Artist: Shalom Neuman

Shalom Neuman is a Jewish New York based artist who has taught at the Parsons School of Design, as a visiting lecturer at The School of Visual Arts at Yale and is presently on the faculty at Pratt Institute of Technology.  He was born in Prague and is the last surviving member of a large Jewish family, most of whom perished in Nazi Germany’s Holocaust. His family escaped from Prague towards the end of the war and emigrated to Haifa, Israel where he spent his childhood. When he was 12 Shalom, his sister and his parents emigrated to Pittsburgh, PA. He has lived in the United States ever since.

While in Prague I got to see some of his work at the National Gallery of Prague.  I was taking photos of his Found Object art when an attendant came up and started speaking to me in Czech- My first reaction was that I had done something wrong- and I thought she was suggesting I had touched the art work (as IF) but I soon realized she WANTED me to touch the art work!

These works- made in 2007 are respectively titled Morris, Ed and Calvin- They depict faces made out of found or trash objects- At the bottom of each work are circular sound bits that when pressed say things that one would expect to hear coming out of a card or toy. 

This piece had fast food 'prizes' from the 1980's of the Fat Albert characters

Ed- had the same Smurfs that I collected as a kid from Mc Donald's- I still have the one on a skate board.

From the artists statement:

If our world is composed of overlapping stimuli which create constant sensory overload, then why should visual art limit itself to any one discipline such as painting, sculpture, print, video or computerized digital images? Is it not true that imagery is inseparable from sound and evolution in time? And if that is the case, shouldn’t art be a mirror that accurately reflects our environment, society and culture? 

Click to see other artist and art I have featured in the genres of:

Recycle Art, Found Art, Reused Art, Upcycled Art

The images are mine but all the information and quotes are from Mr. Neuman's website:
Shalom Art