The New Grand Tour is an episodic art project featuring revolving guest artists with hyphenated cultural and geographical backgrounds. The artists and documentary crew travel together to different parts of the globe and express through art exhibitions the subject matter of the towns and cultures they visit.
The goal of The New Grand Tour in the early 21st Century is to bring together the diversified voices of artists and communities from around the world by bridging cultural divides through art and the moving image as the common grounds for communication, education, discovery, exchange, philanthropy and collaboration.
Our mission is to redefine, revive, change and reinvent the old concept of "The Grand Tour" to be more than just an 18th and 19th century privileged trip for the elite. We seek to interact with foreign cultures in an appreciative and organic way rather than as touring voyeurs.
The New Grand Tour Group was founded by Rey Parlá, José Parlá, Suitman, Julia F. Kwan and Mark Foster.
Beijing Security for Opening Night
Jose Parla's Shangri-La inspired watercolors
Davi Russo's photo wall
The New Grand Tour Crew & Tan Dynasty Brother and HK Mayor Fed T.
Brothers in Arms: HK Mayor Fed & Film Director Alexi Tan
DJ Rage Johnson of the InkHeads & Agent Intellect coordinating the show's after party across the street.
Beijing beauty...
Peking city lights
Jose Parla absorbing the scenery for new works
Rage Johnson + King of The New Grand Tour after party...
Jane, Grace and Li-Ting start to kidnap the DJ
Photography by Davi Russo Design by Chris Rubino
To read more of The New Grand Tour Story visit [ reyparla ]
THE NEW GRAND TOUR Suitman / José Parlá / Rostarr / Deanne Cheuk / Davi Russo
EXHIBITION OPENING Wednesday, April 30, 2008 8:00 to 11:00PM
BRAVE 2 Jiuxianqiao Rd Dashanzi Art District, Chaoyang District, Beijing, China
R.S.V.P. jason_lam@diesel.com 852.2167.1627
Special Thanks to Fed Tan and his amazing Diesel Teams in Hong Kong & Beijing for making this event possible. With their generosity, patience and open understanding the artists and producers have been able to create this unique exhibition and documentary project.
The Galleria Il Trifoglio Nero is delighted to announce an exhibition of new works by José Parlá to mark the occasion of his first show in Italy.
“Parlá is fascinated with how the city constructs itself and functions as a palimpsest, upon which the experiences of those who pass through are materially inscribed on decaying walls.
He sees the city as a vertical grid, from the bridges, to the streets, down to the subterranean warrens of train tunnels, pipes and wires connecting to people living life inside apartments. The construction of the city and the passing of time find their equivalent in the way he attacks a painting, how he sees the need to layer his surfaces the way the city itself is layered.”
“As Parlá himself explains in conversation with his brother Rey “I call my works ‘MemoryDocuments’ because they become fragments of places I’ve been through. I am not only using paint to create my paintings, but I am also collecting bits of paper from walls, old newspapers, chunks of materials from the street or subway stations to reuse as collage onto my own surfaces and rework them until the colours of mould, rust and deterioration are right for the composition. The process may take weeks or months.” Manon Slome, Curator | The Chelsea Art Museum
“In 2005 I had the opportunity to participate in an exhibition by curator Manon Slome of the Chelsea Art Museum and Italian artist Mimmo Rotella. At the museum I installed two paintings – at wall size – both being the sum of 75ft. Together they are titled: Conversations with Rotella.
One painting was Tremont Ave and the second Canal Street. Tremont Ave, the painting – was inspired by walls in the Bronx Avenue of the same name. This piece is layered with posters collected from streets in the Bronx covered in names and signatures made in the style of people who have either passed away or are artist I once looked up to while growing up.
The idea is to pay homage to their names. Each painting bears the name of the location or experience from which it draws its source.” —José Parlá
José Parlá is a Miami native of Cuban descent. Parlá moved to Puerto Rico at a very early age before returning to Miami again when he was nine. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Parlá’s paintings have been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions: Cityscapes at Art Basel Miami Beach, Pirate Utopias with Futura at Elms Lesters Painting Rooms in London, The Chelsea Art Museum in New York where his work was exhibited with Mimmo Rotella, and most recently in Hong Kong for The New Grand Tour exhibition and video project with artists: Deanne Cheuk, Suitman and Rostarr.
A fully illustrated catalogue featuring texts by Francesco Sborgi and Greg Tate will accompany the exhibition.
Just saw this show the other night; truly magnificent work by all the performers. The entire presentation, atmosphere and scene sketches are superb and a joy to watch. Warning, it is a very interactive show, but definitely not to be missed by all family members and close friends. Don't miss it. The circus like cabaret fun house lasts about two hours and very worth the tickets.
Welcome to Spiegelworld… the world's most beautiful travelling venue.
With its opulent decor of mirrors and brocade, the intimate 350 seat Spiegeltent is the venue for two of the hottest shows in town, Absinthe and Gazillionaire’s Late Nite Lounge, plus an incredible line-up of live music acts from around the world as you've never seen them before.
With breathtaking views, sit back with a cocktail at sunset in our Green Fairy Garden, snuggle up in a booth at The Raleigh Oasis Restaurant, and after the show, dance under the stars with our eclectic DJ sessions, every Tuesday to Sunday night.
Spiegelworld's cabaret show, Absinthe, is just steps down the beach at Collins Park. Housed in spectacular turn-of-the-century circus tents, The New York Times heralded the show as, "Cirque de Soleil as channeled through Rocky Horror Picture Show... [Absinthe] is a blend of skill, erotic innuendo and zaniness. The memorable moments make make a jaded audience literally gasp."
We have our own New Grand Tour now Our elsewhere community of know-how
An awakening through what we know As tourists we gather seeds but also sow
An unknown path of what we have yet to learn Always not with enough time to burn
In an endless journey to nowhere Maybe leading somewhere And exiled elsewhere
Where every place is home There we find a piece of Rome For in all roads we roam
Like Nabokov in the Montreux Palace Hotel
We don't like to say farewell And can't ever foretell The future in a nutshell
The era of Pantheons and Tetrarchies is gone Yet the Phoenix rises once again like a true icon
Personalities in search of identity Living life on the hyphen
Down unknown cordilleras and multiple Cities of Light.
A renovated Silk-Road en route to finding out who we are, devouring life to change us into someone else; the inevitable cycle of flux; the interconnectedness of human culture; to encounter organic rhythms of deeper self.
The harvest is a quiet storm; an all seeing eye of random truth up high in the sky.
Gradually we evolve as a global civilization Our only center being this pale blue dot in an Infinite Celestial Kingdom of space and time.
For the New Grand Tour is our creation and our right.
The tour cannot be found through the world wide tourists' guide, but only in the worlds we arrive to reside.
Inspired by a sense of adventure and journey, the quartet embarked on a ten day trip in China called “The New Grand Tour.”
Taking off from Shanghai, they headed to Yunnan Province, where they visited Kunming, Lijiang, Shangri-La county and the Mei Li snow mountains.
Searching for new experiences and cultural exchanges, highlights of the tour include: meeting the Chief Lama of the Eastern Bamboo Forest monastery, who is campaigning to preserve the traditional Tibetan art of Tong Ka; art-exchange sessions with local Chinese artists; as well as visiting school children in rural towns.
with Suitman / José Parlá / Rostarr / Deanne Cheuk
Featuring photography of the tour by Davi Russo and a documentary sneak preview by Mark Foster and Rey Parla.
Exhibition is open to the public with free entry.
From November 3-25, 2007
(11AM to 8PM daily, closed on Mondays)
BRAVE - G/F, Pacific House, 20 Queen’s Road Central, Hong Kong
More random pictures of The New Grand Tour:
~Agent Intellect~
RoStarr absorbing the scene...
Suitman captures Deanne Cheuk's portrait on a sunny Shangri-La day.
Tibetan monks observe as Jose Parla sketches the scene.
As part of The New Grand Tour Project, Suitman has initiated The Suitchild Adoption & Donation Program.
For a visit to a small town school, Suitman has produced twenty-four classic signature portrait photographs of local school children as a record of the primary school students' experience with the Suitman style.
Each photo print comes with an adoption certificate valued at HKD $12,000 per set to cover each particular student in the photo with necessary school materials for an entire year, as well as school repairs that include: electricity, window insulation, doors to keep out the harsh winter cold, plumbing and furniture.
The adoption certificate and photo prints will be accompanied by a signed limited-edition soft sculpture figure of Suitman as part of the package. Profits from the sales will be delivered directly to the school by Suitman himself.
11"x17" Ink Jet Prints on Archival Paper/100% cotton/40% polyester+60% cotton.
Los Angeles— BLK/MRKT Gallery is pleased to present “Sure, Why Not,” Los Angeles-based artist Dave Kinsey’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. The exhibition will open with a reception on October 20th from 6-10pm, and continue through November 17th, 2007.
Kinsey's much-anticipated return to BLK/MRKT Gallery is punctuated by a bold new series of paintings that examine the role of identity in contemporary life—powerful images that simultaneously invoke the burden and frustration of apathy and the helpless rage of defeat. Straying from the figurative work for which he is best known—namely large-scale gallery and street installations that have attracted both national and international audiences—Kinsey takes cues from the current cultural climate to examine the intersection between the urban landscape and the human condition.
In this new creative space, he examines the point where the abstract and figurative collide and the visual dialogue informed by that impact emerges. And while this new series of mixed media on canvas could be described as an evolution, traces of his signature visual language, in all its gritty and unvarnished glory, have not been abandoned.
“The broken-up graffiti and abstract letterform references represent modern fingerprints of the urban environment,” Kinsey explains, “fragments and pieces act as a dialogue of conversations, identities, and messages.”
As always, Kinsey’s striking visuals urge audiences to take a closer look at the content of their surroundings; more is being asked of the viewer than to simply recognize that they should not blindly accept the circumstances of their existence. There is urgency in these paintings—a sense of restlessness with the world at large.
“Apathy seems increasingly common in modern western culture,” Kinsey observes, “There is a general sense that people feel helpless or don't care to engage in issues that affect their lives and the lives of those around them. Consumerism and even modern technology allows for an easy complacency.”
Kinsey attacks these notions with thick swaths of black and red paint in wide gestures of movement that engage and bind the figures being depicted, at once suggesting victimization and complicity. Alluding to a not-so-distant heritage, yellowed pages of a vintage book peek out from behind the face of a troubled man; a lone tree is draped in white stars screened in red, bull rope wrapped tight around its trunk; a pair of aged eyes void of pupils stares past the viewer, tragic and abandoned.
In addition to paintings on canvas, there will be a site-specific installation of canvases, backs facing forward, further exploring the notion of disconnect and non-resolution. In all, “Sure, Why Not” is an echo and call to reason.
Receiving both national and international acclaim as a fine artist and designer, and exhibiting in galleries stateside and overseas, Kinsey has been featured in publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The London Times, Blackbook, and BLK/MRKT Two. He was also a guest lecturer at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Massachusetts and the Semi-Permanent conference in Sydney, Australia this past year. Kinsey resides in Los Angeles with his partner Jana, three cats, a dog, and a potbellied pig.
Lucky London shoppers had the rare chance to take home fresh pieces in a trio of sizes from some of their favorite artists when ELMS LESTERS‘ innovative “Small, Medium, and Large” group show featuring art by:
... ADAM NEATE, ANTHONY LISTER, DALEK, DELTA, FUTURA, JOSE PARLA, MARK DEAN VECA, PHIL FROST, RON ENGLISH, SPACE INVADER, STASH and WK INTERACT...
... opened on Friday nite in Fogtown. As the show’s title implies, each artist created works in three different sizes and price brackets allowing collectors with radically different budgets a chance to hit the cash register with equal force and, as expected, there were no shortage of takers. We can only hope it becomes an annual affair.
Dear Friends, Up Wakers, and Zeronomers - ZERO and its Green Team would like to thank you for your 7 minutes (and more) last Sunday. Let us Continue...., React with ZERO and let's together move, shift, change and shape our New Planet. 7 minutes every Sunday - 7:53pm to 8:00pm turn off all the lights and give the planet a break.
Natasha Tsakos is a Swiss Artist from Geneva, Switzerland. Natasha was introduced at a very early age to the world of Music, Opera, Ballet, and Film which has been a great window to her imagination.
Natasha made her public debut at age 12, adapting Shakespeare’s "Romeo and Juliet" into an original and modern comedy taking place in court. At 13, she discovered Courteline, a French novelist, and decided to memorize, interpret and direct his play "Peace at home". The success of the performance rooted her decision to pursue this career. Independently from her studies, Natasha was attending College level theater classes.
Natasha lived in London, France, Guatemala, and the USA. This gave her the chance to learn and fluently speak French, Spanish and English, though she prefers silence.
Upon arrival in Miami, Natasha studied editing with Mark Boswell at the Art Center of Miami Beach. At 16, she was invited to film and interview Miss World Jacqueline Aguilera Marcano and Miss World Guatemala, Maria Gabriela Rosales. Her documentary was awarded and previewed at the Benefit event of "Nuevos Horizontes" in Antigua.
Her early experience inspired her to explore the many facets of Production. From Film, to Theatre, she also tackled the Visual Arts in an original way. Inheriting the talents from her mother, Catherine de Saugy, acclaimed European painter, Natasha created in 1999, a psychedelic hand painted clothing collection presented by renown fashion designer Gerry Kelly.
She now uses her artistic skills to illustrate her books, create incredible make-up schemes and conceptualize her work through story boards.
She was accepted the same year at one of the nation’s top conservatory: New World School of the Arts and graduated with a BFA in the year 2000.
Natasha has now written 12 original works, directed 20 plays including her own and is the lead performer of nationally acclaimed performance troupe Circ X, a voice over artist at the premiere voice over studio: The Kitchen, a member of Octavio Campos' Hybrid Theater Company Camposition, has been working on her one person show "Up Wake" commissioned by Miami Light Project and co-commissioned by the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts since 2002. Up Wake World Premiered in Nov/Dec 2006 at the Carnival Center for the Performing Arts with a successful sold out run. While preparing to perform with Cirque du Soleil for the Super Bowl Opening Ceremony February 4th 2007, Natasha is currently working in taking Up Wake on a Worldwide Tour.
[ INTERVIEW ]
Natasha Tsakos is a Conceptual Director, playwright, actor, and a clown. She will be the first to admit the latter. I met Ms. Tsakos in 2000 when Kokoff was still living out of a suitcase; nothing has changed. Tsakos is a diverse talent who has successfully exploded onto the Miami theater scene with a sold out run of her latest production: Up Wake, presented and commissioned by the Miami Light Project and the new Carnival Center for the Performing Arts. A worldwide tour is now in the works. Dean Jorge Guerra of the New World School of the Arts has commented: “Better than Ionesco….,” and Octavio Roca of the Miami New Times says, “Tsakos is like a female Bill Irwin, or like Marcel Marceau on ecstasy.”
RP: Where is Kokoff the clown?
NT: Kokoff is in my closet, with Marceau, my cat. (Kokoff also secretly advises Zero... shhhhhhh... it’s our secret)
RP: Natasha, your performance world is infinitely at play. Tell us about that explosive chain of moments when you’re on the stage. Is it still a child like game for you to access your imagination or is it different now?
NT: A child. me hihihihihihihihihihihihihoiahahahahahahahahahaahhohohohhohoHohohohhhihihihihihhhhhhhhhhhohoihohhhhhhahahahahahahaahahahahaahahahahahahgigglegigglegigglegigglggiglgiglgiglgiglgiglgighihihihihihihihih.... ...yes, more than ever...
RP: What inspires you?
NT: Life. Dreams. Beauty. Greatness. And all that exists beyond our wildest dreams.
RP: How has traveling influenced your creative life?
NT: The physical travels? Or the mental travels? (I have many reward points for the last ones.)
RP: You studied editing with Mark Boswell. He was also a professor of mine at the Alliance Film & Video Co-op on Lincoln Road – Miami Beach. At the time of my meeting him in 1993 he was preparing to shoot his super 8mm extravaganza: The Subversion Agency. How and when did you get interested in editing and film? NOVAKINO Presents: Mark Boswell's The Subversion Agency
NT: I think it was a natural progression at the time, from having a camera to wanting to edit…
RP: What was it like studying film with Boswell? Any anecdotes?
NT: My memory works in a strange emo-synthesis process, a sort of consumption-absorption- to-sensation metamorphosis (without the psychological weight). Mark Boswell: Hmmmm.... I remember: gray- hair- spiky- American- cool- far- creative - mission.
RP: What films were you watching at the time? Any influences there?
NT: My life was one... still is!
RP: You made a documentary after your film studies. Is this field a further pursuit of yours? What have been some of your experiences working outside the theater? Filmmaking on your horizon?
NT: We are currently making a documentary about the making of Up Wake, which consists of 4 years worth of footage, and will be submitting it to Sundance next year. Yes, I am interested in all realms of Human Inventions: Architecture, Science, Physics, Philosophy and the Study of Pink Elephants.
RP: You are currently preparing for a world tour of UPWAKE. Will this start mainly in the U.S? Tell us about the upcoming schedule and places you’ll visit?
NT: UP WAKE has been voted Best Performance of the Year by South Florida's Sunpost. After a successful sold out run at the Carnival Center (2nd largest Performing Arts Center in the Nation) UP WAKE will be touring Mexico in 2 weeks and has been invited to Asia's and India’s Largest Festival of Technology on January 08. UP WAKE will open the Sobay Festival of the Arts in Miami, in February 08. Currently negotiating Europe and my Moon Tour. Of course….
RP: What is the writing process like for you? Does it start with an abstract idea? Where do you write?
NT: When I write, I don’t write. The hand, finds the pen, the pen finds the hand, the fingers hold on, on holds the finger, the mind leaves, and all is suddenly better. When I am conscious of what I write, that’s when I know it is not worth writing. Right?
RP: What are some of the themes you have explored through playwriting and why?
NT: I love inventing language, re-de-un-structure grammar, tease our sacred orthography and confuse myself immensely. I take great pleasure in sensical nonsenseness. Truth. Absurdity. Fool. Lunacy. These are words I may leave intact in the dictionary.
RP: Which are your favorite playwrights/writers?
NT: Edmond Rostand, Eric Emmanuel Schmidt, Christian Bobin, Antoine de Saint Exupery....
RP: What is storytelling to you?
NT: ...If you please: Draw me a Sheep.
RP: The Up Wake journey, what has it been like? Where did ZERO come from?
NT: Up Wake is still a Journey. Wonderful, Exhilarating and Magical. A great process, with amazing collaborators, deeply moving audience, and a fantastic roofless twilight school of ethics, imagination, spine, value and friendships.
ZERO comes from void and infinity. From the need to de-segragate and de-genderize ourselves, Zero is the pure form of a little, simple and vulnerable individual struggling to go from point A to B while an amalgam of frequencies interfere, elevate and distract him. Zero is the Little Prince of the 21st Century, a corporate clown, a simply delightful creature of hope and humanity. The perfect image of you and me.
RP: Production wise, behind the scenes, who are some of the key talented people on this great show?
NT: There are 19 people behind the Up Wake 3D curtain! Waow.... where do credits begin? I mean can I include my door who cried one morning, and the minuscule seahorse that rides a unicycle on the electric wire outside my window? Alright...
If you insist:
Octavio Campos (Co-Director, Choreographer) Nathan Rausch / ZendeN Multimedia (Sound Designer) The Lavoisier X-Perience (Original Tailor-Made Music) Ray Aloy (3D Animator) George Delacadena (3D Animator) Melissa Camic (3D Animator) Oscar Baracaldo (3D Animator) Shattered Images Animation Studio (3D animation studio / Up Wake part II animation) Travis Neff (Lighting Designer / Production Stage Manager) Carolina Pagani (Production Coordinator, Installation Artist, Set Designer, Photographer) Gerry Kelly (Haute Couture Costume Design) Tammy Apóstol (Haute Couture Costume Design) M. Tate Tenorio (Chair designer) Aubrey Zappolo (Green Screen Project Director & Up Wake Documentarian) Circ X/ Diana Lozano (Sponsor, Green Screen Costume Producer ) Jorge Valdes-Iga (Green Screen Director of Photography) Capsule Media: Pascal Jaquelin (Animation Supervisor) Capsule Media: Gigliola Gennaro (Animation Supervisor)
RP: How do you treat silence and where do you find it? Is it created?
NT:
Inside. Outside. Above. Beyond... in me. and you. Shhhhhh.......Lets’ listen to it...
RP: Is silence really golden?
NT: No. It’s an expression! Silence is silence.
[ NATASHA TSAKOS' MANIFESTO ]
I am alone, on a path leading toward a little light, walking with my suitcase and my theater. Together we create worlds of wonder, reverie and contemplation.
Theater is the listener of my passions, my dreams and my absurdities.
Sometimes the Musician of Life takes the simple instrument that I am and composes… At that moment, time is lost and I am found. At that moment, I know that my life is not a notion but a feeling that I experience.
Theater is intimate, personal yet universal. It is a mean of communication and we must use it to change and inspire Society.
No, theater is not dying. Theater is too comfortable, too rich and too corrupted, that is the truth. As a believer of life, hope and humanity, I will keep questioning. I will keep making you dream. I will keep provoking you, the audience, the reader, so You can also reanimate values lost amongst Mediocrity and save what was one the ultimate of refinement.
Should the street be my only stage, so will I make it the best stage, and you, my best listeners.
Theater is not show business nor simple entertainment. Theater is poor, ugly, hard, profound and beautiful… I am not looking for fame or money, these elements are superficial, selfish and limited.
So I shall continue walking on that path alone, toward the light that justifies the sweat, the tears, the disappointments and the moments of joy, finding great minds and souls and sharing a world of purity.
Born in 1959, he is a Havana native. Bedia was trained in a traditional academic style, but his work promotes his interest in the indigenous cultures of Africa, America, Mexico and South America. He graduated from San Alejandro in Havana and is considered part of the '80's generation.
Algo incontrolable
The artist lived and worked at the State University of New York and with the Dakota Sioux on the Rosebud Reservation. Bedia returned to Cuba where his work was influenced by native Cuban religions.
Aquellas Extrañas Confluencias
His works have been included in the Biennials of Sao Paulo and Venice and many of the large scale exhibitions of Latin American Art such as the 1993 exhibition of Latin American Artists from the 20th Century at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Bedia lives in Miami.
Final de la Partida
Tan rapido que apenas
José Bedía's latest solo exhibitions include: Ultimo fruto de temporada, Iturralde Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, You Had to be There, Fredric Snitzer Gallery, Miami, FL, Nsila - El Camino: José Bedia and the Spirit's Path in Congo Art, Cantor Art Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA. His latest group exhibitions include: Visual Poetics: Art and the Word, Miami Art Museum, FL, Drawing Conclusions, Buena Vista Building, Miami, FL.
Figura predestinada
LIVES: Florida
EDUCATION: Superior Institute of Art, Havana, 1981. School of Art of San Alejandro, Havana, 1976.
AWARDS: Guggenheim Memorial Foundation International Fellowship, 1994. Premio de la II Bienal de La Habana, Cuba 1986. Gran Premio del Salon del Paisaje, Havana, 1982.
Stefan Ruiz was born in San Francisco, California. He studied painting and sculpture at UC Santa Cruz and spent one year studying painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, Italy. After graduation, he travelled to West Africa to document Islam’s influence on traditional West African art. As a result, Ruiz began specializing in photography and applied his experience as a painter to his photography. On returning to California, he began showing the photos he had taken while in Africa. This resulted in a grant from The Color Purple Scholarship Foundation to pursue his independent work.
Kazakh Portraits
At this time, he also began seven years of teaching art to the inmates from the main line and on death row at San Quentin State Prison. In addition to teaching, he began shooting portraits for magazines. He has now been photographing professionally for 12 years. From December 2002 to January 2004, he was the Creative Director of COLORS Magazine. His work has been shown in the Havana Biennale (Cuba, 2003), PhotoEspaña (Madrid, 2003), and Howard Greenberg Gallery (Tokyo, 2000).
Stefan Ruiz’s first book is about people – about the diversity of the world and the fragility of the human condition. It’s also a portfolio of work by an emerging photographer, with a distinct and original way of seeing the world and of making photographs.
Bodies of work from diverse places and locations – from a Rwandan refugee camp to Birmingham in Britain’s West Midlands, a Cuban asylum to a dance hall in Mexico City – are sequenced into a single essay, linked by Ruiz’s singular aesthetic point of view, his preoccupations with issues of racial and physical identity, his particular identification with people’s vulnerability, and with details of his own autobiography.
Merv Griffin
These are raw and edgy photographs in which people reveal themselves. They are often uplifting, certainly beautiful, yet we often feel we are on the edge of madness. It seems clear that Ruiz identifies with his subjects, even when he displays a trace of irony (for instance in his portraits of participants in the Texan Miss Rodeo contest), yet they are never exploitative. His ability to make pictures that show sincere respect, yet that manage to be so revealing, is a central characteristic of his talents. He has conjured a world that is uniquely his own.
The book deals with several themes, all rooted in his own story. Born in California of Mexican and Italian parents, he is torn between the perspectives of a Mexican underclass and the classical values of old world Europe. A key figure – even though Ruiz doesn’t tell us much about him – is his grandfather Leo. The first photograph in the book (and the earliest photograph included) is a portrait of Leo, and the last is a portrait of him in his coffin.
Stefan Ruiz's pictures reveal the fragility of the "family of man." With photographs of his own family, Mexican soap stars, Cuban mental asylum patients, Texan cowgirls, and Rwandan refugees, among celebrity portraits including Liza Minnelli, James Brown, and Jenna Jameson, this essay is the remarkable first book of a uniquely talented image-maker.
Ruiz chooses to shoot on a large format 5”x4” plate camera, which imposes formality and the discipline of carefully composing each shot. Porfolios of his editorial and commercial work can be found on The Katy Barker Company website below.
Harry Callahan (1912–1999) was one of the most influential photographic artists of the twentieth century. A master of modernist experimentation, Callahan explored a range of subjects—from landscapes to city streets to portraits of his wife—and techniques throughout his career.
Eleanor and Barbara - Chicago 1953
Born in Detroit, Michigan. He is recognized as one of the great masters of photography. He has been a part of countless exhibitions worldwide including retrospectives at the National Gallery in Washington, D.C. and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He has received numerous awards including the National Medal of Arts, Distinguished Career in Photography Award, Friends of Photographers Lifetime Achievement Award, and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Award.
Detroit 1943
By 1946, he was appointed by László Moholy-Nagy to teach photography at the Institute of Design in Chicago. Callahan retired in 1977, at which time he was teaching at the Rhode Island School of Design.
Atlanta 1984
Callahan left almost no written records--no diaries, letters, scrapbooks or teaching notes. His technical photographic method was to go out almost every morning, walk the city he lived in and take numerous pictures. He then spent almost every afternoon making proof prints of that day's best negatives. Yet, for all his photographic activity, Callahan, at his own estimation, produced no more than half a dozen final images a year.
Atlanta 1985
He photographed his wife, Eleanor, and daughter, Barbara, and the streets, scenes and buildings of cities where he lived, showing a strong sense of line and form, and light and darkness. He also worked with multiple exposures. Callahan's work was a deeply personal response to his own life. He was well known to encourage his students to turn their cameras on their lives, and he led by example. Even as he did this he was not sentimental, romantic or emotional. Callahan illustrated the centrality of Eleanor in his life by his continual return to her over 15 years as his prime subject -- she was subject more than model -- but the images are not about who she was, what she did, what she thought as an individual. Callahan's art was a long meditation on the possibilities of photography as it might be used playfully, but not naively.
Untitled#5
Eleanor was essential to his art from 1947 to 1960. He photographed her everywhere--at home, in the city streets, in the landscape; alone, with their daughter, in black and white and in color, nude and clothed, distant and close. He tried every technical experiment--double and triple exposure, blurs, large camera and small. The attitude of respect and warmth permeates the endeavor.
Kansas City 1981
In 1950, his daughter, Barbara, was born, and even prior to her birth she showed up in pregnancy photographs. From 1948 to 1953, Eleanor, and sometimes Barbara, were shown out in the landscape as a tiny counterpoint to large expanses of park, skyline or water. No matter how small a part of the scene they are, they still dominate the viewer's perception.
Morroco 1981
Callahan left behind 100,000 negatives and over 10,000 proof prints. The Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, which actively collects, preserves, interprets and makes available materials that are essential to understanding photography and its history and which holds more archives and individual works by 20th-century North American photographers than any other museum in the world, maintains the photographic archives of Harry Callahan.
Untitled#6-1950
Harry Callahan produced several monographs of his work including Harry Callahan (1996), Water’s Edge (1980), Harry Callahan: Color (1980), Callahan (1976), Photographs: Harry Callahan (1965), The Multiple Image (1961), and On My Eyes (1960). His work is held in the collections of numerous museums including the Art Institute of Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Museum of Modern Art, New York and the George Eastman House, New York.
Frequently Answered Questions is the first solo show of Chris Rubino’s work in Hong Kong.
Hosted by the Academy of Visuals Arts, the exhibit will consist of all new print work, mostly one of a kind screenprints. The work and the exhibition is inspired by overheard conversations (in public) as well as conversations directed at/or with the artist, all of which have taken place in the past year. The work is an abstract narrative within six 30 foot prints as well as a number of smaller heavily layered images.
Chris Rubino is a New York City-based artist/designer whose work has been exhibited in Europe, Japan, Hong Kong and the U.S. He recently has created Commercial artwork for such clients as The New York Times, Banana Republic & The NY Public Theater. He also runs a Brooklyn-based silk-screen studio named Studio18Hundred that makes limited edition posters for bands such as The Rapture, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and Vetiver.
Some of his work can be found in a number of recent book publications including Die Gestalten's A Book Designed to Help, Romantik, IDN Iconography, Maximalism & Sonic/Visuals for Music. A series of his posters has recently been added to the permanent collection at the Museum of Design in Zurich.
Lineage Gallery specializes in bringing artwork that will represent the next wave of innovative and creative artists whose work challenges and inspires viewers.
With a strong knowledge of the past Lineage Gallery keeps their focus on the future by continually scouting for new emerging artists and connecting their work with our clients.
Many of the artists that Lineage Gallery shows have grown out of contemporary street culture or other fields such as comic illustration, graphic design and fashion. The crossover into fine art allows these artists to express themselves in yet another way.
These are exciting times for artists. A new movement is rising up from the underground and Lineage Gallery has focused all of its efforts on helping to get this work seen by larger audiences and into the hands of people who also love this work.
Linage Gallery understands the extraordinary talents and achievements of this new class of artists who understand their past, work in the moment and represent the future of what art will be in the 21st century.
Below, Chris Mendoza's highly precise geometrical abstract drawings like the piece titled: "Tronco" (a tree trunk in Spanish) will be featured in the show.
Christian Mendoza is a New York City based painter from Nicaragua whose paintings draw from the experience
