Domingo Zapata!!! Artist to watch...

Good evening contemporary art lovers! A
Domingo Zapata is a Spanish-born artist (1974) who maintains studios at the historic Bowery Hotel in New York City, the legendary Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. He’s well-known for his works which explore themes of sexuality, opulence, and vitality. Texts and visual cues can also be included in his works that attracte many of the world’s most prestigious collectors. He’s an “artist to watch” and he will announce the details of his first museum show in the coming months.

1- Domingo, have you always wanted to become an artist? Who are the artists who have influenced in your youth or the works of art that have thrilled you?
“I have always been a painter, an artist throughout all of my life. I choose to do this fulltime now and all the experiences I had in the past have contributed to what I create today. Paul Cezanne to me is the master of Modern art! From him Picasso developed and open all the new doors to my inspiration… I try to learn about Cezanne everyday looking for answers and bring it contemporary using today’s techniques.”


2 - You explore themes such as sexuality, opulence, vitality through colorful, bright and joyful paintings. What message would you like to pass on through your art?
“I am using a more urban approach with mixed-media, influenced by the streets near where I stay and the time I have spent in New York. I love using vintage posters and imagine what would happen to them if they were posted in the street. What would street artists do to them? How the weather might affect them.
Polo horses remind me of my youth and love for horses.
Bullfighting is a passion that I even practice when I go back to Spain at my friend El Litri’s estate (he is the best bullfighter in the world and one of the nicest people I know). He is my inspiration for this motif....


READ MORE: 
http://www.hauteliving.com/2012/04/haute-art-domingo-zapata-or-the-one-who-runs-the-art-world/


www.dzapata.com/

Rob Wynne !!!

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
I'm very pleased to present an interview of Rob Wynne, a good friend of mine and an amazing artist....

www.robwynne.net/

1 - Dear Rob, could you please introduce yourself and tell us what is your background? How did you become an artist?

As a young child I had dyslexia - which made it extremely difficult to READ. Oddly, I could read music very easily……but knew that I would not be able to excel as I wanted in that field. I could draw and when it came time to go to college, I went to Art School (Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn NY) After a long period of making abstract paintings - I took a long pause and redirected my work to TEXT, challenging my childhood issues, and began working with NARRATIVE . The ability to change my mind and point of view was for me a life changing experience.

2 - Words mean a lot to you. They are the main subject of your art, why?

See ABOVE!!!

3 - Why did you choose to use glass a main material?

I am NOT a classically trained "glass artist" about 15 years ago, I was making an exhibition for Holly Solomon, my dealer at that time. It was called "SLEEPWALKING" and was loosely based on an early 19th century Opera, "La sonnambula"  I had wallpapered the entire gallery and made large scale silkscreen paintings on fabric….I wanted to have a pair of GLASS FEET - to convey a sense of being and not being present. Not knowing anything about glass working , I was put in touch with a trained technician…and was able to make the FEET. After that I just started hanging around the glass studio and watching and picking up bits of technique. I was then invited to be a "visiting artist" at Pilchuck in Seattle, which is the mecca of the studio glass art movement in the USA. I started to just fool around with GLASS and tried to use it in unorthodox ways. That said, working with glass is collaborative, insofar as you cannot do it alone. I have worked with a crew of assistants since then…always trying to break rules and embrace the imperfection in glass making, which runs contrary to the typical techniques used.

4 - How do you position yourself compared to Jean-Michel Othoniel and Angelo Filomeno who also use glass in their works?

Vis a vis Othoniel and Filomeno, whom I admire very much…..I think the commonality that we share is that we are NOT "glass artist's" in the traditional sense. Interestingly the range of contemporary artists using glass as a material in their work is fairly substantial: ie: Kiki Smith, Beverly Sims, Robert Gober, Mary Carlson, Joan Jonas (in performance), etc. - some Modern Masters like Duchamp( The Bride Stripped Bare) and Pollack ( who mixed glass in his pigment) also used glass. For me, glass is another material to experiment with, albeit, one that does need a large amount of knowledge to handle.

5 - How do you place yourself in the contemporary art market? Do you feel any affiliation to one movement or another?

I don't place myself in the Art Market…I just try to make things that interest me.

6 - Could you please tell us about your collaboration with Dior?

The Architect Peter Marino ( a collector of my work) approached me through JGM.Galerie some years ago about doing a piece for the flagship DIOR boutique in Paris. Peter is in charge of the design of DIOR world wide. He has since then asked me for pieces for other DIOR venues. They typically tell me the perimeters and then I give them drawings  of various ideas in my Poured Glass work. Et Voila!

Thanks a lot my dear Rob. It's always a pleasure

Isa Genzken: Rose II - New Museum

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
Each time I walk by the New Museum, seeing the twenty-eigth feet tall rose that is standing in front of the facade reminds the roses made by Will Ryman. For those who may don't remember Will's roses were blooming on Park Avenue for four-six months in the beginning of 2011. At this time all the New Yorkers were living in the Wonderland!

Isa Genzken is a German-born artist who was born in 1948. She lives and works in Berlin. She studied fine arts and art history in Hamburg and was the subject of a major retrospective in 2009 in Cologne and then in London. She used to be married to Gerhard Richter who was her teacher. She is best know for her sculpture Rose (1993). It is a single long-stemmed rose made from enamelled stainless steel that towers eight metres above Leipzig's museum district. A second version Rose II (2007) is standing in front of the facade of the New Museum. 

Genzken is one of the crucial figure of the Post-war contemporary art scene. Her works, sculpture essentially, are made of many different materials and media such as video, photography, film, works on paper and canvas, collages and books. The replica of the first sculpture Rose is her first public artwork in the United States. She's trying to explore through her work the way in which each one perceive objects, images, nature... She integrates the notions of architecture, nature of mass culture by creating unique works has the enormous scale.

Looking back on that experience, she has commented, “To me, New York had a direct link with sculpture… (It) is a city of incredible stability and solidity.” The installation of Rose II can be seen as a tribute to a place Genzken continues to love.

"The Spirit Level" at the Gladstone gallery

Good evening contemporary art lovers!
The Gladstone gallery is one of my favorite gallery in NYC. For those who like Minimal and Conceptual art. They represent artists such like Sol Lewitt, Dan Flavin, Banks Violette, Donald Judd, Fausto Melotti, Robert Ryman, Damian Ortega, Mario Merz and many others.... Ugo Rondino, who is also represented by the gallery is the curator of the new exhibition. Ugo Rondino is a major Swiss artist who was born in 1962. His installations, which often include a performance by the artist himself and keep track video, depict a central character, alter ego of the artist, a clown, a figure of sadness and disappointment. Once he said: "I'm an artist first—but I like to have other people's art around me."

The Spirit Level is a group show featuring 19 artists curated by Ugo Rondino. The exhibition takes places in both galleries: the one on 24th street and the one on 21st street and is organized like an initiation. One advices you to start your visit at the 21st street space with Peter Buggenhout's three and leaning constructions, parrafin-coated crepe-paper leaves made by Martin Boyce, black printed-stars by 

Joe Bradley, two particolored, unstretched canvases by Sam Gillian...

In the other gallery one can see the three giant - four-foot-high - penises made by Sarah Lucas and made of bubblegum-pink,plaster and rubber. In another room Hans Josephson's small odalisques are grouped with Alan Shields's large triangular canvases. Works exposed balance each other even if they seem paradoxical at first. they are captivating, erotic, fun, innocent ...

Exhibition just opened a few weeks ago and will be on view until April 12!!

MoMA presents "Cindy Sherman"

Good morning contemporary art lovers!
To those who might have decided to go to NYC for Eastern, there is one exhibition you definitely have to see! At the Joan and Preston Robert Tisch Exhibition Gallery, sixth floor. This exhibition is curated by Eva Respini, Associate Curator, and Lucy Gallun, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Photography. Cindy Sherman is an American-born artist who lives and works in New York. She's well known for her conceptual portraits in which ones she's the only model, always disguised and masked!

Throughout her career - more than 30 years - she has captured herself in a range of guises and personas which are at turns amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting. she was always interested in the role of women in society, human behavior, to society of consumption and its impact on human... She has created a myriad of characters using wigs, costumes, makeup or other accessories. To make her photographs she had to stage herself in enclosed places, in the middle of intersections, in public places... 

Bringing together more than 170 photographs, this retrospective survey traces the artist’s career from the mid 1970s to the present. The exhibition will explore famous themes such as artifice and fiction; cinema and performance; horror and the grotesque; myth, carnival, and fairy tale; and gender and class identity.

Sherman has selected films from MoMA’s collection, which will be screened in MoMA’s theaters during the course of the exhibition. Exhibition will be on view until June 11th!!