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ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION
NEWSLETTER October 2013 1
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NEWSLETTER #28 Contents
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Director Al Orensanz
Verbal Communication and the Art of Conversation..................................................6
Graphic Design Yuliya Novosad
TEDx Lower East Side at the Angel Orensanz Foundation.........................................11
Articles Al Orensanz Zoe V. Speas Derek Bentley
Air Travel as Inspiration for Abstract Art........................................................................16 Angel Orensanz Foundation for Art Palm Beach 2014...............................................23 3
Museum. Events. Art Gallery. 172 Norfolk Street, New York NY 10002 Tel. (212) 529-7194 www.orensanz.org 4
From Angel Orensanz’s The Language of Fire – What is verbal communication? It’s the same as the dialogue between an artist and his medium.
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Verbal Communication and the Art of Conversation By Derek Bentley
What is verbal communication? Conversation exists as a link between diverse minds, characters and perspectives. The immediate participants are the speakers, each equipped with a specific set of languages, registers, labels and linguistic codes. For verbal communication to transpire, it requires a gathering of multiple, individual minds. These include first and foremost the minds of the main participants, but might also include some silent, distant contributors incorporated through references, quotations, pictures, video, digital background and other forms of participation. Such stimuli—TV stories and imageries that burst from the depths of distant memories—can trigger points of conversation simply by association. That way, the verbal communication and conversation becomes multiple in the sense that interactions occur not only between the interlocutors involved, but between the environment of the room, of the urban landscape, or the countryside, which slips into and colors the content of what is being said and introduced.
There is no such thing as a spontaneous conversation. We are not inventing our language as we speak; language pre-exists all our encounters. Our words and sentences were formulated, coined and exchanged long before the moment of communication. In addition, conversation does not occur in a void or in vacuum. Every sentence we might think to organize has been uttered and reformulated countless times before for a variety of contexts and goals. Such previous verbal incarnations provides the key to our understanding of statements uttered in any language or in any script, once the morphology has been detected and reconstructed. Love TEDTalks? So do we. Check out this video about by Steven Pinker: What our Language Habits Reveal – What is verbal communication?“ Conversation is always creative and innovative. It determines the pathways of our mind and the formulation of our sentences. It measures the appropriateness of 7
From Angel Orensanz’s LIGHT MATTER. What is verbal communication? An interplay between the participant and his environment, much like Angel Orensanz’s interaction with physical space in his art.
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All of the above - artwork by Angel Orensanz. What is verbal communication? “There is no such thing as a spontaneous conversation.�
questions and their answers, of statements and the silence of a gesture, of the accents of formulation and the position of the speaker. The ingenuity of conversation allows us to process several lines of thought coming from multiple different speakers simultaneously. Despite the crowded environment of numerous strains of verbal communication, we are able to register one main line of discourse, towards which the various lateral and collateral observations are ascribed and formulated.
In a dialogue with multiple participants, it becomes the most clear it is the logos, the verbal communication, the language that first and foremost prevails and manifests itself. In the course of our inevitable departure from the original pathways of conversation, conflicting lines of thought and perception are constantly re-assembled. Therefore, the internal plurality of all truth becomes patent and operative. It becomes truly dialogue.
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TEDx Lower East Side at the Angel Orensanz Foundation By Zoe V. Speas
I’ve been watching TEDtalks forever. I rely on them constantly to fill me with inspiration and renewed purpose to pursue - uh, whatever it is I intend to pursue in life. That part’s a work in progress.
TEDx Lower East Side comes to the Orensanz.
Point being: TED is brain food. Favorite TEDtalk? Easy. Larry Smith: Why you will fail to have a great career. Actually, I’m not the first of my friends to report this talk as one of their favorites. Especially seeing as most of us between the ages of 21-30 have no real clue as to what we’re doing, if we’re being honest - there’s a particularly relevant Huffington Post article entitled Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy that speaks to this predicament.
“Why Generation Y Yuppies are Unhappy” - This is Lucy. Lucy wants a green lawn with a picket fence with a team of rainbow unicorns grazing inside it. 11
It’s all about this formula:
TEDTalks and TEDx Lower East Side help with that, you know, the confusion thing? Somehow having visual and auditory proof that people out there have their stuff figured out makes you a little bit more confident that you’ll figure yours out, too. But the thing about working at The Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts is you have to learn to be content to watch from the sidelines as people from organizations around the world walk through our beautiful front gates
and transform the space into a vessel for change, development, art, science, and the future. Whether it’s Target’s Launch of Chris March’s designs for Halloween or a fundraiser for the Lowline project, - I peer out from the office in the corner of the great hall and watch with eyes wide as saucers as the place explodes with life and innovation. That’s me: the wallflower of the Orensanz. Until this month. Forget sidelines. I jumped right into the game on this one. Why? TEDx Lower East Side has arrived at the THE ORENSANZ. That’s right, folks. Lovers of knowledge from around the world rejoice. TEDx (in which x = independently
Angel Orensanz, founding artist of the Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts. 12
organized TED event) hosted their TEDx Lower East Side event at the Orensanz on Friday, October 25th between the hours of 11:00am and 8:30pm. The TEDx Lower East Side event on Friday is entitled The Hero’s Journey and deals with the questions of why we are drawn to stories like Star Wars or The Matrix basically, the journey of extraordinary people, or better yet, ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Speakers in attendance may be found here with bios and links to more information on their background and speaking points. TEDx Lower East Side describes their mix of presenters as hailing “from a variety of backgrounds including scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, yogis, monks, educators and activists.” From approximately 8am on Friday, the TEDx Lower East Side event planners and volunteers poured through the doors of the Orensanz and planted jungles of hi-tech equipment to enable live streaming of the event online. They set up rows and rows of our chairs facing front to the stage, where the brightest and most creative minds of our time would step under the light and share their stories. The event was independently organized (again, thus the TEDx and not TED), which means many of the people I encountered—most of them around my age— were volunteers.
people make about him occurs when he’s got his ear buds plugged in while walking the streets of New York. “I bob my head like I’m rocking out to something on my iPod and people think, ‘wow, that dude’s really into his music’,” said the TEDx volunteer, “but in all actuality I’m just nodding in agreement to whatever TEDtalk is currently blowing my mind.” He said he was looking the most forward to a virtual talk to be given by speaker Jason Silva—a young filmmaker and “performance philosopher” whose non-commercial series of short videos explore the simultaneous evolution of humankind and technology have over 1.2 million views online. Silva suggests other talks and sources of philosophical knowledge that my volunteer friend follows religiously in his search for a broader horizon of understanding. That’s the glory of these TEDx experiences—standing inside the Orensanz amidst a swirl of energy and inspiration, everyone around me hungry to know more, to understand more than they did—it’s truly invigorating, like a shot of espresso to the nervous system and to the soul. The event was a fantastic success. Here’s looking forward to many more in the future.
One guy said to me, in a discussion of how I might snatch up some free TED swag, that the most common mistake
From the TEDx website: TEDx Lower East Side comes to the Orensanz. 13
ANGEL ORENS
ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION 14
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ANZ GALLERY
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Air Travel as Inspiration for Abstract Art By Derek Bentley
For all artists, the source of inspiration is a vital element of production. In a search for inspiration for abstract art, Angel Orensanz travels the world constantly armed with a camera and with eyes and hands of extreme agility and sensitivity. Once he captures his subject matter, he retains it and analyses it zealously. Orensanz preserves the image in the form of a negative, a unique creative practice in its own right. Angel Orensanz continues his pilgrimage throughout the world in a search for the instance of inspiration for abstract art. The artist works from his studio in New York’s Lower East Side, but he travels frequently to many diverse European countries. His constant pilgrimage throughout the world requires him to spend many hours in airports and on planes, which forces him to settle into a mode of selfreflection in the midst of his constant activity. The tradition of creative inspiration for abstract art being generated by the experience of travel dates back to the records of writers such as Charles Dickens and Pascal. The Impressionist artists crossed the Alps and the Pyrenees by train. The resulting images created by these artists are filed with layers and colors that reflect the colors of the European mountain ranges. Angel Orensanz takes frequent transatlantic journeys throughout Europe,
Right image: Angel Orensanz – Ventanilla; plastic/silicone sculpture installed in the window of an in-flight airplane.
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Angel Orensanz – Ventanilla; plastic/silicone sculpture installed in the window of an in-flight airplane.
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engaging in an artistic pilgrimage similar to those taken by the Impressionists and their predecessors. His work, accordingly, reflects the influence of his surroundings which accordingly provides his inspiration for abstract art. As much as Angel Orensanz’s work is a dialogue with the subject matter that he treats in each piece, it is also a dialogue with the environment—both culturally and physically—in which his work exists. Air travel, then, provides a unique environment of semi-permanent interlocutors who sit next to and engage with the artists. They bring up questions, one after another, jumping subjects and thought processes as rapidly as their neurons can fire. In his aviary work, Angel Orensanz captures the spirit of this instantaneous evolution in the exchanges of travelers. The images are undefined and imprecise, mirroring our retina as it perceives everything in a whole of totality and distance. When looking at these images, our brain is not hijacked by a commotion of visual messages, but by a blur of undecipherable information. Text and language becomes one of the keys to clarifying direction and limits the multiple possibilities open to our interpretation. In other words, our brain is like the deep-sea diver: the more he is equipped to jump, the more truly he penetrates the depths and the mystical landscapes of the darkest reaches of the ocean. Correspondingly, the artist takes advantage of how the mind’s vision is always wider than the sensorial perception, and the spaces that the mind reaches and penetrates surpass what the senses identify and absorb.
Left image: Angel Orensanz – Ventanilla; plastic/silicone sculpture installed in the window of an in-flight airplane.
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Angel Orensanz Museum welcome you to come and visit our spectacular
sculpture exhibitions
ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION
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172 Norfolk Street, New York NY 10002
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T 212 529 7194
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www.orensanz.org
Angel Orensanz Foundation for Art Palm Beach 2014 By Zoe V. Speas
The Angel Orensanz Gallery and Museum is pleased to announce its participation in Art Palm Beach, January 23-27, 2014. The Gallery will present The Collective Unconscious, a series of dramatic new sculptures and paintings by Spanish artist Angel Orensanz. Orensanz has been exhibiting internationally since the 1960s and has a permanent exhibit at the Orensanz Foundation, located inside the former “Norfolk Street Synagogue” in New York City’s Lower East Side.
BURNING BRONZES Burning Bronzes, a series of miniature-to-middle scale sculptures, speaks to the artist’s journey from Earth and Land Art into his current medium. Working with the bronze and stoneware, according to Orensanz, “brings me into closer communion with the earth through my art.” The sculptures on display will represent a continuation of the artist’s study of the human form and its manipulation, while paying homage to a tradition of indigenous art from around the world.
From the Burning Bronzes episode of the Collective Unconscious series, which Angel Orensanz will present at the Art Palm Beach 2014 fair.
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BODIES Bodies consists of an incredibly diverse sequence of drawings in charcoal, graphite, ink, and, occasionally, coffee grounds. Angel Orensanz explores human anatomy through a highly vibrant mix of line weight and texture. The figures he depicts contort and bend in an expression ranging from agony to ecstasy. Orensanz began his training in the 1950s at L’Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts in Paris with in-depth, literal study of the human body. Over the decades, his use of “body” and “form” has become an abstraction and a metaphor for the human condition and for the current project, Collective Unconscious.
From the ‘Bodies‘ series by Angel Orensanz – an exploration of the human figure continues this winter at Art Palm Beach 2014.
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Angel Orensanz presents the Language of Fire as part of the upcoming Collective Unconscious exhibit for Art Palm Beach 2014.
THE LANGUAGE OF FIRE Language of Fire bridges the worlds of painting, sculpture, and photography. Through his use of fire, plastics, and vivid color, Angel Orensanz illustrates the universal language of creativity, which defies boundaries of nationality and race. The artist employs a range of scale and perspective in these living photographs, verging almost into the realm of optical illusion. The images are often reflections and, being taken from the artist’s perspective, the shadow of Angel Orensanz’s figure may often be found within the complex layers of each portrait.
A comprehensive catalog with accompanying essays will be produced for the purpose of the artist’s participation in Art Palm Beach 2014.
FOR MORE INFORMATION ON ART PALM BEACH 2014: Media Inquiries: The Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts, (212) 529-7194, foundation@orensanz.org Fair Hours: Preview – January 23rd 6:00-7:30pm; Collectors Invitational 7:30-10:00pm; January 24th-27th, 127pm (6:00pm on the 27th) Location: Palm Beach County Convention Center, 650 Okeechobee Boulevard, West Palm Beach, Florida 33401 25
Special Preview:
1986 to the Present: The Orensanz Years On one evening in February 1986, Angel Orensanz, having recently arrived from Atlanta, Georgia, took a stroll around the Lower East Side looking for a building where he could establish his studio. He walked from Delancey street, past the corner of Rivington and Norfolk streets, and up to Houston, finally stumbling upon the former Anshe Slonim synagogue on Norfolk Street. Grim, silent and abused, the building seemed to look grounded and frightened. Thomas McEvilley, an accomplished art critic and scholar, imagined the building sitting “like an ancient spirit with folded wings.” Orensanz moved up the steps and peeped through a crack in the cinderblocks covering the entrances. The sun was setting, casting a ray of light over the ark and the eastern wall of the temple. Support beams from the balconies were leaning into the main space, and the entire area was strewn with debris, broken glass, and decaying books. Orensanz still saw something wonderful in the space, and later set about locating the owner, a developer with numerous holdings in the neighborhood, who eventually sold him the building. Angel Orensanz had arrived in New York after doing sculpture projects in Atlanta, Boca Raton, Los Angeles, and other parts of the country. However, it wasn’t until after his return to Europe that he discovered the Lower East Side and was charmed by its European colors and flavor. Soon after purchasing the property on Norfolk street, he unsealed its doors and windows. He then had proper doors and windows installed to protect the space from pigeons and the wind and snow. Next he secured the floors and brought in electric light for the first time in years.
Coming Out Now! 27
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172 Norfolk Street, New York NY 10002
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T 212 529 7194
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www.orensanz.org