The Fowlers Trap Tangled with the Rabbit Holes

The Shortest Distance Between Two Kindred Souls Is Love

Wormholes in a Tree

Artist Statement
Big Dreams focuses around the idea that humankind shares a sort of imagery bank; elementary ideas from the beginning of time or archetypes as described by Carl Jung. With that said, the concept of elementary ideas or archetypes does not belong solely to modern psychology or modern anything actually. Primitive cultures too recognized and drew upon imagery that commonly resonated with their society. In this project I am looking for big ideas reflected in the natural and modern landscape.

Website
http://www.ralphmaratta.com/live/

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Before & After Room, Tribeca. 2007

White Consultation Chair, Upper East Side. 2006

Implants, Upper East Side. 2008

Singular Beauty

“The best of beauty is a finer charm than skill in surfaces, in outlines, or
rules of art can ever teach, namely, a radiation from the work of art of human character.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

This collection of photographs resulted from both a personal struggle with body issues, and a long history in the beauty business. In photographing these doctor’s offices, I not only developed my visual understanding of the world, but I was able to reconcile my own feelings about beauty. I found myself less interested the actual place or thing, than in capturing the emotional significance of it–for myself as an artist–and for those who sought their salvation in these chairs, beds, machines and tools.

Website

http://cara-phillips.com/

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Valery Rizzo @ http://www.valeryrizzo.com/

Wonder Wheel, Coney Island, Brooklyn, 2007

Valery Rizzo @ http://www.valeryrizzo.com/

Pin-Up Girls, Coney Island, Brooklyn, 2007

Lara Wechsler @ http://www.larawechsler.com

Sprinkler Fun

Lara Wechsler @ http://www.larawechsler.com

Flying

John Tebeau @ http://www.tebeau.com

Nathan’s

John Tebeau @ http://www.tebeau.com

Summer Grill

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SEASCAPES
The seascapes are a series titled “Anywhere But Here”. The series consists of 436 different scenes.  The water is actually 1/8″ thick pieces of clear, vacuum-formed plastic.  The varied molded forms create the wave structure. The water color is created by placing layers of acetate underneath the plastic.  The coloring and sky are created with lights and backdrops.  The entire construction is eight inches square. I shot the scenes with a 35 mm camera using a macro lens.  I chose to shoot this small film size so that the image would be grainy when enlarged. The photograph then literally breaks down.  This is intended to reinforce the idea that the image is a simulation.  They have been shown singularly and as installations of between 1,113 and 2,712 images mounted to walls (each photo is 4″ x 6″).

ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Postcards, billboards and magazines instill in us a desire to be physically and emotionally transported to “a better place”.  We see digitally enhanced, perfectly-lit and styled homes, gardens and people. These commercial images are merely representations, completely unattainable. These constructions are meant to instill longing in the viewer.

I, too, create such non-places: images that appear real, but are, in fact, simulations. I construct images of locales, persons and lifestyles. My work is meant to isolate and emphasize the desire for the other, which is, in the end, just a creation. The viewer is left to consider this cycle of desire and dissatisfaction.

We peruse decorating and travel magazines, read adventure travel stories and scan billboards. These things instill in us a desire to have and/or be somewhere else, someone else, but some place where all our wants may be fulfilled.

Born:Chicago, 1970.
Lives and works in Brooklyn.

EDUCATION
MFA-Rhode Island School of Design
Providence, RI(1995)
B.A-DePauw University, Greencastle, IN (1992)
Parson’s School of Design, Paris, France (summer 1991)
Essex University, Essex, England (1990-91)

WEBSITE
http://www.karenconnell.com

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A new Bob Dylan video features photographs from Bruce Davidson’s 1959 “Brooklyn Gang” series to illustrate the song.  In the spring of 1959, Davidson met a group of Brooklyn teens called “The Jokers”.  That summer, he photographed the entire gang in their natural habitat, from hanging out late at night on the street corner to taking a  Coney Island beach trip with their girlfriends.   The “Beyond Here Lies Nothin’” video will appear exclusively on Amazon’s homepage until Wednesday, April 22, in the Bob Dylan Store for 30 days thereafter.

The complete series is on the Magnum website.

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Artist Statement
My own work is largely concerned with the meaning and existence of the self in today’s unstable, fragmented world, specifically how the individual is able to reconcile the external and internal forces that cause us to function in different, often contradictory, roles. Performative in essence, frequently employing role play and adopting multiple or different personas, my work not only reconstructs and documents other’s lives, but regularly becomes an intense examination of my own. The photographs in my latest body of work are an exploration of my own private experience with love and intimacy. Derived from what began as collaboration with my romantic partner, Michael, the work is an embodiment of my own subconscious forces at work, mixed with real events.

More specifically, the work chronicles the obsessive nature of our romantic relationship, and its overwhelming effect on my life, visually attempting to eliminate the distinction between dreams and reality, reason and madness, and objectivity and subjectivity by merging everyday occurrences with psychological aberrations. Fragmented, the events it depicts are not literal but figurative illustrations of a unique psychological state resulting from the self-reflexive nature of our relationship and the psychological breakdown between oppositional forces that comes with love; the internal and external, the self and the other, presence and absence and lucidity and blindness.

Website
http://www.haleyjsamuelson.com/

Upcoming Exhibit
Opening reception June 25th at Hous Projects gallery in Soho,  from 6-8

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