AKIRA YAMAGUCHI

Tokyo artist Akira Yamaguchi explores the idea from a Japanese perspective with the hallucinogenic history lesson that is his new exhibition, "Japan/China and Japan/Russia Fantasy War Drawings."

Yamaguchi, 33, has long been working with the juxtaposition of different historical eras in his expertly-crafted and finely-detailed ink on paper drawings and acrylic and oil on canvas paintings. There is a real sophistication to his process -- the artist does not simply drop a salaryman into a Tokugawa pastoral scene, rather he seamlessly integrates different and disparate period moods, clues, and symbols, and does this so cleverly that it is often not apparent until one closely inspects the pictures.

For example, a man in a yukata, sitting on zabuton in an old izakaya, with the mama-san hovering over him holding a tray of not sake, but milk. Other examples, such as the Russian cavalry man riding a half-horse, half-motorcycle, juxtapose in a way that is not as subtle but no less well-integrated.

Yamaguchi also fuses different artistic styles in his drawings -- we see the lack of perspective characteristic of early Yamato-e paintings; and we also see treatments in the style of contemporary media such as manga, and the virtual imagery found in anime and video games.

Joseph Alois Schumpeter (Trest, Moravia, 8 de febrero de 1883 - Taconic, EE.UU, 8 de enero de 1950), economista austriaco-americano, ministro de Finanzas en Austria entre 1919 y 1920. Uno de sus mayores éxitos fue la aparición en el reciente libro de Robert Jessop "El futuro del Estado capitalista", con la definición del autor de los futuros Estados como 'Estados competitivos schumpeterianos'. También ha dado nombre a un equipo de fútbol sala (Schumpeter F.C.).

Se destacó por sus investigaciones sobre el ciclo económico y por sus teorías sobre la importancia vital del empresario en los negocios, subrayando su papel para estimular la inversión y la innovación que determinan el aumento y la disminución de la prosperidad. Popularizó el concepto de destrucción creativa como forma de describir el proceso de transformación que acompaña a las innovaciones. Predijo la desintegración sociopolítica del capitalismo, que, según él, se destruiría debido a su propio éxito. Sus principales obras son: Teoría del desenvolvimiento económico (1912), Los ciclos económicos (1939), Capitalismo, socialismo y democracia (1942) y La historia del análisis económico (póstuma, 1954).

El principal aporte de Schumpeter es la concepción cíclica e irregular del crecimiento económico, desarrollada en 1911 en su Theory of Economic Development ('Teoría del crecimiento económico') mientras daba clases en Czernowitz (actual Chernivtsi, en Ucrania). En ella recoge su teoría del “espíritu emprendedor” (entrepreneurship), derivada de los empresarios, que crean innovaciones técnicas y financieras en un medio competitivo en el que deben asumir continuos riesgos y beneficios que no siempre se mantienen. Todos estos elementos intervienen en el crecimiento económico irregular.

Después de ser Ministro de Economía de Austria tras la Primera Guerra Mundial, cesado, y de dirigir el Banco Biederman, pasó a ocupar varias cátedras universitarias, entre las que está Harvard. En este último período de docencia completó tres libros más: Business Cycles (1939), Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (1942) – donde predijo la caída del capitalismo en manos de los intelectuales – y su History of Economic Analysis (1954). En los dos primeros se centró en su teoría del “espíritu emprendedor”, desarrollándola en un ámbito más global e integrándola en una teoría cíclica de los negocios, y otra sobre la evolución socioeconómica.

KENNY SCHARF

Kenny Scharf (born in 1958, in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California) is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The artist received his B.F.A in 1980 at the School of Visual Arts located in New York City. Scharf's works consist of popular culture based shows with made up science-related backgrounds.

Scharf uses images from the animated cartoons popular during his childhood, such as The Flintstones and The Jetsons. The reason Scharf uses cartoon images in his art work is to bring popular culture into the fine arts. Scharf wants to see how far he can push the line between high and low art (cf. Lowbrow (art movement)) . Scharf to this day is making artwork that makes the viewers think about where the line is and how far has the artist pushed it. In 2001, he released a cartoon of his own, "The Groovenians" of which there was only one episode.

Scharf was a key figure in the East Village art scene of the 1980s, with shows at Fun gallery (1981) and Tony Shafrazi (1984), before seeing his work embraced by museums, such as the Whitney, which selected him for the 1985 Whitney Biennial.

He did the album covers of The B-52's in the mid-80s. In 1995, Scharf designed a room at the Tunnel nightclub in New York.

Scharf was friends with the graffiti artist Keith Haring and appears in the documentary "The Universe of Keith Haring". In 2004, he appeared in The Nomi Song, a documentary about his friend, opera singer and new wave star Klaus Nomi.

Alfred DuPont Chandler, Jr.^[1] (September 15, 1918 – May 9, 2007) was a professor of business history at Harvard Business School, who wrote extensively about the scale and the management structures of modern corporations. Chandler graduated from Harvard College in 1940. After wartime service in navy he returned to Harvard to get his Ph.D. in History. He taught at M.I.T. and Johns Hopkins University before arriving at Harvard Business School in 1970. He received a Pulitzer Prize for his work, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977).

Chandler used the papers of his ancestor Henry Varnum Poor, a leading analyst of the railway industry and a founder of Standard & Poor's, as a basis for his PhD thesis.^[2]

Chandler began looking at large-scale enterprise in the early 1960s. His Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the Industrial Enterprise (1962) examined the organization of E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company, Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Motors, and Sears, Roebuck and Co. He found that managerial organization developed in response to the corporation's business strategy.

This emphasis on the importance of a cadre of managers to organize and run large-scale corporations was expanded into a "managerial revolution" in The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977) for which he received a Pulitzer Prize. He pursued that book's themes further in Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, (1990) and co-edited an anthology on the same themes, with Franco Amatori and Takashi Hikino, Big Business and the Wealth of Nations (1997).

Chandler's masterwork was The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (1977). His first two chapters looked at traditional owner-operated small business operations in commerce and production, including the largest among them, the slave plantations in the South. Chapters 3-5 summarize the history of railroad management, with stress on innovations not just in technology but also in accounting, finance and statistics. He then turned to the new business operations made possible by the rail system in mass distribution, such as jobbers, department stores and mail order. A quick survey (ch 8) review mass innovation in mass production.The integration of mass distribution and mass production (ch 9-11) led to many mergers and the emergence of giant industrial corporations by 1900.

José de Sousa Saramago (Azinhaga, Santarém, Portugal, 16 de noviembre de 1922 - Tías, Las Palmas, España, 18 de junio de 2010) fue un escritor, novelista, poeta, periodista y dramaturgo portugués. Miembro del Partido Comunista Portugués desde 1969. En 1998 le fue concedido el Premio Nobel de Literatura. La Academia Sueca destacó su capacidad para «volver comprensible una realidad huidiza, con parábolas sostenidas por la imaginación, la compasión y la ironía».
Su primera gran novela fue Levantado do chão (1980), un retrato fresco y vívido de las condiciones de vida de los trabajadores de Lavre, en la provincia de Alentejo. Con este libro Saramago consigue encontrar su voz propia, ese estilo inconfundible, límpido y casi poético que lo distingue. En los siguientes años, Saramago publica casi sin descanso: Memorial do convento (1982), donde cuenta las más duras condiciones de vida del pueblo llano en el oscuro mundo medieval, en épocas de guerra, hambre y supersticiones.
Este libro fue adaptado como ópera por Azio Corghi, y estrenado en el Teatro de la Scala de Milán, con el título de Blimunda (el inolvidable personaje femenino de la novela). También Corghi adaptó su obra teatral In nómine Dei, que con el nombre de Divara fue estrenada en Munster. De Azio Corghi es también la música de la cantata La muerte de Lázaro, sobre textos de Memorial del convento, El Evangelio según Jesucristo e In nómine Dei. Fue interpretada por vez primera en la iglesia de San Marco, de Milán. En 1984 Saramago publica O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis y en 1986 A jangada de pedra (La balsa de piedra), donde cuenta qué sucedería si la península ibérica se desprendiera del continente europeo. Ese año (cuando tenía 63 años) conoce a su actual esposa, la periodista española Pilar del Río, natural de Castril, Granada nacida en 1950, quien finalmente se convierte en su traductora oficial en castellano.

Falleció a los 87 años, el día 18 de junio de 2010 , en su residencia de la localidad de Tías (Lanzarote, Las Palmas) debido a una leucemia crónica que derivó en un fallo multiorgánico. Habia hablado con su esposa y pasado una noche tranquila. Saramago escribió hasta el final de su vida, pues se dice que llevaba 30 páginas de una próxima novela.

VIK MUNIZ

Vik Muniz (born 1961) is a Brazilian born, New York based artist who experiments with media. His works are fleeting and consist of objects arranged to make an image, he then photographs the arrangement resulting in the final piece.

Vik Muniz began his career as a sculptor in the late 1980’s after relocating from Brazil to Chicago and later to New York. His early work grew out of a post-Fluxus aesthetic and often involved visual puns and jokes. His most famous work from this period is “Clown Skull”, a human skull augmented w/ a clown-nose shaped protuberance.

Muniz’s work begins to take on its mature form with The Best of Life (1990) where he drew pictures of photographs included in the coffee table book “The Best of Life” from memory after losing the book in a move. The drawings were subsequently photographed and shown as photographs, a practice that Muniz continues.

Muniz followed “The Best of Life” with Equivalents (1993), Pictures of Wire (1994), and Pictures of Thread (1995) in which he developed the other aspect of his characteristic style by making the drawings out of readily recognizable non-art materials (i.e. cotton, wire, or thread). This process of making a drawing out of a nontraditional material and then photographing it has been central to Muniz’s work ever since.

The next major step in his career came with “Sugar Children” (1996) for which he received critical acclaim. The New York Times reviewed the show and Muniz was invited to participate in the 1997-1998 New Photography exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Since then Muniz has gone on to work in many materials (chocolate syrup, caviar, diamonds, junk, earthworks and pigment to name a few) and has exhibited his work in major museums and galleries around the world. Recently, Mr. Muniz has curated a show at MoMA as part of the Artist's Choice series, seen the second printing of Reflex:A Primer (originally published by Aperture in 2005), and been featured in the award winning documentary Wasteland (2010).

MARK WALLINGER

Mark Wallinger (born 1959) is a British artist, best known for his sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, Ecce Homo (1999), and State Britain (2007), a recreation at Tate Britain of Brian Haw's protest display outside parliament. He won the Turner Prize in 2007.
Mark Wallinger was born in Chigwell, Essex. His formative schooling, from the age of 11, was undertaken at West Hatch High School, Chigwell, Essex. He first studied art at the Chelsea School of Art and later at Goldsmiths College where he was also a tutor from 1986. He exhibited throughout the 1980s, and later showed work in the Young British Artists II show at Charles Saatchi's gallery in 1993 and at the Royal Academy's Sensation exhibition in 1997. In 2000 a retrospective of his work, Credo, was exhibit

State Britain was installed inside the Duveen Hall of Tate Britain in January 2007. It is a meticulous recreation of a 40 metre long display which had originally been situated around peace campaigner Brian Haw's protest outside the Houses of Parliament against policies towards Iraq. ^[3] The original display consisted of donations from the public, including paintings, banners and toys. This had been confiscated by the police under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. Wallinger employed 15 people for 6 months and spent £90,000 to recreate it. He also put a black line on the floor of the Tate and through the middle of his exhibit to mark part of a 1 kilometre radius from Parliament. He stated that this marked the protest "exclusion zone", thereby making half the show in violation of the law.^[4] Charles Thomson of the Stuckists pointed out that the actual exclusion zone ends before it reaches the Tate, so no law-breaking was involved.

MATTEO BASILE

Matteo Basilé (1974, vive e lavora a Roma) è considerato come un’importante protagonista della giovane scena artistica italiana. Tra le sue mostre personali ricordiamo Apparitions - MART di Rovereto, Matteo Basilé-Utopia, Museo d’arte moderna Vittoria Colonna, Pescara, 2006; No Man’s Land, Guidi & Schoen, Genova, 2006; Primordialità Alchemica, Galleria Pack, Milano, 2005; Lord of the Flies, Galerie Beukers, Rotterdam, 2004.

Ha inoltre partecipato a numerose esposizioni collettive tra quali On the edge of vision - New idioms in Indian & Italian contemporary art, Victoria Memorial Hall, Calcutta/National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi/National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai; Arterritory. Arte, Territorio, Memoria, Centrale Montemartini, Rome, 2006; Natura e Metamorfosi, Urban Planning Exhibition Center, Shanghai/ Creative Art Center, Beijing, 2006; Sound & Vision, Museo della Città/Palazzo della Penna, Perugia; Il Male. Esercizi di pittura crudele, Palazzina di Caccia di Stupinigi, Torino, 2005; Italian Six, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, 2003.

Basilé è stato vincitore del New York Price, Columbia University, 2002/2003.Basilé è stato vincitore del New York Price, Columbia University, 2002/2003.

Attraverso scelte scenografiche curate e un particolare uso del mezzo digitale, Basilé conferisce ai suoi soggetti una bellezza straniante e sovrannaturale. Ne risulta un percorso sospeso tra cielo e terra, alle prese con un’umanità resa paradossalmente eterea ed affascinante.

In queste fotografie, rimane tuttavia molto sottile il passo tra elevazione spirituale e sofferenza. Di fronte alla nudità e al carattere implicitamente vulnerabile di queste pietà, l’idea di cura dell’altro e di abbandono, ma anche di accettazione di un suo stato di debolezza, affiora, per produrre una serie di opere sconcertanti e sconvolgenti.

L’artista, considerato come uno dei pionieri dell’arte digitale, usa la materia elettronica in modo particolare, con un’intenzione che potremmo definire “umanista”, sviluppando una profonda indagine sull’uomo contemporaneo. In tutte le sue opere, il racconto di Basilé si sviluppa attorno ad icone figurative dove l’elettronica aggiunge elementi, modifica colori e crea sottolineature grafiche.

GAVIN TURK

Gavin Turk (born 1967) is a British artist and one of the Young British Artists (YBAs). He often uses his own image in life-size sculptures of famous people.

Gavin Turk was born in Guildford, near London, England, and went to the Royal College of Art. However, in 1991, the tutors refused to give him the final degree because of his show, called Cave, which consisted of a whitewashed studio space, containing only a blue heritage plaque (of the kind normally found on historic buildings) commemorating his own presence as a sculptor. This bestowed some instant notoriety on Turk, whose work was collected by Charles Saatchi.

Turk pieces often involves his own image disguised as that of a more famous person. He has cast himself in a series of detailed life sized sculptures as different romantic heroes, including Sid Vicious, Jean-Paul Marat and the leftist revolutionary Che Guevara. Much as leading YBA Damien Hirst used symbolism whose semiotics imply an (involuntary) critique of the aesthetic standards (sheep) and financial propriety (sharks, being fleeced etc) of the mainstream artworld; Pop a waxwork of Turk as Sid Vicious (in white jacket and black trousers, pointing a gun - a work which toured London, Berlin and New York as part of the 1997 Sensation exhibition) appropriated the stance of Andy Warhol's painting of Elvis Presley, thereby depicting Turk himself (like Presley) as (semiotically speaking) a cowboy. In his art, Turk has also appropriated recognizable elements from Jacques Louis David, Yves Klein, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, Rene Magritte, and Jasper Johns.^[1]

Ambiguity features as much as self-obsession throughout Turk's work. What appeared to be a discarded plastic rubbish bag was in fact a bronze sculpture of one. This ambiguity is also addressed in works like Nomad (red) (2003) which looks like a sleeping bag, but is bronze, and Box (2002), which looks like cardboard but is also bronze.^[1] A large industrial skip (normally yellow, battered and covered in rust) was also painted an immaculate gloss black. Turk turned up at the private view of the Sensation exhibition at the solemn Royal Academy, London, dressed as a down-and-out. A set of what appeared to be classic posters of Che Guevara in a beret, revealed themselves on further scrutiny to be photos of Turk himself. Turk alleged that the management of London's (now defunct) Millennium Dome refused to display his Che Gavara (sic) sculpture, for fear of offending arms-manufacturing Dome sponsor BAe/Marconi (however a correspondent in Art Monthly magazine pointed out that work by the highly political left-wing cartoonist Ralph Steadman was being exhibited in the Dome at the same time).

Turk has participated in group exhibitions, including the Istanbul Biennial (1999), ‘Century City’, Tate Modern, London (2001), ‘Remix: Contemporary Art and Pop’, Tate Liverpool (2002) and ‘Coollustre’, Collection Lambert en Avignon (2003), and 'Pop Life: Art in a Material World' (2009-)^[2]. Solo exhibitions include South London Gallery (1998)^[3], Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva (2000), The New Art Gallery, Walsall (2002), New Art Centre Sculpture Park and Gallery, Salisbury (2003)^[1], Schloss Eggenberg, Graz (2006), GEM Museum of Contemporary Arts In The Hague (2007), Le Magasin, Grenoble (2007), Kunsthaus Baselland, Basel (2008). Turk has also been involved in "teach-in" events such as "The Che Gavara (sic) Story" (2001).^[4]

In 2007, Turk embarked on a project with his partner Deborah Curtis. The duo have been running a project based troupe of artists, The House of Fairy Tales, which was designed to further community education projects based supported by, and advocating, art. The House of Fairy Tales tour the country in a mobile gallery horse box which made its festival debut at the 2008 Crunch festival in Hay-on-Wye. In 2009, they appeared at the Glastonbury Festival.^[5]

GHADA AMER

Ghada Amer (born 1963 in Cairo, Egypt) is a contemporary artist living and working in New York City. She emigrated from her birth country at age 11 and was educated in Paris and Nice.^[1] Much of her work deals with issues of gender and sexuality, particularly the representation of female nudes in art history as ideal objects rather than human beings with a sexuality and eroticism of their own.^[2] She is represented by Cheim & Read Gallery [4].

While she describes herself as a painter and has won international recognition for her abstract canvases embroidered with erotic motifs, Ghada Amer is a multimedia artist whose entire body of work is infused with the same ideological and aesthetic concerns. Her oeuvre includes examples of painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, and installation.

Amer's multiple geographic relocations are reflected in her work. Her painting is influenced by the idea of shifting meanings and the appropriation of the languages of abstraction and expressionism. Her prints, drawings, and sculptures question cliché roles imposed on women; her garden projects connect embroidery and gardening as specifically "feminine" activities; and her recent installations address the current tumultuous political climate. Despite the differences between her Islamic upbringing and Western models of behavior, Amer's work addresses universal problems, such as the oppression of women, which are prevalent in all cultures. The submission of women to the tyranny of domestic life, the celebration of female sexuality and pleasure, the incomprehensibility of love, the foolishness of war and violence, and an overall quest for formal beauty, constitute the territory that she explores and expresses in her art.

Amer's work has been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions at such venues as Cheim & Read [5], New York, Deitch Projects, New York; the 2000 Whitney Biennial, New York; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; the 2000 Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; SITE Sante Fe, NM; the 1999 Venice Biennale; the 1997 Johannesburg Biennale; Gagosian Gallery, London and Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.^[5] She is the first Arab artist to have a one-person exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.^[6] A detail of her work, Knotty but Nice was used on the cover of the September 2006 cover of ARTnews magazine, as part of a focus on erotic art.^[7] In 2003 Amer's work was included inLooking Both Ways: Art of the Contemporary African Diaspora, at The Museum for African Art in Queens.^[8] In early 2008 a retrospective of her work was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, at the museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. In the same year, she was featured in Chiara Clemente's documentary "Our City Dreams".

WILLIAM KENTRIDGE

William Kentridge is a South African artist. He was born in Johannesburg in 1955. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Politics and African Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and then a diploma in Fine Arts from the Johannesburg Art Foundation. At the beginning of the 1980s, he studied mime and theatre at the L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris. He had hoped to become an actor, however: "I was fortunate to discover at a theatre school that I was so bad an actor [... that] I was reduced to an artist, and I made my peace with it."^[1]. Between 1975 and 1991, he was acting and directing in Johannesburg's Junction Avenue Theatre Company. In the 1980s, he worked on television films and series as art director.

Kentridge is perhaps best known for his animated films. These are constructed by filming a drawing, making erasures and changes, and filming it again. He continues this process meticulously, giving each change to the drawing a quarter of a second to two seconds' screen time. A single drawing will be altered and filmed this way until the end of a scene. These drawings are later displayed along with the films as finished pieces of art.

In 1979, Kentridge created 20 to 30 monotypes, which soon became known as the "Pit" series. In 1980, he executed about 50 small-format etchings which he called the "Domestic Scenes". These two groups of prints served to establish Kentridge's artistic identity, an identity he has continued to develop in various media.

In 1989, Kentridge created his first animated Movie, Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City After Paris, in the series Drawings for Projection. For the series, he used a technique that would become a feature of his work - successive charcoal drawings, always on the same sheet of paper, contrary to the traditional animation technique in which each movement is drawn on a separate sheet. In this way, Kentridge's videos and films came to keep the traces of the previous drawings. His animations deal with political and social themes from a personal and, at times, autobiographical point of view, since the author includes his self-portrait in many of his works.

The political content and unique techniques of Kentridge's work have propelled him into the realm of South Africa's top artists. Working with what is in essence a very restrictive media, using only charcoal and a touch of blue or red pastel, he has created animations of astounding depth. A theme running through all of his work is his peculiar way of representing his birthplace. While he does not portray it as the militant or oppressive place that it was for black people, he does not emphasize the picturesque state of living that white people enjoyed during apartheid either; he presents instead a city in which the duality of man is exposed. In a series of nine short films, he introduces two characters - Soho Eckstein and Felix Teitlebaum. These characters depict an emotional and political struggle that ultimately reflects the lives of many South Africans in the pre-democracy era.

MONA HATOUM

Mona Hatoum (born 1952 in Beirut, Lebanon) is a video artist and installation artist of Palestinian origin, who lives in London.

Mona Hatoum was born in Beirut, Lebanon. During a visit to London in 1975, civil war broke out in Lebanon and she was forced into exile. She stayed in London, training at both the Byam Shaw School of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art (University College, London) between the years 1975 and 1981. In 1995 she was nominated for the Turner Prize for her exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and for her show at the White Cube.

In the early 1980s Hatoum began her artistic career with performance pieces, though later she moved from 'live' work to more mechanical installations, involving video, light, and sound. While mostly focusing on confrontational themes such as violence, oppression, and voyeurism, she has often made powerful references to the vulnerability and resistance, of our human bodies.

In 1989 Hatoum exhibited her first major scuptural work 'The Light At the End' in the Showroom Gallery. The same piece was shown the following year in the British Art Show. Her Alive and Well was displayed in the Victoria Tunnel (a former air raid shelter under the streets of Newcastle-upon-Tyne) in 1990.

She was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1995. In 1997, one of Hatoum's works which had been purchased by Charles Saatchi was included in the Sensation exhibition which toured London, Berlin and New York.

In 2000, her work The Entire World as a Foreign Land was at the inaugural launch of the Tate Britain. She had a work called Home at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art in 2004.

In 2008, she was awarded the prestigious Rolf Schock Prizes.

In 2009 Hatoum's work was chosen to be part of the exhibition "Anthropology: Revisited, Reinvented, Reinterpreted" along with the work of Lee Isaacs, Karen Graffeo, Sara Garden Armstrong, Janice Kluge, Joel Seah, The Chadwick's, Mitchell Gaudet, Kahn & Selesnick, Sara Garden Armstrong, Beatrice Coron, Kelly Grider, Laura Gilbert, among others. The exhibition was curated by Jon Coffelt and Maddy Rosenberg for Central Booking in Brooklyn, NY.

ALEXIS LEYVA MACHADO "KCHO"

Kcho (a veces deletreado "K 'cho "), Alexis nacido Leyva Machado en Isla de Pinos (1970) es un artista cubano contemporáneo.

Kcho nació en Nueva Gerona, Cuba, en 1970. Se graduó de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (La Habana) en 1990, después la cual le concedieron el Premio de Asociación de Hermanos Saiz.

En 1996, empezó a exponer su trabajo en el Centro Nacional de Arte Contemporánea (Montreal, Canadá), en el Museo de Arte Contemporánea (LA, EE. UU; 1997) y Museo Nacional Reina Sofia (Madrid; 2000).

En 1992, Kcho fue hecho a un miembro del jurado del Salón Nacional del Palacio de Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, La Habana; en 1994, recibió una beca por la Ludwig Foundation; y en 1995, recibió el Premio UNESCOGinebra, Suiza. Kcho es conocido para crear trabajos basados en formas de barcos, a menudo hechos de materiales rescatados de la basura o improvisados, e incorporar iconografía y artículos de la vida diaria en Cuba en su arte. para la Promoción de las Artes,

La migración es una constante en toda la obra de Kcho. Suele asociar su trabajo con el viaje, el éxodo y el exilio. La emigración como drama que describe la historia contemporánea isleña. Con una actitud crítica, Kcho nos advierte sobre la precariedad de la existencia y los anhelos de escapar de las privaciones, penurias, carencias y miserias de este destino:

“El mundo está hecho de migraciones. Del sur al norte, sobre todo, la gente viaja tratando de mejorar sus condiciones de vida. Los grandes movimientos humanos son cada vez mayores. Y sean cuales sean las razones de esos desplazamientos, siempre hay alguien cercano que es parte de eso. Por ejemplo, cualquier familia cubana tiene a algunos de sus miembros lejos o que se ha lanzado al mar tratando de llegar a los Estados Unidos. Eso lo tenemos cerca en la casa, en el barrio, en la escuela… es parte de la vida diaria”. [4]

LI WEI

Li Wei (born 1970, Hubei, China) is a contemporary artist from Beijing. His work often depicts him in apparently gravity-defying situations. Wei started off his performance series ‘Mirroring’ and later on took off attention with his ‘Falls’ series which shows the artist with his head and chest embedded into the ground. His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.

Wei has received the following awards for his work:

2005- "Macau Art museum overseas communicate the prize"-Macau art museum, 2005 2006- "31 photographers with the most creative world"-American Getty, 2006

Wei's works have been published on the cover of the following magazines: Flash Art, WORK, MAGAZIN-FrankfurterRundschau, Out of the Red, ZOOM, JULIET, CONTEMPORARY, THEARTE FORUM, NY ARTS, Fine Arts Literature, LAPIZ and Arte Al Limite.

As anyone who watched the opening ceremony of the recent Beijing Olympics will attest, China has been enjoying a burgeoning of the performing arts in recent years. One of the most striking artists to emerge from this thriving scene is Li Wei, who has become renowned for his arresting and seemingly gravity-defying photographic work.

SHIRIN NESHAT

Shirin Neshat شیرین نشاط (born March 26, 1957 in Qazvin, Iran) is an Iranian visual artist who lives in New York. She is known primarily for her work in film, video and photography.

Neshat left Iran to study art in Los Angeles. It was about this time that the Iranian Revolution occurred. As an effect of the political restructuring after the revolution, her father who had been financially secure and about to retire was left without benefits and a meager salary (MacDonald 4). Once the revolution was over and the society was restructured as a traditional Islamic nation, her family was no longer able to enjoy the comfortable life to which they had grown accustomed. About a year after the revolution, she moved to the San Francisco Bay area and began studying at Dominican College. Eventually, she enrolled in UC Berkeley and completed her BA, MA and MFA.

Her work refers to the social, cultural and religious codes of Muslim societies and the complexity of certain oppositions, such as man and woman. Neshat often emphasizes this theme with the technique of showing two or more coordinated films concurrently, creating stark visual contrasts through such motifs as light and dark, black and white, male and female. Neshat has also made more traditional narrative short films, such as her recent work, Zarin.

The work of Shirin Neshat addresses the social, political and psychological dimensions of women's experience in contemporary Islamic societies. Although Neshat actively resists stereotypical representations of Islam, her artistic objectives are not explicitly polemical. Rather, her work recognizes the complex intellectual and religious forces shaping the identity of Muslim women throughout the world.

As a photographer and video-artist, Shirin Neshat was recognized for her brilliant portraits of women entirely overlaid by Persian calligraphy (notably through the Women of Allah series). She also directed several videos, among them Anchorage (1996) and, projected on two opposing walls: Shadow under the Web (1997), Turbulent (1998), Rapture (1999) and Soliloquy (1999).

Neshat's recognition became more international in 1999, when she won the International Award of the XLVIII Biennial of Venice with Turbulent and Rapture, a project involving almost 250 extras and produced by the Galerie Jérôme de Noirmont which met with critical and public success after its worldwide avant-première at the Art Institute of Chicago in May 1999. With Rapture, Neshat tried for the first time to make pure photography with the intent of creating an aesthetic, poetic, and emotional shock.

Shirin Neshat has become one of the most well known Persian artist within the Western artistic world. While she lives in New York City, she addresses a global audience. Her earlier work was symbolic of her personal grief, anxiety and the pain of separation from her home country. It took a neutral position on Islam. As time progressed and the Islamic regime of Iran became more intrusive and oppressive, Neshat's artwork became more boldly political and subversively critical against it.

In 2009 Neshat won the Silver Lion for best director at the 66th Venice Film Festival for her directional debut "Women without Men". She said about the movie: "This has been a labour of love for six years.(...) This film speaks to the world and to my country." ^[2] The film examines the 1953 British- and American-backed coup, which supplanted Iran's democratically elected government with a monarchy.^[3]

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

Takashi Murakami (Tokio, 1962) es uno de los artistas más influyentes del Japón de posguerra.

Cursa estudios en la Universidad Nacional de Bellas Artes y Música de Tokio donde obtuvo un Graduado en Nihonga (pintura tradicional japonesa). En 1990 se introduce en el arte contemporáneo bajo la tutela de su compañero y amigo, el artista Masato Nakamura. En 1993 crea su álter ego Mr. DOB, y comienza a ser reconocido dentro y fuera de Japón por su particular síntesis entre el arte tradicional japonés, las corrientes contemporáneas de su país como el anime y el manga y la cultura americana, fundamentalmente la corriente pop. De ahí que pronto sea denominado el Andy Warhol japonés.

Su obra abarca múltiples formas artísticas, desde la pintura a la escultura, el diseño industrial, el anime, la moda y otros medios y objetos merchandising de la cultura popular.

Murakami pertenece a una generación de artistas que comenzaron a destacar durante el auge económico que vivió Japón a finales de la década de 1980 y cuyo lenguaje pictórico recurre a motivos ligados a la cultura popular.

Su obra transmite una visión crítica de la sociedad japonesa actual, el legado de la tradición cultural del país, su evolución tras la Segunda Guerra Mundial y su relación con el mundo occidental, especialmente con EEUU.

En sus escritos acuñó el estilo artístico “Superflat”, término que ha servido también para calificar su obra, y que, además de caracterizarse por la bidimensionalidad, critica la propia estructura del arte, desdibujando los límites entre la alta y baja cultura.

Su trilogía de exposiciones “Superflat”: Superflat (2000), Takashi Murakami: Kaikai Kiki (2002) and Little Boy (2005) se ha exhibido en importantes Museos de todo el mundo como la Parco Gallery en Tokio, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) de Los Ángeles, la Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain en París o en la Serpentine Gallery de Londres. A lo largo 2008 y 2009 el artista ha sido celebrado con ©Murakami, la gran retrospectiva que hasta el mes de mayo se exhibe en el Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, y que anteriormente fue presentada en el Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), el Brooklyn Museum de Nueva York y el Museum für Moderne Kunst de Frankfurt.

Instituciones como el Museo de Arte Contemporáneo del siglo XXI de Kanazawa, del Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, del Museum of Modern Art, Nueva York, del San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, de la Queensland Art Gallery y del Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, albergan obra de este polifacético artista que, además de colaboraciones en proyectos de diseño industrial, música o moda, es comisario, mecenas, crítico y precursor de ferias de arte.

DO-HO SUH

Do-Ho Suh was born in Seoul, Korea in 1962. After earning his BFA and MFA in Oriental Painting from Seoul National University, and fulfilling his term of mandatory service in the South Korean military, Suh relocated to the United States to continue his studies at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University. Best known for his intricate sculptures that defy conventional notions of scale and site-specificity, Suh’s work draws attention to the ways viewers occupy and inhabit public space. In several of the artist’s floor sculptures, viewers are encouraged to walk on surfaces composed of thousands of miniature human figures. In “Some/One,” the floor of the gallery is blanketed with a sea of polished military dog tags. Evocative of the way an individual soldier is part of a larger troop or military body, these dog tags swell to form a hollow, ghost-like suit of armor at the center of the room. Whether addressing the dynamic of personal space versus public space, or exploring the fine line between strength in numbers and homogeneity, Do-Ho Suh’s sculptures continually question the identity of the individual in today’s increasingly transnational, global society. Do-Ho Suh represented Korea at the 2001 Venice Biennale. A retrospective of the artist’s work was held jointly at the Seattle Art Museum and the Seattle Asian Art Museum in 2002. Major exhibitions of Suh’s work have also been held at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris (2001), the Serpentine Gallery, London (2002), and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO (2002-03).

JEFF WALL

Jeff Wall fotógrafo canadiense nacido en Vancouver (Canadá) en el año 1946, ciudad en la que reside y trabaja, resultando ser una figura clave en la escena artística de su ciudad durante años. Premiado en el año 2002 con el prestigioso Premio Hasselblad.

Su obra ha ayudado a definir el llamado fotoconceptualismo. Sus fotografías son a menudo cuidadosamente planificadas como una escena en una película, con pleno control de todos los detalles. Sus composiciones se encuentran siempre bien pensadas, o prestadas, a partir de clásicos pintores como Édouard Manet. Muchas de sus imágenes son grandes (normalmente 2X2 metros) transpariencias colocadas en cajas de luz, según el fotógrafo esta idea le vino durante un viaje en autobús entre España y Londres tras ver un gran anuncio publicitario montado sobre una caja de luz en una parada de autobús. Los temas tratados en sus fotografías son sociales y políticos, tales como la violencia urbana, racismo, pobreza, así como conflictos de género y de clase.

Una famosa imagen de Jeff Wall es Mimic de 1982. Resulta ser una transparencia de color de 198 cm por 229 cm. En ella, vemos a tres personas, una pareja y un hombre, caminando hacia la cámara sobre un lado de la acera. La calle pertenece a un suburbio en una ciudad norteamericana, un área residencial mezclada con pequeñas industrias. La pareja, a la derecha en la imagen, es blanca, y el hombre de la izquierda es de origen asiático. La mujer lleva unos pantalones cortos rojos y un top blanco mostrando su ombligo. Su novio lleva un chaleco, con una barba poblada y pelo despeinado; dan la impresión de ser de clase trabajadora. El hombre asiático está vestido elegantemente, con una camisa gris; da la impresión de ser de clase media. El novio hace un gesto racista al girar su cara hacia fuera para mirar de reojo al hombre asiático. La imagen ha sido tomada en el momento justo en que se produce el gesto y revela la tensión social. Sin embargo, esta escena ha sido construida meticulosamente al igual que si fuera una imagen cinematográfica.

WANG QUINGSONG

Wang Qingsong es un fotógrafo chino que se caracteriza por producir imágenes con una ingente cantidad de personas involucradas en platós tan espectaculares como los utilizados en las producciones cinematográficas.
Wang Qingsong trabaja en documentalismo, fotografía, video y escultura. Utiliza la fotografía para reflexionar sobre la transformación y los rápidos cambios por los que está atravesando China, centrándose en las contradicciones de la realidad social contemporánea china generada por el acelerado desarrollo económico del país, y realizando una crítica al culto a iconos globales que define en gran medida la sociedad consumista y la pérdida de espiritualidad en la China de hoy. Sin embargo, su integridad artística brilla con luz propia, pues se muestra igualmente riguroso en su crítica al tradicionalismo regresivo y a quienes tratan de rechazar presiones culturales externas.

“En sus fotografías, Wang crea historias que permiten a los espectadores cuestionar-se actitudes ante los fenómenos sociales del momento y, al mismo tiempo, se esfuerza en proporcionar una plataforma para reflexionar en profundidad sobre la sociedad contemporánea en el siglo XXI”, destacó la comisaria Tamar Arnon. Sus imágenes giran en torno a las contradicciones de la realidad social china contemporánea, donde entran en conflicto tradición, modernidad y desarrollo económico. Las referencias a la modernidad se muestran junto al imaginario con el que creció: recuerdos de heroísmo y patriotismo.

Wang es un artista que piensa a lo grande: grandes ideas, grandes conceptos y, de hecho, producciones muy grandes. La ingente cantidad de personas involucradas en sus instantáneas y las dimensiones de los platós son espectaculares. Muchas de las obras que se exhiben son de grandes dimensiones, pues sus trabajos fotográficos en ocasiones superan los 20 metros de longitud.

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan (Amersfoort, 7 de marzo de 1872 - Nueva York, 1 de febrero de 1944), conocido como Piet Mondrian, fue un pintor vanguardista holandés, miembro de De Stijl y fundador del neoplasticismo, junto con Theo van Doesburg. Evolucionó desde el naturalismo y el simbolismo hasta la abstracción, de la cual es el principal representante inaugural junto a los rusos Vasili Kandinski y Kazimir Malévich.

El arte de Mondrian siempre estaba íntimamente relacionado a sus estudios espirituales y filosóficos. A partir de 1908, se interesó en el movimiento teosófico fundado por Helena Petrovna Blavatsky a fines del siglo XIX. Blavatsky creyó que era posible lograr un conocimiento de la naturaleza más profundo que sólo el proporcionado por los medios empíricos, y mucho del trabajo de Mondrian del resto de su vida estuvo inspirado por la búsqueda de ese supuesto conocimiento esencial. Una frase suya lo explica: «solo cuando estemos en lo real absoluto el arte no será ya más necesario».
En efecto: al dedicarse a la abstracción geométrica, Mondrian, busca encontrar la estructura básica del universo, la supuesta “retícula cósmica” que él intenta representar con el no-color blanco (color que posee todos los colores) atravesado por una trama de líneas de no-color negro (ausencia de colores) y, en tal trama, planos geométricos (frecuentemente rectangulares) de los ya mencionados colores primarios, considerados por Mondrian como los colores elementales del universo. De este modo, repudiando las características sensoriales de la textura y la superficie, eliminando las curvas, y en general todo lo formal expresó que el arte no debe ser figurativo, no debe implicarse en la reproducción de objetos aparentemente reales, sino que el arte debe ser una especie de indagación de lo absoluto subyacente tras toda la realidad fenoménica. Como anécdota de sus ligeras excentricidades cabe mencionar que prohibió el color verde en su casa.

Busca, en suma, un "arte puro", despojado de lo particular, y dice que «El propósito no es crear otras formas y colores particulares con todas sus limitaciones, sino trabajar tendiendo a abolirlos en interés de una unidad más grande.» Su radicalismo es tal que, cuando Doesburg buscó variaciones a sus estructuras formales a partir de 1924, inclinando los rectángulos, Mondrian abandonó De Stijl.