Artist Statement
This work re-presents a mental landscape, an office-scape, used as a symbol or stand-in for contemporary culture at large. Stemming from an interest in the exploration of the psychology of the individual in contemporary culture as contrasted with the primitive psychology of man, this work offers a synthesis that highlights the latent tension between our former modus operandi and our current structured status. While this lifestyle transformation may be recognizable in the lives of the majority, I focus on a specific grouping of individuals, those living in a maximal built environment, the urban environment, cut off from the natural world. This new normal position removes the sights, sounds, scents and behaviors integral to life in the natural world and replaces it with a myriad of man-made objects and experiences centering around the idea of function or purpose in relation specifically to the human being. No longer residing in a subsistence-based communal setting where a reactionary attitude to our environment is part of our survival technique, we now plan for our survival in a construct based in politics and the economy.

The Arts provide a unique escape from this practicality, this need for function or popularization in a market-driven economy for both the fabricator (or art practitioner) and the viewer/collector. To recognize this fact is to provide evidence of the enduring appetite to witness an idea, a feeling, or an aesthetically driven combination of color or pattern that stretches beyond the rigidity common in other areas of our experience. To some extent, the strong economy of the art market itself is evidence of the desire for the unique or rare object, rare because it was not mass produced and is not readily available. On the other hand, it must also be recognized that art objects themselves are now bought and sold purely on the basis of commodity value.

Humor, absurdity, or dysphoria may be an element present in my work in it’s often-times futile attempt to provide a response to the predicament of life in contemporary culture in the form of simulated nature. It is through this lens that my work investigates the tension between our past and out present modes of conduct.

Website
http://www.lisadillin.com

Screwball Spaces, Gowanus Canal’s newest addition of artists’ studios in Red Hook, Brooklyn, opens its doors to the public for a rare glimpse into the work spaces of New York’s contemporary artists.

http://openstudios.screwballspaces.com/

Henry Chung, Studio 50, Anonymous #23, 36″ H x 24″ W (framed), Computer Punch Tape
http://www.HenryChung.com

Enrico Miguel Thomas
Studio 90

Miranda Maher
Studio No. 56
http://www.miranda-maher.com
miranda_maher@hotmail.com
miranda@miranda-maher.com
347-431-5275

Leoworks, Studio 27

Joetta Maue
waking with you,  2010, hand embroidered, appliquéd, and painted re-appropriated linen, and queen size bed, 60in x 80in. x 15in.
www.joettamaue.com
Studio #2

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Yasha Butler, studio 80, Title: Off Circle, Media: Porcelain and Glaze / wheel-thrown and altered, Size: 6.5″h x 10″ x 10″, www.yashabutler.com

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Nathan Gwirtz; ceramics arena #12; oval dish, 2010, porcelain, underglaze sgrafitto, glaze;  nathangwirtz.com

Dana Atherton, Studio 62, Abstract Collection, Oil dana.a.atherton@gmail.com

“Pile of Homes”
2009
Mixed media
4′ x 5′ x 4′

“The New”
2008
Mixed media on canvas
36″ x 48″

Artist Statement
What appears simple just demands a different kind of patience than what is scraggly and complex.

Website
http://malinabrahamsson.com

Construction Workers Vegas

Caracas Marketplace

Eiffel Tower

Acropolis

Taj Mahal

Artist Statement

“TILT-SHIFT”ing the World

Tilt-Shift, What type of photography is that? people always ask me. How do I make people look so small or why do I make people look so small, simple…WE ARE. In the big picture we are just a small blip of what the world truly is. I enjoy the power I have to change the perspective of the way people look at the world and maybe at themselves.

Photographers need inspiration like all artists of all types of art,  mine is travel. From my series “Tilt-Shift”ing the world you can see only a small piece of the world that I have seen. Travel-Photography, Photography-Travel, they go hand in hand with me. The love of both is one. My passion to try and make the iconic places and structures that man desires to see and has for centuries traveled to see, is the same desire that drives me to go there and photograph them. I have been an avid photographer for over 25 years and have taken thousands upon thousands of photographs of iconic buildings. I’ve had the pleasure to “X” off from a list that grows and grows as new architects from around the world build new buildings for me to see and explore.

Life is said to be too short and I agree with that simple statement. I have goals like every artist does and mine is to “X” off as many places around the world until I run out of places to see or I run out of time.

Biography
1961 Born in Brooklyn, New York, USA
Lives and works in New York, NY USA

Exhibits
2002 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
2003 Camera Club of New York, New York
2006 Kolo-submission work
2008 Kolo-submission work
2008 The Skyscraper Museum, New York
2008 Schmap “Miami Guide“, Miami
2008 Ansonia Pharmacy, Solo Show, New York
2008 www.NowPublic.com, “Potent Greenhouse Gas” Publication
2009 Lana Santorelli Gallery, “New York, NY” Group Show, New York
2009 Chelsea Wine Vault, Solo Show, New York
2009 Baboo Digital, “Different Flavors“, Group Show
2009 www.artscenetoday.com finalist
2009 www.InfinityArtGallery.com finalist
2009 Lana Santorelli Gallery, New York, NY Group Show “Gastronomy”
2009 New Artist featured with www.LUMAS.com

Website
www.richardsilverphoto.com

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

A descendant of a Japanese Samurai sword maker, Ms. Ando is a much sought after metal sculptor whose most recent piece was recently unveiled at St. John’s Bread & Life in Bedford Stuyvesant, the largest provider of emergency food services in New York City. Ando’s grid of 144 steel canvas squares work together to compose a visual symbol of hope. The piece, titled Fiat Lux, which translates to “Let There Be Light,” is the focal point in the center’s nondenominational meditation room. It supports Bread & Life’s vision of giving strength and serenity to those who are battling an array of problems, including hunger, poverty, and related stress.

“With this piece, I wanted to create something spiritual but non-denominational so that it would speak to all the guests who visited the soup kitchen,” said Ms. Ando. “The piece provides a meditative environment to encourage introspection.”

Artist Biography

Ms. Ando was raised in two distinct cultures, a Buddhist temple in Japan, where she was cared for by swordsmiths turned Buddhist priests, and a mountainous region of Northern California.  For more than a decade, she has created artwork on steel canvases utilizing traditional metalworking techniques such as grinding, sanding and the application of heat, along with acids, solvents and metal-based pigments to create various textures. Her background and spiritual upbringing infuse her artwork, which create quiet, abstract, meditative environments.

Website

http://www.miyaando.com/