Nicola L. studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris, followed by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris at the atelier of painter Jean Souverbie. Coming to New York for the first time in 1967 at the invitation of La MaMa theater, she had become a permanent transplant by the end of the 70s. Her conceptual work hinges on two approaches that open the door to a myriad of possibilities – to make bodies, and to embody. To embody, meaning to collect bodies within a single skin in order to inhabit a space collectively, organically, and see it from the vantage of a second skin. Red Coat Same Skin For Everyone (1969) is a vast frameless canvas, molded around 11 empty pockets tailored to fit the dimensions of 11 human bodies. The coat was conceived as part of a performance to accompany musicians Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso at the Isle of Wight music festival. Traveling the world since 2002 with her « art-skins » (Cuba, Paris, Los Angeles, the Great Wall of China, all the way to the European Parliament in Brussels), the artist extends an invitation out to everybody to take part, through performance, in what Michel Onfray calls « the odyssey of flesh ». For Nicola, making bodies implies destroying them first. In the ultimate metonymical act, she sends out into the world functional objects that are fragments of our own bodies: The Eye-Lamp (1969), The Woman-Dresser (with irony on the theme of objectified women, 1969), The Eye-Table (1970), The Cultivated Head (1980), The Head-Bookcase (1996). At times, both approaches converge: making bodies, which can then be embodied through usage (The Hand-Sofa, 1970-72 ; The Head-Sofa, 1989). Both approaches are married in The Head-Aquarium (2005), where a swimming goldfish becomes, at random, an eye.
Born in El Ksiba, Morocco in 1967 , Mohamed El baz graduated from the l’Ecole Régionale d’Art (Regional School of Fine Art) Dunkirk in 1989. In 1992, he obtained a DNSEP (Diplôme National Supérieur d’Expression Plastique, .diploma in visual arts) from the ENSA ( École Nationale Supérieure d’Arts de Paris Cergy) in Cergy. He also took classes at IHEAP in Paris (Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques (1988-1994), founded in 1985 by Pontus Hulten with Daniel Buren and Sarkis. Mohamed El baz lives and works in Casablanca , Morocco and Lille, France .
Since 1993, Mohamed El baz has been creating a work entitled “Bricoler l’incurable“( Mending the incurable). His leitmotiv provides him with an ongoing, never ending and always controversial installations; as components or “details” find a place and adapt to each new concept .
His work has three orientations through which Mohamed El baz crosses boundaries and categories : daily , autobiographical and playful ; the work itself becomes mobile and turns into a different story. Mohamed El baz questions the notions of borders and territories and all that works to erect barriers between people.
born in canada – raised in oklahoma – moved to los angeles in my early twenties. went to the california institute of the arts. lived a little – learned a lot. moved to nyc. lived a little more… kept on learning about this big ol world we find ourselves in. still haven’t quite got this whole ‘life’ thing down…
but i like art.
and i like to make things. so here i am.
Kira Nam Greene’s paintings and drawings negotiate the duality and dichotomy of her existence as an Asian immigrant woman in America. As an outsider, Greene is more aware of the contradictions in the plurality of cultures in the present American society. As a feminist, she is repulsed and demoralized by the objectification of female bodies in art history and popular culture, yet she finds herself strongly attracted to sensuality of these images. This paradox has led her to combine the rigidity of patterns with the imagery of desire in the female body. In her most recent work, she replaces the body with the images of lusciously styled food while heightening the complexity with the mixture of patterns and icons derived from various Western and Eastern sources. The food, both in harmony and clash with its surroundings, is the body (literally and metaphorically) and the surrogate for desire to consume and control. Greene earned her MFA from the School of Visual Arts in New York, a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and a BA in International Relations from Seoul National University in Seoul, Korea. She has shown her work internationally at venues such as Accola Griefen Gallery (New York, NY), Diego Rivera Gallery (San Francisco, CA), Bronx Museum of Art (Bronx, NY), Noyes Museum of Art (Oceanville, NJ ), Galeria Galou (San Juan, Puerto Rico), Piccolomini Palace (Pienza, Italy) and Sheldon Museum of Art (Lincoln, NE). Her work has been covered in publications such as Wall Street International Magazine, Art21 Blog, Hyphen Magazine, The Korea Daily and New York Art Beat.
Robin Antar was born in Atlantic City, NJ in 1957. She has been sculpting since 1974 when a high school teacher introduced her to stone carving.
Her mission as a sculptor is to create a visual record of modern culture by capturing contemporary everyday objects in stone, mostly marble, travertine and alabaster. By replicating the model on a life-scale along with marking and symbol details, she attempts to freeze the object in time as an artistic form of artifact. She achieves this high degree of realism through incorporating such materials as parts of the real object, custom-made stains, paints, plastics and gold leaf.
Her works have been exhibited in various shows and galleries, including Sotheby’s, NY; the National Arts Club, NY; Nabisco Gallery, NJ; Fine Art Management Enterprises, Miami, FL; the City Museum of St. Louis, Mo., the Provincetown Art Museum, Provincetown, MA; the MGM Grand hotel, Las Vegas and others. Recent commissions include Dr. Marten Boots, England; Sketchers Boots USA; California and Chateau Haut-Brion wines, France as well as private collections.
She has been featured in newspapers including the New York Post, Las Vegas Tribune and others, and magazines such as Fashion Manuscript, Art Business News and Sportswear International. She was also awarded second place in the sculpture section of the Best of New York artist books and was awarded the Gold Medal of Honor by the Allied Artist of America in Sculpture and asked to become a full member.
Broadcasts include today in New York, Fox News in Las Vegas and 1010 Wins radio in NY. Memberships include Pen and Brush, NYC; National Association of Women Artists and the National Sculpture Society.
Sol’Sax is a multi-disciplinary artist whose performance work, sculptures, and videos layer complex connections between African-American and hip-hop culture with Yoruban traditions of West Africa. His artwork is subtle, incorporating clever wordplay or creative symbolism to engage with the public in a discourse about race in America.
Painter Hall Groat II, professor and chair of Art and Design at SUNY Broome Community College, teaches foundation courses in painting, drawing, color theory, and computer graphics. Groat earned a master of fine arts degree in painting and drawing from City University of New York at Brooklyn, a bachelor of arts in art history, minoring in studio art at Binghamton University, and attended graduate and certificate programs at Buffalo State College, Syracuse University, and Savannah College of Art and Design. He also attended summer sessions at Chautauqua School of Art, Chautauqua, NY, and Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vt.
Groat has had one-person exhibitions at Everson Museum of Art, Roberson Museum of Art, Finger Lakes Community College, Cazenovia College, Jasper Rand Art Museum, Lemoyne College, Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, and Washington and Jefferson College, and has participated in dozens of group shows throughout the United States.
In 2004 Groat was included in the Roberson Museum Center’s exhibition, “The Cosmos and Chaos: a Cultural Paradox,” with artists Lucian Freud, Eric Fischl, Jerome Witkin and several other contemporary artists. His work is included in private and public collections internationally, including Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones, Clear Channel Communications, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Cellular One, House and Garden, LTD., Sheraton Hotel Corporation, Binghamton University, Everson Museum of Art, Munson-Williams Proctor Institute of Art, The State University of New York system, Roberson Museum and Science Center and Washington Jefferson College.
May DeViney is an unrepentant Midwesterner and remains so despite having lived in widely divergent areas of the country since her youth. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she absorbed the influences of the Chicago Imagists and iconoclastic art movements such as the Hairy Who. Hairy Who icon Jim Nutt was one of her instructors. She left school to study independently at workshops, seminars and classes under several prominent artists, most recently at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. She has traveled throughout the United States and internationally. The experiences she has gained and her trenchant observations on the human condition are reflected in her work.
She began as a painter in oils and acrylics and her paintings have won awards in regional shows and in national competitions. But in recent years she has turned more to mixed media constructions, which frequently incorporate paintings and found elements built into three-dimensional multi-media wall pieces and sculpture. These constructions exhibit a flavor of H. C. Westermann and Grant Wood combined with the styles of Renaissance historical and religious art. Her work has been included in juried shows at national and international levels and has been included in national publications, such as Harper’s magazine, the New York Times and on the cover of Prism magazine.
She has remained a lifelong feminist, active in women’s rights organizations, and for several years contributed art and design work to the Walk for Women’s Lives, a fundraising effort for domestic abuse shelters in the Concord, Massachusetts area.
She is also a member of an eponymous group of artists named Detritus after their chief materials, the detritus of modern life. Detritus’ art is apropos of the fact that modern life seems to be drowning in its detritus. These artists, whose spiritual organizer is New York-based artist Vernita Nemec, recycle scrap elements to sharpen their arrows aimed at modern life. Feminist and social commentary as well as church-state separation issues are some of the targets of May DeViney’s work.
Our culture has a deep-seeded desire for isolation that we mask with seemingly communal interactions like cell phones, social networking, online games; anything to escape the here and the now. We spend more and more of our time hiding behind screens, drugs, headphones, alcohol, and we take on the persona of anonymous alternate personalities that never go anywhere or do anything, but are more informed than ever about everyone else.
I’m as guilty as anyone of having a minimal attention span so don’t consider these drawings a chastisement, but rather a meditation on life. Or if you prefer, just drawings.