ARTCOVER ISSUE
1
2016
Art Basel
10of the best MUSEUM exhibitions
Salustiano Garcia
Powerful ART FAIRS Aspen Miami New York
US 5.99
COVERING SUPERLATIVE ART NADALEENA MIRAT BRETTMANN PUBLICATION
Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann Hermes Rags at Midnight Aug. 4-7, 2016 Aspen Ice Garden Opening Night, Aug. 4
Titled: Hermes Rags at Midnight Medium: Original Hermes scarf, matte medium, rags and acrylic on canvas Dimensions: 36x36 Year: 2014
Wa lt er W i c k i ser G a l l ery, i n c 210 11t h Ave #30 3 , N Y, N Y 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 2 .9 4 1 .1817 www.walterwickisergallery.com wwickiser g@aol.com
ARTCOVER Volume 1, 2016
Publisher & Editor
Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann Art Director
Ron Lucarelli Senior Editor
Suzanne Schultz Executive Editor
Bryan S. Smith
Associate Editor
Arlene Kuljis Advertising
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Titled: Joyful Chaos Mixed Media on Canvas Dimensions: 84 x 84 inches Artist: Will Day
49 Geary Street, Suite 200 San Francisco, CA 94108 415.986.4799 info@mgart.com
EDITOR’S NOTE Art is a fulfilling and deep felt vocation that contributes significantly to our culture. I cannot stress enough the importance of art and the subsequent support of the arts that are so greatly necessary in our lives -- as well as in our broad community. Fortunately, I am surrounded by some of the world’s unparalleled talent in this vast and complicated art world. ARTCOVER Magazine is dedicated to publishing the highest and supreme achievements in the arts, the best of museums, galleries, art fairs and artists alike. All my best,
Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann Ph oto: Peter Baratti
President/Publisher Editor in Chief
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Contributors
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Thomas Thompson
homas Thompson (October 3, 1933 – October 29, 1982) was a journalist and author. He was born in Texas and graduated from the University of Texas in 1955. He then worked as a reporter and editor at the Houston Press. Thompson joined Life Magazine in 1961 and became an editor and staff writer. While at Life he covered the JFK assassination and was the first writer to locate Lee Harvey Oswald’s home and wife. Among his stories were coverage of the making of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles, in which he revealed the group’s extensive drug use; an in-depth look at Frank Sinatra and his alleged Mafia ties; and the 40th and 50th birthdays of Elizabeth Taylor. His book Hearts (1971) concerned the rivalry between Houston surgeons Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley at the dawn of the heart transplant era. Richie: The Ultimate Tragedy Between One Decent Man and the Son He Loved (1973) was the story of a Long Island man who killed his drug-addicted son. This was made into a TV-movie called The Death of Richie. Thompson’s most successful book was Blood and Money (1976). It was based on a true story of scandal and the murders of Houston socialite Joan Robinson Hill and her husband John Hill, and the alleged involvement of Mrs. Hill’s father, Ash Robinson, a wealthy Texas oil magnate. The book sold four million copies in fourteen languages. There were three lawsuits against Thompson after the book’s publication. Ann Kurth, John Hill’s second wife, sued Thompson for his description of her as a “sex bomb”. Kurth’s suit and that of a Longview, Texas police officer, were both dismissed. Ash Robinson, the father of Joan Robinson Hill, also sued Thompson for his portrayal in the book; Robinson was unsuccessful in his suit against Thompson. Robinson had been allowed to read the book prior to its publication and initially said he approved of what Thompson had written about him. His only criticism was that he believed the book was too long. Thompson’s publishers withheld his royalties until all suits connected with the book were settled. Thompson also wrote Serpentine (1979), the story of convicted murderer Charles Sobhraj. Thompson wrote one novel, Celebrity (1982), which was on the national best-seller list for six months. That novel became the basis for a five-hour mini series in 1984. Thompson received the National Headliner Award for investigative reporting. He was also the 1977 Edgar Award winner for Blood and Money. Thompson’s family believed that the liver disease that caused his death was contracted in the Far East while investigating the Charles Sobhraj saga. When he became ill, Thompson was teaching writing at the University of Southern California. Among his survivors were two sons, Kirk and Scott.
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Arlene Kuljis
rlene Aly Kuljis divides her boho-chic lifestyle between New York City and her Mother’s hometown of Split, Croatia. Her passion for the Arts began in high school at Convent of the Sacred Heart in NYC, and was further honed when she attended Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Her passion for ArT took a special turn when she spent her Junior year abroad in Toulouse, France where the study of ArT & Architecture captivated her. Upon graduating with a B.A. however, she followed her Mother’s practical advice & attended New York Law School. After several years as a General Litigation Attorney, Arlene followed her artistic bent & worked for a Fashion Designer in the Garment District. While working there she was ‘discovered’ by Mrs. Veronica Atkins, now widow of celebrity diet guru to the stars, Dr. Robert C. Atkins. It did not take long for Mrs. Atkins to be totally intrigued by Arlene’s vibrant personality, law degree and creative mind & create a job uniquely for her at the Atkins Medical Center. It was here, at the then cutting-edge Center, that Arlene’s legal education & creative side merged. Working alongside Dr. Atkins & running his practice was fast paced; assisting Atkins’ patients with medical reimbursement for alternative medical treatments & lobbying for good causes was personally gratifying. In the midst of this high paced & ‘work hard play hard’ attitude, Dr. Atkins sadly & suddenly passed away & Arlene was propelled to turn her effervescent energy towards the vibrant NYC real estate market. At present, Arlene, as a single Mom to her 14 year-old Daughter Olivia (who resides with her Grandparents on the Adriatic Coast) is constantly motivated to combine the BEST of both Worlds. Her real estate dealings in NYC, as well as her real estate business ventures with her Mom back in Croatia, keep her very busy indeed ..... & inspired. “I live the rhythm of NYC but my soul is always breathing in the charm that is Croatia ..... “
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ryan S. Smith has worked in the commercial airline/travel/ tourism industry for 30 years. He began his freelance writing career as executive editor for magazines published by US Airways, United Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Allegiant Airways and the San Francisco Tour Guide Guild. He has also published a portfolio of articles highlighting every aspect of the arts and the people who create them for a number of luxury magazines. Some of his favorite stories include published articles featuring photographer William Coupon, an American photographer, known principally for his formal painterly backdrop portraits of tribal people, politicians and celebrities, Dean Torrence, co-founder, co-lead singer, and co-writer of the hit surf duo, Jan & Dean and most notably Edgar Tafel, an American architect, best known as a disciple of Frank Lloyd Wright. His exposure to the national arts has been an enriching experience having lived and worked throughout the United States in New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Denver, Pittsburgh and Phoenix. He believes that seeing things is what opens our mind and stimulates our senses to not only explore the world around us but to appreciate the ‘art’ of it all.
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Celina Colby
he spends her time pitching, writing, and editing articles for a variety of publications including ARTCOVER, Sasee, Trouvé, the Boston City Paper, and the Bay State Banner. Celina provides news coverage, feature articles, and personal essays. Plus, she shoots photographs to accompany articles and does freelance photography for The New York Times and Wicked Clothes. Celina Colby also runs the internationally recognized fashion blog, Trends and Tolstoy, styling outfits, writing content, and maintaining the blog. trendsandtolstoy.com
Bryan S. Smith
Seth Beckton
eth Beckton is a self taught photographer from Casper, Wyoming. Some of his work has been featured in magazines such as Mountain Bike Rider Magazine, Mountain Flyer and Dirt Rag. He has worked for clients such as Aspen/Snowmass the Town of Snowmass, Aspen Chamber, and Aspen Magazine, along with many others. Currently residing in Aspen, CO. Seth likes to spend most of his time traveling, snowboarding, and mountain biking. You can find more personality through social media channels such as Twitter and Instagram@SethBeckton.
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Ron Lucarelli
ajoring in Fine Art in college, Ron decided to find a more immediate source of income and plunged into the design, publishing and advertising world. From the beginning of his career he worked in advertising agencies promoting several regional and national clients. From there he began his own design agency, Lucarelli, Ltd., creating branding, advertising and collateral for high-tech and medical companies, Universities and non-profits. Merging with a publication agency, he created the branding and design for several lifestyle and financial magazines. Ron’s worked on the corporate side of the desk, as well, designing retail direct marketing and art directing photography for Lands’ End for 5 years, and then as Creative Services Manager at National Public Radio developing branding and business-to-business marketing for their Satellite Division. Upon his arrival in the Los Angeles area, Ron worked as a freelance consultant immersing himself in the entertainment world working on sets and marketing design for independent movies and for Disney, Warner and Universal on a project basis. His publishing work continued with Hollywood magazines, art galleries and online marketing and design work for home furnishings companies, direct mail, 200+ page catalogs, cookbooks and Nadaleena’s coffee table book of her art. He continues to happily work with Nadaleena as the art director for this cutting edge ARTCOVER magazine.
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Stephen Wayda
tephen Wayda is an internationally published photographer best known for his demonstrative images of celebrities and women. In the creation of entertaining and compelling images he is widely regarded as a master in the use of composition and light, both natural and artificial. After 40 years, as an editorial and commercial photographer and photojournalist, he is expanding into the world of Fine Art as a means to realize his additional Creative depth. Stephen Wayda is represented by Kavachnina Contemporary Miami and Gallery M, Denver, CO.
Suzanne Schultz
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n art writer once titled a story about Ms. Schultz as “Portrait of
the Artist’s Mother” that conjured up the image of an old woman wearing orthopedic shoes. This dynamic force of nature is anything but that! In seven years Canvas Fine Arts has gone from a small gallery in Acton, Massachusetts to a player on the world stage representing over 50 artists over the years. With art shown and collected internationally, she engages corporate commissions with companies like Legal Seafood, Revlon and national and international press. Canvas Fine Arts’ works have graced numerous magazine covers and have received notable reviews. Canvas Fine Arts represents painters, sculptors and photographers. Ms. Schultz is helping visual artists gain exposure – to be seen and heard. With the population of professional artists growing exponentially each year, exposure can be difficult to obtain. “There simply are not enough venues to support them, so I have created new and innovative arenas for my clients,” says Schultz. In response to the growing needs of artists, locally, nationally, and internationally, Canvas Fine Arts has established its own platforms intuitively following global trends in the way art is seen and sold. Ms. Schultz also guest hosts for BNN TV’s “It’s All About Arts” and contributes to a New York City art paper Revolt. Her Motivational program “EXPOSED”, available to artists and art organizations, shares her knowledge on the business side of the industry.
Stephanie Grilli
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contributor to Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann: Abstract 2013, art historian Stephanie Grilli has a PhD in art history from Yale University and is known as a scholar for her research on the 19th-century Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Now she is a freelance writer and curator who focuses on contemporary art (artscribe.net), and her current project is Color on Another Plane for Fresco Books. Identifying a noteworthy trend, Grilli has gathered a collection of 21st-century colorists who use paint to achieve luminescence, radiance, and transparency for expressive purpose. In 2012, she co-curated Taos Contemporary with Cecily Cullen at the Center for Visual Art, Metropolitan State University of Denver: this exhibition of 56 artists updated the fabled art colony to show that it is an outpost in touch with contemporary currents but with its own creative center-of-gravity.
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Donald Kuspit
onald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic, poet, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and former professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts. Kuspit is one of America’s most distinguished art critics. He was formerly the A. D. White Professorat-Large at Cornell University (1991–1997). He received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism in 1983 (given by the College Art Association).[1] In 1983 he received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Davidson College, in 1996 from the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2007 from the New York Academy of Art. In 1997 the National Schools of Art and Design presented him with a citation for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2000 he delivered the Getty Lectures at the University of Southern California. In 2005 he was the Robertson Fellow at the University of Glasgow. In 2008 he received the Tenth Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. In 2014 he was the first recipient of the Gabarron Foundation Award for Cultural Thought. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation, and Asian Cultural Council, among other organizations. He has doctorates in philosophy (University of Frankfurt)and art history (University of Michigan), as well as degrees from Columbia University, Yale University, and Pennsylvania State University. He has also completed the course of study at the Psychoanalytic Institute of the New York University Medical Center. Donald Kuspit (born March 26, 1935) is an American art critic, poet, and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and former professor of art history at the School of Visual Arts. Kuspit is one of America’s most distinguished art critics. He was formerly the A. D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (1991–1997). He received the Frank Jewett Mather Award for Distinction in Art Criticism in 1983 (given by the College Art Association).[1] In 1983 he received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Davidson College, in 1996 from the San Francisco Art Institute, and in 2007 from the New York Academy of Art. In 1997 the National Schools of Art and Design presented him with a citation for Distinguished Service to the Visual Arts. In 1998 he received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 2000 he delivered the Getty Lectures at the University of Southern California. In 2005 he was the Robertson Fellow at the University of Glasgow. In 2008 he received the Tenth Annual Award for Excellence in the Arts from the Newington-Cropsey Foundation. In 2014 he was the first recipient of the Gabarron Foundation Award for Cultural Thought. He has received fellowships from the Ford Foundation, Fulbright Commission, National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, Guggenheim Foundation, and Asian Cultural Council, among other organizations. He has doctorates in philosophy (University of Frankfurt)and art history (University of Michigan), as well as degrees from Columbia University, Yale University, and Pennsylvania State University. He has also completed the course of study at the Psychoanalytic Institute of the New York University Medical Center.
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ARTTISTIKA Museum of Contemporary Art + Photography
ARTTISTIKA.com
Current Exhibition ‘Dale Therlkeld
TABLE OF CONTENTS MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS
PORTFOLIOS
Denver Art Museum.............................................. 10
Lauren Worth........................................................ 52
Metropolitan Museum of Art.................................. 11
Dorothy Heller....................................................... 53
Los Angeles County Museum of Art....................... 12
Ajax Axe................................................................ 54
Aspen Art Museum................................................ 13
Leo Rostohar......................................................... 56
The Boca Museum of Art....................................... 14
Elena Kolesova..................................................... 58
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art:.................. 15
Ralph Rieckermann.............................................. 60
Clyfford Still Museum........................................... 16
Paul Toupet........................................................... 62
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston........................ 17 MoMA Museum...................................................... 18
THINGS WE LOVE............................................ 63
Masterworks Museum of Bermuda Art................... 19
GALLERY SPOTLIGHT FEATURES
PACE Gallery......................................................... 64
Dale Threlkeld....................................................... 20
Casterline | Goodman Gallery................................ 65
Barnett Suskind . ................................................. 24
GALLERY M........................................................... 66
Salustiano............................................................ 28
Kavachnina Contemporary.................................... 67
Peter Baratti......................................................... 34
Marlborough Gallery.............................................. 68
Matt McKee........................................................... 38
ForrĂŠ Fine Art Gallery............................................ 70
Stephen Wayda..................................................... 40
Walter Wickiser gallery.......................................... 71
Paul Gian.............................................................. 42 Andy Berg............................................................. 44
THE STRONGEST US ART FAIRS
Beth Barry............................................................ 46
ArtAspen............................................................... 72 Miami Project Art Faire......................................... 74
IN THE STUDIO
CONTEXT Art Miami............................................... 76
Katrine Hildebrandt-Hussey.................................. 48
Art Basel Miami.................................................... 78 Art Market San Francisco...................................... 80 New York Affordable . ........................................... 82 ARTCOVER 9
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Why We Dance
AMERICAN INDIAN ART IN MOTION Opens May 29, 2016
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his multisensory exhibition will present the motives behind Native American dance and highlight the museum’s annual Friendship Powwow and American Indian Cultural Celebration. It features about 86 works, including 78 drawn from the DAM’s American Indian art collection. In addition to historic works, the exhibition will showcase contemporary dance regalia from the regional Native American community. Paintings and drawings will illustrate specific Native dances such as animal dances, healing dances, and rites of passage primarily found in the Plains region and the American Southwest. Included in the exhibition are large-scale, dance-themed portraits from the 1939 San Francisco World’s Fair by Charles Loloma, Jose Duran, and Ignacio Moquino. Visitors also will be invited into a dancing circle through Mohawk artist Alan Michelson’s Round Dance video art installation, allowing them to join in on a form of dance used as social protest over tribal sovereignty issues. Why We Dance is curated by Nancy Blomberg, chief curator and curator of Native arts at the DAM, as well as John Lukavic, associate curator of Native arts, and guest curator Russ Tallchief.
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Jerusalem 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven At The Met Fifth Avenue SEPTEMBER 20 / 2016–JANUARY 8 / 2017
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his exhibition will illuminate the key role that the Holy City played in shaping the art of the period from 1000 to 1400. While Jerusalem is often described as a city of three faiths, that formulation underestimates its fascinating complexity. In fact, the city was home to multiple cultures, faiths, and languages. History records harmonious and dissonant voices of people from many lands, passing in the narrow streets of a city not much larger than midtown Manhattan. This will be the first exhibition to unravel the various cultural traditions and aesthetic strands that enriched and enlivened the medieval city. Over 200 works of art will be gathered from some 60 lenders worldwide. Nearly a quarter of the objects will come from Jerusalem, including key loans from its religious communities, some of which have never before shared their treasures outside their walls. Jerusalem 1000–1400, Every People Under Heaven will bear witness to the crucial role that the city has played in shaping world culture, a lesson vital to our common history.
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Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) Japanese Prints and Photographs: Paths through Modernity Pavilion for Japanese Art, Juda Gallery May 21, 2016–September 25, 2016
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rints and photographs share a basic quality: each form involves transferring an image to paper, whether through the impression of an inked plate or the projection of light through film. Japanese Prints and Photographs: Paths Through Modernity opens up the relationship between these media by presenting prints and photographs from Japan that span almost 100 years, from 1917 to the present. Though modern prints and photographs developed in different directions, the exhibition explores several points of intersection between these media, examining the ways in which Japanese print artists and photographers approached landscape, the city, and abstraction.
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Liz Larner: X
Aspen Nov 6, 2015-Nov 30, 2016
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iz Larner’s presentation at the Aspen Art Museum showcases the artist’s long-standing investigation into the possibilities and poetics of sculpture. X (2013), a mirror-polished stainless steel sculpture installed outdoors on the AAM Commons, highlights the artist’s use of line, color, volume, and form to produce new relationships between the viewer and the surrounding environment. AAM exhibitions are made possible by the Marx Exhibition Fund. General exhibition support is provided by the Toby Devan Lewis Visiting Artist Fund. Liz Larner’s exhibition is supported by Gabriela and Ramiro Garza and Susan and Larry Marx, and funded in part by the AAM National Council. Additional support is provided by Eleanore and Domenico De Sole.
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Arnold Newman: Masterclass Boca Raton April 21 - July 3, 2016
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ver the course of nearly seven decades, Arnold Newman (1918–2006) created iconographic portraits of some of the most influential innovators, celebrities, and cultural figures of the twentieth century. The first major exhibition of the photographer’s work since his death, Arnold Newman: Masterclass, examines the evolution of his singular vision, from the informal portraits, cityscapes, documentary images, and design studies of his early career to the “environmental portraiture” style for which he would become famous. Through more than 200 of his well-known photographs of famous sitters, including JFK, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, Truman Capote, Marc Chagall, Igor Stravinsky, and Marilyn Monroe, along with manuscripts, correspondence, business records, and magazine tear sheets, Masterclass invites the viewers to explore the life, career, and art of this important and prolific master of the photographic image.
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Martha Russo: coalescere Boulder March 31 – June 12, 2016
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oalescere brings together 25 years of work by the sculptor and installation artist Martha Russo. The artist’s first solo museum exhibition, coalescere will explore the progression of Russo’s work, highlighting sculptural pieces created over the course of her artistic practice as well as a series of new works and large-scale, site-specific installations. The exhibition title, which is from the Latin “come together,” reflects Russo’s interest in bringing together her diverse body of work, allowing visitors to explore the themes and forms that carry throughout her career. The title also speaks to the nature of her newest works, which feature thousands of individual elements pieced together to create unexpected and surprising new forms. Russo’s organic, abstract sculptures and installations push the boundaries of clay. She playfully references a multiplicity of sources and processes, including anatomical, botanical, and oceanic elements, and notions of growth and decay, particularly on a cellular level. Early small-scale, visceral works, such as chicken (1994) and trickle (2000) shed light on Russo’s study of developmental biology and psychology. coalescere ultimately presents a process of discovery for both the viewer and exhibiting artist. The exhibition looks both backward and forward, and most importantly, is a catalyst for defining and shaping Russo’s future work.
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Clyfford Still: The Works on Paper City and County of Denver Oct 14, 2016–Jan 8, 2017
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he first exhibition in history devoted exclusively to Still’s graphic art. This exhibition of some 225 works and related programs will reveal the centrality of drawing within Still’s life-long creative process and challenge prevailing assumptions about Still’s place in art history. More broadly, this project will offer a unique opportunity for the public to view a vital, missing element in our understanding of abstract expressionism and a key period in America’s cultural history (Still’s career spanned nearly 60 years). The exhibition is supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. The sheer volume (more than 2,300) and variety of Still’s works on paper attests to the significant role draftsmanship played in his art, particularly when compared to his abstract expressionist contemporaries. Still explored graphite, charcoal, pastel, crayon, pen and ink, oil paint, gouache, and tempera, as well as lithography, etching, woodcut, and silkscreen. The exhibition will explicate the interplay between his drawings and paintings. In some cases, paintings grew directly out of sketches or more finished drawings. In others, the opposite was true, underscoring that his works on paper were not preparatory steps but fully realized pieces in themselves. This exhibition will also draw on the extensive Clyfford Still Archives housed at CSM. For example, small technical sketches of shipbuilding plans from Still’s time working in the war industries are included, which no doubt played a role in the abstracted, mechanistic forms found in many of his drawings and oil works from the early 1940s.
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High Society: The Portraits of Franz X. Winterhalter Apr 17, 2016 - Aug 14, 2016
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he first exhibition in history devoted exclusively to St Franz Xaver Winterhalter, the 19th century’s most renowned portraitist of European aristocracy, captured the elegance and opulence of his distinguished sitters with an unrivaled brilliance. The comprehensive exhibition High Society: The Portraits of Franz X. Winterhalter presents a selection of these canvases, complemented by select items of clothing by sought-after fashion designer Charles Frederick Worth and several of Worth’s contemporaries. This major survey features works drawn from public, private, and royal collections around the world. The German-born Winterhalter (1805–1873) gained popularity in Paris and became the preferred portraitist of England’s Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, and his services were eventually in much demand throughout Europe. He was celebrated for his ability to capture likenesses and for his superb rendering of textures and fashionable details. Although many of Winterhalter’s iconic portraits of European nobility predate the entry of couturier Worth (1825–1895) into the field of fashion, their client lists among elegant women of the European courts overlapped. High Society showcases about 45 of Winterhalter’s magnificent paintings, along with glamorous evening gowns and other couture garments from the period.
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Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty New York Through Sunday, July 24
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dgar Degas is best known as a painter and chronicler of the ballet, yet his work as a printmaker reveals the true extent of his restless experimentation. In the mid-1870s, Degas was introduced to the monotype process— drawing in ink on a metal plate that was then run through a press, typically resulting in a single print. Captivated by the monotype’s potential, he immersed in the technique with enormous enthusiasm, taking the medium to radical ends. He expanded the possibilities of drawing, created surfaces with a heightened sense of tactility, and invented new means for new subjects, from dancers in motion to the radiance of electric light, from women in intimate settings to meteorological effects in nature. The monotype also sparked a host of experiments for Degas, who often used the medium as a starting point from which an image could be reworked and revised. This process of repetition and transformation, mirroring and reversal, allowed Degas to extend his approach to the study of form. The profound impact of his work with monotype can be seen in his variations in different mediums of key motifs, revealing a new kind of artwork that was less about progress or completion than endless innovation. The exhibition includes approximately 120 rarely seen monotypes—along with some 60 related paintings, drawings, pastels, sketchbooks, and prints—that show Degas at his most modern, capturing the spirit of urban life; depicting the body in new and daring ways; liberating mark-making from tradition; and boldly engaging the possibilities of abstraction.
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Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann Bermuda August 1 - August 30
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n her series of large-scale oil paintings of twisters, Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann achieves a rare truce between the brute force of the natural world and the visceral limits of individual expression. If the New York School proposed Abstract Expressionism as a cohesive form of mark-making divorced from physical reality, Nadaleena has retained their signature—the evocative gesture, ripe with emotion—while aiming this energy squarely at actual phenomena: Hurricanes, tornados, wild and destructive storms at sea. The artist herself is working from experience—one of her properties is in Nebraska, giving her a front-row seat to meteorological drama, and she’s witnessed plenty of tropical storms in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and the Caribbean. “A tornado is one thing,” she says. “It’s another when it becomes a violent twister, destroying everything.” Nadaleena embodies the storm in her practice, always intensely physical; mirroring the words of critic Harold Rosenberg, writing in the early 1950s, the canvas becomes “an arena in which to act,” the painting a record of this encounter. “I start losing myself,” Nadaleena says. “Sometimes I get a little angry—you can see by the bold strokes of the brush.”
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xploring the unknown is what drives artist Dale Threlkeld. “I have found ways to get super fine lines and patterns and color combinations,” he says. “I am mixing silver and gold oil with a variety of colors using techniques I have perfected.” Picasso, Pollock, Arthur Dove and Brancusi were huge influences to Threlkeld. More specifically, his paintings are the logical next step in the continuation of the historic Color Field paintings of Paul Jenkins and Morris Lewis. Picasso found literally anything not only worthy of comment but demanding of one. Threlkeld creates imagined scenes presented in abstract symbols, with no reference to historical fact. Rhythmic modulations emanate from his varied sources of “pulse-pumping” inspiration from music and literature to the features of the natural world. Threlkeld shares, “A work of art should be a revelation that explores the territory between what we know and are yet to discover. I draw upon all I have experienced and have learned, set that as free as I can and trust my senses. “I really got my career going with my new work back in 2006 when I was invited to be guest artist at the Dogwood Festival in Dowagiac, Mich. Michael Collins, the distinguished author from Ireland, was the guest author. That show led to a major exhibition at The Krasl Art Center, Saint Joseph, Mich., and The Artist Project, Art Chicago in 2008.” Threlkeld’s abstract, non-objective paintings are indisputably a revelation, disclosing much about his confidential methodology, his unique aesthetic, his painterly tradition. He is painting
a picture, not writing a book. It’s like lighting the fuse for this creative explosion. Threlkeld’s realized vision, culminating in universally compelling paintings, enjoin the viewer to embark upon an adventure, exploring the mysteries that lie somewhere between the explicable and the inexplicable. “Inspiration is everywhere,” he supposes. “Nature is the biggest inspiration. Hearing a new song or watching some new creation that lifts my spirit and makes me feel deeply or think, always inspires me to go make a painting. I truly am most inspired by the last painting I did. I am always apprehensive before I begin but once I get started I am always amazed at how I know what to do next and how I know when it is finished.” Threlkeld adopts a steady progression along a continuous line. Each cluster of paintings is linked not only backward and forward but on all sides, as well as to the distant past through influences as widely separated as El Greco and Praxiteles. Revealing an original and thoroughly singular artistic identity, the result is a luminous body of work giving shape to his unmitigated freedom of expression. He articulates, “I knew I had to find my own way of expression and execution. I came to know that to the extent to which my work is different from all others that is its style, its identity, and for it to be original it has to be honest and not contrived. You can’t fake real.” Threlkeld’s dazzling contemporary structure yields intellectual and emotional passion. He is a man vitally receptive to the forces that have
determined the character of his time. An artist whose vigor and invention remain phenomenal. By reports of people who know him as a person, he sees and feels and lives with extraordinary intensity and liveliness at all levels from desire and horseplay, from philosophical brooding upon the human condition to unquestioning, extroverted gusto for the commonest diversions. He resonates, “I spend a lot of time preparing paint to get the effects I seek. For a very long time I have searched for a way to make a painting that is unique and personal. I believe the highest level one can achieve is ‘ownership.’ I want to own the way I make paintings so they are like none other. I had a series of breakthroughs in the studio in the 1990s. I have created a lot of new techniques I continue to perfect that I believe are unique and new. The highest craftsmanship is very important. I want to move the viewer. I hope they are not only moved but intrigued. The magic is in the mystery and the mystery is the magic.” A great painting is usually realized at a time when an artist’s technical command has come into harmony with his intellectual and spiritual maturity. A moment when his sensitivities are at their keenest. The artist creates an amalgamation of liquid forms and vaporous contours. Threlkeld’s paintings can be fully absorbed only by contemplation, anticipatory tingles, coloristic lushness and exotic poesy. If we chance to look away, just for a moment, the works might seemingly change in an instant; like frosted breath vaporizes in the cold, crisp air.
Dale Threlkeld By Bryan S. Smith
Spontaneous paintings straight from the heart
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“Star Mist ” oil on vinyl 12x12” 2015
“Oracle” oil 24x30” 2016
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“Threlkeld accomplishes this through his vibrant pallet and distinctive approach to the preparation and application of paint”
“Midnight Rendezvous” oil on vinyl 12x12” 2016
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“ Vamp Soiree” oil on vinyl, 12x12” 2016
“Kamarand” oil 30x40” 2016
“Roulette Rise” oil on vinyl 12x12” 2016
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T
he discourse of the nude body--especially the female nude body, usually as seen through the male eye--is perhaps the oldest in the history of art. With good reason: it conveys our concern with the condition of our own bodies--our fundamental body narcissism, one might say, recalling that Narcissus fell in love with his own naked body, rather than that of the nymph Echo who pursued him with her love. The female nude has always been a symbol of sovereign insularity--Venus has always been associated with vanity, as the numerous images of her with a mirror indicate--however desirable her body may be by reason of its beauty. What is the place of Barnett Suskind’s Big Venuses, as I call them, by reason of the size as well as beauty of their bodies, in this very rich tradition of the narcissistic female nude?
Venus has been secularized in modernity: one only has to compare Titian’s graceful Venus of Urbino to Manet’s sluttish Olympia to get the point. De-idealized--and de-feminized, one might add--Olympia’s boyish body becomes a crude caricature of beauty. Manet’s Olympia is shocking, indeed, has come to symbolize the de-mystifying shock of the new: her vulgarized nudity is new in the history of art, even as her thinness seems to echo the thinness of Cranach’s Venuses. But their thin bodies are uncannily elegant, while Olympia’s bony thinness--almost anorexic--conveys her emotional barrenness, not to say emptiness. A famous editor of a woman’s magazine once said that you can never be too thin or have too much money, never realizing that the thinness of the modern model--the so-called glamour
girl--suggests her superficiality and her selling of her body for money implies that she has no mind let alone self-respect. Olympia’s body has lost its dignity, confirming that she is a symbol of vice, and with that viciously realistic. Suskind restores opulence to the female body, and with that dignity--a certain majesty: the majesty of the primordial. It goes far beyond the opulence of Rubens’s Venuses, who remain worldly however divine in name. Neither Ruben’s Venuses, nor those of Titian, Manet, and Cranach, have the primordial quality of Suskind’s Venuses. It is this--their primordial opulence--which makes them unique in the history of modern art. They restore us to the prehistory of the female body--restore the transcendental opulence of the mythical Magna Mater, the fertility
Barnett Suskind Written by Donald Kuspit
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goddess envisioned in the Venus of Willendorf and similar sculptures. Suskind returns to the “original female,” that is, the female who has the origins within her, who is creatively pregnant. She is the muse writ cosmically large, filling the canvas to suggest her selfsufficiency and hermetic self-containment. The body of Suskind’s Big Venus is the eternal feminine alternative to the debased, trivialized, devalued modernized female body that begins its reign with Manet’s cheap courtesan, however much she now covers her cheapness with glamour. Kenneth Clark famously distinguished between the naked and the nude--the empirical body, with all its blemishes and awkwardnesses, and the idealized, well-proportioned body, perfected into a symbol of transcendence and symbolizing what Freud called the
ego ideal. The body of Suskind’s Big Venus has the particularities of the naked and the ideality of the nude--and, even more rare in the discourse of the nude, be it traditional or modern, archetypal primodiality. It is this saving grace that makes it unique and peculiarly post-modern, if post-modern means abandoning the distortion and fragmentation that beset and compromised the body in modern art--perhaps most noteworthily in Picasso--to recover a sense of its fullness and wholeness. The Big Venus, full-bodied and fecund, is clearly Suskind’s muse--a projection of his own pregnant creativity--and a rather unexpected and unusual representation of the muse: she has been in hiding since she first appeared at the dawn of art. Suskind has made many expressionist portraits of his contemporaries, showing his gift
for grasping psychic reality, and his Big Venus shows his ability to observe his own psychic reality, that is, to represent his own anima. The figures in Suskind’s psychodynamic portraits seem to be in a state of impending emotional disintegration--intensely suffering, as the painterly forcefulness with which they are represented suggest. But his Big Venus is completely integrated--no loose gestural threads we can pull to unravel her body. Her seamless body, with its tranquil smoothness-the delicate skin that holds its bulk together-hasn’t the slightest hint of the anxiety that permeates Suskind’s portrait heads, suggesting that it embodies a new-found sense of creative confidence and the achievement of self-integration. continued next spread
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LEF T : “Eves with Apple, Diptych 1 and 2 ,” 3'x6' oil on canvas “Ruth,” 36"x48", oil on canvas “Ms. America,” 60"x48", oil on canvas, 2011
THIS PAGE: “Torso,” 30"x 40", oil on canvas, 2010 “Janis,” 5'x7 ', oil on canvas
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A
n encounter with one of Salustiano’s paintings is an encounter with a human version of the late Benoît Mandelbrot’s fractals, a striking experience through which the viewer will dive into him or herself through the open windows that are those captivating eyes, unveiling one layer of thoughts after the other. continued
CO M O S I N O PA S A R A EL TIEM PO 150 CM
TAMB IÉN HACIA L A LUZ n º6 80 cm
UN DE R T H E RA IN ( n i ñ a co n f l o r ro j o) 8 0 cm N at u ra l p i g m e n t s , a c r y l i c re s i n a n d o i l o n canvas
Salustiano by Thomas Thompson
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C A M P O DE A L M E N DRA S E S P UM OS A S ( J UA N ITO CO N L IBRO ) 12 0 CM
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A passer-by in a hurry will wonder what the figure is thinking, what are the reasons behind the feelings expressed by its eyes, trying to determine where he is being invited to go. But if this passer-by takes but just one second to take a closer look, he will realize that he is not looking at ‘someone’, but rather facing a surprisingly red mirror of his or her own soul – past, present and future. Mature and serene, these artworks enable us to take time exploring ourselves, acting as a reminder that what is really important deserves that we dedicate time to it rather than being thunderstruck for a short while before going back to our busy lives – without having really learnt anything from the experience. A painting by Salustiano is an invitation to a journey through oneself, an exploration of one’s deepest feelings, emotions and ambitions. Apart from the almost-mythological figure of the hermit, or the rare case of the Buddha, human beings are unable to live strictly on their own and by themselves. But at the end of the day, and even though we are deeply influenced by those surrounding us, when facing the necessity to make a choice we realize that we are alone in taking deci-
sions about our own lives. By often choosing pre-juvenile models, the artist enables himself to depict emotions and feelings at their purest, making us begin the journey by realizing how much life steals away purity and innocence as it unfolds; but also how these are progressively replaced by wisdom and knowledge of self and the world we live in. “I am looking for something more primitive, deeper inside, more delicate and long-lasting. I intend to cause a certain state in the viewer’s soul. It is an intellectual work, very assessed, but always pursuing an emotional goal”. Through this clearly established choice of working angle, Salustiano forces us to face the fact that however analytical or down-toearth a person might be, being human makes us base everything on emotions. Whether we see and take them as such or choose to bring them down to a mathematical approach, they shaped us and are responsible for who we have become. Besides our approach to sexuality and our capacity to think logically, the Sevillano reminds us of what really makes us human. One can be moved by a landscape, a construction,
a piece of music, but these objects merely provoke emotions. Only another human being can transmit an emotion that will echo through us for we either have experienced it before or have an intuitive knowledge of it. By looking into these blue eyes, we also realize how much it is important for us to assess these emotions, for plenitude and a clear state of mind cannot be reached through suppressing them, but only after having faced, acknowledged and dealt with what we feel. Salustiano helps us question where we go, what we really want and if those things are really important to us – whatever they might be. Changer la Vie, Tamara with bag, with her Louis Vuitton bag and determined, almost defying look is making a clear statement about what she has achieved, where she is and wishes to stay. It is the parrots behind her that, looking right into the viewer’s eyes, call him out to reflect on what he or she has achieved – silently and almost ironically asking “What about you? What have you done so far? Where are you heading to?” Once again, there are emotions at stake, but in this case they are not only the ones we feel towards ourselves – they are the painted etymology
L A MUY 80 cm
L A MUY 80 cm
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of the word “reflection”, where a thinking process unwinds by bouncing off a series of emotions provoked by others and that make us think about ourselves as opposed to those around us. I believe that one of the most remarkable strengths of this artist is to arouse identical questions and state of minds even though browsing through his work will see an alternation of sometimes neutral, almost mysterious stares with some that clearly reflect strongly felt emotions – the mixed anger and disappointment of Changer la Vie (War), for instance. Like listening to the minimal ballad Aaron from Paul Kalkbrenner, watching either one or several of these works emphasizes the dual nature of feelings. Each and every single one of them is unique – for it will never be felt within the exact same context or situation – yet similar as we only have a limited set of them available. Seemingly to a scratched vinyl disc, emotions repeat themselves tirelessly; identical yet different as the scratch deepens after each revolution of the diamond on the shiny black surface. The glance in Salustiano’s figures’ eyes is
strikingly acute, just as in the work of a really talented photographer who manages to press the shutter button at the exact moment when his model is expressing something that really matters. Looking at a person comes down to looking at what she has done in her past that made her become what she is today. But by looking at the past of these models through their eyes, we end up wondering more about their future. In the same way that one can wonder what might have happened should they have talked to that coup de foudre stranger in the subway, or if they had decided to abandon everything to follow that person met in a context where being together is not possible, these red canvases bring us to wonder where we are headed, what we will become and who we really want to be. A memory from the past, an impression of the present or an intuition for the future do not require us to have something solid to hold on to in order to remember them; and this is where emotions in general and Salustiano’s paintings in particular become so strong. A smell, a sight, a sound, a touch, a taste can all trigger the reminiscing of a memory, but it
is the emotion linked to those that make this memory so vivid and bring our five senses to life, making them something we can relate to so strongly. Emotions are what makes us human, for they transcend the mere senses, and these artworks are here to remind us of this. Senses and emotions are universal, and beautiful in a way Kant would think it. Can be considered as art or as something beautiful anything that can be either universally appreciated or that, on the contrary, will spark a debate. Independently from one’s social background, ethnic or geographical origins, Salustiano achieves the feat of rendering his artworks understandable by all, reminding us of the universality of emotions and feelings – almost asserting the superiority of feelings over art for itself through these pure emotions he is presenting on this out-of-context red background that forces these passersby to stop, watch and then start thinking. This is where Salustiano becomes an Artist: he renders useless the necessity to have a background to understand his artworks, in the end creating as many artworks as they are people standing in front of his paintings.
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( TA M A RA CO N T IJERAS) 1 50 x 1 50 cm C H A N G E R L A V IE ( A L BA ) 4 5 0 X 3 5 0 c m p i g m e n t s a n d a c r y l i c re s i n o n c a n va s
VA R I AC I ONE S G OL D B E RG 1 50 C M
C H AN G ER L A VIE (M ARÍ A CON T I J E R A S) 3 50 x 1 52 cm Natural pigme nts and a cryl ic res in on canvas .
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WA R 80 CM COMO SI NO PA S A RA E L T IE M P O N ยบ 5 130 x 130 cm.
(ELISA COLU MPI O NE G RO) Oil and ac ryl ic on canvas 1 52 x 1 2 0 cm
6 Purple Strip 26x40 1998 Oil on linen
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Peter Baratti American Models
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Peter Baratti
Matt McKee
W
alking into photographer Matt McKee’s studio in Hyde Park, MA, is something akin to walking into a vintage store. One wall cradles shelf after shelf of props for McKee’s photos, ranging from a cat sculpture made by a former intern to a vial of glass eyeballs and capping off with an R2D2 lunchbox wearing a set of headphones circa 1995. Further on is a set of burgundy leather couches where McKee entertains clients from corporate CEOs to emerging actresses. A waist-high display case separates the couches from the makeshift makeup area, which features a vintage optometrists chair now used to replace eyeglasses with eyelashes. The rest of the space holds McKee’s dual-screen editing station and a large studio area for shooting everything from portraits to products. It’s clear from the start; Matt McKee is no ordinary artist. The Boston-based talent fell in love with his medium at age seven. After seeing Godzilla at his grandmother’s house he rushed upstairs to stage a Polaroid photograph based on the film. It captured
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Written by Celina Colby
his dinosaur toy eating a slew of plastic army men. “I even painted red on his teeth to look like blood,” McKee recalls fondly. “That was the first time I realized I could create a version of reality that would affect people.” But the now polished, professional photographer wasn’t always such a smash success. McKee attending five different schools over ten years before finally forming the photographic career he desired. Although he was always interested in art, the budding talent could never find teachers who spoke on the practical side of the business, and like many art school students and their parents he wondered, how can I make a living doing what I love? Ultimately he found the answer at a job with a commercial photographer shooting educational catalogues. “That job taught me more about the craft of solving people’s problems,” McKee says. And that, he attests, is what photography is really about, solving problems. This is a new take on the medium in a world where photography is being pulled in several very
different directions. Many artists are using cameras to create abstract, fictional images and stories, while teenagers use their Instagram accounts to document the true and often mundane. McKee’s practical outlook sits in the middle. Although much of his work is art of his own inspiration, McKee’s corporate commissions are up these days. He takes headshots for companies as well as product photos and promotional shots. One of his most recent projects was working with a scientific company. The task: taking photographs in their laboratory that made science look cool. McKee has a few tricks up his sleeve to achieve seemingly impossible results such as this. “Whenever possible I like to put someone in the shot to humanize it,” he says. On a more creative note, McKee has two projects in the works. His series Sweet Blast! has been an ongoing project since 2012. Inspired by an NPR program about American food production and waste, the series features different fruits and vegetables, as well as a few meats, hitched into the top of a grenade. McKee has been fascinated to
see how different people gravitate towards different images in the series. “My photography tells one story to each individual person,” he says, “but the story changes depending on each person’s perspective.” The signature image of the series, Cherry Bomb, shows a ripe, juicy, perfect-looking group of cherries on the verge of explosion. The red juices dripping off the fruit take on a much more ominous tone when paired with a piece of weaponry. Even more recent is McKee’s new series Night Lights Boston, a commentary on light pollution and the otherworldly feel it can give to a nighttime space. “I’ve always been fascinated by the man made light we create after the sun goes down,” says McKee. Four years ago the artist shot a nighttime lights series focusing on the different colors of light and the way they made spaces feel. Now he’s revisiting the theme with an emphasis on movement. McKee takes the photos from a moving vehicle, making the lights blurred and abstract, paring them down to simply their color. It feels like a completely different concept from the original
series, taking on a frenetic movement that embodies the spirit of a bustling city. McKee says, “I wanted to show the vibrance and life in this urban community.” Back in the studio, the artist points out a surprising fact about the space, he doesn’t have any work on display by other artists. This is hardly from a lack of respect. As a younger man McKee would often collect postcards with pictures of other artists’ pieces and use them as inspiration, in fact he often still does. But his muse has changed with his lifestyle. In addition to being an artist and all around fun guy, McKee is a husband and father to two teenage boys. The wall that would once have held work by other artists now holds family photos. One shot shows his wife during their dating years, another shows two toddlers giggling uncontrollably, while a third shows the whole family during a holiday. They are his world now, and in that world he finds his creative spirit. The studio isn’t just a reflection of his home life, but of the artist himself. Often out on the town
with other Boston area creatives, McKee is sociable and funny, someone you might grab a beer with after work or stop to chat with at a new gallery. He wanted to show this in his space. “I went into a lot of studio spaces that were very officey,” he remembers. “I wanted to create a space where my corporate persona could exist without people feeling like they’re walking into a boardroom.” The space and McKee share that in common, professional with a hint of quirky. He stands smiling in front of his wall of objects, reminiscing about each one. The chachkies weren’t chosen without reason; each one has attracted McKee’s artistic sensibility. “My art is all about looking at the world in a new way,” he says, and gestures up to the third shelf, “Even there, there’s something beautiful about that blow torch.”
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AFRICA
Stephen Wayda AFRICA NARRATIVE Story and Photography by STEPHEN WAYDA
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N
ever was there a day in Africa that there was not the child like wonder of being in a wild and untamed land where I was ignorant of almost everything. In a land so vast and mysterious, every moment became a series of exciting and unexpected adventures. On the edge of the waterless and vast Makgadikgadi Pans sits Jack’s Camp, “a cross between Alice in Wonderland, a Salvador Dali painting and a Fellini movie that is reminiscent of a 1940s-style safari camp”. To the northwest is the Okavango Delta, one of the world’s largest inland river systems, and home to Randall Moore’s luxurious Abu Camp with his herd of 14 “trained -but never, ever tame” recused African elephants. Further north and east flows one of the seven natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls…Mosi-oa-Tunya: The Smoke That Thunders. For 12 grand and glorious days I was a child in unknown lands, an adventurer with a camera creating a romanticized fantasy of the beautiful Elke Jeinsen running with the Bushman across the grasslands and desert pans on the edge of the Kalahari, of her taming and bending to her will the untamable African elephant in the wetlands of the Okavango, and of her caressing the lip of one the seven natural wonders of the world. In a remote oasis under desert palms is Jack’s Camp, named for Ralph Bousfield’s father, who discovered the spot while hunting in the 1960s. East African safari tents sit on wooden decks, the antique brass beds and brass hinged storage boxes on floors covered with ancient Persian rugs, and teak and canvas furniture are outside the canvas tent flaps. Meals at Jack’s Camp are taken under the huge acacia tree and nights are spent without electricity sitting around the lantern lit table listening to the lions calling and zebras moving. At times the silence is so complete you can hear your blood circulating. The camp is infused with an explorer’s sensibility, looking out over a harsh and savage land… a land home to the indigenous Bushman. Ralph introduced me to Aice/ul, a small and lean Bushman, with a deeply lined face and weather hands, clad in a leather loins cloth, barefoot with boney shoulders and prominent ribs, and a head of course curly hair. He is one of some 85,000 Bushmen alive, teetering on the cusp of cultural extinction, wandering the remote reaches of the Kalahari. He is one of the last connections with the hunter-gatherer existence that was a way of life for human before animals were domesticated and crops were grown some 10,000 years ago. Aice/ul is a man that for the most part still depends directly on nature for survival. Aice/ul speaks in the extraordinary Bushman language of tonal clicks. We communicate through Ralph and with hand signs. He has arrived in camp after traveling through the grasslands and desert in search of food and water. He will stay in camp for a time only he knows, for his life is nomadic, moving to different hunting and gathering grounds as the seasons change, following the migrating wildlife in their own search of water and food. Armed with a quiver of arrows tipped in a poison made from snake venom and cactus juice, and a bow of Kudo sinew, Aice/ul leads us into the bush for our “hunt”. He reads the bush like we read a book, determining the age and sex of animals by reading the signs they leave behind. Aice/ul measures the age of tracks in the grass by the time it takes termites to rebuild a nest that’s been trampled on, or a spider to repair its cobweb. He examines the droppings of animals, the more roughage in the dropping, the older the animal. In the distance the vultures are rising and landing as they feast on the remains of death in the desert. The bones of a zebra lie breaching in the sun, as the vultures pick over what’s left on the carcass from the lion’s kill and the scavenging of the jackals. The next day we traveled by jeep to a clearing in the bush, a thin dirt landing strip, awaiting the two small planes that will to fly us northwest over the vastness below to our next adventure, Abu Camp. Abu Camp, nestled in a pocket of hardwood tress overlooking a large lagoon with a resident school of hippos, with its opulently high, wide and airy Afro-Bedouin style tents, is the antithesis of Jack’s Camp. Electric lights link the tents with the main lounge and dining areas that open out onto tiered teak decking surrounding giant termite mounts. Antique furnishings are in the lounge, where Randall Moore is our host for drinks and cocktails before a dinner of Beef Wellington. Nearby a secluded plunge pool is waiting for us to cool off and relax tomorrow after a day atop the elephants while on safari. The Okavango is one of the most incredible wildlife sanctuaries in Africa, hosting the largest elephant population in the world. This 15,000 square kilometer area is criss-crossed by river channels, lagoons, islands and floodplains. Deep within the Kalahari Desert, an influx of water flows seasonally into this area creating a wetland that supports and sustains a huge
diversity of plant and animal. Large elephant herds roam throughout the area, as does a large population of buffalo. Large mammals are plentiful. Red lechwe, reedbuck and hippo frequent the floodplains, lagoons and channels. Zebra, impala, blue wildebeast and giraffe are more common in the dryland. Warthog, kudo and tsessebe roam the area. Lions and spotted hyaenas are the dominant carnivores. Abu Camp is the culmination of a 30-year conservation effort by Randall Moore. After being rejected by the Kenyan and South African governments, his attempts to establish an elephant conservancy were finally realized when he found a sympathetic government in Botswana that saw the potential benefit to tourism and backed creating a home for elephants that were orphaned, survivors of culling, separated from their herds, or living unhappily in safari parks. An old friend of Randall Moore, photographer and adventurer Peter Beard, had suggested that the finest way to enjoy an African bush safari would be from the back of an elephant. In the early 1990s Randall pioneered elephant-back safaris in Africa, ending the long -held belief that the African elephant could not be trained. In the morning Randall sits behind those great map-of-Africa ears of the bull elephant Abu, silhouetted against the early sun. A cigar clinched in his mouth, Randall is introducing us to the herd… baby Kitimetse, the young bull Lataba, the matriarch Cathy with the longest eye-lashes of the heard, and the oldest and largest of the herd, lovable Big Benny, six tons and 3 meters tall at the shoulders.. The herd is highly matriarchal and a closely-knit family unit, which can only be separated by death or capture. The interaction within the herd is fascinating. The 14 elephants making up the herd are not related, but the youngest choose their own favorite adult to whom they turn for reassurance. The adolescent bulls jostle and spar, while the teenage cows make a great fuss over the young babies. Elephants are amongst the world’s most intelligent species, exhibiting a wide variety of behaviors, from grief and learning, mimicry, art and play, to altruism, use of tools, compassion, cooperation, self-awareness, memory and possibly language. The next day we venture into the Delta, moving with remarkable silence as we sit atop the larger elephants, eyeball-to-eyeball with the giraffes, part of an elephant herd accepted by all creatures. For two days now its been an unimaginable adventure with these giant, gentle intelligent beasts, with their expressive eyes and rough skin covered in coarse stiff hairs, and their long tusks of ivory, making pictures I had never before imagined. As the sun sets over the Okavango, the golden glow mixes with the deep blue sky to silhouette Abu as his trunk curls up and back to sniff at the woman’s outstretched hand as she sits with legs wrapped around his massive head. Mosi-oa-Tunya -- “The Smoke That Thunders” -- awaits. To the northeast of Abu Camp flows the Zambezi River where the waters crash over one of the seven natural wonders of the world, Victoria Falls. Our small planes have landed us in Livingston, Zambia where it is a short cab ride to Tongabezi Lodge. Tongabezi is all romance…. erotic, exotic and sensual. Private rooms, completely open to the ruby red sunsets to the west, touch the river’s edge as the seemingly calm and tranquil water flows quietly to the largest waterfall in the world, where the spay of the thundering water forms clouds of mist 1300 feet to 2500 feet into the air, visible from 30 miles away. Victoria Falls is neither the highest nor widest waterfall in the world. It’s claim to being the largest is based on its 5600 foot width and 350 foot height, forming the largest sheet of falling water in the world. Upstream from the falls the river flows through shallow valley bounded by low and distant sandstone hills, there are no mountain, escarpments, or deep valleys which might be expected to create a waterfall. The falls are formed as the full width of the river plummets in a single vertical drop into a chasm 5600 feet wide. With the morning sun two boats, each with two engines (just in case), float down stream to the middle of the river, touching the lip of the falls where the water thunders down 350 feet. There in the torrent of water, with clouds of mist billowing a 1000 feet above is the island where Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone was the first European to view the falls in 1855. Livingstone Island is the only land accessible in the middle of the falls. There on the lip of disaster the boats are moored. Adjacent to the island is Devil’s Pool, where with a leap of faith into the warm water, from the rock face of the falls with head and arms extended out over the falls to look down the 350 foot drop, looking at rainbows, hearing the roar of the waterfall as it thunders past, and look into the thundering clouds of mist and spray. “Not all who wander are lost”, for there is nothing like travel and adventure to places that remain unchanged to find how you yourself have changed.
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Bill Gian
Whimsical Narratives, Expressions of Color
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nfluenced by an experience in performance art, during the late 1970s, Bill Gian performed nationally with performance art greats in Los Angeles and New York, including Rachel Rosenthal - best known for her full-length performance art pieces, which offer unique combinations of theatre, dance, creative slides and live music, Barbara Smith and Robert Wilson - the world’s foremost avant-garde theater artist, George Herms - an American artist best known for making assemblages out of discarded, often rusty, dirty or broken every-day objects, and juxtaposing those objects so as to infuse them with poetry, humor and meaning. When he first moved to New York Gian lived in a tiny space up town near Columbia University, off of 116th Street, between Broadway and Amsterdam. “My studio on the 15th floor had a little window that looked out at a shaft of four buildings,” he said. “It was a space about 10 feet by 10 feet. But, I was doing a series of paintings for an upcoming show in Caracas, Venezuela. The series of paintings were large canvases about 52 inches by 42 inches. I made 11 paintings in New York and 11 in Caracas. So, I rolled the paintings up I did in New York and sent them to Caracas where the gallery there stretched all of them for me. While there, I realized that I produced
Smashy Face 2008 Acrylic On Canvas 36"x 48"
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By Bryan S. Smith Photography by Glen Covalli
those 11 canvases in such a tiny space. Space does affect the work. But place also plays a part. In Caracas, I had a different studio downtown. It was owned by a friend of mine. It was a unique space. It had a little kitchen and when you walked into it at night and turned on the light, thousands of cockroaches would scatter everywhere. But, that was my studio – a different kind of universe. Being in the heart of downtown, I would hang with the local flavors of the city, play checkers, walk about the city; all the while absorbing the influences that engaged me at the time. The pieces I produced in New York for Caracas had
an entirely different sentiment about them, based in part on ‘the studio’ of where I was at the time.”
Moving to a very cool large loft in Tribeca, Gian started a design series of hand painted garments for the Guggenheim Museum gift shop. “I was painting day and night in my studio and hawking them in the stairwell of the museum. One day a museum security guard approached me and started giving me a hard time. When the guard escorted me out of the building, the museum store buyer manager came walking out to where I was and told the guard that I was connected with the museum store and this was a gorilla marketing idea to influence people to come inside. That relationship lasted about 10 years. I painted garments for the Guggenheim. They were fun, whimsical story telling narratives in vibrant colors and characters. I sold them at the museum as a design series. They were selling 50+ T-shirts a week. I developed the shirt concepts into monumental paintings – with a socio-political theme. I was having a lot of fun with the concept. “I did a lot of art opening pop up shows in my Tribeca loft (3,000 square feet) that included hanging out with personalities and rock stars that would show up unexpectedly. My life at that juncture was a hub of activity. I sold a lot of my paintings at the pop up events as well as in galleries throughout New York.” Gian’s art, like a plant at the bottom of the ocean, sways in the currents but remains fundamentally unaltered. “My newest series of work will be a number of paintings entitled ‘Mythos,’” he says. “They will be abstract paintings in collaboration with my cousin Alexandra Pappas who holds a doctorate in Greek Classics. Both of us are Greek-American and we are producing a collaborative show where I will do a body of work based on the Greek Classics, which are contemporary abstract paintings, mythological stories, and she will write the narrative for the paintings. We will encourage and influence Jellyroll 2014 each other in this series to be Acrylic On displayed in and around San Canvas Francisco.”
Be Mine 2009 Acrylic On Canvas 24"x 24"
Kookaroo 2011 Acrylic On Canvas 60"x 72"
60"x 60"
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Andy Berg
Written by Stephanie Grilli
T h at Wa s T h e n / Thi s Is N ow Ure re , 4 6 ” x 57”, M i xe d M e d i a on Panel, 2 0 15
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rtists can use line and color to represent or to abstract the world of appearances. Andy Berg uses line and color to signify the experience of being in the world. With no preconceived structure, he intuitively makes marks and applies paint in a push toward revelation. Surrendering to the creative process, he taps into what Carl Jung portrayed as “the play instinct acting from inner necessity.” Stirred by the Swiss psychologist’s belief in the power of imagination, Berg approaches each painting as a collision and reconciliation of opposites, infinite and finite, dark and light, spirit and matter.
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Pressing at and running over the edges, strokes and swathes of pigment form irregular patterns that squeeze, swell, intensify, and grow. Simultaneously constricted and expanding, the gathering of gestures is emerging and unstable, assertive and elusive. Berg grapples with his canvases, as he adds and subtracts elements over time. He explores the full possibilities of acrylic, oil, and house paints as they are smeared, scraped, smudged, and splotched. The dynamic teeters between flow and entanglement, as the surface both obscures and suggests what lies beyond. In his worked and reworked canvases, Berg brings
forth specters of unseen forces or things felt but not named. Through his meditative practice, the artist adheres to the principle of wu or wu wei, letting be and aligning with Tao, or the natural flow. In his engagement with materials, Berg connects with his own physical being — applying, incising, or removing the fleshy paint with intensely physical actions. The traces of his impulsive yet purposeful movements are sinuous and abrupt, elegant and brutish, intricate and raw. Rather than contradictory effects, one generates the other. Berg amasses a stockpile of different types and varieties of paints, including art pigments and ordinary
P h anes, 49 ”x 57 ", M ixe d Med ia on Pa nel , 2 0 1 4
N e te ra at , 37” x 4 9 ”, M i xe d M e d i a on Panel 2 0 14
Jo nah, 38” x 6 0” Diptyc h, Oil on Pa nel , 2 0 1 1
Ya g gd ra s i l l , 76 ” x 8 8 “ M i xe d M e d i a o n Canvas, 2 014
house paint. While limited materials offer consistency, this assortment requires constant adjustment to distinct properties, such as interaction with light, viscosity, color blends. This dissonance heightens the sensation of his body making contact and keeps the artist vigilant. The challenge is to balance the drive to learn and seek new perspectives with the drive to create a coherent whole, Jungian principles of differentiation and integration. While color often describes, Berg exploits its capacity for suggesting space and movement, light and substance. Shunning easy relationships, Berg selects colors that startle, juxtaposing pretty with jarring, lyrical with
violent, emotional with contemplative. A palette of pastel blue, yellow, pink, and green recalls a sensuous rococo painting and conjures the feminine. Yet pink can play against type and becomes raucous even intimidating. His blacks and whites embody the underlying yin and yang, but they are laden with emotional, associative content. For his lines, Berg most frequently uses black, which references writing, calligraphy, or traditional drawing, some sense of the hand. The rudimentary elements of characters, glyphs, or symbols emerge from the artist’s spontaneous yet insistent arm movements. Reaching
across the canvas or folding back on itself, line begets line in an irregular system that suggests meaning. But Berg insists he is simply the messenger, and the import remains unknown.
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Beth Barry
Written by Celina Colby
Pa i n t i n g by J i m m y L e e Sud d uth
B et h Barry in Studio
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very morning New York City based artist Beth Barry heads into her studio to paint. Barry’s landscapes are abstract and emotional, and she likes her work environment to reflect the same feeling. Her studio is in her son’s childhood bedroom and the memories create a warm, safe atmosphere conducive to her work. On the walls of the studio, Barry has hung some of her personal art collection. These pieces are integral to her process, they create the space that she works in and inspire her daily. “When I surround myself with art that’s immediate, it creates a very welcoming feeling in my space,” says Barry, “and as an artist, space is very important to me.” Artists inspire each other, whether they be painters, writers, sculptors, or musicians. But so frequently we forget what artists are looking at and focus only on what they create. For Barry, there’s a definitive link between the two. After earning a masters degree in art therapy from the Pratt Institute in 1979, she began to use her love of painting
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G ol d enrod by B e t h B a r r y
B ea c h at L o u se Po i n t by B e t h B a r r y
to help others. As a result of working with her patients, Barry was exposed to a lot of people who had no artistic training whatsoever. “I was drawn to the rawness, and realness of these paintings,” she says. After seeing this kind of raw passion in those she treated, Barry began to investigate outsider art. Art critic Roger Cardinal coined the term “outsider art” in 1972 as an English translation of the French term “art brut.” This refers to art created outside the traditional confines of the art scene. In the beginning it often indicated people on the fringe of society such as mental patients, drug addicts, or the homeless. In contemporary use “outsider art” refers to artists with no formal training and those who work with unconventional methods. They’re often also called “folk artists” or, more diminutively, “naïve artists.” Notables in this field include Henry Darger, famous for his gender-bending collages, self-taught Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý, who made his own
cameras, and famed Grandma Moses who began her art career depicting small town America at age 78. The outsider art movement was in its heyday as Barry began to explore it and collect works by these makers. Some of her best-loved works come from unexpected places. One of her artists is a farmer in his ‘60s who mixes house paint with tar to create a textural, innovative medium. Another is a crack addict who expresses his wild trips and rocky road to recovery through his animated works. Barry works with dealer Marcia Weber out of Montgomery, Alabama, who deals almost exclusively in outsider art. But often, Barry gets her artwork from more ordinary places. “I might find something at a yard sale,” she says. “In a pile of junk I might see a painting or a sculpture I just love.” One such sculpture features a compact, almost elf-like figure swinging on his back between two suspended iron poles. He wears a pointed yellow hat and red striped pants. At one glance it looks like a child
Petal Whip by M ic hae l Banks
S to r m y S a n d by B e t h B a r r y
Anah i
F ro n t to B a c k by Mi chael Banks
but the seriousness of his face indicates adult wisdom. He seems to be contemplating something very grave rather than swinging for enjoyment. The beauty of this thoughtful sculpture lies not just in its aesthetic appeal, but in its mysterious history. Whereas many artworks go from studio to gallery, this swinging figure has had a whole other life that we know nothing about. When she’s not hunting through goodies at yard sales, Barry often finds artworks at the estate sales of deceased artists. There’s something very romantic about one artist passing their things down to another. Barry says just being in another artist’s environment inspires her. “I’m taking a piece of them with me when I buy something,” says Barry, “Then their influence lives on.” Just like the swinging boy, these artworks may have inspired several other creators before Barry; she’s another stop in their lifecycle. Although Barry does have formal artistic training, she studied printmaking in college, the works
she collects have a strong influence on her own work. Abstract and emotional, Barry paints rolling seas, sandy beaches, and vibrant sunsets with thick, frenetic brushstrokes. “The connection is the honesty,” she says. “My work is very authentic, very visceral, and it’s very much the same with the work I collect.” This emotional integrity comes through in one of Barry’s favorite outsider works. A thin, horizontal, wooden panel, the piece depicts two large faces surrounded by seven smaller figures. The faces, perhaps representative of statues, are emotionless, but the figures around them exude joy. They dance around the faces, smiling, and gesturing to each other with open arms. The background is painted with stripes of color and features a few disparate, unidentifiable shapes and objects. The technique of the work is elementary at best. The figures are ovals with limbs and dots for eyes, the activity in the scene has no real purpose or explanation, even the colors are basic extensions of the primary
palette. And yet, there’s a sophistication about the painting. There’s intent and above all, a powerful feeling of joy radiating from this otherwise nondescript artwork. It’s no wonder that Barry would feel a sense of warmth and happiness, sitting in her son’s old bedroom, looking at these dancing figures. Though this wasn’t painted by one of her patients, this work also speaks to Barry’s years as an art therapist. There must be no better feeling than seeing a struggling person slowly break through their emotional barriers to find a sense of happiness. This painting is that end result; this painting embodies that feeling of coming into ones own. It’s a celebration, and Barry gets to celebrate it every single day. Celina Colby is a Boston-based writer and the blogger behind Trends and Tolstoy. Her work can be seen in Art New England, Sasee, and ARTCOVER.
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I N
T H E
S T U D I O
Visit with
Katrine Hildebrandt-Hussey Mixed-media artist Katrine Hildebrandt-Hussey uses volatile processes like burning her paper to create layered, geometric work. We had an intimate look at her process and how she keeps work from going up in flames.
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“I’m drawn to things that have weight but are impermanent. India ink, graphite, and burning have all been materials I have been exploring for the past ten years primarily.” KATRINE HILDEBRANDT-HUSSEY
“For me the process is also an integral part of the finished product. Burning holes into paper is ritualistic, meditative, and a test of being able to let go.” KATRINE HILDEBRANDT-HUSSEY
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“Burning to me is a ritualistic mark making process. It is slow yet instinctual. It is permanent yet ethereal. And, timing is everything, one second too long and the risk of burning too much is inevitable.” KATRINE HILDEBRANDT-HUSSEY
KATRINE HILDEBRANDT-HUSSEY is available at UPRISE ART
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P O R T F O L I O
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auren Worth’s work has singular beauty, power and originality. The product of a synthesis of abstraction and of an almost magical realism, it is work that is wholly her own while being wonderfully enriched by history. Like mid-century masters Milton Avery, Wolf Kahn and Ralph Wickiser, Worth begins with the natural world, visually building layer upon layer to create a complex
tangle of natural forms articulated in clear, jewel-like colors. Ultimately, we are aware of an underlying unity to be found in her process and in her work. And this sense of unity is also present when Worth speaks of the wellsprings of her work… “I celebrate the hum of the earth—the dance and rhythm of life. I celebrate the living
spirit of trees and those places found in Celtic lore where the veil between the spiritual realm and the material realm is very thin.” In Lauren Worth’s work we find a new twenty-first century vision for the medium of painting; one in which a great legacy of twentieth century abstraction joins with a renewed embrace of the natural world to marvelous, revelatory effect.*
JUGGLING ACT 36X48 in Mixed Media 2016
Blue Shoulders 1 60x36 in Mixed Media 2015
Lauren Worth 52 ARTCOVER
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orothy Heller’s career as an artist spanned over five decades, from 1942 to the mid-1990s. By 1950, her works were abstract expressionist, many with urban or untamed nature themes. The work evolved into a humanistic period, beginning in the early 1960s, during which she explored human sensibility and intellect: the roles of literature and poets, life and death
cycles, world religions, and symbols. Heller (1916-2003) lived and worked in New York City. She studied at the National Academy of Design and, later, with Hans Hofmann. She was active in the New York art world in the 1950s through 1970s and her solo exhibitions and works in group exhibitions were well-received. Her work appeared in numerous group exhibitions including the Albright
Knox Art Gallery, Wadsworth Athenaeum, the Whitney Museum Annual, and Piccadilly Gallery, London.
The Mask 54x50 in Acrylic on Linen 1962
House Of Fire 55x51 in Acrylic on Linen 1961
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P O R T F O L I O
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jax W. Axe has spent most of the last ten years in Colombia, Egypt, Kenya and other parts of Africa. She began creating sculptural work when she was 16, studied sculpture at Skidmore College, and later took conceptual and installation classes at Harvard University. Her work has been displayed at the Tang Museum, the Boulder Museum of Modern Art and the Public Art Installation Initiative at Harvard. She’s had gallery shows in New York, Bogota and Saratoga Springs.
Knowledge, the future and material culture are the main themes in my work. Coming from a background in anthropology and photography, the concept of creating culture and cultural artifacts is an idea that I continuously grapple with. Representation of a culture through its objects is a concept well-suited for the sculptor and one that I continue to explore as I imagine different possible futures and the artifacts that would accompany it. Idols, shrines and temples are some of the oldest and most enduring examples of art and
culture, and the numenic power of an object worshiped as the embodiment of some unseen truth transcends all eras and civilizations. For that reason, I’ve chosen to focus primarily on the creation of deity representations rather than more banal manifestations of the future of culture. By creating the idols that these future societies would worship, I can expose the possible preoccupations of generations to come: excess and ignorance or wonder and a quest for wisdom.
Encountering the Future The Constraints of the Self 42" x 23" x 23" Steel, Wood, Hemp
Transfiguration of the Expected II 53" x 30” x 23” Silk, Steel, Antler, Hemp, Wood
Ajax Axe 54 ARTCOVER
Encountering the Future series The Constraints of the Self 42” x 23” x 23” Steel, Wood, Hemp
Symbol of the Mystery II 19.5" x 34" x 8" Cardboard, Mud, Metal, Glass, Wood The Absolute Truth 23" x 23" x 23" Plastic, Cardboard, Metal, Clay, Wood
Altered Consciousness 90.5" x 70" x 58" Antler Leather, Cardboard, Steel, Wool, Coconut Rope, Wood
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P O R T F O L I O
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eo Rostohar truly has the artistic touch! As a graphic Artist & Designer by trade, his eye for artistry was behind every single Croatian edition of Playboy Magazine from the cover pages to the steamy centerfolds. In fact, no photograph was ever published without Rostohar’s eye for re-touching and making an already perfect photograph infinitely flawless.
So it is no surprise that Rostohar’s artistic talent so seamlessly and naturally flows into his art work which consists mainly of oil on canvas and chalk on paper. These eye-catching works have been hidden from the public for decades until NOW. ARTCOVER Magazine brings to life the very first exhibit of Rostohar’s unique contemporary pieces that resemble a colorful blend of Picasso and George Condo.
“Destiny” Oil on canvas 81x60 cm 2015
“In my garden” Oil on canvas 73x90 cm 2016
Leo Rostohar
written by Arlene Kuljis
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“Love is in the air” Colour chalk on paper 51x41cm 2014
“My space” Mixed media on paper 66x46 cm 2016
“Hope” Colour chalk on paper 54x41 cm
“Kontemplacija” Oil on canvas 100x70 cm 2015
“Look at my past” Oil on canvas 40x30 cm 2015
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P O R T F O L I O Castle Difficult choice. The princess has a difficult choice. She can have romantic prince. Prince with money. Prince who brings all flowers of the world to her feet or beautiful singing prince. She does what she can to keep the attention of each prince.
Girls like to dream.
This suitcase represents everything they created together and black birds symbolize bad people who try to tear and destroy their lives.
Elena Kolesova 58 ARTCOVER
Man lost his head over love
Each sip another kiss
Women are most beautiful without burka and chains
Fusion
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P O R T F O L I O
“SY M B IOS IS” 20 1 5 26 x 26 a c r y l i c o n c a n va s
Ralph Rieckermann 60 ARTCOVER
“ N EBUL A” 2 0 1 5 Oil in g l a ss m ixed m ed ia 6 0 x4 0
“P RE AC H E RS O B S E SS IO N ” 20 1 6 O i l i n G l a ss m i xe d med i a 45x2 5
“ FUT UR E MU SI C ” 2 0 1 6 Oil in gl a ss m ixed me d i a 6 0 x 4 0
“T H E M E C H A N IC ” 20 1 6 O i l i n g l a ss m i xe d med i a 60x40
“THE DIVINE BAL ANCE” 2016 Oil in glass mixed media 60x40
“G RAV IT Y ” 20 1 6 O i l i n G l a ss m i xe d m e d i a 6 0x40
“ T HE 5 T H DIMENSI ON” 2 0 1 6 Oil in g l a ss m ixed m ed ia 60 x 4 0
“P H OTO S H OT ” 20 1 6 O i l i n g l a ss m i xe d med i a 60 x40
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P O R T F O L I O
Paul Toupet 62 ARTCOVER
Things we Love
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A. Luci Geller B. Milijada Barada
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C. Brian Comber D. Andy Warhol E. Will Day F. Salustiano Garcia E
G. Bill Gian
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H. Heather Wild Lowry I. Shay Davis J. Brendan Smith K. Mark Castator L. Shawn Benton
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M. Franco Lacosta
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N. Canyon Castator
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Gallery Spotlight
PACE Gallery
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ace is a leading contemporary art gallery representing many of the most significant international artists and estates of the 20th and 21st centuries. Founded by Arne Glimcher in Boston in 1960 and led by Marc Glimcher, Pace has been a constant, vital force in the art world and has introduced many renowned artists’ work to the public for the first time. Over the past five decades, the gallery has mounted more than 700 exhibitions, including scholarly shows that have subsequently traveled to museums, and has published nearly 400 exhibition catalogues. Today, Pace has eight locations worldwide: four galleries in New York, two in London, a 25,000 square-foot gallery in Beijing, and a recently opened exhibition space in Hong Kong. www.PaceGallery.com
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Casterline|Goodman Gallery
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pecializing in postwar and contemporary art, Casterline | Goodman Gallery is committed to innovatively showing first-tier investment-grade original artworks from the 20th and 21st centuries. The gallery has and continues to show original paintings, sculptures, and drawings by established artists including: Carl Andre, Donald Baechler, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Alexander Calder, Joseph Cornell, Jim Dine, Sam Francis, Alex Katz, Willem de Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, Gerhard Richter, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, and many others. Casterline | Goodman Gallery’s strong presence in the global art community enables the gallery to place artworks in established private, corporate, and institutional collections. Casterline | Goodman Gallery - 611 E. Cooper Avenue, Aspen, CO 81611, 970-925-1339 - www.CasterlineGoodman.com
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or those who love the gallery scene found in Denver, there is one you probably have not experienced recently. It is likely that you have been to the Golden Triangle, walked Santa Fe Drive, explored Rino and liked Lodo galleries. There are those in Aspen, Vail and, given a willingness for a long drive, even some excellent options in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The question is: have you experienced the country’s oldest online gallery? Established in NOVEMBER 1996, GALLERY M (gallerym.com) brings to collectors, in Denver as well as internationally, contemporary fine art, photography, sculpture and new media that is the quality and diversity found in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Europe and Latin America. Featuring the work of more than thirty national and international artists, many who are museum credentialed, GALLERY M has been decidedly different. In 2010, GALLERY M opted to become a by appointment only gallery based in Cherry Creek North. “The original three physical spaces were excellent to build a strong local following” says co-founder and 2nd generation gallery owner Mason Hayutin. The neighborhood was in transition and so to were the type of works that the collector desired. “Our base of collectors however were mostly from out of state due to the solid growth we found online with our offerings.” Asked whether he and his co-founder, Myrna Hayutin, missed the physical space, Mason stated: “We have extended the physical experience with two special venues: nationally recognized fine art fairs for the avid traveling collector and our downtown Denver exhibition space.” To bring the exhibitions to Denver, Hayutin implemented in 2014 the elegant ticketed event series called INSPIRE ART & CULTURE by GALLERY M. The series allows a progressive look at the regional, national and international influences in the arts, film and new media. Special guest speakers are invited whose influence span multiple disciplines including Film, Art, Photography, Sculpture and Music as well as Urban, Civic and Financial leaders responsible for the crucial dynamic of Fine Art in Denver and the Rocky Mountain Region. The evening sales typically benefit either the gallery’s main beneficiary, Guide Dogs for the Blind, or one of the co-sponsors designated charities. Events are hosted in Denver and nationally throughout the year. Each event has a curated collection that links to the evening’s theme. The series luxury sponsors embraced the concept. Each curated their discussion based on how Fine Art interacts and interplays with their brand in our daily lives. For the inaugural launch event, held at Denver’s Luxury hi-rise The Spire in February 2014, GALLERY M invited co-sponsors including Bentley Motors. Attendees were exposed
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N adaleen a Mi r a t B r et t ma n n / St ep hen W a y d a C eleb r i t y R a g s
Gallery Spotlight
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GALLERY M
to more than the latest offerings with a few test drives. The catering sponsor, Three Tomatoes, ensured the theme inspired drinks and passed Hors D’oeuvres instilled the Pop and elegance required for the evening. Once patrons had finished viewing the “art” in the street along with the curated, original works by Jean Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Howard Schatz, Anne De Villemejane and Alex Guofeng Cao, Bentley presented their connection in the 10th floor private theater. Bentley’s Brand Manager Sean Cashin discussed how the featured cars stand out because of their attention to design from draft to final delivery. This specific evening’s theme, Pop and Street Art, was rounded out with the special screening of the Sundance film selection, “Jean Michel Basquiat - Radiant Child.” The fine art, film, luxury concept has become a local favorite. GALLERY M filled 2014 with discussions and film screenings on Andy Warhol, Pollock and Abstraction in The Streets. With Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum around the corner, the Inspire Series takes shape this fall with the world’s foremost authority on Mark Rothko and his influence on Clyfford Still, Dr. David Anfam. The gallery continues its success online and offline. For it’s 7th event (G series) in December, 2015 the INSPIRE event will be held in conjunction with New York’s Peter Tunney at his Wynwood studio. This event will cap off a 6 month exploration into the painter’s influence and use of photography, specifically with unique giant Polaroids. Myrna is happy that the gallery keeps evolving. “Our consultants have personally worked with the estates, foundations and artists including: Eisenstaedt, Mydans, Agam, Bledsoe, Kaupelis, Schatz, Nechita, Regina Saura, Peter Max, Alexander Renoir and Alex Guofeng Cao to name a few.” I am always interested in furthering what fine art can mean for those passionate about collecting. Now, the established collector is able to reach us as easy as the newest because of the web. For this, GALLERY M is grateful.” Make sure to put GALLERY M on your “Bucket List” when in Denver and of course as a favorite from your mobile device or desktop. GALLERY M is located at: gallerym.com By Appointment: 180 Cook Street, Suite 101, Denver, CO 80206. Or National shows including: Art Aspen, Art San Francisco, Palm Springs Fine Art Fair and Art Hamptons.
Kavachnina Contemporary
Fang Lijun 1993 SilkScreen Print 22x30 in 2007
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Feng Zhengjie T itled: Chinese Portrait Silkscreen Print 22x30 in 2007
AVACHNINA CONTEMPORARY has been a leading fixture in Miami’s Contemporary art scene for ten years. The Gallery has long embraced unpredictability in its exuberant exhibitions, rendering a mélange of cultures and ideas across the canvas of the public view, garnering national acclaim. Voted as “The Best Damn Art Show, Period” by The Miami New Times in 2010 and earning the 2009 Miami Award in the Art Galleries & Dealers category by the U.S. Local Business Association (USLBA) KAVACHNINA CONTEMPORARY’S successful curatorial philosophy is consciously provocative yet inherently cerebral, bringing both highly-talented young and long established local and international artists to an ample, welcoming space. As its international repertory grows, gallery’s priority is maintaining and developing its privileged relationships with artists, attendees, collectors and friends of prestigious local and international cultural institutions. Gala Kavachnina , gallery founder and director , has taken admirable risks to bring art to her space that seeks to open viewers to more than superficial noodling in what can be an intimidating art world. At the core of her practice is a desire to foster deeper awareness and openness to new art forms. She selects artists who have exceptional technique, unique style and subject matter.
and enjoyable experience. Our position and expertise allows our collectors to obtain precisely the works they desire. We have healthy access to the ¨grey market¨in addition to primary and secondary markets. We believe art is a personal matter that should be based on an individual relationship, one which focuses on singular vision and direction.
Services Sourcing Kavachnina Contemporary has over 20 years of experience with the regional, national and international art markets and can assist collectors in establishing valuable relationships with emerging artists, established artists as well as art galleries and dealers from around the world. As part of Kavachnina Contemporary´s commitment to lifelong relationships with it´s clients, we can help establish a direct link between a collector´s vision and the artwork that best suits their needs. We are here to make your art selection a more refined
Collection Management Kavachnina Contemporary provides a valuable platform on which collectors can base their collection management practices. Everything from cataloging to researching, our team can assure that your collection is up kept in the most up-to-date manner.
Consulting / Curating Similar to our service of sourcing artworks from around the globe, Kavachnina Contemporary provides a specialized and in-depth experience of solving your art needs. Our art consultancy can provide valuable support to new collectors building their very first collection, seasoned collectors looking to diversify their artwork, or a novice looking for advice on an upcoming purchase. Our service will prove indispensable - having our team present to help understand the process of art creation can help you keep a clear mind in order to make the best decision as opposed to being lost in the mystic allure of the art world. Our service protects our collectors from less than appropriate business practices. Years of experience and top knowledge of the market, as well as art historical relevance, can assist you in making a purchase that will make a lifelong contribution to your collection as opposed to merely follow a trend of the moment.
AAA Certified Appraisals We offer certified appraisal services for use in estate and financial planning. Our appraisals are fully certified.
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Gallery Spotlight
Marlborough Gallery
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ounded in London in 1946, Marlborough Gallery is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading modern and contemporary art dealers. Marlborough has an international presence with major galleries and offices in Madrid and Barcelona to complement its long established venues in New York and London. Marlborough, apart from a strong secondary market, represents highly credentialed artists such as Magdalena Abakanowicz, Claudio Bravo, Richard Estes, Red Grooms, Tom Otterness, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Manolo ValdÊs, Zao Wou-Ki, Frank Auerbach, Paula Rego and Antonio Lopez Garcia, among others, as well as a new generation of artists and programs at Marlborough Chelsea. Marlboroughgallery.com
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Gallery Spotlight Jame s V er b icky
Citta Sam tana 139
Mixed m edia on panel 60 x 8 0 inch es
Forré Fine Art Gallery
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orré & Co Fine Art Gallery is a Contemporary art gallery for the sophisticated buyer. A trusted resource for collectors and designers and architects. In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Aspen and Vail Colorado, Forré Fine Art Gallery exhibits internationally recognized master artists from the 19th and 20th Centuries and emerging artists from around the world. Featured at SCOPE, Art Basel and other global fairs, Forré & Co is a trusted resource for museum quality art, sculpture and installations. www.ForreFineArt.com
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gallery
Ralp h W ickise r
I n Y ellow , O il on Linen, 4 7” x 70”, 198 7
Walter Wickiser
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he Walter Wickiser Gallery, located in the prestigious Fine Art Building in Chelsea- located at 210 Eleventh Avenue, Suite 303, New York, NY 10001 - was established in 1992. As the son of artist and art educator Ralph Wickiser. Walter Wickiser’s career as an art dealer formally began in 1990 in Soho, NY, when he became the first director of the first gallery to be established in the United States, from main land China. This led to establishing his primary direction as a gallerist to exhibit work by both American and Asian-American painters, as well as artists from China, Japan and Korea. It has always been the focus of the Wickiser Gallery to create a visual dialogue between these cultures, and simultaneously remind us of the ability of the arts to transcend cultural boundaries. The Wickiser Gallery has received numerous reviews in ARTnews, Art In America and many other internationally recognized publications. www.walterwickisergallery.com
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rtAspen showcases an impressive collection of 250+ important contemporary and post-war art works presented by 100+ respected artists. It is presented by an elite group of 28 prominent galleries. The fair pays homage to Aspen’s well-earned reputation as an important fine art market place. By presenting this visually compelling experience, the fair’s goal is not only to establish ArtAspen as one of the cultural highlights of the Aspen summer season, but also to make it a “must see” on the calendar of globetrotting art enthusiasts in August. Last year’s fair generated 2,500+ fairgoers which brought millions of dollars in art sales. This August, the fair expects to attract over 3,000 art enthusiasts, a record turnout. The fair is pushed back 2 weeks on the calendar so as not to overlap with other local art charity events. ArtAspen Teams up with Leading Aspen Charities, Including: • Anderson Ranch Art Center • Support of Influential Local Groups Expected to Generate Record Attendance @ 6th Edition Many of the nation’s top art collectors, arts patrons and business leaders are in Aspen in August. As Aspen’s only fine art fair, ArtAspen offers galleries exclusive access to this semi-private, wealthy playground of the rich and famous. This summer, the fair is collaborating with several of the city’s most respected organizations to create a philanthropy-driven, accessible and well promoted fine art weekend for Aspenites.
Museum, of Contemporary Art, Boca Raton Museum of Art, BYU Museum of Art, Knoxville Museum of Art. Topics include: • Museum Integration into the Community • Where Do Ideas for Exhibitions Come From? • How Museums Preserve and Restore Their Collection • Emerging Trends in Museum Exhibitions • How Does a Museum Build a Collection? • Lessons Learned in Curating A Stellar Group of Exhibitors The roster of 28 galleries presents not only the leading blue chip
The Fair has assembled eight esteemed contemporary art museum curators from across the nation to provide their astute perspectives on emerging Museum trends. Participating museums include: Bass Museum of Art ( Miami) , Akron Art Museum, Boulder
masters, but an exciting array of hot, up and comers. Exhibiting galleries include Yares Art Projects (Santa Fe), Sponder Gallery (Miami), M+V Gallery (Miami), Tim Yarger Fine Art (Beverly Hills), Axiom Contemporary (Venice Beach), Gallery 125 (Bellport NY), reM gallery (NYC), Kavachnina Contemporary (Miami), and many others.
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All Photography by Seth Beckton Photo
America’s Ultimate Boutique Fair
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Miami Project
ecember 9, 2014. Miami Project’s Edition 3 closed Sunday evening in Miami’s Midtown Arts District after six busy days of robust sales to an exciting and engaged audience of international arts patrons, museums, institutions and corporate collections. The Miami Project Pavilion’s 65,000 square foot tent soared above the heads of the fair’s 25,000 visitors, all of whom were met with singular exhibitions by the country’s top galleries and afforded the opportunity to experience modernist masterpieces alongside the work of some of the world’s finest emerging and mid-career contemporary artists. Miami Project’s new Midtown location remained committed to the elegant display of important artwork, with wide aisles and towering ceilings lending each art-filled wall a sense of significance and occasion. The first moments of the fair were defined by major museum acquisitions, one of the most poignant of which was the sale of Andy Diaz Hope & Jon Bernson’s Beautification Machine to the Nevada Museum of Art. This acquisition marked the culmination of a ground-breaking initiative presented by Catharine Clark Gallery and philanthropists Andy and Deborah Rappaport to expand the traditional art fair model into a platform for giving. Prior to the fair’s opening, the Rappaports committed to purchasing the work for an institution devoted to the exhibition of socially progressive art. Interest was strong from museums around the country with the work acquired by the Nevada Museum of Art an institution that prides itself on an active display of their permanent collection. Major success was also had in the private sector with strong six figure sales reported from exhibitors throughout the fair. Highlights include Haines Gallery’s sale of their Ai Weiwei Forever Duo (Stainless Steel Bicycles in Gilding), 2013 to a private collector concluding the work’s edition of ten in the first hours of opening night. Greg Kucera Gallery’s powerful solo exhibition of six Deborah Butterfield sculptures dazzled the crowd with the artist’s Little Sorrel,2014a powerful bronze cast of reclaimed plywood acquired by a board member of the Boise Art Museum. B ernard Goldberg Fine Arts placed an important John Marin oil with a private collector, and Adelson Galleries sold a stunning Jamie Wyeth from the early 1990s in the fair’s final Sunday evening hours. Many of Miami Project’s exhibitors saw great success across their roster of exhibited artists, including MARC STRAUS and Quint Gallery. Both galleries sold work by each of their exhibited artists including STRAUS’ placement of a major Chris Jones sculpture and the sale of all available Sam Jinks’, including a crowd favorite hyperrealistic sculpture of an elderly woman cradling an infant. Pavel Zoubok Gallery placed their Mark Wagner currency collage, made especially for the Miami Project audience, with a private client. The gallery also sold their three Vanessa German sculptures, with the celebrated artist’s works going to new collectors across the country. RYAN LEE made sales to new and existing collectors of works by Paul Henry Ramirez, Clifford Ross, and Donald Sultan. Sasha
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Wolf Gallery’s back wall of astoundingly beautiful river photographic prints by Adam Katseff were in high demand. The gallery sold most editions, pulling from larger sizes available in their New York City space. Also enjoying the success of their photography program was Yancey Richardson Gallery, placing their large Olivo Barbieri archival pigment print, work from Ed Ruscha’s seminal Pools Portfolio, several large unique Rachel Perry Welty drawings, and eight Bryan Graf photograms over the weekend. Lennon, Weinberg, Von Lintel Gallery, Robischon Gallery, and Richard Levy Gallery among many others throughout the fair also reported great success with the Miami Project crowd. Museum presence was significant throughout the run of Miami Project. The fair’s Cultural Partners, including the Brooklyn Museum, ICA Miami, Perez Art Museum Miami, The Bass Museum of Art, The Menil Collection, The Museum of Arts and Design, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Whitney Contemporaries, and the Junior Associates of MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum of Art along with local favorites the Bakehouse Art Complex and The WolfsonianFIU brought curators, directors, board members, and groups of patrons through Miami Project for private tours, cocktail receptions, and a chance to experience the fair’s tight curation of some of the best art in the world. Miami Project worked alongside VIP preview presenter 1stdibs to curate a festive celebration of the arts. The fair is thrilled with the continued partnership between Miami Project and the industry’s leading online arts and design marketplace. Miami Project sponsors The Wall Street Journal and Perrier kept an active presence at the Pavilion, filling our garden and media spaces with exciting product for fairgoers. The Miami Herald and WLRN News said “If you can only see one fair, make it Miami Project” and the public listened. The fair experienced an increased attendance along with excellent reviews from local and national press making it one of the most highly sought out fairs of Miami’s art week. Set apart by its extraordinarily high level of exhibitors presenting a concise collection of the best in modern and contemporary art, Miami Project is absolutely here to stay.
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CONTEXT Art
iami CONTEXT, along with the 26th edition of Art Miami, commences on December 1, 2015, with the sister fair’s highly anticipated Opening Night VIP Preview to benefit the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM) and Miami Light Project. The 2014 preview attracted 14,000 collectors, curators, artists, connoisseurs and designers, and the fair hosted a total of 82,500 attendees over a six-day period. This immediately reinforced the CONTEXT fair as a proven destination and serious marketplace for top collectors to acquire important works from the leading international galleries representing emerging and mid-career cutting-edge works of art. The combined exhibition space of CONTEXT and Art Miami will increase the overall roster of galleries to 200 participants and cover 250,000 square feet. Convenient parking is available for both fairs through the use of a four-story parking garage with 2,000 spots, located directly across the street from the CONTEXT and Art Miami Pavilions. A network of complimentary shuttle buses will run round-trip service between Art Miami, CONTEXT, Aqua Art Miami and Art Basel Miami Beach. ART MIAMI Art Miami is the leading international contemporary and modern art fair that takes place in Miami’s Wynwood Arts District each December during Art Week. It is one of the most important annual contemporary art events in the United States, attracting 82,500 motivated collectors, curators, museum professionals and art enthusiasts from around the globe. Now in its 26th year, Art Miami remains committed to showcasing the most important artworks of the 20th and 21st centuries in collaboration with a selection of the world’s most respected galleries. Art Miami showcases the best in modern and contemporary art from 125 international art galleries. Art Miami maintains a preeminent position in America’s contemporary art fair market. With a rich history, it is the original and longest-running contemporary art fair in Miami and continues to receive praise for the variety of unparalleled art that it offers. It is the “can’t miss” event for all serious collectors, curators, museum directors and interior designers providing an intimate look at some of the most important work at the forefront of the international contemporary art movement.
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AQUA ART MIAMI Aqua Art Miami celebrates its tenth consecutive installment this December and its second among the Art Miami family of fairs. One of the best fairs for emerging art during Miami’s Art Week, Aqua has consistently earned critical recognition for presenting vibrant and noteworthy international art programs with a particular interest in supporting young and established galleries with strong emerging and mid-career artists. Aqua Art Miami continues this tradition established in 2005, attracting increasingly diverse and distinguished exhibitors while retaining the fair’s signature relaxed vibe and lively energy. Aqua’s unique environment – in a classic South Beach hotel with spacious exhibition rooms that open onto a breezy, intimate courtyard – has become a favorite gathering spot for collectors, curators and art lovers to discover fresh talent and acquire new works while exchanging cultural ideas and forming meaningful connections. The 2014 edition featured 47 dynamic exhibitors from North and South America, Europe and Asia whose displays of high-quality art are enhanced by the refined production values and expanded amenities that the fair’s new ownership offers. Innovative interdisciplinary programming, multimedia installations and other happenings create an immersive experience for fairgoers.
Miami
Mariela Sancari, MoisĂŠs, Chromogenic print, Patricia Conde Galeria
Darle Escobar, Turbulence XI, 2013, wood and polyurethane paint, Patricia Conde Galeria, Beatriz Gil Galeria
Vanderlei Lopes, Enxurrada, 2014, Polished bronze, Galeria Athena Contempornea
Adela Goldbard, Atenado VI; Microbus, 2014, Galerie Enrique Guerrero
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t the nexus of North America and Latin America, our Miami Beach show presents artworks from across the globe. Over 250 of the world’s leading galleries participate, drawing over 70,000 visitors each year. With miles of sandy beaches dotted with classic Art Deco architecture, worldclass art museums, and a glittering nightlife, Miami Beach ranks among America’s most iconic cities. During Art Basel, it embraces the artworld with special exhibitions at museums and galleries across the city, transforming the week into a dense and dynamic cultural event.
What to expect Leading galleries from North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa show work from the masters of Modern and contemporary art, as well as pieces by a new generation of emerging stars. Paintings, sculptures, installations, photographs, films, and editioned works of the highest quality are on display in the main exhibition hall. Ambitious large-scale artworks, film and performance become part of the landscape at nearby beaches, Collins Park and SoundScape Park. Galleries More than 200 of the world’s leading international Modern and contemporary art galleries display artworks by over 4,000 artists, including paintings, sculptures, installations, photography, film, video, and digital art. Visitors can find works ranging from editioned pieces by young artists to museum-caliber masterpieces.
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About Art Basel Art Basel stages the world’s premier art shows for Modern and contemporary works, sited in Basel, Miami Beach, and Hong Kong. Defined by its host city and region, each show is unique, which is reflected in its participating galleries, artworks presented, and the content of parallel programming produced in collaboration with local institutions for each edition. In addition to ambitious stands featuring leading galleries from around the world, each show’s singular exhibition sectors spotlight the latest developments in the visual arts, offering visitors new ideas, new inspiration and new contacts in the art world. Partners UBS, global Lead Partner of Art Basel, has supported the organization for more than 20 years. As Art Basel’s global network has expanded, so too has UBS’s commitment and lead partnership, which includes all three shows in Basel, Miami Beach and Hong Kong. In addition to its support of Art Basel, UBS has a long and substantial record of engagement in contemporary art: as a holder of one of the world’s most distinguished corporate art collections, as an active partner in global contemporary art projects such as the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative, and as a source of information and insights through the UBS Art Competence Center, UBS Arts Forum and its contemporary art news-focused app, ‘Planet Art’. Associate Partners Davidoff, the prestigious Swiss cigar brand, Audemars Piguet, the independent high-end watch manufacturer, and NetJets, the world leader in private aviation, support Art Basel across its three shows. Art Basel’s global Media Partner is The Financial Times, and the VIP car service at the shows is by BMW. Long-standing partner AXA ART, the international art insurance specialist, provides VIP guided tours at all shows. For further information on Art Basel’s partners, please visit artbasel.com/partners.
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N e w ur story: from Battersea and beyond
Way back in 1996, Will Ramsay opened Will’s Art Warehouse in southwest London to bridge the public’s increasing interest in contemporary art and London’s highbrow gallery scene. By concentrating on relatively unknown artists not carrying a premium for reputation, the gallery was able to offer works from about $100 up to $5,000 from a stable of over 150 artists. The response Will received from his Art Warehouse inspired him to take his approach to the next level, and three years later the Affordable Art Fair was born. By embracing other friendly galleries selling affordable art, the first fair launched in Battersea Park in October 1999. 10,000 visitors took advantage of the ease of buying, breadth of choice, affordable prices and user-friendly approach. Today, Will’s Art Warehouse still stands and the Affordable Art Fair has become something of a global phenomenon. The Affordable Art Fair now takes place in cities including Amsterdam, Bristol, Brussels, New York, Milan, London, Singapore, Hamburg, Seoul, Stockholm and Hong Kong. Globally, over 1.6 million people have visited an Affordable Art Fair and purchased over $367 million worth of art. But Will didn’t just stop with the Affordable Art Fair. He also founded the contemporary art hub PULSE, held annually in New York and Miami; co-founded Asia’s leading art fair, the prestigious Art HK (which has since become Art Basel in Hong Kong); as well as being a co-shareholder of Art India, the country’s first international art fair, attracting over 190,000 visitors since its launch in 2008. Wherever there’s art, there’s Will.
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Nadaleena Mirat Brettmann AUGUST 1 - AUGUST 30 2016
Titled: Destructive Twister
M e d i u m : O i l o n C a n va s
Dimensions: 72x60
183 Sou t h R oad, Paget, DV0 4 Berm uda w ww.be r m uda m a sterwork s.or g
Year: 2013