All posts tagged: contemporary art

La Gravité et la Grâce par Gérard Uféras

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Gérard Uféras est né et vit à Paris. À partir de 1984, il entame une collaboration régulière avec le journal Libération, pour lequel il réalise de nombreux reportages et portraits. Il participe à la création de l’agence VU en 1986, et publie régulièrement dans la presse française et internationale. Parallèlement au photo-journalisme et à son travail de portraitiste, il réalise des campagnes de publicité, travaille dans la communication institutionnelle et réalise des séries de mode. Il poursuit parallèlement des recherches personnelles qui l’amènent à exposer dans de nombreux pays. Passionné par la musique et le théâtre, lauréat du prix “Villa Medicis hors les murs”, il entreprend dès 1988 un long périple à travers l’Europe dans les coulisses des théâtres d’Opéra. Commencé à Paris et achevé à Moscou en 2001 celui-ci sera publié dans le livre ” Un fantôme à l’Opéra ” aux éditions du Collectionneur. Il rejoint l’agence Rapho en 1993. Suivent alors une série de grands travaux: “L’Etoffe des rêves”: l’univers de la mode réalisé dans toute l’Europe ainsi qu’à New-York, “The visit”: l’ile de …

Brief encounter in an english garden with Rebecca Louise Law

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Rebecca Louise Law is a London-based installation artist known for her transformation of spaces using hundreds or thousands of suspended flowers. Trained in fine art at Newcastle University in England, Rebecca Louise Law has been working with natural materials for 17 years, a practice that involves a constant exploration of relationships between nature and humans.  The physicality and sensuality of her site specific work plays with the relationship between man and nature. Rebecca Louise Law is passionate about natural change and preservation, allowing her work to evolve as nature takes its course and offering an alternative concept of beauty. Over the past few years she has worked in numerous public spaces, museums (such as the Royal Academy and the Victoria & Albert Museum), and galleries. She has worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and has been commissioned by brands like Hermès, Cartier, Gucci or Salvatore Ferragamo. Her notable commissions include ‘The Flower Garden Display’, (The Garden Museum, London),‘The Grecian Garden’ (Onassis Cultural Centre, Athens), and ‘Flowers 2015: Outside In’ (Times Square, New York).  1. Do you see yourself as a …

Into the Wild with Ellis O’Connor

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Ellis O’Connor is a Contemporary Landscape Artist from Scotland living on the Outer Hebridean Island of North Uist working in the field of painting and drawing. The dynamic energy to be seen in the paintings are Ellis’ response to observed changes in the landscape; ‘the movement and rhythms of the sea and the land … the merging of sea with air, advancing rain and mist, ever changing light – elements that seem to be about something intangible.’ In order to immerse herself in the environment, Ellis makes much of the artwork on site where extreme weather and the elements find their way into the pieces. Ellis describes the process of working outdoors in wild weather as almost ‘performative’. Some of the pieces made on paper on site become the basis for larger works on canvas painted back in the studio. Here, Ellis usually works with oil paint, building up the surfaces using natural substances like sand and dried seaweed. By producing the art work she hopes it will give people a chance to connect with …

Art in motion with Erik Saglia

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Born in 1989, Erik Saglia lives and works in Turin in Italy. In his early works Erik Saglia, starting with the implications of the “modernist grid”, emphasizes and restructures it replicating it first with graph paper and spray, then with adhesive tape, that, perfectly laid in orthogonal lines, covers the camouflage spots; the tape is stuck in a precise and rigorous way, submitting the body to the discipline of the exact gesture that contrasts with the free aggregation of the spots below. In the recent works, the strictness that seems to disappear with the smoother motion of tape come back thanks to the precision of applying resin, revived with an almost sculptural thickness. The use of materials, spray paint, tape and synthetic resin, seeks to renew the concept of surface, deleting every biographical and pop aspect reconnecting the work by Erik Saglia to the Spatialist research by Lucio Fontana and the lesson of Alighiero Boetti. Erik Saglia has already participated at several group shows, among all: Too big or not too big at Thomas Brambilla …

“J’ai rêvé le Beau” avec le peintre vénitien Roger de Montebello

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Depuis « Venise la rouge » comme la décrivait Alfred de Musset, le peintre Roger de Montebello suit les traces des grands maîtres qui ont consacré leur don à la représentation parfaite de la Sérénissime. Explorant les liens entre la peinture métaphysique et le monde Méditerranéen, Roger de Montebello se situe à Venise, entre Orient et Occident, là où le cœur d’un Art en quête de sens bat au quotidien. Roger de Montebello découvre très tôt les lieux qui inspireront plus tard sa peinture : Venise, la Méditerranée, l’Espagne. Ses études l’emmènent à Séville où il acquiert les bases de la peinture à la faculté des beaux-arts, puis à Harvard où il étudie à la fois la pratique picturale et l’histoire de l’art. De retour en Europe, il ne tarde pas à se consacrer entièrement à son art. Ses voyages le portent souvent sur les rivages de la mer Méditerranée. Ses thèmes principaux sont les vues urbaines, notamment Venise, la corrida peinte sur le vif et le portrait. En 1994, René Huyghe, éminent spécialiste de la peinture …

Beyond the visible with Luis Beltràn

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Hailing from Valencia in Spain, contemporary photographer Luis Beltràn may be regarded as a storyteller who uses photography to set his mind free from everyday life. Through his pictures, Luis Beltrán talks about loneliness and mystery, suspended between reality and imagination and dedicates his work « to those who daydream, who live in fantasy worlds and don’t want to wake up ». Although not entirely fantastical, his images have been retouched to make each setting slightly unreal, giving it a sense of the impossible while firmly keeping one foot in reality. Luis Beltran is represented by Agora Gallery in New York, Blanca Berlin in Madrid, Artloveyou in Barcelona, Mediadvanced in Gijón and Galería O+O in Valencia. His work has been published in such magazines as Ex Magazine and Art Notes. 1. Do you consider yourself as a figure of contemporary photography ? Luis Beltràn : As long as I can remember, the pursuit of creativity and talent always fascinated me. One day, I discovered that I could express myself through photography. It allows me to …

Dean West, photography grounded in reality

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A wide range of environments and character types are explored in the works of New York City-based Dean West. The Australian-born (1983) artist who studied at the Queensland College of Art, is best known for his intricate and highly staged photographs that take everyday occurrences beyond the realm of natural reality. Extraordinary in their tonal range, digital clarity, and artistic vision, Dean West’s meticulously choreographed scenes, character studies, and atmospheric landscapes powerfully yet synthetically link needs to desires and documentation to invention. Passionately dedicated to the vast possibilities of digital photography as both a medium and a cultural epoch, Dean West’s narratives draw inspiration from the total diversity offered by the visual arts. While the tableau photography of Stan Douglas and Jeff Wall inform Dean West’s understanding of photography as a form of contemporary communication, the paintings of David Hockney and Edward Hopper provide evident aesthetic direction. The fictional world of cinema and the functional language of advertising have also clearly left their mark and taught lessons of their own. International brands have embraced Dean …

Ian Rayer Smith, painting that makes visible the invisible

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Since graduating in 2013, british contemporary artist Ian Rayer Smith has been prolific in his creating and is establishing himself as a highly accomplished and award winning artist, who explores and pushes the boundaries of contemporary painting with his own unique expressive style. His work is highly charged with emotion, vibrant and energetic. Strongly influenced by the work of the abstract expressionists and the romantic light of the old masters, Rayer-Smith’s large oil and acrylic paintings effortlessly fuse abstraction, the figurative and the surreal. Ian Rayer Smith paints full time from studios in Manchester and in rural North Shropshire, England. Voted one of Manchester’s Top 10 Artists by Manchester Confidential and Winner of the 2014 Warrington Contemporary Prize, Ian Rayer-Smith has been hailed as one of the North’s artists to watch.  1. Do you consider yourself as an emerging artist in contemporary art? Ian Rayer Smith : I hope so. As a contemporary painter, I’ve been constantly experimenting and evolving to the point where I have now established my own artistic identity that validates me …

Painting is silent poetry with Betsy Eby

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In her paintings, Betsy Eby fuses the line between the musical and the visual composition. A classically trained pianist, she seeks in her work what Rothko described as “the place where music lives.” The layers and gestures of her paintings evoke musical spaces and rhythms while drawing on patterns found in nature. From her early childhood, musical and natural rhythms blended in Eby’s sensibility. She spent her first years of life in a small town on the Oregon coast, practicing at the family piano by the age of five. Today her work reveals that interconnected sensitivity: her delicate, organic compositions become synesthesias of sound and image. Painting with Fire features the artist’s recent paintings that utilize the technique of encaustic, which means “to burn.” The process is an ancient one by which layers of pigments, sap, and wax are fused together by the flame of a torch. Eby has slowly refined the technique to her own language, composing dynamic surfaces and deep, luminous spaces. Her abstract paintings incorporate a soothing palette and subtly reference wildflowers, …