|
New York: Raandesk Gallery of Art
announces Optical: Staged. Optical
is an annual juried competition held
by Raandesk Gallery for photography. Each year a new theme is selected and works
from around the world are submitted for consideration. The theme, Staged, was
selected by one of the competition's jurors for the 2010 competition and served
as a single word platform for photographers to present their work. The
exhibition is comprised of photographs created by the top five finalists of the
competition and serves to be dramatic as well as insightful into each artist's
individual definition of the theme. The exhibition will feature both small
and large-scale black & white and color photographs by Katarzyna Majak, Tom
Prado, Margaret McCarthy, Frances Berry and Vincent Zambrano.
About the Finalists
Katarzyna
Majak
First place winner Katarzyna Majak has chosen to
photograph different phases in the "life" of an item of clothing. Through
staging and performance the project reveals fascination, idealization and
"disengagement" from external factors that influence us (be it objects or
people). Majak received her B.F.A. in Photography at Poznan Academy of Fine Arts
(now a PhD candidate). She has exhibited and curated throughout the U.S. and
Poland where she is a member of the Association of Polish Art
Photographers.
Tom Prado
Second place winner, Tom Prado has created a series of diptychs entitled
Double Take, that challenge the veracity of the photographic image.
Photography has the ability to deceive and capture t he truth. Double Take embraces this dichotomy by photographing different objects, in public and
private spaces, that repeat. Although different objects, when photographed from
the same perspective, they give the illusion of sameness. Prado was born in
Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982. He received his B.F.A. in Photography from the
Rhode Island School of Design, 2009.
Margaret McCarthy
Margaret McCarthy's series, Late Night Animals, is a display of animals as guests on late night TV talk shows.
She explores the reactions of the TV hosts interactions between the exotic
animals as a mirror of our own reactions. The animals are brought on the show to
educate the mass TV audience, but in humorous and strange ways their "15 minutes
of fame" end up entertaining our basic human desire to know these animals on our
own terms and in our own comfort zone. M cCarthy tries to speak
to our conflicted reactions about co-existing with wildness and the natural
world, and the irony of a culture that seems to love these animals to death but
can't seem to leave them alone. She has exhibited her photographs extensively,
including the Fogg Art Museum, the Overseas Press Club and the Hudson River
Museum, as well as numerous galleries, universities and public exhibition
spaces.
Frances Berry
Berry is a formalist at her core,
naturally abiding by the laws of good design: line, color, repetition, symmetry.
Drawn to single saturated colors, modular forms, and unusual compositions, her
photographs are bold representations of the everyday dream that she is living
in.
Vincent Zambrano
The
Sleep of Doubt series is Zambrano's latest photo-collage, a rework from
etchings by the Spanish artist, Francisco de Goya. The five original images are
a spin off of the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment of Age of Reason.
Zambrano has put his own spin on the images with his Sur-American culture and
Spanish heritage. He has put himself as the subject to represent a different
view on society. In each image he  appears as the Sleep of Doubt figure with the specter of unreason hovering nearby; its presence being a
constant reminder that humans are not perfectly rational, or enlightened all the
time. A native of Manta Ecuador, Zambrano grew up in Queens, New York where he
studied Fine Arts at the Fashion Institute of Technology. He continued his
studies at The School of Visual Arts to widen his creative talent as film
director. Throughout the years, Zambrano has exhibited his works in several
group shows and private collections in the U.S. In 2002 he was accepted in the
HBO International New York Film Festival for his film "La Arana". Among his
other films he wrote and directed "The Heart of a Broken Tale" which was
accepted at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006.
About the Optical 2010
Jurors:
Evan
Mirapaul is an art collector who specializes in photography. Since
1989, travel has been a catalyst for this collector. It has become his goal to
seek out artists, particularly photographers, and galleries wherever he goes.
Highlights of his personal collection include the work of world-renowned
American documentary photographer Ray K Metzker (b. 1931, see www.laurencemillergallery.com), young
American photographer Tim Davis (b.1969, see www.agvdgallery.com), and Brazilian
artist and recent BALTIC exhibitor Vik Muniz. He documents his encounters with
photography on his blog, "Fugitive Vision". Mirapaul is the co-chair of the
Friends of the Library Committee for the International Center for
Photography.
JP
Pullos
After studying at the George Eastman House and at ICP, JP Pullos joined
Patrick McMullan's team of event and celebrity photographers and has spent the
past three years documenting the urban jungle that is New York City. His
editorial work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Women's
Wear Daily, GQ, the Village Voice, and Time Out New York. More recently, he has
turned his attention to teaching photography while simultaneously working on
documentary portraiture.
Listing Information
When:
Exhibition
Dates: March 10, 2011 through April 23, 2011
Opening Reception: March 10, 2011, 7 - 9 PM
Where:
Raandesk Gallery of
Art
16 W. 23rd Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY
10010
|
