ERIK BERGRIN: THE 8 DISSOLUTIONS EXHIBITION

Dissolution 8 – Emptiness – One starts to become conscious again, the clear light of death manifests. This appears as a clear vacuum-like empty sky. “I visualize the vastness of traveling through space. An open vacuum of blackness with shining stars and colorful nebulae, harnessing the energy of the sun in order to be reborn.”

Morris Museum Announces Fiber Sculpture Installation by Artist Erik Bergrin Exhibition on View January 28 – July 10, 2022

The 8 Dissolutions is a fiber-sculpture installation by New York City-based artist and costume maker Erik Bergrin. A student of Buddhist philosophy, Bergrin explores the transience of the human body and the eternity of the mind in this new collection of work. The exhibition takes its name from the eight dissolutions, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation practice that visualizes one’s mortality in the recurring cycle of death and rebirth on the path to enlightenment. The costumes are entirely handsewn, made from fabrics created by Bergrin using traditional techniques such as weaving and felting, as well as grown from unusual materials such as seaweed, fermented tea, and crystallizations. Some include integrated drums and rattles. A video monitor documents a performance with the costumes making musical sounds with each movement, revealing the multidisciplinary nature of Bergrin’s artistic approach.

“The 8 Dissolutions,” is a Buddhist death process in which the senses and elements shut down in 8 stages. There is a visualization meditation that guides you through the 8 stages. Dissolution 1 starts with the earth element dissolving, as well as your sight. Dissolution 2, is water and sound, etc. I practiced this visualization repeatedly to imagine the pieces. To create the visceral textures that I was seeing, I experimented with developing new kinds of textiles. I developed fabric made of sodium alginate seaweed, spent a year growing leather like materials from kombucha scobies, growing crystals on fabrics, embedded handmade drums in pieces, making bioplastics from seaweed, and melting bismuth to make colorful crystals, along with weaving, coiling, and felting. During the visualization, my hands always wanted to move a certain way, which is why each piece is associated with a mudra, or hand gesture. Each of these mudras is photographed and printed on fabric that was sewn into dresses which will hang behind each piece to act as a shadow. The show has a video component of people wearing the pieces, along with a teacher showing the mudras to each model. Each piece is also associated with a sound that will build up one by one and will play throughout the gallery to accompany the video.

Dissolution 1: Earth and Sight – The element of earth dissolves. The eye sense power deteriorates. The person ceases to see clearly, unable to open or close their eyes. As the earth element dissolves it evokes the experience of the dying person being buried beneath the earth. The visualization of this dissolution brought forth imagery of straps crossing and binding over my body as my arms hung lifeless at my sides sinking back.

In Tibetan Buddhism, meditating on the eight dissolutions, or eight stages of death, allows the practitioner to prepare their consciousness to move into the cycle of rebirth without fear. Erik Bergrin first experienced this visualization meditation at a monastery in Nepal, where he was struck by imagery of colors and textures. Through repeated practice, clear visualizations of each dissolution emerged with a corresponding symbolic hand gesture known as a mudra. Each of the pieces in this exhibition is a representation of Bergrin’s visualizations realized. “Meditating on your own death is a way to realize how precious your life is.” -Erik Bergrin

Dissolution 2: Water and Sound – The element of water dissolves. The ear sense power deteriorates. The person can no longer hear sounds. The body can no longer feel the three types of feeling: pleasure, pain, and neutral. The fluids from the body dry up: urine, saliva, blood, and sweat. The burning heat of red pain creeps up one arm and the uplifting icy blue creeps up the other, meeting at neutral at my neck. My body starts to shrivel and dry up, like a vacuum sucking away all the fluid leaving the fossilized bones remaining. What hangs in the center is the reminder of the sound of where water once was.

Sculptural Processes:

Kombucha Leather developed similarly to kombucha tea. Scobys (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), water, sugar, and tea are brewed in a large container and fed once a week. The scobys produce a layer on top of the liquid as a way to protect themselves, which after a month is removed. This thick flat sheet of slime dries into a translucent piece of leather after a week. The leather is colored using different types of tea and food coloring during the growing process. It took almost a year to grow enough leather for the pieces in the exhibition.

Seaweed Textile developed from sodium alginate, glycerin, and water mixture then laid over wool roving and sprayed with calcium chloride to harden.

Grown Crystal Textile Pipe cleaners with rubber mat backing are soaked in a bath of borax and water to crystallize. The mixture is then sprayed with translucent tint spray.

Armature Wire and Wax Armature wire is hammered down and wrapped with wax thread to create strands that sound like water when a hand is run over them.

Drums Rawhide is soaked and stretched over a wooden frame and laced together in the back.

Bismuth Silver charms are dipped into melted down bismuth to create colorful bismuth crystals.

The exhibition is curated by the Morris Museum’s Ronald T. Labaco, Director of Exhibitions and Collections/Chief Curator, and Michelle Graves, Curatorial Assistant.

Founded in 1913, the Morris Museum is an award-winning, multifaceted arts and cultural institution serving the public through its exhibitions and performances, which strive to interpret the past and discover the future through art, sound, and motion. The Museum is home to the historic and internationally-significant Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata. The Museum’s Bickford Theatre is a 312-seat performing-arts facility, offering unique programming in film, jazz, and live performance through its innovative series, Live Arts. As New Jersey’s only Smithsonian Affiliate, it launched Spark!Lab, a dynamic, Smithsonian-created learning space which will inspire young visitors to create, collaborate, and innovate.

Morris Museum
6 Normandy Heights Road
Morristown, NJ 07960

Museum Hours:
Monday – Tuesday, Closed
Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00AM to 5:00PM
https://morrismuseum.org/

NFT COLLECTION OF RICHARD BERNSTEIN

The Estate of Richard Bernstein is proud to announce the first series in a new NFT program of rare and extremely collectible artworks by famed Pop Artist Richard Bernstein. In collaboration with digital art platform Culture Vault, Rory Trifon (president of the estate as well as the late artist’s nephew) has selected a small catalogue of digitally created works by Bernstein featuring subject Andy Warhol as well as Bernstein’s iconic 1984 cover of Grace Jones for Interview Magazine. The Richard Bernstein NFT Collection debuts on February 3rd, 2022, at www.culturevault.com.

It is likely that Bernstein would have thoroughly embraced NFTs were he around today as he was the first Pop Artist to use computer-generated graphics in the early 1980s to create fine art. Bernstein was the first to embrace digital technology which enabled him to distort and transform images which would then be combined with hand painting on oversized canvases.

Bernstein, often cited by Andy Warhol as his favorite artist, was commissioned by Warhol to create the iconic celebrity portraits for the covers of his Interview Magazine from 1972 to 1989. The NFT Collection is an opportune venue to celebrate the artist’s professional alliance in a new medium that both Artists would have surely embraced if they were around today.

The first NFT is titled “Andy Warhol with Red Paint” and features an image of a paint splattered Warhol with a yellow box and red paint splatter in 1990. This was Bernstein’s signature digital piece when it debuted at The Cornerstone Galleries in 1992, curated by Joan Quinn. This NFT will be an edition of 1 and will be accompanied with a framed one-off print as well as a copy of Bernstein’s out of print book and access to VIP events.
The second NFT is titled “Warhol Wallpaper” featuring one of Bernstein’s most famous images from 1973. Warhol is depicted as a floating head, varying in size in perspective and painted in his own silkscreen style. This NFT will be an edition of 10, in the varying colors Bernstein mocked up, and each token holder will receive entry to VIP events as well as a copy of Bernstein’s out of print book, MegaStar from 1984.

The third NFT is titled “Grace Jones”. Richard Bernstein’s contribution to iconic performer Grace Jones’ image cannot be overestimated. Designing the art for most of her album covers from the 70s and 80s, Bernstein alternatively played the role of stylist, confidante, and friend. This image, created for Jones’s 1984 cover of Interview Magazine, brilliantly captures the groundbreaking image Bernstein and Jones created together. This will be an edition of 50 and each token holder will gain access to VIP events including a New York print exhibition in May 2022.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT MAURICIO PADILHA [email protected]

SK Manor Hill

Clothing by SK Manor Hill (Fall/ Winter 2019)

Photographer: Jason Rodgers @jasonrodgersphoto
Art Direction: Paul Hamann @pablomoses
Styling: Ian McRae @iannxo
Hair and Grooming: Matthew Tuozzoli @tuozzoli
Featuring: Alioune Badara Fall @aliounebf
Amber Chandler @ambermchandler
Dominic Sondag @skminorhill
and Garfield

Clothing by SK Manor Hill (Fall/ Winter 2019)

CONGO TALES BY PIETER HENKET

The World’s Attention is Brought to the Earth’s Other Amazon Rainforest – Africa’s Congo Basin – in Congo Tales (Random House / Prestel, November 15, 2018)

Adapted for Congo Tales by Congolese philosopher S.R. Kovo N’Sondé and award winning author Wilfried N’Sondé, and put in print (in English, French and Lingala) for the first time in Congo Tales.

In the deep heart of Africa lies a tropical rainforest second only in size to the Amazon – the Congo Basin. It measures 500 million acres, spans 6 nations, and is home to some of the largest swaths of intact tropical rainforest in the world, with the pristine Odzala Kokoua National Park as crown jewel.

Known to ecologists as the world’s second lung, the Congo Basin is the Earth’s other Amazon – as vital to preventing runaway Climate Change as the Brazilian rainforest and as vulnerable to deforestation and abuse. Yet the Congo Basin falls far short of the Amazon when it comes to the world’s awareness of it as a major player in the global environment, a cathedral of nature’s treasures, and a stopgap against looming ecological catastrophe.

Congo Tales (Prestel, November 15th, 2018) is intended to help solve this lack of awareness, and help create a conservation infrastructure for this critical pillar of the world’s fragile ecological balance.

Upturning the traditional conventions of fear-based environmental messaging and the portrayal of Africa solely as a place of plague and war, Congo Tales takes a completely different approach to communicating the urgency of conservation efforts in this region.

In this groundbreaking photo series that was 5 years in the making, national Congolese who live in the Mbomo district of the Congo Basin staged their never-before recorded mythology for fine art portrait photographer Pieter Henket (Lady Gaga, Eddie Redmayne, Mary J. Blige). Henket’s portraits – of dozens of children forming the shape of an Mbomo (or Boa Constrictor); of over a hundred Congolese women assembled at the border of the forest; of Congolese men on the hunt for a mythical bird – make the Congolese, their myths, and the rainforest the stars of Congo Tales, and communicate the magic and mystery of this little understood place, and its incalculable value to the planet.

In the book, editors Eva Vonk (who spent 3 years working closely with people in the Mbomo district to record their mythologies) and Stefanie Plattner (who produced the project) delve into and reveal the wealth of the Congo Basin and its people, illustrating both with Henket’s cinematic and surreal portraiture of the Congolese depicting their legends, tales and lore under the canopy of ancient rainforest from which they sprang.

Channeling the primal heartbeat of one of the world’s most powerful ecosystems and the people who call it home, the mythological tales of the Congolese – of supernatural forces in control of life and death, of ritualistic initiations into adulthood, of the laws of nature that lie outside the laws of people – are revealed as a treasure trove of universal wisdom that is both existential and pragmatic, with the unspoiled Odzala Kokoua National Park as stage and actor.

A groundbreaking book of scholarly anthropology that calls on the work of Joseph Campbell and the Brothers Grimm, and a captivating work of art and photography, Congo Tales is a feat of innovative environmental messaging and cross-cultural and cross-continental collaboration intended to both prevent the loss of this all-important bastion of nature, and reveal its priceless value to the world and our communal future in it.

Henket’s signature style takes inspiration from the use of light in 17th Century Dutch Golden Age painting, known best by Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. Henket, who grew up in The Netherlands, used powerful battery- powered strobe lighting in the rainforest to evoke a similar effect, thus rendering a surreal finish appropriate to the mythology of the Congolese. Proceeds from the sale of Henket’s Congo Tales photographs at Christie’s in January, 2019 go back to supporting the recording of Congolese legends and lore, and to similar story-telling projects in other unsung parts of the world through Tales of Us.

HIROKO KOSHINO: A TOUCH OF BAUHAUS

Please join us on Thursday, November 1^st from 6 to 8 PM at WhiteBox in NYC and meet Hiroko Koshino at the opening of her exhibit, Hiroko Koshino: A Touch of BAUHAUS.

A Touch of BAUHAUS, curated by Kyoko Sato, is part of the WhiteBox Prime SAS (Seminal Artists Series), which honors artists of great repute. Past participants of the WhiteBox Prime SAS include Carolee Schneemann: More Wrong Things, Michael Snow: Snow Alert, Naoto Nagakawa: XXX-1960’s, Vienna Actionists Hermann Nitsch and Günther Brus, Hyman Bloom, Braco Dimitrijevic and Aldo Tambellini to name a few.

Post-World War II Japan found itself in the midst of rapid economic and cultural transformation – one in which growing industries such as technology and fashion shot to the forefront. It was amidst this landscape that a group of young people began rebelling by sporting a preppy, Ivy League look that broke stride with propriety-and time-honored traditions, and celebrated individualism. Known as the “Miyuki Tribe”, with Hiroko Koshino at the helm, talented young fashionistas began reinterpreting traditional Japanese artistic elements through a personalized and radical lens.

Visual artists began to be influenced by various new incoming art notions culled from Abstract Expressionism and Land Art, paralleled by the indigenous and subversive Gutai movement. This fresh shift in artistic perspectives made way for a wave of artistic leaders that included Hiroko Koshino. Building on her belief in the unity of all forms of art-a Bauhaus tenet- the classically trained Koshino used key elements to inform her paintings and sumi-ink masterworks as the basis for her stunning fashion designs, resulting in her recognition as one of the foremost couturiers in Japan.

HIROKO KOSHINO: A Touch of BAUHAUS will, for the first time in New York, reveal how Koshino’s visual artworks inform her high fashion designs. Curated by Kyoko Sato at WhiteBox, the exhibition will include Koshino’s most inventive runway pieces, side-by-side with her signature abstract paintings and sumi-ink works, including-in WhiteBox’s project space-a site-specific eighty-foot-long ink scroll that epitomizes her brilliant combination of art and design as Gesamtkunstwerk, the Bauhaus approach towards a total artwork.

After years of creating riveting artworks inspired by key painters ranging from Jackson Pollock to Gustav Klimt, as well as the Lyrical Abstraction and Tachism movements, Koshino began experimenting with the connection between art and fashion in the serene studio created for her by her colleague, genius architect Tadao Ando, in Ashiya. There she was able to deeply connect with her love for Mother Nature, free from the hustle and bustle demands of Tokyo, while infusing her paintings with a deeply Japanese attitude.

Koshino’s innovative design techniques, based on painting with sumi-ink directly onto the fabric, were the essence of many of her innovative fashion creations. In an essay on Koshino and her works, critic Anthony Haden-Guest writes, “Hiroko’s Sumi-Ink works are wholly beautiful, but not so much so as to overwhelm. They do not exclude, they embrace.”

Early in the history of Japanese art, Nihonga, tradition-based Japanese paintings, used to be exhibited in separate spaces from yōga, or artwork with Western influences. A push for change and a reconciliation of the two energies was beginning to happen. Thus Haden-Guest points out that while Hiroko’s work is “delicate, forceful and remarkably various … it embodies this accommodation, in her fashion, as in her art,” fusing the two styles.

In 1977, Hiroko joined the cutting-edge group “TD6” (Top Designers 6), presenting her fashion collection in Tokyo for the first time. Since, she has been showcasing twice a year. In 1978, she became the first Japanese designer to join Alta Moda in Rome, a sensational show earning her a thirty-page article in the Italian edition of Harper’s Bazaar.

In 1982 Hiroko Koshino created International Inc., leading the “Designer’s Character Brand” boom that turned fashion into a top industry in Japan. Subsequently, she debuted her brand and her signature prêt-à-porter collection at the Paris Fashion Week, to great acclaim.

Koshino considers herself an artist since childhood. She got started drawing characters from Manga and Anime, attending Kabuki plays regularly, influenced as well by the Bunraku national puppet theater of Japan. Six decades later, Koshino unabashedly continues her painting career, having created, by now, well over 1,900 paintings using a wide variety of techniques and inventive, unorthodox paint applications.

Her artwork continues as a wellspring of inspiration flowing right into her fashion design. “I can continue designing because I paint,” Koshino explains. Indeed, her paintings frequently function as brainstorm-drafts for what will later become one of the extraordinary design creations that she refers to as “the architecture of the body”, all along carrying as part of her signature, the elemental Japanese sense of sculptural ‘high volume’ in her couture.

Although her artwork and design are deeply intertwined, Koshino explains there is a definite separation between the two camps. “The process of production in fashion and art is very different,” she says. “When I make art, I can express my spirit directly. It is very personal. When I create fashion, I need to think about what people want, and I need to design what people will buy, so it unequivocally contains a business aspect.”

–Kyoko Sato

Koshino’s works will be showcased at WhiteBox with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on November 1st. The exhibition runs through December 1st.

“I can continue designing because I paint,” Koshino says. “Both design and art are my creation, and I cannot divide them.” This thought reminds people of Bauhaus-style “total work of art” (Gesamtkunstwerk), which became the title of her New York debut exhibition at the WhiteBox [HIROKO KOSHINO: A TOUCH OF BAUHAUS (329 Broome Street); Curator Kyoko Sato (Nov. 1-Dec. 1, 2018)]

FASHION INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY LECTURE BY HIROKO KOSHINO

Thursday, November 1, 2018 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Fashion Institute of Technology

227 W 27th St, New York, NY 10001

Feldman C501

About WhiteBox:
WhiteBox, on its 20th anniversary remains a non-profit art space aiming for total invention catalyzing the tenor of the times. It serves as a platform for contemporary artists to develop and showcase new sitespecific work, and is a laboratory for unique commissions, exhibitions, special events, roundtables, and arts education programs, providing an opportunity to experience an artist’s practice in a meaningful way, socially inspired free from market constraints. WhiteBox artistic vision provides hard to pigeon-hole artists with sustained exposure, creating an ideal environment for more in-depth interaction between sophisticated as well as community-bound New York audiences and artists’ practices. It achieves this by inviting local and international emerging and established artists to respond to its exhibition space with leading-edge interventions, performances, and developing long-term inspired programming that allows them to develop projects and engage with audiences. The artists who exhibited at WhiteBox tend to defy easy categorization.

Special thanks to The Costume Institute, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and Nao Takekoshi.

CELAYA BROTHERS GALLERY

Celaya Brothers Gallery (Mexico City), in collaboration with INEZ SUEN (Brooklyn) is pleased to announce its first participation in TX Contemporary Art Fair

Celaya Brothers Gallery is presenting a selection of artworks by Agostino Iacurci (Italy), Camila Rodrigo (Peru), Josh Reames (USA), Juan Carlos Coppel (Mexico), and Mathew Zefeldt (USA) at Booth 517 at George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, Texas October 4-7 with special exhibitions by Houston’s own, Rene Garza (USA). TX Contemporary will begin with the Opening Night Preview (Thursday, October 4, 6-10pm) and will open to the public October 5-6 (11am-7pm) and October 7 (12-6pm).

The exhibition pieces discuss the relationship between man and nature by way of still lifes, burning landscapes and eroded mountains. The artists explore -in various disciplines such as photography, sculpture, and painting and in a wide range of styles – how capitalism has driven societies to perceive progress as a (de)construction and to understand humanity as the opposite of nature.

Agostino Iacurci – Through his work with synthetic forms and bright colors, by means of an essential language, Agostino Iacurci is able to manage multiple layers of interpretation. This approach sets his tales on the perennial threshold between innocence and artifice, serenity and catastrophe; on a magnetic tension that is the interpretative key to our very existence. His recurrent themes include self-perception, uncertainty, imagination, and play. His work has a cynical and critical vision of reality —pessimistic at times— setting the stage for drama, and at the same time sublimating it, alleviating it. Iacurci’s work challenges the limits of sinuosity by presenting an image that seems familiar and innocent but is, fundamentally, malicious. And in that uncertainty lays its richness, a half-open door that leads to other interpretations.

● Agostino Iacurci’s work has been exhibited at the MACRO Museum in Rome, Italy; the Italian Cultural Institute of New York, USA; the Media Library of Orly in France and the Biennial of Urban Art in Moscow, Russia.
● Has collaborated with Adidas, Urban Outfitters, Penguin Books, La Repubblica, TBWA, Mailchimp, Laterza, Minimum fax, Herman Miller, L’ Unità, Orecchio acerbo, Sugar Music, Edizioni Lapis, , Cielo Tv, Smemoranda, WALLS_Contemporary Public Art, Rat Creatives, Roma 3 University, B5 Production and more.

Camila Rodrigo works with photography, sculpture and installation to reflect on the effects of erosion and wear, focusing on the idea of progress as a (de)construction, a contrast between past and future. Her images examine the passage of time, the transformation of the natural space parallel to the reorganization of society.

● Finalist in the 2010 Lacoste Elysée Prize
● Exhibited at the National Museum of Lima, Peru; the Museum Rosphoto in St. Petersburg,  Russia; the Musée de L’Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; and the Palais de l’Árchevéché in Arles,  France
● Part of several private collections such as Juan Mulder (Lima, Peru), Eduardo Hoeschield (Lima,  Peru), Jorge Villacorta (Lima, Peru), Fola (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
● Published in: 77 Artistas Peruanos Contemporáneos by Mario Testino, YOUTH by: Prestel  (Random House), Re Generation: tomorrow photographers today (Aperture foundation), and E l Placer es más importante que la Victoria (Tasneem Gallery), among others.

Josh Reames’ paintings use contemporary tools available on the Internet to create surreal patchworks of contemporary signs and symbols that portray the flattening of artistic hierarchies in our postmodern world. Reames employs computer drawing applications and Google images to create assemblages of “modern hieroglyphs.” His work considers abstraction and painting in relation to the Internet and is informed by the strange, new space where a majority of viewership takes place: online through blogs and websites. His conceptual framework functions as a kind of filtration device for cultural byproducts and its attending relativism, flattening signs, text and symbols, cultural objects and icons to the same-level composition, thereby removing their hierarchy.

● Represented by industry leading galleries.
● Named one of the 30 Emerging Artists During Frieze Week by Artsy
● Juror’s pick in the 2011 New American Paintings, Midwest Edition #95
● Was artist-in-residence at Ox Bow (funded by Joan Mitchell Foundation)
● Exhibited at the Museo Di Capodimonte in Naples, Italy; Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in  Michigan; Luis de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, The Hole in New York, and Guerrero Gallery in  San Francisco, among others.
● Published in Artcritical, Artnews, Artsy, Hyperallergic, New American Paintings, Chicago Tribune,  Chicago Art Review, among others.

Juan Carlos Coppel  The burning of tires is a practice carried out by farmers to raise the temperature of the fields and avoid the crops to frost during the winter preserving months of work, one of the main economic activities of the state. This procedure poses an ethical and environmental problem related to the ecological devastation of the agricultural field, even in the context of a rationalized production. The images, taken in a field to the north of Sonora, play ironically with the nineteenth-century painting by pondering, on a romantic mood, a concern of our time.

● Took specialized courses in photography with Jay Dickman (Pulitzer Award winner) at the National Geographic, in Paris with Manuel Abellán and at the International Center of Photography in New York.
● Won the Acquisition Prize in Fotoseptiembre and the Acquisition Prize in the XV Bienal de Artes Visuales del Noroeste.
● Exhibited in the National Center for the Arts CENART (MX), Sonora Museum of Art MUSAS (MX), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (USA), among others.
● He was invited to the 4th edition of Salón Acme (MX), the XVII Biennial of Photography in Centro de La Imagen (MX), the VII Biennial of Visual Arts MIRADAS in Tijuana (MX), Guatephoto (GT) and Foto España (SPA).
● He was member of the 2016-2017 Young Creators Program of the National Fund for Culture and Arts FONCA and the Contemporary Photography Program in North Mexico.
● He is part of the private collections of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California and the Sonora Museum of Art in Mexico.

Mathew Zefeldt – His work uses representational imagery as an element within a larger composition. It’s less about what the repeated image represents necessarily, but rather the interplay and relationships of the parts to the whole, and each other— reflecting the pluralist landscape we find ourselves in today. Zefeldt uses images from our life and culture, to reproduce them in an almost lifeless, systematic way. His interest in the aesthetics of digital collage is addressing the multiple visual languages and bringing them together in one plane, creating an overlay of styles and gestures that echo the fragmented, heterogeneous nature of contemporary reality.
● One of two national recipients of the Dedalus MFA Fellowship in 2011
● Exhibited at the Santa Monica Museum of Art, the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, the  Minneapolis Institute of Arte, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Marin Museum of  Contemporary Art, Circuit 12, Joshua Liner Gallery, and Lisa Cooley among others.
● Published in LA Times, Art Ltd., New American Paintings, and Art Fuse, among others.

Rene Garza is a New York based Artist that is in residency in Houston, TX where he was raised. Garza has spent over 15 years as a fashion and celebrity stylist traveling the world in a business ruled by visceral aesthetics. Using this time to create a body of work that reflects his long standing love of conceptual art. As an artist in many mediums, Garza notes his inspirations usually comes from travel, minimalism, geometry, dark gothic and romanticism. Garza currently has a public art installation in Houston, Texas called “A Moment” that covers an entire building’s facade and is meant to inspire calmness in our busy lives. “A Moment” follows up the exhibition of a drawing of graphite on paper at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ABOUT Celaya Brother Gallery – IG @celayabrothers

Celaya Brothers Gallery (CBG) is a unique space that challenges the creative limits of the participating artists. A contemporary art gallery with a proactive offer that invites international artists to develop unique concepts and defy the parameters of their time.

ABOUT INEZ SUEN – IG @inezsuenart

INEZ SUEN is a multi-service international creative company for a changing art market. INEZ SUEN offers a wide range of services such as strategic planning, advising and consulting, and art exhibition production.

ABOUT TX Contemporary

Texas Contemporary, Houston’s leading contemporary and modern art fair, brings top galleries to the area’s discerning collector base. Now going into its seventh edition, Texas Contemporary 2018 will feature 65 exhibitors and an innovative program of special projects and public installations.

RAUL DE NIEVES

Among a menagerie of rainbow-hued, glittering, plastic beaded life-sized figures, standing like a proud father overlooking his artistic creations, the charmingly unique Raúl de Nieves shares his artistic rituals with us in his cathedral of creations.

Photography by Tiffany Nicholson | Interview by Mariana Valdes Debes

Blending the lines between the human and the artificial, Raúl de Nieves’ instantly recognizable shoes, masks, and humanoid figures are at once fantastical, desirous art pieces, yet remain relatable and human. Located in the heart of Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY, de Nieves has created a studio filled with beads, fringe, ephemera, and anthropomorphized beings who appear to dance and interact with each other.and it is within that studio where we met the artist and sat down to discuss his art and unique perspective.

Born in Michoacan, Mexico, immigrating to the United States at the age of nine to California, and following the winding path to New York City, Raúl has made a name for himself and cut a swatch of color through the country. In our current state of political turmoil, climate change, and war, it is a breath of fresh air to see the talent that emanates from each piece of art that de Nieves creates as well as from the artist himself.

Here, Mariana Valdes Debes, an international art promoter of Mexican artists, sits in conversation with Raúl for Iris Covet Book.

Hello Raúl!

Hi Mariana, it’s nice to talk to you.

Nice to talk to you as well, I think your work is amazing! I want to start from the beginning and ask how growing up in Michoacan, Mexico influenced your decision to enter into the world of art?

Growing up in Mexico, especially in Michoacan, was really enriching through the different cultures, craftsmen, and artisans. My family was always really pushing for us to see what Mexico had to offer. I remember seeing artisans working in their community, and I came to the United States with that knowledge and those memories. I’m not trying to emulate what I saw, but I am creating these narratives through performances and storytelling, painting, installation, and at the end it’s about creating experiences for yourself and for others to be part of.

Your exhibition last summer “El Rio” was an analysis of the western cultural view of death and the antithetical idea of death as an “ecstatic mystery of life” – how did that concept come to fruition?

I’ve experienced a lot of death in my family, with my friends, and it’s something that we all have to face at one point. My father passed away when I was very young, and it helped me understand that it’s a part of life. Obviously we mourn when someone passes away, but how do we continue to celebrate their lives and what does that mean? To understand that they are not physically here, but emotionally they are closer to me now than ever. Having a really close family member pass away is one of the scariest things, yet it’s also like becoming closer to that person. It’s something that I had to experience and move past.

The majority of your body of work is comprised of fantastical humanoid creatures made of glued beads and other miscellaneous non-traditional material— how did the decision of using these materials come about?

The bead has been utilized by many cultures, but somehow we forget that it’s this beautiful little piece of material that can transform in so many different ways. I went to New Orleans during Mardi Gras and came back with a suitcase full of beads. From then on it just made a lot of sense. All of a sudden they just started to appear more and more in my life.

Well the beaded shoes you created in your earlier work are really just to die for. Every time I see them I just wonder what it feels like to wear them.

They are actually really uncomfortable. I think that’s the best part about it—they are beautiful objects of desire, but when you actually put them on they hurt. When I wear these objects in my performances, it becomes part of this struggle to portray myself as this specific character. I don’t know, it’s kind of magical. Sometimes we want these beautiful objects, but they are obviously not the most practical things we should long for, but we still do.

In an interview with MoMA, you stated that one sculpture, Day(Ves) of Wonder, took you seven years to complete but you never gave up on it. How does the process of creating each labor-intensive sculpture strengthen or teach you as an artist, and do you think that the number of years changed the idea behind the piece over time?

The work is made completely of beads and was a very complicated piece to build. I started to make these huge sculptures and was fantasizing about what it would be like to create a full, life-size figure out of beads. It took me so long because there was a lot of trial and error. The piece spoke back to me and taught me that every time I felt like I was failing, there was a possibility that it could continue to work as long as I had the ability to go forward. Till this day, it’s one of my favorite works. Day(Ves) of Wonder derives from my mom’s daycare called “Days of Wonder”, and I was thinking how interesting it is for my mom to have these small periods of time with these kids as they grow up. I think this piece had this same idea of learning from each experience. I don’t know when I’ll have another moment to work on something for that long, or if I need to, but it really gave me so much understanding to know that every time I went back and started working on the piece, it was teaching me something in return. Maybe that’s why that piece is so celebrated, because people feel that energy within its expression and within its movement.

You never gave up and you went through stages creating the piece, becoming a master of the process.

Yeah, exactly! There’s beauty in creating this object that doesn’t have a moving life or a soul. Through our emotions and the experiences that we project into these objects, the energy that resonates with the viewer creates the idea of a life behind it. To me, the sculpture is of a seven year-old child because of the time that I spent with it and how I saw myself growing. It was an ambitious task to take on and I don’t want to reproduce another one because this piece lives on to be a celebration of an experience and a time. I still question what that piece actually continues to mean to me. That’s the beauty of art, you can work on something forever. As humans we’re constantly doing that; we’re always working on who we are and trying to figure out what it means to be human.

That brings me to my other question. Surrounded by these figures every day, do they develop personalities and life stories of their own as you become attached to them?

Yeah, of course! It’s amazing to build each piece with its own identity, and this identity can be processed through the relationship of the other works next to one another. I like to believe that we live in a fantasy world and we should give ourselves some freedom; life doesn’t necessarily always have to be so concrete. As children, we get this beautiful time of our life to dream and imagine, and then we get to a certain age and give up on that. I constantly imagine myself to be this fantastical person, even if it’s just for a moment.

The performance aspect of my work allows me to tap into these roles that I can’t necessarily inhabit on an everyday basis. It’s a great gift to be able to perform these silly experiences or cathartic moments through these characters, and there’s comfort in putting on a mask and allowing yourself to not really be seen as human, but to be something fantastical. Having this ability to tap out is really cool and I think that’s why a lot of cultures use costumes and perform these beautiful dances, plays, and fables to tap out.

I want to ask about your use of vibrant colors. How did your very maximal use of colors develop over time?

Colors can create very emotional experiences, and I guess that’s why I tend to use so many bright hues of colors. I’m trying to learn how to really control what the color can do, what it means, and what it can put out into the world. In a way, color is like language, it allows for people to feel a certain way. The simplicity of these tools that we already have and putting them into artwork is not necessarily about following rules but following common sense and what feels natural.

Like just going toward the aesthetic of it, the feeling and the emotion that comes through the first time.

Yeah, for awhile my least favorite color was red, so for a year I only wore red to understand why. I had so many different experiences with strangers asking me why I was wearing all red. People would come up to me and try to tell me what they felt red meant to them. It was really interesting to do this exercise for a year, but I’ll probably never do it again.

Well that must have felt like a performance. Yeah, exactly. I wasn’t really intentionally trying to make it a performance, but it was a very interesting exercise. As a Mexican-American artist, how do you feel about the political climate in both countries? Do the current political events inspire or influence your work?

The current President having these views towards Mexico is very archaic. But I realize it’s been happening since the beginning of time, as hard as it is to believe. I try not to be too political about it, because I know it’s not just the United States versus Mexico; it’s the world against one another. When will it end? Who knows? You would think by now we could unite and make this place even better than it is. We are made of the same matter; we need to understand that we will be stronger together. The idea of immigration is beautiful. It has allowed me to believe in acceptance for all. It is beautiful to know that you can somehow be who you are and be accepted and be part of a new nation. That idea has influenced a lot of my work. Everyone has a different experience with immigrating, and in the end I am thankful that I was accepted into a new culture, and that maybe I can influence more people to believe that this is a positive possibility.

A quick scroll through your Instagram reveals an interest in religion and historical references. Where does this interest come from?

Well, I’m a spiritual person. I have a lot of faith, and not just in history or the idea of religion. I like feeling that there is a higher power, or that perhaps believing is what creates a higher power. For me, spirituality is a way of life and it helps to ground myself and cope with all of these catastrophes happening around us.

What do you view as your biggest personal accomplishment to date and why?

Self-acceptance. I’ve been able to really accept myself, and not just myself, but also the people around me. In a way, that’s a huge accomplishment. I think it’s self-love and acceptance that’s made me as open as I am, and as a result I can be my true self.

What can we expect next from you?

I’d like to make art more accessible, to create more experiences that can be accessible not just inside the art world, but also outside. I don’t know whether that means creating public artworks, or if that even changes anything, but I just want to really feel like there is more openness to everything.

And in 10 years?

In 10 years? Maybe I’ll have a dog.

CIRCADIAN LANDSCAPE BY JESSICA ANTOLA

Jessica Antola’s debut monograph is set in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa and debuts with Damani Books. For the project, Antola traveled mostly by car to capture everyday life in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Senegal, and Ethiopia from 2011 to 2014. Each image reflects the astonishing variety of ways people create and define themselves daily through dress and ritual, work and play.

The photographs follow a nonlinear path and trace the variety of ways people live their lives. None of the images were posed; none of the backgrounds were created — there are two men dressed head-to-toe in elaborate African wax textiles who share a motorcycle; a gold jewelry-clad Kumasi king performs a warrior dance; and a girl in an oversized straw hat steers a boat affixed with a patchwork sail.

Tofinu Girls, Benin 2014

“The Tofinu people of Ganvie built houses on stilts in Lake Nokoué during the 16th and 17th centuries to escape capture by Fon warriors and avoid being sold to European slave traders. This location provided a safe haven for the Tofinu people, who still live here and use boats for transport.”

Lundi and His Shoes, Burkina Faso 2014

“We drove deep into Burkina Faso to visit the Lobi people, ‘the children of the forest.’ Their strong ties to the spirit world were evident from the shrines around their clay homes. Lundi, who was born on a Monday, was wearing an oversized patterned shirt that had been carefully repaired several times. I felt his pride in his clothing and indestructible shoes.”

Brothers at the Mami Wata Festival, Benin 2014

“African and Dutch wax textiles are important to West African history, folklore, tradition, and identity. Numerous times I saw a mother with her children all dressed head to toe in the same print. Bridal dowries often include several symbolic wax fabrics to ensure desirable things for a marriage, such as fertility, prosperity, and love.”

Egungun Child Spirit, Benin 2014

“The Egungun masquerades represent the spirits of the departed Yoruba ancestors, but locals say that they actually are the deceased. During this Egungun ceremony in the Dassa region, spectators immediately collapsed as if they had died when spirits touched them. Moments later, they were resurrected to rejoin the celebration.”

African Soil, Ghana 2014

“This photograph was taken on a road in rural Ghana that was under construction by a Chinese company. The earth was being leveled and red dust blanketed the landscape. The first time I visited Kenya, the rich, red soil stained the white soles of my running shoes. I liked carrying this physical reminder of Africa with me once I returned home.”

Hamar Woman, Ethiopia 2013

“Around 430 BCE, the Greek historian Herodotus wrote of Libyan women in garments of goat leather with hair “fringed at the edges, and colored with vermilion.” I was reminded of this in the Omo Valley when I saw Hamar women with their hair covered in a mixture of red ocher and ghee wearing beaded goat skins.”

Khat Market, Ethiopia 2013

“Ethiopia has dangerous roads and thus sometimes apocalyptic scenery, like overturned cargo trucks with blood on the driver’s seat and bees swarming the crushed produce in the back. The faster the trucks move, the more money the drivers make. Khat, a legal narcotic and major cash crop in Ethiopia, is used heavily by truck drivers and contributes to the carnage.”

Circadian Landscape by Jessica Antola is available for purchase at Damiani Books

A CONVERSATION BETWEEN MARY BOONE AND PETER SAUL

Through her illustrious career, revolutionary gallerist Mary Boone has represented some of the most influential artists of our time. In a rare opportunity, we get to sit in on the conversation between one of America’s best known fine-art painters, artist Peter Saul, and Mary Boone at her gallery located on 5th Avenue in New York City.

Portrait Photography by Dustin Mansyur

From the beginning of her career, Mary Boone made a name for herself as a brash, subversive, enfant terrible of the New York art scene. David Salle, Julian Schnabel, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barbara Kruger, Francesco Clemente, Jeff Koons, and Ai WeiWei all have been represented by Boone. Early in her career, Boone revitalized the New York art scene by creating exhibitions for young, unorthodox, avant-garde downtown artists and giving them a new platform made up of influential international collectors. Boone’s keen instinct and bold moves revolutionized the art of dealing, making her the first to have waiting lists of collectors vying to purchase works yet to be created. New York magazine once dubbed Boone “The Queen of the Art Scene”, and now over forty years later and with two New York galleries that remain internationally respected, her crown remains firmly in place.

Of the many controversial artists in Mary Boone’s kingdom, Peter Saul, known for his cartoonish lampoon of American political figures and anti-war commentaries, is perhaps one of the leading contenders. Saul’s fantastic representations of American politics painted in his signature psychedelic, hyper-saturated palette, paired with historical influences and intellectual irreverence, have opened the interpretive, and at times controversial, dialogue between politics and pop culture. Educated in Europe in the 1950’s and keeping his art career under theradar through most of his life, Peter Saul found a champion in Mary Boone, who helped him claim his rightful title as one of the top contemporary artists in the US.

In the library of her uptown gallery in New York City, Iris Covet Book captured a conversation between the notoriously pressshy Mary Boone and Peter Saul as they discuss the history of the gallery, the politics of fine art, and painting Donald Trump.

So, Peter, to start from the beginning, you began your career in Europe in ‘56, correct?

Yes, and I started showing here in New York in 1962; it was my first show in New York City. I’ve been showing all these years but it hadn’t been appreciated until recently. I’ve had some success in Europe over the years, which is great. That’s really kept me going a lot of the time. In the ‘90s I sold a lot of work in Europe, very inexpensively, but for a college professor it seemed like a miracle of finances. Like, “Wow, 20,000 bucks!” You buy a new car and it’s just wonderful. I didn’t look any further than that. I suffered from modesty somewhat, and now I’m much less modest. Now I grumble at small amounts of money. (laughing)

My early days as a gallerist…I mean it was really a hard struggle too. People kind of think it must have been really glamorous. I worked as a secretary at Bykert for Klaus [Kertess], then the gallery closed and I went off on my own in ‘77. And when I was at Bykert, I met an artist named Ross Bleckner. I put him in a group show in Bykert, and he was showing with me and with Paula Cooper. In those days artists would try different galleries and find which one sells, which one fits. So when I opened my own gallery, he introduced me to a lot of his friends from CalArts, and that included David Salle, Eric Fischl, Barbara Kruger, Julian Schnabel and Jeff Koons and a lot of other artists. So, I met artists through word of mouth from other artists.

But you have to remember that at the time no one believed in any of the artists I was showing, no one believed in them. No one wanted to see them or hear about them. They were either unknown or too hyped. People didn’t believe in Schnabel or Basquiat or Sally or Fischl, or even Brice Marden. Jean-Michel [Basquiat] and I met when he was 19; he decided he wanted to show in my gallery because he wanted to show with all these other artists who he thought were really good artists. And I was really very, reticent, like, “Is this right?” but he was really a wonderful person, so sweet to me and really a good artist. I showed Francis Picabia in 1983 and got a scathing review from The Times about it.

They’re so dumb!

They said it was a terrible show and that I was just trying to trick the art world. There was this conspiracy theory that I was making fun of art or artists, but eventually they started to believe in them.

It is easy to kind of glamorize things in retrospect, but mostly I like artists that are challenging. I mean, you are challenging. Even though you were not young chronologically, you were really young as an artist. The paintings weren’t just flying off the wall like they are now. It was hard to sell them, but to me you are such a master and such a forward thinker; everybody should want to be grabbing them up. But it takes a long time to make an artist. How were you exposed to the art world in your early career?

Well, I met [art collector] Allan Frumkin, he was very important to me. I accepted a certain amount of money every month for my work. He would show up one day of the year and pick which pieces of mine he wanted and then leave again, and I could do whatever with the ones that were left. This lasted for about 30 years; it was a long relationship. From 1960 through 1990. The last time he arranged a show of my work was ‘97 I believe, so this is 37 years of activity. During this time I took the opportunity to not mess with business. I just enjoyed my life. Unfortunately, I was looking backwards when I decided to be an artist in 1950. I was looking to the 19th century: you have a lot of cigarettes to smoke, wake up late in the morning, work on your picture, there is a beautiful woman in your life, there is a room you call a studio, you look at the painting, and that’s it. That’s your life, you know. You don’t worry about any business or anything, and I was encouraged in this attitude by my art teachers.

My life was very simple, and not lived fully up until the decision to move to New York City in ‘97, and I thought “Why not normalize my career?” I realized at that point it depends a lot on the artist. You have to present yourself to the buyers, and I hadn’t done this before. I simply hadn’t shown up. I did everything I could to make my paintings attractive and interesting, but I personally didn’t show up, hardly ever. This was weird, and I suddenly realized this was weird, so I said [to myself ], “Hey, from now on, be normal.” So, we showed up. By then I was with Sally, we were in Austin, and I retired from my job at age 66 and came here to proceed with you.

We were meant to be.

A lot of it is just showing up and being a nice person. Sally and I show up, we’re nice people, we get along, and that is very attractive because most of the time artists who are married don’t get along. I didn’t know this, but this is the way it is. This has helped us to be liked by important people in the art world who think we are attractive to work with because we get along with each other. It’s crazy, but it’s the truth. You have to be a nice person.

That’s true!

It’s not enough to make an interesting picture or whatever.

Do you think the newfound appreciation you’ve been experiencing has to do with the times?

I guess so.

I remember remarking at your first show that the average age of the audience was like 22. There was us and then all these 20 year-olds. You have become a mentor to a lot of young artists.

It’s true. It’s a blessing; it’s a good sign.

In speaking of mentorships, influencing and teaching, are there any important mentorships or up-and-coming young artists that you are working with, Peter?

Well for example, Erik Parker is an artist that was in my art class, he showed up at some point in the ‘90s and is now in the art world. He has shown some flexibility, he’s stuck around, and he is now going to have a show at this gallery. So I have him and others from Texas. I don’t know… people introduce themselves to me and say, “I remember your art class!” and then say something I never would have said, but that’s okay, I just let it pass. I don’t concentrate on what has already happened, I try to keep my mind open for the painting I’m working on and that’s pretty much it; I’m not a historian.

Well that’s good, because then you’re not looking in the past, you’re always looking forward.

Yeah it’s important not to get hung up. If you’ve been around for 40 or 50 years, it’s easy to begin getting interested in research into those years, and what did you do and all of that stuff, but that’s deadening. Likewise, I like to show at a gallery where there is one person in charge and it’s not a corporate thing. What I don’t like is when a gallery has a selection of people that is based on age and gender and stuff. When they’re like, “Well, we have four male artists in their 70’s, so we got enough of them. Let’s get three women between the ages of 30 and 40.” That kind of thing is nonsense. I like the individuality of this gallery, that’s why I’m here really.

Oh, I love that you said that! I do think of artists in terms of their individuality, I’m not trying to make a movement. So many of the galleries now are going towards assigning different staff members to artists, and I think it is impersonal. I always thought the greatest thing was becoming friends with the artist and having a relationship.

Yes, we want to, sort of, “skip” the corporate scene, don’t we?

I think that it’s ruining the art world. What are your thoughts on the art world today?

Well, I’m seeing a lot more shows than I want because my wife, Sally Saul, who makes ceramic sculpture, is extremely interested in art and what’s going on. She insists that I see a lot of shows. Today we’re going to the Outsider Art Fair, I think, and then to the Tom Laskowski opening, and then a group show where a painting of mine that belongs to Joe Bradley is being shown. Sally insists on a certain number of days a month we go see art. So, I see more art.

And you live in Germantown, so you have to travel a couple of hours to get here.

Yeah, but it’s relaxing to be on the train. You want to take a pause often from the painting so you can rethink certain areas that you’re working on. Painting for me is a slow thing, it gets done in various stages, it develops. And the next development came clear to me this morning so it can happen tomorrow.

We had a chance to show your recent Trump pieces a few months ago. What has the response been to them and have you experienced any backlash?

No, I don’t think so. I’ve treated Trump tenderly compared to the other Presidents I have painted. The most psychotic looking one was actually one of the first, Nixon. I tore the guy apart like he was in the hands of a serial killer or something: bad news. I hope for no particular response, but Trump is a good subject. I didn’t vote for him anymore than anyone else I know. 83% of New York voted for Hillary. I don’t know why she isn’t President. She won the election, but because of the electoral college she isn’t sitting in the Oval Office. As far as I know, Trump is not aware of me. He probably thinks of me as some loser artist. He looks at my prices and goes “This is cheap! He’s a loser, he’s a loser!”

“It’s fake! It’s fake art!” (both laughing)

No, but I’m not looking for trouble. I’m looking for subject.

For more information visit maryboonegallery.com