Birks Canto XVIII, referencing Dantes Inferno.

  • Birk’s “Canto XVIII,” referencing Dante’s “Inferno.”

I was poking around the Internet today and stumbled across gallery news from Catherine Clark Gallery in San Francisco that a work by Sandow Birkhttp://www.sandowbirk.com was acquired by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

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Here’s a little bio on Birk from his website:

Los Angeles artist Sandow Birk is a well traveled graduate of the Otis/Parson’s Art Institute. Frequently developed as expansive, multi-media projects, his works have dealt with contemporary life in its entirety. With an emphasis on social issues, frequent themes of his past work have included inner city violence, graffiti, political issues, travel, war, and prisons, as well as surfing and skateboarding. He was a recipient of an NEA International Travel Grant to Mexico City in 1995 to study mural painting, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1996, and a Fulbright Fellowship for painting to Rio de Janeiro for 1997. In 1999 he was awarded a Getty Fellowship for painting, followed by a City of Los Angeles (COLA) Fellowship in 2001. In 2007 he was an artist in residence at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, and at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2008. His most recent project involves a consideration of the Qur’an as relevant to contemporary life in America.

The Clark Gallery also said that work by its artist Chester Arnold was going to Crystal Bridges, but didn’t include an image of the painting. The gallery describes his work thusly:

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His compositions present skewed linear perspectives that place the viewer at a remove, above and beyond the unfolding narratives. Natural landscapes are subverted by his preoccupation with the detritus of human accumulation.

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