Shinola Hotel's Art Collection

Nick Cave

Tondo, 2010

Found beaded garments, wool and wood
120 in. diameter

Nick Cave is an artist, educator and messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums. Cave is well known for his Soundsuits - sculptural forms made to fit the human body - which camouflage the wearer, creating a second skin that conceals race, gender, and class to force the viewer to look without judgment.

In 2013 Cave said of his project HEARD•NY, a large scale performance at Grand Central Station, “I was thinking of getting us back to this dream state, this place where we imagine in the present how we exist and function in the world." This idea has been consistently relevant to his practice. Cave's Tondo is made of found sequined and embroidered fabrics assembled to create a circular work 10 ft in diameter. It is reminiscent of the intricate detail and ornamentation found in his famous Soundsuits. Cave had a solo exhibition titled Here Hear on view at the Cranbrook Art Museum in 2015, a significant exhibition for him as an alumni of Cranbrook’s MFA program. Other solo exhibitions include St. Louis Art Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Denver Art Museum, and The Let Go at the Park Avenue Armory.

BEVERLY FISHMAN

Untitled (Insomnia, Anxiety), 2018

Urethane paint on wood 88h x 44w in.

For more than 25 years, artist Beverly Fishman has researched the science, imagery, and advertising of the pharmaceutical industry. Fascinated by our tendency to aestheticize the symptoms of disease as well as the substances that cure it, she studies our obsession with modern day medications.

By exploring color and form throughout, she recognizes the power of abstract qualities to function like placebos, affecting the viewer both mentally and physically. The artist uses hue and texture to destabilize the viewer, with bright contrasts and slight variations that cause optic confusion and palpable disorientation. She paints the edges of her works in bright fluorescents that leave a hovering glow on the gallery wall, a symptomatic and circumstantial buzz that radiates from each piece. Fishman received her MFA from Yale University in 1980. Since 2000, she has been the subject of over two dozen one-person exhibitions in New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Chicago, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Institutional exhibitions include the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and the Toledo Museum of Art. Ms. Fishman has been awarded numerous honors including the Toledo Museum of Art’s Guest Artist Pavilion Project in 2015 and. 2010-11; a Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 2005; and a Ford Foundation Grant in 1979. 2018 saw her awarded the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman Grant.

TIFF MASSEY

The Reveal (Black), 2018

Fiber 24h x 18w in.

Tiff Massey was born and raised in Detroit, receiving both her BA (College for Creative Studies) and MFA (Cranbrook Academy of Art) in the metro area. Massey’s work ranges from wearable sculpture to large-scale public works and performance, and has been consistently influenced by 1980s hip-hop culture, African art and Japanese fashion.

In creating pieces meant to be worn as well as interactive works, she involves the viewer in the experience, bringing dialogue about space, the body, and racial and gender politics. Known for her work in metal and mirror, in 2018 she moved towards fiber. First drawn to pattern and stripe, she began researching the history of gingham: “I realized it had a political background, made from cotton manufactured with slave labor and then used to create uniforms or markers for slaves on plantations. Later it was a print for the working class and signified the domestic. You see appropriation of it everywhere.” She sourced the fabric in a number of colors and began removing the white squares within the pattern as a way of reimagining a history without slavery.

ALAN BEAN

That’s How it Felt to Walk on the Moon, 1986

Acrylic on Masonite 48 x 34 in.

Alan Bean was the Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 12 and the fourth man to set foot on the moon. He explored the beautifully desolate landscape of the Ocean of Storms and later, as commander of Skylab 3, he spent 59 days in orbit around the Earth.

Bean had been painting earthbound subjects for many years by the time he returned from his missions, but his fellow astronauts convinced him to paint his experiences: “You can create the first paintings in history of a place other than our own planet,” they said. “Your paintings will forever be the first paintings of the many other worlds humans will visit as the centuries unfold.” Seeing this as an unprecedented opportunity and challenge, he resigned from NASA in 1981 to devote all of his time and energy to painting, celebrating the great exploration that was Apollo. In his paintings, the lunar landscape is not a monotonous gray, but shades of various colors. "If I were a scientist painting the Moon, I would paint it gray. I'm an artist, so I can add colors to the Moon", said Bean.

JASON REVOK

Chatham, NY Loop Painting 2, 2018

Oil enamel and acrylic on canvas 60h x 48w in.

Entirely self-taught, Jason REVOK is known for pushing creative boundaries that began in the street. Though his story begins with graffiti, the artist has spent the last decade focusing on his studio practice and the evolution of process and concept.

Unofficially coined his Tape Loop Paintings, this series of works are inspired by the avant-garde composer William Basinski, who in the 80s set out to convert old easy listening tapes to digital, but instead watched his cassettes break apart as they moved through the recording spool. He kept documenting despite the interference and created an unprecedented series called The Disintegration Loops, where the music dissolves into bits before droning, interference and silence bring it to its end. REVOK creates a similar effect through paint - imperfect concentric lines interrupted by diagonal composition - which he builds up through the methodological use of a paint roller coiled in tape. The result is a series of works that vibrate with intensity. REVOK has exhibited nationally and internationally, including MOCA Los Angeles and the Pasadena Museum of Contemporary Art.

CHARLES MCGEE

Time Passages II, 2008

Collage and ink on PVC board 14.5h x 16w in.

Born in 1924, Charles McGee has worked as an artist for over 70 years. McGee’s enduring themes chronicle the black experience and a love of nature that span an evolution across mediums. His works range from charcoal drawings, painting, and photography, to avant-garde three-dimensional and multimedia pieces and massive murals.

The artist has completed public projects in and around Detroit at the William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, Michigan and the Detroit People Mover Broadway Station, among many other sites. His works are on permanent display at the Detroit Institute of the Arts and the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. Nationally, his work has been shown at the Brooklyn Museum and Whitney Museum of American Art, and in touring exhibitions with the Smithsonian and Corcoran Gallery of Art of Washington D.C. Charles McGee’s art and outlook are inspiring for us all. He has provided limitless creativity through an exceptionally long career, and at 94 years old is just as impressive in his sustained optimism regarding the future of Detroit and its people.