File Under: c

Andrey Chezhin was born in St. Petersburg (then Leningrad), Russia, in 1960, and graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Cinematic Engineering in 1982.  Until the fall of communism, he worked as photographer for a construction company, which gave him access to its darkroom and materials for his own practice.  From 1987 to 1994, he and two colleagues founded an idea-driven photographic group, TAK, and produced a number of shows.  Since then, his work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States, and is included in the collections of the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York, Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, among others.  Ever fascinated by the illusive transparency of space and time, Chezhin mines a variety of sources for his photographic series, which typically involve sophisticated shooting and darkroom manipulation.  His hometown is behind “City-Text,” while he is the subject of “Self-Portrait: 366 days.”  Other series pay homage to seminal predecessors, including Kasimir Malevitch and Man Ray.  “Kharmsiada” is dedicated to the author, D. Kharms.  In this work, Chezhin culled discarded headshots from photo booths and replaced their features with hardware.  Anonymous and disturbing, these recontextualized images stand for the triumph of the Soviet citizen who has lost individual identity to collective obedience.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by International Arts & Artists

Multi-Color Fin/Warehouse
Sculpture

Cafeteria Art
Mixed Media

Ivan Chermayeff was born in London, United Kingdom, in 1932 and died in 2017 in Manhattan.  He studied at Harvard University, Massachusetts, the Institute of Design in Chicago, and Yale University’s School of Art, Connecticut, where he received his degree in 1955.  A graphic designer, painter, illustrator, and photographer, Chermayeff is a founding partner of the graphic design firm Chermayeff & Geismar, Inc., New York.  He has received numerous awards, including the Industrial Art Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Artists.  His paintings, collages, and illustrations have been exhibited throughout Europe and Japan.  His well-known design projects include the United States exhibit pavilions at Expo ’67 and ’70 and logos for the Smithsonian Institution, the Modern Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, and the National Parks Service.  Chermayeff created a series of kodalithographs for the Hechinger Company, photographic tools, hardware, and lumber in the company warehouse, then enlarging and cropping the images which he printed in high contrast.  Removed from their usual context, the subjects become explorations of pattern, texture, light, and dark.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

www.cgstudionyc.com/

Debra Chase was born in Rochester, New York, in 1954.  She received a B.S. in studio art in 1977 from Nazareth College, Rochester, and an M.F.A. from the School for American Craftsmen, Rochester Institute of Technology, in 1982.  Her sculpture has been exhibited at the American Craft Museum, New York, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, and the Renwick Gallery, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.  Chase sees her wall-mounted “clothing” of wire mesh as visual metaphors for rites of passage, celebrations, and various social states.  Beginning with kimono compositions that were two-dimensional and meant to be displayed on the wall, Chase moved to larger, more three-dimensional constructions, including a series of “Life Jackets” that refer to meaningful but fleeting experiences from daily life.  The mesh screening allows the artist to work with light and transparency while it serves as the ground for decorative, rhythmic patterns of elements such as tools, leaves, flowers, and figures.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

After receiving his B.F.A. in ceramics from the University of Kansas at Lawrence in 1980, Jeffrey Chapline went on to study glassworking, receiving his M.F.A. from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1984. He has been awarded two grants from U.C.L.A. and a fellowship from the Creative Glass Center of America. His work has been exhibited at galleries and universities around the country. Chapline works in cast glass by arranging objects in a sand mold, making a casting, and filling the mold with molten glass; he then makes still-life arrangements from the objects.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

James Carter was born in Port Chester, New York, in 1948. He studied at Silvermine College of Art in Connecticut and graduated with a B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute of Art.  Carter’s paintings and prints have been exhibited at the Zenith Gallery, Washington, D.C., the Horizon Gallery, New York, and the Bell Gallery, Greenwich, Connecticut.  His still lifes display the influence of Surrealist painters of the 1930s such as Rene Magritte and Max Ernst.  Like the Surrealists, Carter juxtaposes unexpected objects – teacups, whales, and blue skies, for example – which often sit uncomfortably within his pictorial space.  But he has also been influenced by the late-nineteenth-century American trompe l’oeil painters William Harnett and John Peto, as demonstrated by the great detail and tactile presence of the objects in his work.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

Roy Carruthers was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1938, and graduated from the Technical College of Art, Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1956.  He was the recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Art and the Gold Medal Society of Illustrators in 1973, and his work is in the collections of the Ulrich Museum, Wichita, Kansas, the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, the University of Wyoming, Laramie, and the Ponce Museum, Puerto Rico, among others.  Whether it be expressed in a painting or a work on paper, Carruthers’ signature style is hard to resist.  He seamlessly transforms a sleeping woman, a plumber, the open shelves of a cabinet, the wooden flooring of an interior, a teapot, and other everyday objects through a curious distortion of proportion and a muted palette of warm earthy colors.  Recalling the Surrealist experiments of Matta and Picasso, his manipulated images replace the expected geometry of the real world with a simple yet wondrous reverie. Roy Carruthers died in 2013.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by International Arts & Artists

Anthony Caro was born in 1924 in New Malden, a suburb outside of London, England and died in 2013, in London. One of Britain’s most distinguished sculptors, Caro was knighted in 1987. He received an M.A. in engineering from Christ’s College, University of Cambridge, in 1944. After serving in the Fleet Air Army of the Royal Navy during World War II, he studied sculpture at Regent Street Polytechnic and attended the Royal Academy Schools in London. From 1951 to 1953 he was an assistant to Henry Moore. He taught at St. Martin’s School of Art in London from 1953 to 1981. In 1954 he began modeling figurative sculpture in clay and plaster. In 1967 he was given his first retrospective at the Rijksmuseum Krōller-Müller in the Netherlands, and since then he has been featured in major exhibitions throughout the world. He was commissioned to create a work for the 1978 inauguration of the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. His first visits to Greece in the 1980s inspired a body of work that includes After Olympia, his most monumental work to date. Intensely physical, Caro’s work suggests a kind of primal struggle between rigid geometry and organic forms. Other recurring themes include the play between void and solid, frame and infill, and concave and convex.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

www.anthonycaro.org/

Debbie Fleming Caffery was born in New Iberia, Louisiana, in 1948. She received her B.F.A. from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1975. Caffery photographs workers in the local sugarcane fields and sugar mills. She works with a simple camera and prefers to use daylight to illuminate her subjects. The straightforward simplicity of her images aligns her with the documentary tradition of Berenice Abbott and Walker Evans. Caffery's work has been exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe, including shows at the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, and the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. She is also included in many prestigious collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and The National Museum of American Art.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: The Hechinger Collection, published by Harry N. Abrams Inc.

www.debbieflemingcaffery.com/