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Monday
Feb202012

Mona Kuhn

spacer Monday, February 20, 2012 at 09:16AM

Portrait of Kuhn by James Franco...

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Mona Kuhn will be exhibiting her new works titled Bordeaux Series at the Flowers gallery in NYC located at 529 West 20th st from Feb 24 - Mach 24. Mona was born and raised in Brazil. Twenty years ago she moved to the US. The Summers are spent at her house in France where the Bordeaux Series was created. 

"As I step into this house, I enter a parallel reality that unravels and exists only for a few months of the year. We cook and gather around the table. We speak plainly together of ourselves, and it feels as though these moments we have shared over the years are strung together into a braid of tales. As the night arrives, we are surrounded by the dark silhouettes of pine trees and the sensual play of wind on foliage. The smell of resin mixes with the verbena in our tea. The days fill up with a sense of abandon, as if life in between never mattered." Mona Kuhn

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UTP ~ How did you love of photography begin?

Mona ~ I began taking photographs at age 12, when my parents gave me a small Kodak camera for my birthday.  The first images were of my friends during that day.  In a way, little has changed. I like to photograph people I have known for a while, or good friends of friends of mine.  I find people thru word of mouth, someone’s boyfriend, sister, cousin. It feels more intimate, a bit like an extended family.

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UTP ~ Who and what inspire you?

Mona ~ I am influenced by everything, movies, photography, billboards, books, paintings, graffiti.  I am looking and absorbing all I can see with my eyes.  In regards to photography, early on my strongest influences were Mario Cravo Neto, a Brazilian photographer working mostly with dark figures and nudes.  His work is sensational, and early on influenced mine very much.  Then when I moved to the US, I was marveled by the work of the twin brothers Starn.  It had little direct influence on my personal work, but it opened my mind for taking photography as a serious form of expression.  I also love the lifetime works of Nan Goldin, Leon Levinstein and the photography in Julian Schnabel’s movies.  

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UTP ~ Talk us through your creative process.

Mona ~ I start my creative process by imagining colors.  I don’t know why, but coloration comes to me first.  From there I tie in emotion, then location and last the people. I might be working 6 months into a project before I find the right person to photograph.  This preliminary phase gives me time to submerge, to really feel and bring out what I am trying to say, what I am trying to express.  By the time I start photographing people, I already know what I want, the visual vocabulary is matured, so photographing people feels natural and in line with the overall emotion I am trying to convey.

As i started Bordeaux Series, i knew from the start, it to be a reductive approach: simple traditional portraits done in one single room, along with landscapes of the region.  As i imagined the colors early on, i was sure it had to be reduced as well to a basic yet very classic palette: black, white and red.

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 UTP ~ What advice do you have for aspiring artists?

Mona ~ My advice is for them to follow there inner voice, to trust themselves and lastly to show up on time!

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 For more information on Mona Kuhn Go Here:

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Friday
Feb172012

Max Snow on his upcoming show at the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts Gallery

spacer Friday, February 17, 2012 at 11:53AM

portrait of Max Snow...

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Max Snow was born in 1984, and raised in New York City. He studied at the London College of Communications. He is known for his signature black and white photographs, intimate and melancholic, at times as uncomfortable as they are sublime. Beauty, fantasy, mortality, and the metaphysical are all recurring themes. Snow's work is brave, inspiring and original. His upcoming show titled "100 Headless Woman will be on view at the Kathleen Cullen Fine Arts Gallery at 526 w.26th st  in NYC from 3/2 - 4/3. We recently caught up with Max to ask him a few questions about the show.

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UTP ~  In your upcoming show "100 Headless Woman" the faces of the woman shown are obscured. How did this idea come about?

Max ~ I have been experimenting with applying foreign mediums to photographs for some time now and am finally pleased with the achieved results. The obscuring of the faces adds a new dimension to the portrait in both the physical and the intellectual sense. The inks that I use add a new tone and texture and another dimension. In the cerebral sense the masked subject puts what you know at odds. It defies convention. Most importantly it adds mystery, that’s what I like the most..

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UTP ~ You have said that the series "Black Magic" came from an introspective period of your life. How would you describe the period of your life your were in while creating this show?

Max ~ While creating this show I felt lighter. A little less plagued by demons maybe. There are bets being placed as to how long it will last. Maybe I’m on a smoother stretch of road.

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UTP ~ Your work has dealt with mortality, pain, the KKK... generally speaking the  darker areas of humanity, with it some imagery that to most viewers would be unfamiliar or uncomfortable. In this show the  subject matter seems to invite the viewer in for a closer look. Was this your intention?

Max ~ In a way yes. In this series I have photographed nudes against a featureless white backdrop. I have focused the viewers gaze on the subjects by abstracting them from any precise time or place. And then obscured their faces. By taking away the eyes, you take away a viewers normal focal point for relating to a portrait. It forces you to look at the subjects in a new way. The fact that what you are looking at a subject that stood for a portrait melts away into shapes. Then one subject melts away into the entire body of work and you see forms en masse and maybe you are using your imagination again.

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UTP ~  On display will be church statues of saints with dissolved and chipped away features. I'm sure the Catholic church will have something to say about this. What role has religion played in your life? 

Max ~ I don’t care what they have to say to be honest. I learned one thing which has gotten me this far, If you give a fuck what anyone thinks you will never survive. I would be more nervous to tell my printer that Ive defaced the beautiful prints we made. I grew up in a family of diverse religious persuasions. My immediate family is Catholic but there are Sufis, Buddhists, etc. For some strange reason though, of all my siblings, I was the only one who wasn’t baptized. My mother used to say it was because she couldn’t file my horns down fast enough and holy water would boil when I went near it. In answer to the question, If I didn’t reveal that the sculptures began as church sculptures no one would most likely know. I also do not mean to degrade or deface these icons, only change them. There can be beauty in destruction. More like an erosion or a metamorphosis. Im sure if I sat down for a beer with Mary Magdalene or St. Theresa they wouldn’t mind If I explained that perhaps this is a second Martyrdom and that perhaps a new audience would be viewing their effegies that normally would not. The sculptures, like the photographs are undiscernible. They are what you would make them in your minds eye. They are enigmatic ghosts.

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UTP ~  What advice do you have for young artists of today?

Max ~ Don’t give a fuck what anyone thinks. Be true to your self… Wait, Am I not a young artist?

To see more about Max go here:

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Sunday
Feb122012

Michael Bilsborough

spacer Sunday, February 12, 2012 at 08:19AM

 

Portrait of Michael Bilsborough...
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Michael Bilsborough was born in the desert of California. He received a BA from Columbia University in 2001 and his MFA from School of Visual Arts in 2006. Bilsborough's work is precisely crafted and often monumental in showcase. His figuritive work corrresponds to biological ideals, while the spaces they inhabit belong to geometric archetypes. His work all draw from real-world memories. He is currently based in New York. We caught up with Micheal to ask him a few questions about his art...

spacer Angels vs.Aliens, 2012

UTP ~ How did your passion for the arts and figurative work begin?  

Michael ~ Being born.

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UTP ~ Who are some of the other artists who inspire you?

Michael ~ Friendship, or at least a personal relationship, with the artist is a condition of inspiration, at least for me.  Rachel Mason, mostly a performance artist, inspires me to magnify my vision.  TM Davy inspires me to keep it close to the source.  Kathryn Garcia inspires me to balance my motivations with my audience.  Sam Gordon inspires me to keep my eyes open.  There are many more: Keith Mayerson, Frank Haines, Robert Melee, Lisa Kirk, and Scott Hug.

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UTP ~ How did the use of drafting film in your work come about?

Michael ~ Many years ago, I was walking in the desert where I grew up, and found a map printed on a translucent plastic sheet.  I knew right away that I could use this material.  It enables me to draw on both sides and build up drawings in layers.  I also like how a translucent material embodies the transparency of how I'm drawing.  I pursue drawing as a record of thinking, deciding, and even fantasizing and for that kind of transparency, it's fitting to use a see-through material.

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UTP ~ In your figurative work we have seen men with men, women with women and men with women. What inspired you to vary your pairings?

Michael ~ An artist has to see dreams (or nightmares) in male and female bodies alike.  There's little room for preference.  There are times when I intentionally draw women while thinking of a feminine space, or men in a masculine space. But sometimes, I draw figures and the gender just emerges by accident: I begin to draw a man, and then see that he'd look better as a woman.  Or vice versa.  Anyway, I think my pairings are quite unvaried.  I haven't taken on intersexed and transsexual figures.  I've also left out youths, animals, plants, produce, tools, furniture, and many other counterparts known to mythology and reality - for the most part. There is the occasional wine bottle or fruit.

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UTP ~ That brings us to our next question, You have spoken about your Catholic background in past interviews and we can see this influence especially in some of your early works. What are your thoughts on it today?

Michael ~ Going to church while growing up meant visiting a life-sized, semi-nude, polished Christ on the cross once a week. Every Catholic church has one and to varying degrees, it's the focal point of the congregation.  In my work, every figure is potentially a crucified Christ, because that image is at the center of my "figurative" imagination.  For a while, Catholic art - the Italian Renaissance - inspired some of the pictures I made.  Now that's less of an influence.  And personally, I think the institution of the Church is so regressive that I can only respond with hostility.  I don't like to bring hostility into my art.  Or maybe I don't know how.

 UTP ~ What advice would you give the young artists of today?

Michael ~ Make friends with artists you really like and stay close to them.

To see more of Michael's work go here:

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Sunday
Feb052012

Paolo Roversi at the Wapping Project Bankside

spacer Sunday, February 5, 2012 at 08:42AM

Self Portrait by Roversi

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Paolo Roversi was born in Ravenna Italy in 1947. His passion for photography began as a teenager during a vacation in Spain in 1964. In 1970 he started collaborating with the Accociated Press, his first assignment was to cover Ezra Pound's funeral in Venice. In 1971 he met Peter Knapp, art director of Elle Magazine. At Knapp's invitation, Paolo visited Paris in 1973 and never left.

The British photographer Lawrence Sackmann took Paolo on as his assistant in 1974. Roversi credits him for teaching him all he knows today about photography. Sackmann always use to say "your tripod and camera must be well-fixed but your eyes and mind should be free."

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spacer On View from Feb 03 - March 31  

For more Information go to the Wrappping Project Bankside site here:

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Thursday
Feb022012

Steven Spazuk

spacer Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 09:03AM

Selfportrait, 2007 soot on paper 80x119 in. 

composed of 272 pieces that fit into a shoebox 

spacer Steven Spazuk is a French Canadian artist who has been working with a technique he developed in 2001 that allows him to use a flame from a candle or torch to create his paintings with the trails of soot that remain. Tools manipulate the soot left behind on thick paper to develop gossamer transparencies, volkuptuos spheres with ephemeral halos and x-ray like images of the soul's body.

He works in large composition as well as smaller pieces of paper that assemble to form a large portrait mosaic. Paint is also incororated in to his work on occasion for that splash of color.

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