Artist Statement

At an early age I remember looking at art books, walking around the house trying to identify titles of art reproductions I saw hanging on the wall, and observing while my father was painting a still life. From the inception I gained a love and appreciation for art and art history which has inspired my work.

My latest work is a series of Still life oil paintings painted on wood. I am attracted to still life genre as as it involves putting together an assemblage of household objects, color, and form into a thematic compositional arrangement.

In many of my still life paintings I use a glass of wine as the main character to personify the human spirit. In addition, I am interested in the reflective qualities of glass and how it distorts shape, color, and light. I am also attracted to the interplay of dramatic chiaroscuro (light and shadow) on shapes and objects.

A number of my still-life paintings are concerned with the simple joys of life, leisure, and contemplation. In some of my still-life paintings I also allude to other artists to touch upon a specific theme such as mortality and the cycle of life.

I work primarily in two-dimensional media such as painting, printmaking, drawings, mixed media, photography, creative graphic design, and digital art.

My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is represented in numerous private collections. I am self-represented and I live and work in Brooklyn, New York.

Website

http://DanielMontoyaStudio.com

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Oh, Very, Yes!, detail 1

Oh, Very, Yes!, detail 2

Installation View

Artist Statement
I think of cameras, along with photographs, as cultural artifacts. In the same way that an anthropologist can look at jewelry or clothing to learn about the culture that created those things, the design of a camera and the photos it takes can tell us about the culture that created them.

The camera, as we know it today, evolved out of Renaissance painting experiments in linear-perspective. A few curious chemists simply put a piece of light-sensitive paper in the light path. As a result of this particular history, photographic images still bear a strong aesthetic kinship with western painting. Stripped of its cultural history a “camera” is simply an enclosed object with a hole in one side through which light enters. As such, the camera predates photography by thousands of years. With these factors of origin, evolution, and technology as a starting point, my work asks the question: “what would photography look like if it had grown out of a different aesthetic tradition?”

The photos I make explore the representation of space, time, and narrative through a panoramic style. Using a specially modified camera I shoot directly onto long rolls of color slide-film. The image fills the entire film-strip, without any frame breaks, looking much like a photographic scroll. The strips of slide-film, which can be up to 100-ft long, are displayed on light-boxes. The long horizontal strips of film serve as both as a measure of the dimensions of the subject and also as a record of the subjects movement over time.

Biography
With an extensive background in the visual and performing arts, Kwabena Slaughter brings together fresh new ideas on the nature of art and aesthetic experience. His current work in photography investigates the relationship between the camera, photography, and the painting traditions that precede it. Instead of accepting the historical narrative that leads from linear-perspective, through the camera obscura, to photography; Kwabena imagines an alternative history, one in which photography grows out of scroll-painting. Working with cameras that the artist modifies himself, Kwabena makes single images that occupy the entire length of a strip of slide-film. These strips of film can be up to 60-feet long.

Kwabena’s video and photographic work has been shown at premier institutions in the U.S. and abroad, including the New Museum, and the Studio Museum in Harlem. He has been a resident at the Art Omi International Artists Residency, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, the Bronx Museum’s AIM Program,
and Smack Mellon Gallery. His grant credits include the New Media and Technology Grant from the New York State Council on the Arts. Kwabena’s performing arts credits include acting in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival, dancing with a trapeze-dance company, and stage-managing for a clown school. His writing on aesthetics has been published in the journal “Philosophy and Social Action”.

Website
www.kwabenaslaughter.com

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This weekend is the 13th Annual A.G.A.S.T. tour on Saturday and Sunday, October 17-18, 2009 from 1-6 p.m. Below is a listing of artists that have been featured on this site, please be sure to stop by and check out their work in person.

John Azelvandre
Rick Midler
Brooklyn Artists Gym
168 7th St (at 3rd Avenue)
3rd Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11215-3147

Ella Yang
Location #18
168 7th Street, between 2nd & 3rd Avenues

Helene Mukhtar
440 Gallery
440 Sixth Avenue

Areta Buk
Studio: 418 Third Avenue, 2nd Floor
Cross streets – between 6th & 7th Streets
http://www.agastbrooklyn.com/artists09/buk.html

Elizabeth Jordan
299 Third Avenue, between Carroll and First Streets

Rosa Ruey and Christy Speakman
94 9th Street (between Smith and 2nd)
Studio #50, 4th Floor

metaphor contemporary art
382 atlantic avenue
brooklyn . new york 11217
718.254.9126

More information on the tour can be found at http://www.agastbrooklyn.com/

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Module Assembly Factory

Untitled (Aerial View)

Alchemic Transmogrifier For Distressed Emotions

Where The Wilderness Evolves

Chrono-Particle Processor

Artist Statement
For my work I’ve created a concept called Fantastic Functionalism. This concept involves creating an alternative reality filled with objects and environments which are imbued with extreme idealism and hope. I look at everyday problems on a emotional, physical and social level and imagine new possibilities and solutions for them. I think of my work as the sketches or plans of a mad and naïve inventor creating fantastical machines, passageways, bus stops, transportation devices and shelter from a playground of transformed shapes and bright colors that stems from the ordinary.

Website

http://www.rtimesr.com

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Little Swimmer, 20”x30”

Entering Neverywhere, 48”x48”

Artist Statement
This series of oils on canvas and wood panels explores Desire. It examines how the things we lust after gain our interest and how our imaginations process them. Color, movement and light are tools Life uses to attract attention. Emotions run through the landscapes in the form of teardrops. Colorful balls are planets, meteors, and objects to be collected. Here, in the pseudo-sexual circus-world of Neverywhere, one-eyed flowers, myopic slugbunnies and painted women are both the main attractions and the audience as they passively experience the world from the safest place of all – inside their own shells.

Artist Bio
Rick Midler’s paintings have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries throughout the United States, including the Brooklyn Artists Gym,
The OmniGallery at the UBS Building, The Art Vanguard Gallery and the Premiere Wall at Crew Cuts Space.

In addition, his work is in private and corporate collections, including those of Big Foote Music, Triple Nine Entertainment and Audio Alchemy in Warwick, NY.

Among various other awards, Mr. Midler received an Emmy for a short film which appeared on HBO and honors at The London International Festival. His work as been published in Communication Arts, Creativity Magazine, The One Show Annual and The New York Times.

His artwork and creative direction helped bring the animated M&M’s characters to life. Throughout his commercial career he worked for companies such as FedEx, Pizza Hut and AT&T. Midler also worked with top names in the entertainment business, such as Spike Lee, John Turturro, Ashton Kutcher, Fran Drescher, Roseanne, Megan Mullally, Jack Palance, Stanley Tucci, Elijah Wood, Forest Whitaker and Sydney Pollack.

Rick Midler was born in Clifton, NJ in 1966. He received a B.S. in Visual Communications from University of Delaware in 1988. He currently lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn with his wife Samara and son Jude The Dude.

Website
http://www.RickMidler.net

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