THREE SECONDS WITH THE MASTERS

This ongoing body of work examines transitory aesthetics and the rapid interpretation of historically significant visual art by art audiences. Studies have shown that the average gallery/museum visitor spends three seconds viewing individual artworks. Based on the painting of Masters and Old Masters, I question the accepted cultural “value” of the “priceless” object. A fundamental objective of my work is to create a dynamic that engages viewers in evaluating their relationship to art objects, breaking through the casual glancing norm which has become the socially assumed method of experiencing art. I am interested in the dynamic of the actual viewing of original painted images in motion and at different angles, the contemplative intent experienced in transition. My interest expands to include the co-dependence of art in a gallery setting to its label text as well as curatorial input as art content.

By appropriating highly composed and executed subject matter that has withstood curatorial vetting, in most cases for hundreds of years, I eliminate the issue of contents’ significance. Similar to the appropriation of commercial icons by Pop artists, the readymades of Marcel Duchamp, and the compositions of many Hip Hop artists, this work questions assumed relationships within the art environment as well as independently sustaining its own aesthetic and narrative presence. My art is not documentary in nature but is experiential, object oriented (surface, scale, composition) where content expands beyond a narrative subject matter to include the physical and conceptual experience of viewing.

These archival print images were photographically shot in various major museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Getty Museum of Art, Norton-Simon Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Los Angeles County Museum of Art , and the Carnegie Museum of Art.

James Osher 2012
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Born in Cleveland, Ohio, James Osher attended Carnegie Mellon University and received his Masters of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, studying with John Baldessari and Alan Kaprow. Jamesí career evolved from painting to conceptually focused work, creating a large-scale urban environmental sculpture project for Cleveland State University and The New Gallery. In 1979, he stopped making art objects, and for two year, as a performance artist, became a stockbroker, metamorphosing into a non-artist thirteen year career in the investment industry. In the early nineties, dramatically impacted by his mother’s terminal illness in addition to the public announcement that a close acquaintance and her son were HIV positive and that her young daughter (similar in age to the eldest of his three sons) had died of AIDS, he acknowledged his inherent desire to create objects, and his personal need to communicate through artwork. In1995 James retired from the investment industry and refocused his lifework on art making.

James has exhibited his work in galleries and museums in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Miami, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. His solo exhibition, based on their permanent collection, was exhibited at the Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greenburg, Pennsylvania in late 2009.

Each separate image is approximately 44"x30"; vertical diptych are 99"x30"; horizontal diptych are 62"x44"

THREE SECONDS WITH THE MASTERS

Review

Northern Virginia Art Beat

By Kevin Mellema

Wednesday, November 04 2009 16:19

FotoWeek DC Again FotoWeek DC is upon us once again. Photography shows are suddenly taking over the D.C. metro area art spaces, and then some. Strictly speaking, FotoWeek DC runs from November 7 - 14; however, most shows are running through the end of the month, with some museum shows running into next year. For more details, check out www.fotoweekdc.org. A Fresh Spin James Osher; Three Seconds With the Masters, at Addison/Ripley Fine Art (1670 Wisconsin Ave. NW, Washington D.C.). The exhibit runs through Dec. 5 and the gallery is open Tuesday - Saturday 11 a.m. - 6 p.m. For more details, call 202-338-5180 or visit www.addisonripleyfineart.com. Osher has concurrent solo shows of his work at Addison/Ripley in upper Georgetown, as well as the Westmoreland Museum of American Art near Pittsburgh. The concept at hand is fairly simple. Go into major museums, such as the National Gallery, shoot digital photos of Old Masters paintings and make art out of the resulting images. Detail of Osher's "Braid." Despite appearances, the simplicity of this series ends there. First of all, the fairly long duration exposures are combined with significant camera movements that make the shooting process an experimental endeavor. Through variations in cropping or shooting angles, Osher's diptych images come alive in a way the old masters had never considered. The irony here is that photography is what made this type of painting obsolete in the first place. Photography took over the realistic drudgery of artists work. With the availability of quick, easy and cheap photographic portraits the tightly painted portrait became an expensive anachronism. Suddenly the Salon style was dated. Movement entered the realm of painting, quickly advancing into Impressionism, abstraction and the like. Meanwhile, still photography itself began to move when faster film speeds allowed rapid fire successive images to be recorded. Today's modern eyes, accustomed to moving images of all sorts, look back at centuries old paintings and find them quaint, if not outright boring. That is until Osher steps into those hallowed hallways and goes to work recycling antiquated paintings. Osher's artist statement has a fair amount of ivory tower conceptualism to explain his work, as befits his Cal Arts M.F.A. However, what he's up to is more akin to a magic act performed right before our eager and willing eyes. On an artistic level, Osher has done the seemingly impossible: He's brought the dead back to life - with the very instrument of their initial demise. Once you get past the genius of the idea and realize the almost unending supply of source material at his ready disposal, you come to the most tortuous question of all... why didn't I think of this? Osher displays a level of compositional skill and maturity that's rarely seen in any artistic medium. Osher is hitting the ball hard here... really hard. Reggie Jackson smashing the lights on top of Tiger Stadium kind of hard. "Braid" shows a woman with questioning eyes that seem to offer a subtle suggestion. In the second image of the same painting, Osher shoots at a higher angle of attack and aggressively crops away half her face, leaving her to look at us with a side long glance as she exits the image field. In so doing, Osher's image goes from one of subtle sexual possibility to outright challenge. Osher's "Turban." Similarly, Osher's piece titled "Swing" shows a blurry image of a young girl and her suitor playfully on a swing. The left-hand image has her at the right side of the image looking at him. While the right-hand image has her near the left side of the image field with her gaze now pointed off to the right looking outside the picture frame. We imagine that her fickle youth has grown comically bored with the beau she's already conquered and now has her sight set on her next victim. All of which is accomplished with acute sensitivity to cropping and image placement. Two of the most audacious images here are "Rose" and "Rose II." Both images show a section of nude female torso holding a pinkish white rose. The first has her holding the rose down low, while the second has her holding it shoulder high. Using the rose as a metaphor for love – as we are all inclined to do – it's as if she is accepting, or offering, but fully in control of her passions in the first image. In the second image she swoons and yields to their sway. In actuality, they are the exact same image. Osher has simply turned its presentation ninety degrees.