On The Issues Magazine provides an Online forum for artists to exhibit their art, including moving images and audio, as well as stills. This art section presents exciting responses relating to major themes of our day.
In this edition of On the Issues Magazine, we feature the art of New York artist, Joyce Kozloff. In keeping with the topic of this edition, New Revolutions We Need, Kozloff is a revolutionary artist for revolutionary times, expressed both in her art and politics.
Kozloff is an originating figure of the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s, which was a “cultural melding” that challenged mainstream modern art. The recent work displayed here — a combination of installation, sculpture and painting created since 2000 — features maps and geographical interpretations that show her reflections and transition from that movement.
Throughout her career, Kozloff has made art about wars, past and present, and she has participated in innumerable peace actions throughout the country. Today, her art has become even more proactive in its anti-war themes, as she experiments with dramatizing visually the earthly and aerial landscapes of potential future threats: conflicts over securing helium from the moon; frightening monsters unleashed to target enemies; menacing maps with projected troop movements, and dizzying, disorienting and claustrophobic spaces.
In viewing Kozloff’s art, one cannot help feeling the visceral response that comes with fight or flight, followed by the clenched-fist desire to revolutionize the world so that these futuristic wars do not occur.
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–Linda Stein