JANUARY 6TH – FEBRUARY 28TH

Bianco is a collective of 6 artists: Lorenzo Perrone (Italian), Alexandra Valenti (Italian), Simone D’Auria (Italian), Erika Calesini (Italian), Umberto Ciceri (Italian), Melita Osheowitz (American) and Patti Grubel (American).
These artists’ styles are marked in this exhibition by their use of the absence of color to evoke reflection on our own lives.
Each artist employs different techniques.

Using books, plaster, glue, acrylic paint, and other media, Lorenzo Perrone transforms a book, and it acquires an accentuated symbolism wherein tactile and sensory suggestions are heightened. The language becomes that of surfaces, folds, volumes, emptiness, fullness, andpositive/negative spaces that transform a book into a sculpture. Perrone uses white for its ability to command attention. He believes that, in the end, freed from the weight of words, the pages become symbols, and the “libro bianco” gains eloquence and calls silently for a different reading.
“The meaning of color has always been very important in life. White represents purity, innocence, and decency. White represents spirituality,” writes Galleria Ca’ d’Oro partner Gloria Porcella in her curatorial statement for the New York exhibition BIANCO/WHITE.
Alexandra Valenti and her girl on the Swing is like an imaginative journey where the eye, instead of recording images, perceives them poetically. The artist’s visions are distinct. They tap into the suggestive power of absence within works that relies as much on what can be seen as what cannot. Simone D’Auria actually operates in all disciplines of design, creating projects for industrial design, graphic design, publishing, art direction, architecture and interiors. For this show, he has created a large spoon coated with egg shells and a marble tank inspired by the one in the game Risk.
Erika Calesini, the daughter of a blacksmith and a former fashion designer, transforms iron, rubber, and other recycled industrial materials into found object sculptures. A recurring motif in her work is the bicycle, which she considers a timeless symbol of freedom and physical evidence that lightness and circularity can coexist.
The artist disassembles and reassembles abandoned bikes and their component parts, giving them new lives as lamps, furniture, canvases, and other sculptural forms. For this show she has created a Lamp with a Bicycle painted in white.
Umberto Ciceri uses lenses as a kinetic medium, “moving” in antithesis to immobility acquires an existential meaning: regeneration against stasis. The shifted motion of the spectators is thus the motion of the works in which they are reflected. His two lenticular Ballerinas enhance the wonder and the hidden drama behind every provisional state of harmony.    Melita Osheowitz’s Untitled series is inspired by nature and the artist’s increasing curiosity to work with the materials as a joint effort to create the end result. She starts with a vision and direction, but allows the materials to do what they naturally desire to do. She transforms materials that are traditionally used two-dimensionally into three-dimensional pieces infused with life and movement.

Umberto Ciceri was born in 1961 in Milan and now lives and works in Barcelona.

After his early studies in art and fashion design, he has been for decades a prolific creative and Art Di­rector for the collections of textile, print and embroidery of the majors fashion firms such as Versace, Moschino, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Armani, Chanel, Hermés, Gucci, among others.

Active in the art world since 2007, he cultivates his creativity around patterns and textures, developing his personal research on neurophysiology and colours atomic physics.

Ciceri’s artistic practice is divided into two main axes, different in content and representation techniques. One has social purposes and uses sound installations, video projections and performance. The other is based on neuroaesthetic studies, a personal evolution of kinetic technique which gets people to move in front of the work in a ritual perceptive of temporal coincidence, named Hypertrait.

The constant element in the video installations is the association and ambiguity between the high defi­nition of the text to be read and the low definition of the images to be watched. The artist records with an HD video camera but purposely films out of focus, encouraging an emotional contrast between the descriptive logic of the words in focus and the logic of the sensation in the blurry films: the entire work indeed hinges on these ethical and aesthetic ambiguities.

In the works based on neuroaesthetic studies, “moving” in antithesis to immobility acquires an existential meaning: regeneration against stasis, the Passage has risen to evolutional model. The shifted motion of the spectators is thus the motion of the works in which they are reflected. This plunges into the substance of seeing, extracted chromatic core samples, millimetre by millimetre, from the main body of the images to the search for the indivisible, balance out the optical and kinetic representations, which reverberate on the surface of our vision.

A walkthrough through the labyrinthine abstractions of every common existence dominated by fate en­hance the wonder and the hidden drama behind every provisional state of harmony.

Umberto Ciceri is represented by international galleries, took part in the 54th Venice Biennale of Art in the Italian Pavilion, and his works are in prestigious private collections around the world.

VIDEOS

SPIN LIFE (motion is an illusion just as stillness is an illusion) “Work Filmed”

LUMINOSI

MAKING OF

HUMAN Fights Rights Lights

HUMAN Fights Rights Lights – Video triology of 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights

HUMAN Fights Rights Lights (extended version)

May 1st – June 3rd

In his second US solo show, The Street is in the House, Italian born artist Carlo Sampietro presents five years of work based on his observations of life in megalopolises. “The Street is in the House” is a body of work that transmutes elements of urban life into objets d’art. By using found materials and placing them in unfamiliar contexts and sophisticated designs, Sampietro reshapes everyday objects into meaningful amalgams. Sampietro dismantles established value structures and elements of social behavior, the catastrophic result of human ignorance, and the immutability of desire.
The artist begins by surrounding himself with objects that populate NYC sidewalks. He obsessively searches for familiar props on the street that will represent and communicate metaphors concerning problematic situations rooted in urban society. Based on his international background and his research, he uses a point of view and comparison that expands to megacities worldwide. He forces the audience to face social realities by bringing repurposed street objects into the house or bringing viewers out into the street.

At the gallery, spectators will be able to play mini-golf through “Street Scraper,” a reconstruction of a 50 foot sidewalk where urban elements seem to emerge from the concrete. This installation is a provocation to reuse the sidewalk as a social melting pot and as an extension of our living rooms, the way life in the city used to be.

In his installation, PopDogs, Sampietro investigates facets of theurban condition by creating a gargantuan edifice—a popcorn machine that spews plastic dogs at an alarming rate—a symbolicparallel to canine overpopulation in urban centers. In the video art Bunda Pandeiro, Sampietro explores the roles of gender and race in the contemporary world. An entire room will be dedicated to Cloche Sofa Masterpieces, a body of work that dismantles discarded elements of construction materials, such as sewer pipes and elevates them into unique and functional designs.

MICHELANGELO BASTIANI – ANTHONY LIGGINS – EWA BATHELIER

JAVIER MARTIN – LONG BIN CHEN

VIP Preview Pass

Thursday, May 3, 2018                 2pm to 5pm

Public Fair Hours

Thursday, May 3, 2018          5pm to 8pm

Friday, May 4, 2018                12pm to 8pm

Saturday, May 5, 2018           12pm to 6pm

Pier 94

55th Street and West Side Highway
New York City

]]> http://ca-doro.com/newyork/art-new-york-2018/feed/ 0 http://ca-doro.com/newyork/javier-martin-blindness-the-appropriation-of-beauty/ http://ca-doro.com/newyork/javier-martin-blindness-the-appropriation-of-beauty/#comments Tue, 20 Mar 2018 11:31:08 +0000 http://ca-doro.com/newyork/?p=2993 Javier Martin: Blindness The Appropriation of Beauty

Mar 21st – Apr 30th

Opening Reception: Tuesday, Mar. 20th, 6pm -8pm

The multimedia work of the Spanish-born artist Javier Martin raises many questions as to the function of art in relation to commercial culture and mass media. At times, the questions put forth in his art may appear difficult to unravel. Even so, his art is not obscure. It goes straight to the point. This could be no more apparent than in his recent series of work, titled Blindness Collection, which appears both eloquent and imposing. It consists of re- photographed black and white images taken of fashion models, but in each case, something has been removed or altered. The eyes have been covered with swirls of neon light so they are no longer visible. We cannot read what their eyes are saying just as, hypothetically, they cannot read ours.
There is little doubt these “portraits” have been arbitrarily emptied of their humanity through a technique that suggests an inability to see anything outside of the self. They are blinded by neon light, but not in the literal sense. Rather Martin is representing his models in metaphorical terms. We see their faces but not their eyes. Still, there is a lingering seductiveness in the models’ appearances even as they are removed from our ability to wholly decipher them. We do not know exactly how to read these women, Nor do we know how they read us – the viewers. We do not know how they really look or what they might be thinking given the somnambulant gaze that has replaced their original appearance.

There are ten works in this exhibition, ranging from Martin’s paper collages on painted wood, also replicating images of models taken from magazine ads (2014), to the more recent mixed-media neon collages that comprise the Blindness Collection (2017). Of the latter, each work is given a separate title that carries a poetic angle of vision as to how we might perceive these models. For example, one carries the label Blindness Light Concave Convex while another is Blindness Light Diamond Poetry. They read almost like systemic variations of a fashion cult. A third is Blindness Light Parallel Balance, and a fourth, Blindness Light Porcelain Dream. What do these titles really mean?
In each case, the question is raised as to how we might respond in the process of seeing them – what they might evoke in our sensory memory – especially given that the artist has obliterated any eye contact through the application of neon. Through this simple, yet profound aesthetic alteration, these transformed female models offer an eerie ambiguity that carries with it a paradoxical point of view. Instead of seeing them for who they are, we stare into their blankness whereupon we become possessed by a certain irony. We turn away from what they see (or what we see) by recognizing the fact that they exist in a world of commercial exploitation.
According to Martin’s press statement: “Mass media, consumption, and the systems created by society occupy space with vapid distractions, dimming the pure light burning inside each of us which fuels our passions and lives. The neon in the Blindness Light Collection references the bright, artificial lights of consumer culture built to distract from what is truly meaningful. The ultimate goal is discovering what is behind the light, what lives in each of us.”
As we gaze from one model to the next, we are blocked from seeing what is truly exemplary or original about the person who has been paid to put her blankness on view. This is an important aspect in Martin’s recent work. To understand the meaning latent within this exercise in collage and re-photography, one might consider what the artist regards as the “uniform standards of beauty perpetuated by the media.” Martin is clearly concerned with the ambiguities found in commercial culture that obscure the problem. It would appear that meaning instilled within Martin’s Blindness Collection is concerned with how to avoid the absence that perpetually reaches toward cynicism.
It is interesting to consider that Martin’s neon collage images are focused on observing women isolated from their identity. Here the aura of absence becomes pervasive. Those left within the frame with neon eyes are blinded by a hyper-mediated culture removed from the indigenous self. Or put another way, they assume the disguise of fakery in order to exist. As a fundamental critique, Martin’s images procure a chain reaction. Images are produced by commercial culture that automatically transform reality into a lassitude that eventually become distraught embodiments of metaphorical blindness. There is nothing beyond the frame in these images other than a defiant narcissism.
Martin refers to what he calls “vapid distractions,” which are images prompted by the media that dim “the pure light burning inside each of us.” Clearly he refers to the creative insight that re-invigorates our senses and as it struggles to make itself known as art. This is the basis of restoring sight, which stands in opposition to mindless coercion given to advertisements.
In a statement by the artist, titled “Appropriation of Beauty,” Martin makes clear that “the eyes not only permit the observation of the world but provide a window to see inward, beyond the realm of the physical.” He goes on to say that “the eyes, classically associated with the reflection of human emotions, will always be concealed in his work.” For Martin, the Blindness Collection is critical of those constituents who promote disengagement with culture as the outward reality of human experience.
This also refers to what Martin cites as the “uniform standards of beauty perpetuated by the media.” Better known as “perceived perfection,” beauty is consciously conceived as an absolute standard perpetually at the disposal of the media. According to Martin, this further suggests that mediated forms of beauty – that is, “beauty” agreed upon by various high- powered agencies – will not and cannot be what artists understand as beauty. For the artist, beauty requires a sense of openness, intuition, and liberation that commercial culture cannot afford to indulge. Therefore, the appearance of repetition is what potential buyers depend on as determined by company specialists that steer the course of marketing.
Martin is inclined to accept beauty in art as unconditional. In this sense, beauty is neither determined nor fully conscious as an enterprise. In contrast, it represents an insurmountable reassurance of the human condition less in its despairing moments than in those moments of fulfillment and hope. In fact, this is the essential message of the Blindness Collection. Moreover we cannot deny the irony present in his profound series of re- photographed images enhanced by neon that emerge in the substratum of popular culture. Here we continue to live in a global village where media controls what we already know is mistaken, even as we continue to abide by its conditioning principles. This is the challenge that Javier Martin puts in our path, arguing in favor of alternative ways of seeing ourselves as we come to terms with art in contrast to the seduction of prescribed media.

Robert C. Morgan

Jan 26th – Mar 20th

Opening Reception: Friday, Jan 26th, 6pm -8pm

curated by

Gloria Porcella – Frances Sinkowitsch – Lori Robinson

EWA BATHELIER – M. CLARK – MARCO GRASSI /GRAMA – GIOVANNI MOTTA – VICKY STECKEL

NINA SUREL – WILLIAM SWEETLOVE –  PAUL VINET – JASON YOUNG

Nov 29th, 2017 – Jan 3rd, 2018

Oct 24th – Nov 27th 2017

Sep 1st – Oct 23rd 2017