Author Archive
John A. Parks
Born 1952 in Leeds, England
John A. Parks is a painter who has shown widely in the US and England over the last thirty years. His work is represented in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Royal College of Art Collection, the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design and many private collections. He is a member of the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York.
Beginning with his meticulous but lyrical realist paintings in the late seventies Parks has concentrated on themes of English life and the broader issue of the relationship between personal and national identity. A long series of delicately romantic paintings in the eighties explored the English obsession with the transformational properties of gardening and landscaping. In the late eighties and nineties Parks shifted his attention to British public imagery where he applied a whimsical, playful and sometimes alarming painterly attack to undermine and decode some of the nation’s most preciously held icons. For the last several years Parks has been using a finger painting technique – literally painting with his fingers – to explore the imagery that occupied his imagination as a child. Paintings of trains, hunting scenes and monuments have recently been superseded my images of schoolyards and the pursuits of boyhood – cycling, exploring, fighting and camaraderie. “The recent work is all executed from memory,” says Parks. “And in using finger painting I’m using a childish method to explore childish things. For all that, these are far from childish paintings. I’m amazed at the rich surfaces and evocative properties of the pictures I’m able to make this way. They are starting to feel like the very stuff of memory. I’ve never been more excited about what I’m doing.”
Education
1973 – 76
M.A.(R.C.A.) in Painting, Royal College of Art. London, England.
1970 – 73
B.A. in Fine Art, Hull College of Art. Hull, England.
Awards
National Endowment for the Arts Grant.
1985
British Institute Award for Figurative Painting.
1974
Scholarship to Skowhegan School of Art, Maine.
1974.
Fullbright Travel Grant.
1974
Collections
Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Royal College of Art, London.
Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design.
Numerous private collections.
Reviews and articles on the work
Arts Magazine, September and November 1978
New York Times. May 30th 1982. John Russell.
ArtSpeak. February 1984. “John Parks at Allan Stone.”
American Artist. May 1992. Major article with reproductions by Jane Cottingham.
Pulse Magazine. June 2005. Interview
New York Sun. June 30th 2005. Review of the exhibition at Allan Stone Gallery
Passport Magazine. Winter 2005-6. Major article with reproductions.
Teaching at the School of Visual Arts, New York, NY since 1979 as well as various visiting assignments. Courses taught have included advanced drawing, figure and portrait painting, gouache techniques, issues in realism. Other assignments have included organization of student exhibitions and supervision of graduate students. In 1999 taught a course on the history of composition at the New York Academy of Figurative Art.
The Other Side
Joergen Geerds
January 26 – March 3, 2012
Through five panoramic photographs, artist Joergen Geerds explores the interconnections of space and community, humans and habitats, inside and out, self and other.
Start anywhere and you’ll quickly slip into Geerds-vision: Central Park is a space for enjoying grass and trees, inviting the warmth of the wilderness into the heart of the city. But the other side of the Park is its persistent emptiness (it is literally a hole in a field of skyscrapers), signalled here by a field of snow. This Park is not a lonely place, but very much an outside that has been invited in—a vampire of sorts, both awing and terrifying.
Astoria’s other side is its past: Here, a working class neighborhood was transformed into New York’s most diverse, becoming an anchor point in Robert Moses’s plan to transform the city. Geerds has lived in Astoria for many years; it cannot hide from him. In his image of historical Astoria, he catches an older building in the act of growing an enchanted hedge around itself—protection against a change that is inevitable, already creeping into the frame.
The Astoria pool, emptied of humans, also betrays its other side: It is an outdoor space, even when it’s treated as a private room. It is an outdoor space, yet it feels like an aqueous family den walled in by two bridges and the New York skyline. The pool, like the Park, is not lonely, but re-exteriorized… The sushi restaurant at the Esplanade, just south of the World Trade Center site in Battery Park, hints at a warm interior—only to have this warmth dragged out, in neon, into the empty street… The East River Park is caged by the installation above, but brought back outdoors by the fact it’s used only as a dog-run…
Geerds highlights here not a dissociating modern city, but its underlying structures and spaces, which—temporarily scrubbed free of people by the power of the camera—allow for unity, for community. Geerds’s alchemy shows us that the city is not so much a succession of insides and outsides as it is a plastic network of other sides.
In this critique of city spaces, Geerds’s photography recalls the maximal, place-focused interrogation of industry practiced by Allan Sekula and Noël Burch in The Forgotten Space. But—odd for a New York artist—Geerds does not bring a politics of exchange into his work.
If anything, he empties New York of its value as a site of exchange. He flattens the New York of capital (snowy parks, busy restaurants, bright streets) with the New York of snow and streets.
This attention to the elemental is what makes Geerds’s images so arresting: Are these photographs dark comments on a New York underneath, around, and above us all the time, hiding from us, shaping our lives?
Or are they agnostic, or even stoic works—intended to ask us questions about our city, yes, but also intended to question the spaces themselves, to bring them, in answering, into concert with one another, in the not-quite-dark of the long-exposure night?
Regardless of how we interpret or are questioned by Geerds’s many-sided New York, we can’t help but look at it, and look again.Text by Wythe Marschall
The Shadows Of The Fire In My Mind
BIRTHE BLAUTH
December 9 – January 21, 2012
532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel is pleased to present four new works by Birthe Blauth, in her first solo show in the US.
Plato likens the restricted nature of human perception and recognition to being in a cave. Humans are trapped, chained down, and see nothing but the shadows of the outside world projected onto the walls of rock by the fire behind them. We are prisoners of our own neurological and biological structures, but also of our cultural and biographic backgrounds. We are unable to perceive the “real” world. We have no way of doing so. But still we strive to see beyond the limits of our own mental caves.
Birthe Blauth’s conceptual video works and installations explore the conflict between the individual stands and his limitations. Her interest is divided equally between two areas. On the one hand, she focuses on subjective perception. On the other, she explores the subjective thinking and effort individuals undertake to relate themselves to their surroundings. Her precise, pared-down works appear simple at first. But as soon as the observer takes the time to open up to them, their complexity and effectiveness unfold. Her works are meditative and “unhurried”. Her approach to time is more at home in the cultures of the Far East. Often, the boundaries between fiction and reality, between art and the observer, between art and non-art become dissolved.
M.A. and doctorate in Chinese Studies, Ethnology and European Art History at Ludwig-
Maximilians-University, Munich. Specialist area: iconology, mythology, religious anthropology
Lives and works in Munich.
WORKS IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS AND BUILDINGS
2011 Kunstmuseum Bonn/Germany
2011 Johanneshouse Saarbrücken/Germany, acquisition of the archbishopric Trier
PRIZES AND AWARDS
2011 City of Munich, studio sponsorship
2011 Winner of the competition of the archbishopric Trier about the best art concept for the lobby Johanneshouse in Saarbrücken.
2011 Bavarian Studio Sponsorship
2010 BundesGEDOK Kunstpreis, Dr. Theobald Simon Preis
2010 International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), New York
2010 City of Munich, extra studio sponsorship
2010 Galerie Bezirk Oberbayern, catalogue sponsorship
2009 Prinzregent-Luitpold-Foundation, Munich, project sponsorship
2005 Rotbuchen Award, second prize
2005 Andreas Art Award
2004 HausderKunstAward, Munich
Armando Marino
BIOGRAPHY
Santiago de Cuba, Cuba.
Lives and works in New York. USA
1980-1987 Escuela Provincial de Arte “Joaquín Tejada”. Santiago de Cuba. Cuba.
1987-1992 Facultad de Educación Artística del Instituto Superior Pedagógico
“Enrique José Varona”. La Habana, Cuba.
2004-2005 Rijksakademie van beldeende kunsten.Amsterdam .Holland
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
1993
“Arqueología de la Simulación”. Centro de Arte 23 y 12. La Habana. Cuba.
1996
“Nostra Nusquama”. Galería Espacio Estudio. La Habana. Cuba.
“Des-Colon-izando el entorno”. Centro Wifredo Lam. La Habana. Cuba.
1997
Obra Reciente. Galería Ángel Romero. Madrid. España *.
1998
Obra Reciente. Sala de Exposiciones Palacio de Abrantes. Salamanca. España.
1999
Recent Works. Gary Nader Fine Art. Miami. (USA)*
ROPA USADA. “Para los otros del tercer mundo”. Galería Ángel Romero. Madrid. España.
2000
“Más Allá”. Centro Wifredo Lam. La Habana. Cuba.
Recent painting. International Art Studio Valjevo. Yugoslavia
2001
Más Allá”. Museo Iberoamericano de Arte contemporáneo.(MEIAC)Badajoz. España.
La angustia de las influencias”. Galería Theredoom. Barcelona. España.
“In utero”.Gary Nader Fine Art.Miami.USA.*
2002.
Arte en las Venas.Sala Rivadavia. Fundacion de la Diputacion Provincial de Cadiz.España
Arte en las Venas.Museo Cruz Herrera. La Linea de la Concepción.Cadiz.España.
From my bathtub. Galeria RAY GUN. Valencia.España.
Con permiso de mi antropólogo. Galeria Ad Hoc. Vigo .España.
2003.
Esteticamente correcto. Galeria Fernado Pradilla. Madrid.Spain.
2004
Paintings..Project room east.Rijsakademie van beeldende kunsten.Amsterdam.Holland
2005
Beautiful World. Project Room Oost. Rijksakademie van Beeldende
Kunsten. Ámsterdam. Holland.
Ámsterdam. Recent Paintings. Galeria Fernando Pardilla. Madrid Spain.
2006
Crash/Clash.Hof &Huyser Gallery .Ámsterdam.The Netherlands
The Night inside of the painter’s house. Galerie Jean Brolly. Paris France
2007
Tervuern’s Tales . Grusenmeyer Art Gallery Deurle. Belgium.
Interiors. Fernando Pradilla Gallery. Madrid. Spain.
2009
Drilling America. Pan American Art Projects. Miami.FL.USA
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
1990
El Objeto esculturado”. Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales. La Habana. Cuba.
1994
“Los dados de medianoche”. Galería Espuela de Plata. Centro de Desarrollo de las Artes Visuales.
La Habana. Cuba.*
Salón Provincial de Dibujo de Ciudad de la Habana. Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño. La Habana. Cuba.
1995
Primer Salón Nacional de Arte Contemporáneo Cubano. Castillo de la Fuerza y Palacio de Bellas Artes. La Habana. Cuba.*
1996
Río Almendrales. Ni fresa ni chocolate. CENCREM. La Habana. Cuba.*
Tercera Bienal de Pintura del Caribe. Museo de Arte Moderno. Santo Domingo. República Dominicana. *
1997
Cuatro Artistas Cubanos”. Exposition Identification. Salle Allende. Université Libre de Bruxelles. Bruselas. Bélgica.
VI Bienal de La Habana. Casona del Fondo Cubano de Bienes Culturales. La Habana. Cuba.
“Inside”. International Art Exhibition. Kassel. Germany.
1998
Hidden Art of Revolution. Contemporary Cuban Art. Toronto. Ontario. Canadá.*
“Caribe, exclusión, fragmentación y paraíso” M.E.A.C. (Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo. Badajoz. España.*
XXXe Festival internacional de la Peinture. Château-Musée Grimaldi. Cagnes sur Mer. Francia.*
1999
Internacional Exhibition. ART/OMI Residency. New York. USA.
Heterotopias. Project rooms-Cambres d’art. INTERART 99’. Valencia. España.*
2000
The Young Ones. Gary Nader Fine Art. Miami. USA.
Paraíso Cero. Eventa 5. Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo. Uppsala. Suecia. *
2002
Itinerarios.VII Convocatoria Becas de Artes Plasticas Marcelino
Botin.Fundación Marcelino Botin.Santander.España *
Decada de los 90.The Berardo Modern Art Collection.Museo de Sintra .Portugal.
2002
Atravezados.Fundación Telefónica.MADRID.ESPAÑA*
Show y Basura.Foro Sur.Caceres.Extremadura.España
DerGlobalKomplex. OK.CentrumfurGegenwartskunst. Linz.Austria.
Premio L’Oreal de Arte Contemporáneo.XVIII Edición.Madrid
Erased Border.ContemporarFair.ProjectRoom.Miami FL.USA
2003
Centimetro a centimetro.Galeria Fernado Pradilla.Madrid .Spain
Catastrofe Minime.Museo de Nuoro.Cerdana.Italy.
La Colección.Espacio Camargo.Cantabria.Spain.
VIII Bienal de la Habana.La Cabaña.C.Habana .Cuba.
2004
Inside/outside.Contemporary Cuban Art.Charlotte and Phillp Hanes Art Galllery.Wake Forest University.Florida.USA.
Colectiva.Galeria METTA,Madrid..Spain.
Open Ateliers.Rijskakademie van beeldende kunsten.Amsterdam.Holland.
Affirming a Legacy .Art from Robert E. Holmes Collection H.C. Taylor Gallery of the Dudley Building.North Carolina .USA
2005
Contemporary Paintings of LatinAmerica. The DeVos Museum. Northen Michigan University USA.
Mi Cuerpo ,Mi Pais. Cuban Art Today. U.V.A Art Museum.University of Virginia.Virginia.USA
Open Ateliers.Rijskakademie van beeldende kunsten. Amsterdam. Holland.
Berezdivin Collection. Espacio 1414 .Opening Exhibition. San Juan .Puerto Rico
Winter Show. Hof & Huyser Gallery. Ámsterdam.Holland
Young Painters. Grusenmeyer Art Galerie. Deurle. Belgium.
New Paintings. Group show Hof & Huyser Gallery.Ámsterdam.Holland
New adquisitions.The Nederlandsche Bank.Ámsterdam
2006
New Adquisitions. CBK Ámsterdam.Holland
Looking Back, Looking Black African-American, African, and Latino Images from the Robert E. Holmes Collection. The Kansas African-American Museum .Kansas USA.
More than Meet the Eyes.Perpectives from The Robert E Holmes Collection.California Africa-American Museum L.A USA
2007
Cuban Avant-garde:Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection..Harn Museum of Art . Florida USA
Cuban Avant-garde:Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection.. Ringling Museum.Tampa Flordida.USA
Restos.Estudio Arteologico.Muestra tematica de la coleccion permanente. Contemporary Art Museum of Puerto Rico. San Juan.Puerto Rico.
2008
Deconstruct. Hof & Huyser Gallery. Amsterdam .Holland
Cuban Avant-garde:Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection. Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art. California. USA
Visiones Publicas .Pasiones Privadas. Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Vigo.Vigo. Spain
Something and Something Else .Exhibition Oce Art Foundation in Museum Van Bommel van Dam.Venlo Holland
2009
Peregrinatio.Arte en las Ermitas de Sagunt.Sagunt.Valencia.Spain.
Cuban Avant-garde:Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection.The Winnipeg Art Gallery.Winnipeg Canada.
2010
Without Mask.Contemporary AfroCuban Art. Johannesburg Art Gallery. Johannesburg.South Africa
Cuban Avant-garde:Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection.Lowe Art Museum.University of Miami.FL.USA
Keloids.Centro Wifredo Lam.La Habana.Cuba.
Keloids. Mattress Factory.Pittsburg.USA
Sinergias.Latinamerican Art in Spain.MEIAC.Badajoz.Spain.
Cuban Avant-garde:Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection.Katonah Art Museum.New York .USA.
Open Studios ISCP .Brooklyn New York. USA
2011
Sinergias. Latinamerican Art in Spain Macuf – Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Union Fenosa. Coruna. Spain
Open Studios ISCP .Brooklyn New York. USA
Keloids. Race and Racism in the Cuban Contemporary Art .The 8th Floor. Shelly and Donald Rubin Foundation. New York. USA
Buy what you love 2011.The Rema Hort Mann Foundation. Marianne Boesky Gallery. New York.
The Museo’s Biennal (S) Files. Museo del Barrio. Rotunda Gallery .Brooklyn. New York. USA
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
Deutsche Bank Collection USA
21cMuseum.Kentucky.USA
Shelley and Donald Rubin Private Collection. New York. USA
Howard Farber Collection. New York .USA
Centro Wifredo Lam. La Habana. Cuba.
ART/OMI Residency. Nueva York. USA
ASU Art Museum: Arizona. USA
Colección Berardo Museo de Arte Moderna.. Sintra. Portugal
Museo Extremeño Iberamericano de Arte Contemporáneo. MEIAC.
Fundación Marcelino Botín.Spain
National Museum of Valjevo.Yugoslavia.
Espacio C. Camargo. Cantabria. España.
Diputación Provicial de Cadiz .Sala Rivadavia. Cadiz. España
Fundación COCA COLA .España
CEGAM.Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporaneo.Galicia .España
University of Virginia Art Museum.Virginia. USA
Rijskakademie van beeldende kunsten . Amsterdam. Holland.
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes. La Habana . Cuba.
Stichting Oce Kunstbezitp. Venlo. Holland
De Nederlandshe Bank. Holland.
Arttoteek Den Hagg. Holland
PRIZES AND AWARDS
Segundo Premio I Salón Nacional de Arte contemporáneo Cubano.
Castillo de la Fuerza y Palacio de Bellas Artes. La Habana. Cuba.
Mención de Honor XXXe. Festival International de la Peinture. Château-Musée Grimaldi. Cagnes sur Mer. Francia
RESIDENCIES/Fellowships/stipends.
Artist Studio in Residency Bronx Museum 2011
Chashama Studios. Brooklyn. New York 2011
The Pollock–Krasner Foundation Grant. New York. 2011
The Christopher Reynolds Foundation. New York. 2010
Ford Foundation. New York .2010
Mattress Factory Residency Programs. 2010
ISCP. Brooklyn. NY.USA 2010 \ 2011
Raid Project. Los Angeles California.2009
Dutch Ministry of Foreing Affairs, DCO/IC.2005
Dutch Ministry of Foreing Affairs, DCO/IC.2004
Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten/Dutch Ministry of Education,Culture and Science,2004- 2005
Fundación Marcelino Botín 2000.España
ART/OMI Residency. Nueva York. USA. Julio de 1999.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Catalogues,magazines and newspapers.
La resurrección del símbolo. José Manuel Noceda. Palabras al catálogo de la exposición Des-Colon-izando el Entorno. C. Wilfredo Lam. 1996. La Habana. Cuba.
Catálogo de la Sexta Bienal de La Habana. Lupe Álvarez. Mayo/ junio 1997. La Habana. Cuba.
Fuga en espejo de Armando Mariño. Carino Pinos Santo. Revista Revolución y Cultura Nº2/97 año36.
La Habana. Cuba.
Art exhibit provides glimpse into Cuba. Christopher Hume. What’s on. Thursday, May 15, 1997. Toronto. Canadá.
Textualidad y dialogismo en la pintura de Armando Mariño. Rufo Caballero. Revista Unión, 29/1997. La Habana. Cuba.
Analyse d’une oeuvre”. Monique Mirabel, Valérie John, Mathilde Titina. Revista Arthéme Nº4. Septiembre 1999, Martinica.
Mariño, la modernidad y la jungla. José Marín-Medina. El Cultural. 26.12.99. El Mundo. Madrid. España.
Andanzas de un negro. Fernando Castro Flores. ABC Cultural. 8 de enero de 2000. Madrid. España.
El Caribe una identidad de diferencias. Santiago B. Olmo. Art Nexus Nº31. Enero/marzo. Miami. Colombia.
Armando Mariño”. Exposiciones. Santiago B. Olmo. Revista Lápiz, Nº 160. Año XIX. Madrid. España.
Marcel Duchamp a propósito del negro. Notas introductorias al objeto muerto de risa. Armando Mariño. Revista Cimal Arte Internacional Nº 52. 2000. España
El Negro (conceptual)de Armando Mariño. Denis Matos. Pagina
web.www.cubaencuentro.com. 8 marzo 20001
Armando Mariño. Galería Theredoom. Luis Francisco López. Revista Lápiz nº174. 2001.España
Change the Joke, Slip the Yoke. Franklin Sirmans. Catalogo de la exposición In útero. ”Galería Gary Nader Fine Art. Agosto.2001. Gary Nader EDITION.
Arte en las Venas. El artista o el extranjero.Una mirada que retorna. Javier Fuentes Feo.Catalogo de la Exposición Sala Rivadavia-Musep Cruz Herrera.Cadiz.Enero-Marzo.2002.España.
Armando Mariño.Parodist of the canon. Fernado Castro Flores. Catalogue.Der Global Komplex..OK.Centrum fur Gegenwartskunst.Linz Austria Jun-July.2002.
Armando Marino. Entrevista/Pintura.. Javier Diaz Guardiola. Blanco y Negro Cultural.El Cultural del MUNDO.11,Oct.2003.pag 27. Spain.
Inside/ outside. Contemporary Cuban Art. David Hart.
Exhibition catalogue. Wake Forest University. 2003.
Armando Marino. Review. Jose Jimenez. Artnexus.No.51 Volume 2003.
Octava Bienal de La Habana Bienal de La Habana.
Julia P Heizberg. Artnexus No 52,April 2004
The diffused diaspora. Dennys Matos. Magazine ARCO Contemporary Art. Number 30,winter 2003.Spain
Imagen y representacion. Dennys Matos. Exhibition catalogue. Arte y Naturaleza Centro de Arte.2004. Spain
Fighting spirit. Kay Hartenstein Saatchi. Art Review.Volume LIV. March 2004.
The Painting’s gesture. Ruben de la Nuez.Art Notes. International Art Magazine.12. 2006 Spain
Armando Marino. Abelardo Mena. Cuban Avant-garde: Contemporary Cuban Art from the Farber Collection. Samuel P Harm Museum Of Art, Florida. Gainesville Florida.2007
El que no tiene de Congo tiene de Carabali. Sara Cooper. Essay Published by the STATE University of California Chico.2008.
Armando Marino,born manipulator. Fernando Castro Florez. Keloids .Catalogue. Mattress Factory. Pittsburgh. USA 2010.
Brooklyn .USA .2011
Channels
Peggy Bates
October 20 – November 26, 2011
Presenting new acrylic paintings on canvas by abstract artist Peggy Bates in an exhibition entitled Channels inspired by the artist’s recent observations of light and color in California’s Channel Islands. Although Bates’ experiences with the landscape and seascape in her frequent travels inspire her work, her oeuvre is not landscape painting per se. They seem to be painted from a different angle than traditional landscapes. Looking at her work is like experiencing the land and the sea from the sky, with the horizon outside of one’s point of view. Bates encourages viewers to look, not for the facts of landscape, but for a remembered sense of air, land and water. What we see in Channels is carefully constructed, non-objective painting based on memory of ocean and land. Bates revisits her memories by creating a robust iconography that has a charmingly lyrical feel to it. Vivid hues of poured blues, greens, and oranges contrast and interact with pale blue, lavender or grey grounds. In Bates’ work, the active synthesis of hard-edged shapes and pale, flat grounds is uncommon. This is not simple figure-ground painting, and the fields in the paintings are never static. Following Bates’ colors on their journeys through imagined space is a joyful experience. As our eyes wander about in one of her paintings, we become aware of the breadth and depth of Bates’ vision, and of her bold attempt at designing a new, non-art-historical, abstract painting.
Anna Borowy, Tanja Selzer
September 8 – October 15, 2011
Anna Borowy’s motifs are primarily human characters and moments, depicted portrait-style and manifesting particular events. The reduced appliance of outlines and forms connects the figures with the backgrounds and accompanied diaphane images of animals. The apparent youth and grace of the portrayed are distorted by flawed structures and sinister traits.
Technically remarkable is the soft, silhouette-like application of color. Though appearing like water colors, the applied paint is oil-based with a special consistency allowing the blending with water. The base white coat of the painting is not being colored completely by the artist but serves as a continuous bright background on which the paint is thoroughly arranged. Thus the figures of the paintings appear partly overexposed, corresponding to the overlapping of several transparent image elements. Since the resulting point of view, i.e. transparency normally can only be achieved by alternating perspectives, the effect in Anna Borowy’s paintings is one of particular dynamic. This way her works fulfill not only a spacial but also a temporal perspective.
Through the limited use of paint the white background is being conserved as a structure or matrix for content, causing lightness on the one hand expressing emptiness on the other. Emphasis on the later skillfully highlights and complements the manifested motifs and forms.
Repeatedly Anna Borowy joins animals with the human protagonists in her paintings. The expression of this fauna ranges from symbolic meaning to common gestures, but either way the affinity to humans is very imminent and perceivable. Humans and animals are not shown as counterparts, but as reciprocal allegories and impressions without their identities being merged Ovidian-style.
It is not easy nowadays to phrase legitimately a primarily positive aesthetic attraction. But Anna Borowy’s works succeed in generating genuine beauty and are capable of deriving from this constituent any other inanimate facet.
Tanja Selzer draws her motifs from the daily media-related flood of images as components of human sceneries, figures in wild natural scenes or single persons and animals in front of or inside a natural background. She changes these images by composition, shift of colour and an ease of paint application, so they appear in the guise of a pretended, mostly idyllic scene.
In the works of the series Gib mir dein Rot (Give me your red) Selzer additionally emphasizes the dynamics of her nature-bound protagonists and scenes to the point of fight-like confrontations and compositions. The idyllic backgrounds remain perceptible as bearings for the image as a whole but are not only contrasted by the drastic actions in the foreground but also are stirred up and involved in it. The alternating depiction of humans and animals also their interactions are an expression of their mirror-symmetric anima. Selzer stages this without psychological abstractions but with the genuine intensity of a direct line to the source of fables.
Going Places
Thietmar Bachmann
June 28 – July 16, 2011 Summer hours: Tue – Fri 11- 6 pm, or by appointment
532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel is showing a special Farewell exhibit for a dear friend and artist. His artworks brings together photography and painting on the same canvas, stimulating the eyes of the viewer and inviting to virtually “dive” into the pictures, going places around the world.
Thietmar Bachmann, was born in Coburg, Germany. His artistic interest focused first on painting, working both in oil and watercolor, as well as on etching, expanding to photography later on. Some of his work has been shown at the Federal Photography exhibit in 1983.
During the day Mr. Bachmann served as the Head of the Cultural Department of the German Consulate New York for the last three years, currently he is getting ready for a new posting in Europe.
Transatlantic Climate Change II, Oil on canvas 12×16 in.
Lumin-o-City: Joergen Geerds solo show in Portugal
Joergen Geerds is opening his first solo show in Europe in June 1st. 2011 at the Pousada de Palmela, about 30km south of Lisbon, Portugal.
He will be showing 15 of his large scale night panoramas until the end of August 2011. The show is open to the public.
More info at www.palmela2011.com/featured/lumin-o-city-a-panoramic-photography-exhibit-by-joergen-geerds
Robert Kunec
“WESTEND?” June 16th, 2011 http://www.mots.org.il/Eng/Exhibitions/west-end-info.asp
MUSEUM ON THE SEAM, JERUSALEM, ISREAL
“Krieg im Frieden” May 12th – 12th June 2011
KUNSTPAVILLION München
www.kunstpavillon.org/
Vincenzo LoSasso shows in Venice
Curator Vittorio Sgarbi invited the artist representing the Lombardia Region at the Italian Pavillion during the 54th BIENNALE VENICE
June 4th- November 27, 2011
PEARLESCENT
an exhibition of new paintings by Marcy Brafman,
May 31 – June 27, 2011.
Brafman’s second solo show at 532 Gallery with a new body of work employing a variety of tools and motifs that were only half realized in previous creations. The title “PEARLESCENT” comes from the exploration of specialty formulations of One Shot Oil Enamel, the glossy, viscous fluid pigment used by sign painters and employed here with spray paint. Pearlescent, Fluorescent, Krylon, Montana Paint, and sometimes melted Crayolas, take on a form which is both extremely engaging but sticks to the repertoire she has popularized, of taking invisible icons and making them very overt, stylizing them with the medium and gestures of painterliness bordering on graffiti. These are paintings born of Jackson Pollock, the end of nature, comic strips, cartoons, rock n roll, black ops insignia, John Singer Sargent and a long toxic immersion in the living billboard of electronic and digital life. They are also mashed up with urban street poetry and American highway.
PEARLESCENT continues the artist’s exploration into the way symbols, signifiers, and half remembered gestures of the media landscape make up our collective psyche. The paintings of Marcy Brafman can be considered portraits of situations which are inherently symbolic, sometimes taking on symbol as icon, and mining it for humanistic traits mired in narrative that exist outside of fine arts but not outside of the human condition. Another painter might spend time trying to re-insert the symbol into the category or scenario from which it first appeared. But this might possibly obscure the symbol, obfuscating the process of discerning its efficacy and its inevitability. Instead, Brafman restates the symbol itself as a central esthetic event, as evidence of a gesture and its philosophical importance.
Per Adolfsen
April – June 29, 2011 solo exhibit at Schuebbe Projects, Düsseldorf
Marcy Brafman donates work to Sculpture Center Benefit
Lucky Draw 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Lucky Draw – a one of a kind art raffle – guarantees that each and every ticket holder walks home with a work of art! This fast-paced one night event offers first time and seasoned collectors access to more than 180 artworks by top emerging and established talent. All proceeds benefit SculptureCenter.
Oil Enamel, Spray Paint on Canvas 20″ x 24″
Courtesy of 532 Gallery Thomas Jaeckel
In The Name Of
Robert Kunec
April 28 – May 28, 2011
FLAG DAY 2011 ( photo, 16″ x 24′ Edition of 3) IT’S NOT A BOMB (suitcase, 20″ x 28″ x 8″, unique)
Editorial Review: The New York Art World, May 2011
Robert Kunec’s work, which refers to the suicide attack, is of self-explanatory. Kunec creates an impressive picture of the interior mechanism of this event, also of the ideological, manipulative indoctrination. The sculpture deals with the totalitarian way of thinking, taking the subject as hostage. It is searching for the human role behind the uniform of a religiously motivated fight. The picture found by Kunec varies between a toolkit and an explosive device, both mechanical constructions. With this complex question about the subjectivity is raised in its intercultural context, on the basis of one of the most extreme examples in current debates. Humans as toys, as subjects, relieved of their own will, or as individuals driven by their faith.
Excerpt: Prof.Dr. Eugen Blume, Director Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin
Terrorism. It affects everything. Though rarely contemporary art. The subject is too hot, too political, too dangerous perhaps. Despite this fact, one who does dare to seek out images of terror, a willingness to self sacrifice, fanaticism and religious delusion, is the young artist Robert Kunec. It’s a path that has taken him to the boundaries of the acceptable and the utterable.
Excerpt: – Dr. Noemi Smolik, (artnet magazine -Sept.2010)
Kunec was born in Slovakia in 1978. He first completed his training as a goldsmith, then later went on to study art at the Art Academy of Prague and finally at the School of Art and Design in Halle, Germany.
Evanescent Dreams
Kaleidoscope, 29 ft x 7.9 ft (seven panels)
Vincenzo Lo Sasso
March 25 – April 16, 2011
The work of Vincenzo Lo Sasso is not only the search for a balance between opposing forces but rather, and radically so, the attempt to translate the ancient contrast between solid bodies and liquid presences into images, between that which is unmoving and that which cannot avoid swaying, ever more deeply, even between formalism and informal being. In his metals, treated, violated, oxidized, enameled, transformed into Caribbean islands or mini atolls on the Pacific, places where there is no clearly defined border between sea and earth, where each piece of territory or abyss is a space momentarily stolen, it’s a surface which could also turn back into water or the other way around – color and matter do not only speak of themselves, they do not present values which are exclusively descriptive or emotional, but they effectively reference those relationships and situations of stability or instability, specificity and non-specificity on which the whole planet rests today. The artist stages the continuous change of things, the constant being on the edge of the world, the unavoidable renewal of elements; on his strange metal canvas he blocks the continuous progress of evolution, and he does so not to deny it, but to emphasize it. In practice, Lo Sasso is inspired by Earth and its history, its destiny.
- Maurizio Sciaccaluga
Charles Mingus III
Charles Mingus III has become recognized as one of America’s most gifted and versatile artists. A native of Los Angeles, California, his work is a part of the collections of such distinguished collectors as Daniel Filipacchi, Ivan Karp, the Estates of Larry Rivers, Willem de Kooning, Baroness de Koenigswarter Rothchild and Allan Stone. Additionally, Mingus’ work is represented in corporate collections such as Fort Mason Capital, LLC in San Francisco.
Peter Muehlhaeusser
Muehlhaeusser’s expressively posed aluminum figures of boys establish a disconcertingly captivating presence through their serious features and strikingly anatomically correct physiques. The mid-sized figures encapsulate an adult’s serious life-view within the small body of a child, suggesting a metaphysical theme that implies growth, being and time.
Hendrik Smit
Hendrik Smit’s colorful gestural abstract paintings exude a playful sense of joyous freedom. The fluid seamless forms build to crescendos that appear to dissolve and re-form over the activated surfaces. The modulated upbeat colors create harmonies that recall symphonic musical arrangements.
Per Adolfsen
Per Adolfsen’s emotionally charged acrylic paintings seamlessly merge representational and abstract elements that activate the works with surprising “funhouse” effects of fear, foreboding and buoyancy. The dream-like floating tableaux, replete with swirling figures and fragmented architectural forms, engage the viewer in a seductive world of fantasy and uncertainty that recalls classic Scandinavian angst.
Peggy Bates
By deftly pouring bright acrylic onto smoothly primed canvases, Bates creates expressive, if elusive, vistas. The vivid paint runnels convey a palpable sense of shifting gravity while the varying opacities blend into transitions as smooth as flowing tides. In a few pieces, squiggled skeins of color convey dynamic energy like the spikes of an EKG monitor, fusing a technological frisson to Bates’s organic imagery.
