JAMES ENSOR.
Although all three of these Belgian Modernist artists have an international reputation, the work of James Ensor is not as recognisable in the same way as that of Paul Delvaux or René Magritte. Ensor‘s work is indeed especially varied and since the advent of Post-Modernism, surprisingly topical again. Ensor is then also a genuine artist‘s artist‘.
James Ensor is not only an exceptionally talented colourist, but also one of the great 19th-century Realists. From 1876 to 1884 he was a radical, adherent to the plein aire movement that was pre-dominant in Europe-Realism, free from aesthetic, literary and moral conventions. The artist demonstrated this propensity in numerous, nearly empty seascapes, still lifes and in fifteen intimate interiors. His nearly pure pictorial importance appeared from the virtuoso manner in which he applied the paint with the palette knife.
Moreover, no one has examined light as a source of mystification like Ensor. From 1885 until around 1890, he practiced a creative method in his drawings and sketches, in which light experiments were combined with associative or surreal grotesques. Autobiographical motifs are mixed with societal ones.
However, the most striking realisations he produced as a painter were humourous masquerades and grotesque persiflages. For Ensor, the mask is an instrument of an expressionistic demasqué: he reveals the true malicious and ridiculous nature of humans. This emancipation from the caricature will be a source of inspiration for the German Expressionists.
( source: jamesensor.vlaamsekunstcollectie.be, text by Herwig Todts)
Born in New York (1979), Krista moved to Chicago to pursue a graduate degree in photography. In 2004, she received the Graduate Opportunity Award to begin her studies at Columbia College Chicago. In graduate school, Krista became less interested in the act of photographing and more interested in a conceptual look at the way media forms out perception of the world. Since receiving her MFA, her work has been exhibited at the SOHO20 Gallery in New York City, Packer Schopf Gallery, and the David Weinberg Gallery in Chicago. She is currently an adjunct professor of photography at Columbia College Chicago.
ANETA BARTOS.
When fashion-turned-art-photographer Aneta Bartos first emigrated from her native Poland to Brooklyn’s Canarsie neighborhood at the age of 16, she didn’t know a word of English. But that didn’t stop her from enrolling in a high-school photography class. “I found it very soothing because I didn’t have to speak,” says Bartos.
Now 33, the Manhattan-based Bartos has used that early training to eye-opening ends, producing intimate, darkly romantic images of often nude, sometimes self-pleasuring waifs in startling positions. Probably the most provocative of Bartos’s works to date is a series of prints shown last November in an exhibition called “4 Sale” at New York’s 8 Bond Studio. Bartos’s eight grainy, dimly lit Polaroids feature herself and three other young Eastern European female artists posing nude in what appears to be a seedy, sepia-toned motel room, where the subjects are splayed suggestively, either alone or in pairs. The images are highly erotic, of course, but also aggressive in their brutal voyeuristic gratification.
Bartos’s next project, “Boys,” takes off where “4 Sale” ended, featuring an array of male artists, art directors, and gallerists, including her boyfriend, an abstract photographer, caught in equally intimate moments. “ ‘4 Sale’ was about empowering the female perspective,” says Bartos. “I finally felt without any restrictions and boundaries, and then I was like, ‘Oh, god, this feels so great. What can I do to go further? I should use men!’
“I started by approaching my now boyfriend,” remembers Bartos. “He drank half a bottle of vodka. I had him conscious for about five minutes, but I got the shot.” Bartos plans to capture 12 subjects for this next series, which she hopes to show this fall. “It’s shocking,” she says. “But there’s a bigger purpose to it, and I try not to listen so much to other people. Sometimes ignoring is a good thing.”
( source: Interview Magazine, text by Ashley Simpson)
View other pictures on Aneta Bartos website.
Afri Cola commercial by Charles Wilp, 1968
SARA STAVRIDES.
La sua figura di asceta, filosofo, musicista…
“Se uomo volete raffigurarvelo, per comodità del vostro cervello, questo spirito supremo ed infinito, perché grande, quando voi dovete forzatamente fissare dei limiti a questa grandezza? La vostra non potrà mai arrivare alla sua, dunque pensate addirittura ad un uomo come voi e sarete al vostro posto. Perché in peplo e non in tait? Perché in coturno e non con un comune paio di scarpe walk-over? Perché un’immagine seria e relativamente grande è più facile di una relativamente piccola e allegra. E’ il suo spirito che voi dovete riuscire a scoprire; il suo corpo, che non esiste, potete raffigurarvelo come vi pare e piace.” ( Il controdolore, A. Palazzeschi)
La sua vita é una saga costellata di epifanie, eventi rivelatori, drammi, sconfitte e trionfi che ben si addice alla sua figura di guerriero nordico piovuto da chissà quale altra dimensione.
” La mia collezione prende spunto da tutto quello che é lui, i suoi sensi, la sua cecità, la sua sensibilità ai suoni superiore ad ogni altra cosa e dal suo forte legame con la cultura giapponese e indiana rintracciabile in ogni suo componimento.”
Sara Stavrides
Panorama talks about Plastic re-opening.
M.M.P.
” Questa é la mia prima collezione di lampade… ognuna é unica ed irripetibile, fatta a mano e con vecchi pezzi trovati per caso o cercati con molta cura fra Barcellona e Milano. Non ho seguito un particolare concept per arrivare alla creazione di questi magri e luminosi insetti di metallo, mi sono semplicemente lasciato trasportare da tutto quello che mi circonda, ho aperto gli occhi e seguito l’intuito delle mie mani che hanno avvitato e tagliato ogni singolo pezzetto.”
M.M.P. (Marlee Marco Pasinetti)
