as being included in 94 group shows. Her work, which ranges from complete abstraction to the use of organic and architectural images, relates to the formalist ideas of Clement Greenberg and is noted for the use of color. Some of Sutton paintings have been related to ontology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">George Campbell Tinning</span> Canadian (1910-1996)

George Campbell (Cam) Tinning, known as Campbell Tinning, was a Canadian painter, graphic designer, muralist, and illustrator. He was an Official Canadian War Artist in World War II; the only one born in Saskatchewan. After the war, he resided in Montreal but travelled extensively and painted in every Canadian province, the United States, Jamaica, Italy, France, England and Scotland. In 1970, he was elected a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Sarah Anne Johnson is a Canadian photo-based, multidisciplinary artist working in installation, bronze sculpture, oil paint, video, performance, and dance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wynona Mulcaster</span>

Wynona Croft Mulcaster was a Canadian painter and teacher from Saskatchewan, best known for her prairie landscapes. She also played an important role in developing competitive riding in Saskatoon.

Edward Poitras is a Métis artist based in Saskatchewan. His work, mixed-media sculptures and installations, explores the themes of history, treaties, colonialism, and life both in urban spaces and nature.

Ann Harbuz (Napastiuk) was a Canadian artist. A self-taught artist, she is known for folk art painting depicting 20th-century Canadian Ukrainian prairie perspectives. She drew inspiration from her rural and Ukrainian origins in Western Canada, reflecting her very personal vision of the social life of her community, a vision which is a combination of memories, dreams and reality. While her art career began late in life, she produced more than 1000 paintings and painted objects.

Leesa Streifler is a Canadian multi-disciplinary artist and art professor who lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her works have been exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions, nationally and internationally, and appear in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Surrey</span> Canadian painter (1910–1990)

Philip Surrey LL. D. (1910-1990) was a Canadian artist known for his figurative scenes of Montreal. A founding member of the Contemporary Arts Society, and Montreal Men's Press Club, Surrey was part of Montreal’s cultural elite during the late 1930s and 1940s. In recognition of his artistic accomplishment he was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, awarded a Canadian Centennial Medal in 1967 and was appointed to the Order of Canada in 1982. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Ottawa Art Gallery, and museums across Canada.

Tania Willard is an Indigenous Canadian multidisciplinary artist, graphic designer, and curator, known for mixing traditional Indigenous arts practices with contemporary ideas. Willard is from the Secwepemc nation, of the British Columbia interior, Canada.

Sandra Semchuk is a Canadian photographic artist.

Lorna Muriel Russell is a Canadian artist, known for her distinctive prairie landscapes in watercolor, guache, and oil that interpret her home province of Saskatchewan.

Honor Elizabeth Kever is an American-born Canadian artist.

Morgan Wood is a curator and artist who is Stony Mountain Cree. Her family is from the Michel Callihou Band in Alberta and her Great Grandmother was Victoria Callihou. Wood received a Bachelor of Indian Art from the First Nations University of Canada, at the University of Regina in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Angela Grauerholz D.F.A. is a German-born Canadian photographer, graphic designer and educator living in Montreal.

Holly King is a Canadian artist based in Montreal, known for her photographs of constructed landscapes. She views landscape as a product of the imagination.

Clara Hume was a Canadian painter. Her work is largely focused on landscapes and still lifes. Her paintings have been exhibited in Saskatchewan and Manitoba as part of group and solo exhibitions. She was particularly noted for her detailed acrylic paintings of prairie wildflowers and grasses, and prairie landscapes.

References

  1. Sickle, Hannah Van (2017-09-13). "Work by New York artists Ashley Garrett, Brian Wood at No. Six Depot". The Berkshire Edge. Retrieved 2021-08-22.
  2. 1 2 "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Brian Wood" . Retrieved 2021-08-04.
  3. Casebere, James (Spring 2006), "Artists on Artists: James Casebere on Brian Wood", BOMB Magazine , 95: 8.
  4. Cotter, Holland (March 13, 2014), "Brian Wood: Enceinte", The New York Times .
  5. "Brian Wood - Artist". MacDowell. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
  6. "Brian Wood". Department of Art and Art History. 2018-01-16. Retrieved 2021-08-04.
  7. Big Pictures by Contemporary Photographers, April 13-June 28, 1983. Interview with Wood and two other exhibited photographers (Nancy Hellebrand and William Wegman), MOMA sound recording 98.10 Archived 2007-10-22 at the Wayback Machine .
  8. 1 2 3 Robertson, Lisa (2001), Brian Wood: Cribbed, ABC Art Books Canada, ISBN   1-895497-47-7 . Catalog of exhibit of photography from the collections of the NGC, CMCP, and Kamloops gallery. Also described at Kamloops 2001 exhibits web page Archived 2007-09-01 at the Wayback Machine .
  9. Hanna, Martha (1995), Brian Wood: Related Differences. Catalog of exhibit at Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography , Ottawa, Ont: CMCP/MCPC, ISBN   978-0-88884-571-9 .
  10. Poser, Stephen (1979), Brian Wood: Photographic Works (exhibition catalogue, 1979, Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, 1979-1980 circulating exhibition, Canada), Saskatoon Gallery and Conservatory Corp.
  11. Kamloops Art Gallery: 2002 Archived 2007-08-15 at the Wayback Machine . "The works of three internationally known Canadian-born artists make up this exceptional photographic exhibit from the Kamloops Art Gallery's permanent collection ... Brian Wood's Rolling Out is a series of sharp, detailed, black-and-white prints using a circular motif that echoes and responds to Lawrence's underwater photography in the main gallery."

Additional sources