SPACE

It’s Only Yours Until Helene Black Gets Her Mind On It.

By Rodney Wallace

Though I dropped out of the “painting is dead” school during a three day bout with sobriety back in the spring of 1984, Helene Black of Cyprus gives real support to any one still defending the argument. For some time “mixed media” was synonymous with combining lots of paint with a bunch of crap that should have been thrown out of the studio a long time ago. Ms Black’s work is where this mixed media title truly belongs. Working with steel, films, glass, perspex, bytes, lights, poems and every once in a while, a little paint, she creates images that explode upon first sight and then constantly sizzles while viewing. While this relatively new medium has not yet evolved its own vocabulary of images, techniques or mechanisms that are readily translated, she makes powerful statements that are quickly understood.

Her site is configured with drop down menus that allow you to conduct your very own retrospective. This little feature is huge in seeing the growth of Helene as an artist. You can witness her evolution by simply clicking through 1997, 1998, 1999… in the “Banks” or other categories under the “Commissions” menu. Hindsight being what it is, once viewed, her direction appears quite methodical but during the process she defies predictability. On the image quality scale her site has no middle ground. The images are either excellent or just a waste of bandwidth. When the image is good, it is very good. The resolution and size allows you to save it to your hard drive and enlarge it in any viewing software to study the softer nuances and the excellent craft work. Another sweet feature is the links to other sites that contain more of her work.

The true rose of her portfolio is the “Framed Views 2000” in the Limassol waterfront sculpture park that won the Cyprus national competition 'Twin Cities'. At night this work does what Helene does best. She takes the entire space and makes it her bitch. Using the aforementioned drop down menu for this piece and seeing it from all the angles, you get the sense that this should have been created large enough to be seen from outer space. Of course with every rose comes a thorn. During the day the piece looks lonely and to sharpen the thorn even more, there are two chairs that are designated to sit in to view the work. A sculpture that requests you to sit at one place and view it? Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t that basically just two dimensions?

Another full bloom in the Black bouquet is “Suspended Reflections”, a commissioned installation for the Universal Life Insurance Head Offices in Nicosia Cyprus. You can find this in the drop down for “Commissions” and then “1997 – Universal Life Insurance”. Most artists have difficulty owning a space on the floor, but to do it from above ground just begs comparison to the guy who painted that ceiling in the church.

Before wrapping this up, I would be totally out of line if I did not mention at least one of her works that hang on a wall since that is the most accessible of her art for collectors. That would have to be, “Defragmenting van Gogh-the Energy from the Subject”. This work is in the collection of the Foundation van Gogh, Arles France. Nuff said.

Price wise, Helene being from Cyprus might work for a lot of collectors in the industrials right now. The EU's Council of Economic and Finance Ministers believes that Cyprus EUROs will stabilize with the “general orientations of economic policies" in 2004/2005. (See exchange rate chart) This is all for naught though because finding a price for any of her work is difficult.

Art world etiquette burdens the sender with the responsibility of getting the art to you but with continual looting of cultural icons and little pieces of stone from historical sites, getting artwork out of Cyprus might have a hoop or two more to jump through than most countries. You will not buy a Black today and have it for you dinner party tomorrow but it would be worth the wait.

Helene Black web site:

http://www.hblack.net

Quick links to selected works of Helene Black’s art:

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a04.jpg

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a05.jpg

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a07.jpg

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a08.jpg

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a09.jpg

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a12.jpg

http://www.hblack.net/tc/pcts/a13.jpg

Find an embassy to figure out the art export issues.

http://www.embassyworld.com/embassy/directory.htm

Currency converter:

http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic

Rodney Wallace, Web Art Critic. Rodney surfs the web reviewing artists work much the same as the local critic wonders the galleries of their cities and reports. Rodney is an artist that works mostly in the objective, academic genre of color theory and compositional formulation. Rodney’s work is currently being represented by the Andenken Gallery in Denver and can be seen on display at Studio A in the Andenken building. He also runs RAW ART, a national artist and object de art management organization.

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