Featuring works by Nick Cave, Bill Viola, Thornton Dial, Tom Friedman, Vik Muniz, Kate Orff, Betye Saar, and others, highlighting some of the most important artists of today, known for challenging conventions.

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Nayland Blake in his gallery at 502 West 22nd Street.

Blake’s newest work is produced with a combination of found and made objects. Blake seeks out the spontaneous moments in daily life and uses them as departures for his art. A modern-day flaneur, he accumulates elements and materials for his sculptures through his daily wanderings, continuing to explore the themes of gender, identity, and community in his work as he has for more than twenty years.

Nayland Blake (b. 1960) first exhibited his work in 1985. He has had one-person exhibitions in New York, San Francisco, Houston, Brussels, and London, including a 2003 survey of more than ten years of video work at the Tang Museum at Skidmore College, and a 2008 retrospective of work in all media at Location One, New York. Last year, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, presented a one-man exhibition entitled Free! Love! Tool! Box!. In 2012, Blake was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Blake chairs the International Center of Photography-Bard MFA program and lives and works in Brooklyn. This will be his eighth one-person exhibition at the Matthew Marks Gallery since 1993.

Matthew Marks is pleased to announce an exhibition of new work by Darren Almond, opening Friday, February 1st in his gallery at 522 West 22nd Street.

Darren Almond: Hemispheres & Continents includes sixteen photographs made between 2002 and 2012 on all seven continents and the Arctic Circle. The photographs are part of Almond’s Fullmoon series, made at night, with exposures lasting between 15 and 60 minutes allowing the light of the full moon to illuminate massive ice shelves, African micro-climates and Japanese meadows in full bloom. This exhibition marks the first time that Almond’s images from all of the continents are on view simultaneously. By setting the camera in complete darkness and forgoing technical control, the artist relies on his prior study of the landscape to produce these images.

In addition to the photographs, the exhibition includes a new sculpture titled Johns Radiometer. Believed to be the world’s largest radiometer, the moving parts of the sculpture measure electromagnetic wavelength. When exposed to light or radiation, the metal vanes within the hand-blown glass sculpture spin. Seen together, the two distinct bodies of work articulate Almond’s persistent engagement with time, place and the elements in ways both literal and figurative.

Darren Almond (b. 1971) lives and works in London and began exhibiting his work publicly in 1991. He has had one-person museum exhibitions at Tate Britain, London; the Kunsthalle Zürich; de Appel Centre for Contemporary Art, Amsterdam; The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf; and SITE Santa Fe, among others. Almond participated in the 2003 Venice Biennale and, in 2011, Almond’s work was featured on a billboard overlooking Chelsea’s High Line Park. Hemispheres and Continents will be his sixth one-person exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery since 2000.

Lesley Heller Workspace is pleased to present X-tra, an exhibition of nine mid-career artists, all preoccupied with interdisciplinary relationships. Regardless of the medium, a prevailing attitude towards the extra-territoriality of the polarities of light and dark appear both as content and breakdown.

 Extra material, extra gaze, extra messy, extra energetic, extra light moving into extra dark, extra blast, extra pull, and extra push. Light and dark operate as bipolar forces within the attitudes of the artists. Our sensory overload of visual information gives the mind a possibility that allows combat zones of light that is not exactly nature in the work of Black Lake and Peter Rostovsky. Urbanism is a leaking city, without borders or contrasts of its phantasms in the paintings of Lydia Dona and Kanishka Raja. With Fabian Marcaccio, the body is no longer itself, and the elasticity of political communities and American legacies stretch themselves from loaded materiality into the problematic content and its reversal.

X-tra is an attempt to be about “this is too much,” not as categorical hermeticism, but as a creation of intricacies that allow expression and definitions of mediums into a more charged and dynamic model.                                                                     

The questions asked by these artists are compressed within their mediums, holding onto the medium, but reversing its perspective as subject-object relation. Scott Grodesky pushes the excessive figural and linear to the most extreme compression of minute and inner-loaded drawings grouped in contrasting inner darkness and highlights.

Daniel Wiener’s materials dig and morph visually into a sculptural mass. The “extra” lightening of silence and the activation of drawing through performative combinations of movement and sound is exemplified in the installation and performance of Black Lake. (Susan Jenning’s silvered objects and Slink Moss’ drawings).  The play of light and shadow continues in Lisa Beck’s transparent and endless ready-made balls. Vertically stacked glass balls, where light disappears and passes through the object, not recalling where it originally started, leave one with the mentality of putting things out—a complex attitude of stretching pictorial time outside of itself.  The irony of confrontational time is viewed in an extreme parallel with its lighting zone of “Switzerland for Movie Stars” by Kanishka Raja.

The material utilized between the woven ropes in Fabian Marcaccio’s, Nicole, 2012, serves to weave different pictorial modalities.  The ropes weave a background into the structure of the painting and the brush marks operate like muscles, holding pictorial troubles in suspension. The light moves between and through patches of meeting points in the ropes. It translates rather than depicts. Lydia Dona’s engine lines and body organs entangle lines and objects of fixation, environmentally diffusing light and dark through metallic and transparent junctures. Black Lake’s silver wires dangle and form silhouettes of shadows. Lisa Beck’s strings and Raja Kanishka’s sharp and linear contours of east/west models of ruptured architectural legacies create a new linear relationship within light and dark. Peter Rostoevsky’s hyper-natural and artificial settings digitalize and re-explode to create a setting for the diminishing light of American power and act as a metaphor for nuclear phenomena only reached through mediation.

X-tra pushes the viewer the extra mile, to investigate and bring the physicality of the event, visually and experientially. We have stagnated into a long, long, long convention of limited pictorial models and must allow for more intense and endless extensions.

TRASH ART GALLERY at METROPOLIS COLLECTIVE

Mechanicsburg, PA (February 1st)– The Metropolis Collective is pleased to announce the opening reception for an evening of multidisciplinary art featuring “Switch, Pop, Boom, Box”an exhibition of new works created by internationally acclaimed NYC artist Paul Kostabi and Scott Mitchell Putesky(aka. Daisy Berkowitz)at Trash Art Gallery from 6-10pm on Friday, February 1^st, 2013. The exhibitions will be on display at Metropolis Collective through February 26th, 2013. 

At Trash Art Gallery this evening

The title of the show,“Switch, Pop, Boom, Box”is a descriptive mélange of the facets appearing in this multi disciplinary artisan show. The SWITCH paintings of Paul Kostabi, the POP culture influenced art of Scott Mitchell Putesky aka. Daisy Berkowitz and the BOOM BOX from the sonic sound collision Scott will be providing for an aural sculpture in the gallery this evening.

Both artists appearing at Trash Art Gallery this evening share a multidisciplinary love of art. Both Paul Kostabi and Scott Mitchell Putesky have had a passion for art beginning in childhood and big dreams and the talent to fulfill them. Both artist found fame rising to the top of the Rock ’n’ Roll world, Paul founding and performing in such bands as White Zombie, Psychotica, Youth Gone Mad, The Dee Dee Ramone Band and currently Damn Kids. Scott founded and performed in Marilyn Manson and The Spooky Kids under the stage name Daisy Berkowitz as well as many other musical projects. Paul Kostabi is a seminal figure in the art world and continually garnishes critical acclaim and demand for his artworks internationally. Paul recently had an incredibly successful launch of his new brand of “BAD THINGS” in NYC where his artwork is appearing on various electronic device covers such as iPhones in retailers throughout the city. Scott Putesky is devoting more time than ever to his art and enthusiastically diving in head first into a foray back into the art world after a long musical hiatus.

Paul Kostabi

Paul is a critically acclaimed artist born in Whittier California on October 1, 1962. Currently residing in New York City, he is an artist, musician, music producer and audio engineer. He is the brother of artist Mark Kostabi. Paul Kostabi’s artworks are published, shown and collected worldwide in an incredibly long list of publications, galleries, institutions and museums that span the globe. His paintings are present in Permanent Collections of: The Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Whitney Museum of Art, Video, Paper Tiger Sessions, The Paterson Museum, New Jersey, The New England Museum of Art, Brooklyn, Connecticut, Millennium Museum, Museion Museum, Bozen, Italy, to name a few.  

About Kostabi's "Switch" Paintings

SWITCH: An on and off mechanism used to turn things on and off; a flexible rod, typically used for corporal punishment; a paintbrush?

This series of new artworks by Paul Kostabi was inspired by the recent Super Storm Sandy, which devastated the North East. He watched the tide rise and the wind blowing on his SWITCH forest. Through all the havoc and anxiety of possibly losing everything, the SWITCH forest survived and possibly even thrived. Then he got the call from a neighbor stating that his Japanese Knot-weed trees were “blocking her view".  As he cut them down, one by one, he felt there had to be a further use for these beautiful weeds that had made a wonderful natural barrier.

This inventive series of works, a departure from Paul’s signature figurative expressionism, use only SWITCHES, no traditional paint brushes, as we know them. Paul’s “SWITCHES” range from 20 feet to 2 feet long. He uses bamboo chutes to literally whip and strum the paint into place. Some by chance, some by careful manipulation of the SWITCH. He applies the first layer from 20 feet away, which is hard to control, providing a loose background that he later ties together with each additional layer using diminishing lengths of the SWITCHES. Paul says “There is a sort of Zen like action to the application and free flowing acrylic paint that hardens to a nearly flat surface after switching the first layer into a smooth texture ready for the second layer with a shorter switch. There is even a switch for the application of oil paint. Each painting has at least four layers some as many as twenty.” The process from start to finish can take days or even weeks to complete one painting. Paul acknowledges and admires the work of Brice Marden, as he created masterful twig paintings that are gentle and flowing, with a subdued monochromatic color scheme. Paul describes his recent SWITCH works as “Very colorful with enough contrast to be similarly compared to a colorized movie”, which he obtains by constantly photographing his images in black and white to see where color or contrast needs to be added or subtracted in order to get the well balanced final compositions you will view this evening. 

Scott Mitchell Putesky (aka. Daisy Berkowitz)

Scott Mitchell was born in Los Angeles just before a certain eponymous cult darkened the Hollywood Hills with murders that shocked the world.  Years after, the burgeoning performer and designer had desires to be Picasso, a TV star, and a circus ringmaster. He was actually a magician, puppeteer, painter, musician and stage actor… all by the age of twelve. And there was always the drawing. 

While music dominated Scott’s high school years (he was in three different bands), a teacher encouraged him to pursue graphic design. He went on to earn a degree in marketing and advertising art and after working in various print shops, he formed a bizarre little band called Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids that combined his passion for music and art. 

Scott coined the name Daisy Berkowitz for himself (the rest of the band members had similarly contrived names - combining a female screen star with that of a serial killer) and designed the band’s t-shirts, flyers and cassette liner art. He also wrote most of the group’s music – a high-concept low-tech skewering of American glamour, vice, hypocrisy and exploitation. Marilyn Manson (& the Spooky Kids) went on to change music and art the world over in the twilight of the 20th century. The maniacal fun of “The Spooky Kids” would become legend. Music is still a vigorous part of Scott Mitchell's creative output.

Scott has been dedicating more time than ever to making new work and developing a style that is visually appealing while representing his own unique place in counter-culture. Scott resists, but doesn’t rail against, conventional parameters, he just chooses to ignore rather than expand boundaries in visual and aural art, drawing inspiration and influence from humor, darkness, passion, music, the 1980's, mysticism, sex, pop culture, film, social dysfunction, Americana and science. His works this evening utilize vintage magazines, catalog extractions, personal photography and memorabilia, acrylic paint, colored pencil, paper, and board. Working in Mixed Media suits his broad range of influences and desires. His work is theme and conceptually based often with metaphors, messages and visual codes carefully placed within, typically with no delineation between pop culture and sub-culture. This is the future where everyone is famous for fifteen miles. 

Also this evening, Scott will also be unveiling his first musical installation at Metropolis Collective, which comes after several years of consideration and several months of development.

The aural installation utilizes four portable early 1990's Sony CFD type stereos (boom boxes) with detachable speakers and CD players set against opposing walls of a gallery/space/interior. The speakers face the room's center at right angles to each other. One of these models recorded many early Spooky Kids rehearsals. No processed reverberation or aural spatial effects are utilized in recording so the sounds can be heard reacting to their present physical surroundings - the listener's space. The noises and instrument voices behave as any others would in the same environment. A soft assault on the ears, the "box" is actually the space the listener occupies. The total program is a twenty-five minute loop of five five-minute segments with all notes in the key of C, Lydian scale, with a standard tuning of A = 440 and play out at a spectral tempo of 100 beats per minute without an obvious rhythmic pulse. 

A true eight independent channel conveyor of music and noise that seems chaotic at first but after moments you can hear them sing to each other as if across a street or through outer space. Scott says of his installation, “Pumping up the volume is not for break dancing, but it will make your psyche pop-and-lock.” 

In the Hole In The Wall Art Gallery

Also this evening at Metropolis Collective is the “Multidisciplinary” group exhibit in the collective’s Hole In The Wall Art Gallery, which will feature the creations of multi disciplinary artists who are all performing musicians. Exhibiting artists include Dave Barr, Scott Mitchell Putesky (aka. Daisy Berkowitz), Christopher Millar (aka. Rat Scabies), Paul Kostabi,Joseph Arthur, John Carruthers, Dean Chooch Landy, Gaye Black, RT Vegas,Ducky Duke and Pat Sandman. 

Performing live on The Stage Noir

Performing live this evening on the Collective’s Stage Noir is Central PA’s very ownDucky Duke and The Vintage. Matt 'Ducky Duke' states, ”My music is basically a rock’n’roll, bluesy country, soulful vibe with some pop infused. I think the songs put across a vintage sound coupled with a more modern approach and they really sum up everything that I am as a person and musician. Its just rock’n’roll done in my own way.” Ducky Duke and The Vintage is Ducky (Matt Schmohl) -Guitar/Vox, Greg Hildebrand- Guitar/keys, Micheal Tarrant- Bass, Logan Summey- Drums/Percussion.

About Metropolis Collective 

Metropolis Collective is a contemporary eclectic fine art gallery and performance spacerun by a husband and wife team made up of Richard Reilly and Danielle Charette. Reilly is a former NYC native with 20 years of experience working with the prestigious Adelson Gallery, and professional Rock musician and founder of the seminal first wave NYC punk rock band The Victims amongst others. Charette is a Harrisburg native who resided in NYC for most of her life prior to returning to the area. She is an emerging contemporary expressionist artist who actively exhibits nationwide.

Metropolis Collective is home to the Trash Art Gallery, the Hole In The Wall Art Gallery, Danielle Charette Art, Rick-o-Chet Records and The Stage Noir. The collectiveexhibits an eclectic variety of contemporary fine art (photography, paintings, mixed media, printmaking, sculpture, installations and drawings) as well as hosting musical and artistic performances. The gallery represents the talents of many artists locally residing and non-native, emerging and internationally established. Based in Mechanicsburg Pa, Trash Art Gallery is located at 17 West Main Street, Mechanicsburg, PA 17055. Gallery hours are [Tues-Thurs 12-7, Fri-Sat 12-8pm and by appointment]. For more information, please call: (717) 458-8245, or visit our website: http://metropoliscollective.com/, Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/MetropolisCollectiveor email: info@metropoliscollective.com

Hey Melanie: A  group show, curated by Raina Bajpai, which explores the ways four artists utilize the ironic and contradictory as means to very different ends.  The cute and childlike imagery of Jeffrey Johnson's watercolors and pen and ink drawings is subverted by sex and death.  Troy Olson's digital collages cast iconic political figures as stars of comical tableaux.  Francis Wong's delicately rendered mixed media pieces on scavenged materials are influenced by his experiences in post-disaster New Orleans. Louis Le Papp's documentary photographs are a tongue-in-cheek commentary on a society so obsessed with picture-taking that truly anyone can call themselves a photographer.  Exhibition poster by John Holt.  Opening reception: Fri., Feb. 1, 6-8 PM, North Light Gallery, 56 Bogart St., Brooklyn.

The second of the two-part annual exhibition Illustrators 55 will be held at the Museum of American Illustration at the Society of Illustrators from January 30 through March 2, 2013.  The exhibit features works by leading contemporary illustrators worldwide, selected by a prestigious jury of professionals.  

The exhibit includes works in the Editorial, Book and Advertising Categories. 

Illustrations featured in the Editorial category include work commissioned by newspapers or magazines, medical and scientific journals or online magazines.  This year's Gold Medals are awarded to Jason Holley for his piece titled "Bike Pain", Donato Giancola for "J.R.R. Tolkein", and Mark Ulriksen's "Capturing Memories."  Silver Medals go to John Cuneo for "Erotic Art", Leo Espinosa for his piece "Young European Composers", and Frank Stockton's "Nuke 'em."

Illustration in the Book category include all single image illustrations originally commissioned for use inside or on the covers of hardbound and paperback books, including fiction and non-fiction; children's and young adult literature and comic books.  Gold Medal winners include Anna and Elena Balbusso for their image "Tatyana", Victo Ngai's "Jacks and Queens at the Green Mill", and Sam Weber for "Lolita."  Silver Medals are awarded to Julianna Brion's "Wirefox", Etienne Delessert's "Ionesco Stories 2", and Yuko Shimizu for her piece "The Unwritten."

Advertising illustration includes work for advertisements appearing in newspapers, magazines or on television; video and CD covers; brochures, fashion, point-of-purchase and packaging illustration; movie and theater posters.  This year's Gold Medals go to Raymond Bonilla for "The Piano", Stephen Kroninger's "Grand Central", and Yuko Shimizu for "Tame Your Hair."  Silver Medals go to Josh Cochran for his piece "Go Fly a Kite", Aad Goudappel for "Ballet", and Adam McCauley's "Simplicity". 

The Illustrators 55 will now be exhibited throughout the entire building, including the 3rd floor Hall of Fame Gallery.  Moving Image entries will also be playing in the new Winsor McCay Screening Room.

The seventh exhibition in the Raw/Cooked series, titled Supple Beat, presents the work of Gowanus-based artist Marela Zacarias. Recommended by Ramírez Jonas, Zacarias has created four site-specific sculptural works inspired by the Williamsburg Murals, uniting her interests in abstract forms, the history of objects, and urban renewal. Her large-scale pieces appear to be climbing the walls of the Museum’s first-floor lobby and Great Hall, interacting with the architecture as if they were murals come to life. Zacarias draws on the concept of resilience implied by the Williamsburg Murals and explores the idea of bouncing back from adversity, relating to the history of the public housing project for which the murals were commissioned and the history of the works themselves. She constructs her unique sculptural forms from window screens and joint compound, which she then paints with original patterns. In Supple Beat, Zacarias’s patterns are inspired by the related murals’ unique color palettes and geometric forms. Born and raised in Mexico City, Zacarias has painted more than thirty large-scale public murals. She holds an MFA from Hunter College.

Whimsical oil and mixed media still life paintings that challenge the notion of stillness.

This February, Agora Gallery is proud to present two exhibitions that will warm your heart and touch your soul, bringing light and life to the winter days. Idiosyncratic Expressions delves into the diverse and diverting nature of perception and individual expression and awareness. Uniting a very personal approach to human nature and the world around us with an ability to expose the shared understanding that binds us together, these works both inspire and celebrate the variety of existence and the power of vision. In Degrees of Abstraction, the audience will be introduced to the work of artists who are constantly reworking the boundaries and borders of skill and possibility. Lively, innovative impressions of both reality and inner life take the potential of visual expression to a whole new level.

February is also Heart Month and to celebrate we’re doing something a little special. Some of the artists in this exhibition have created artwork especially for the occasion. The entire sales proceeds from the sales of these particular pieces of art will be donated to the Children’s Heart Foundation.

The exhibitions open on February 7, 2013 and run until February 27, 2013. The opening reception will take place on the evening of Thursday February 7, 6-8 pm. Entrance is free and all art enthusiasts are warmly welcomed to attend and meet some of the artists responsible for creating these remarkable works of art.

Exhibition Dates: February 7, 2013 – February 27, 2013

Reception: Thursday, February 7, 2013, 6-8 pm

Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, New York City

Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat, 11a.m. - 6 p.m.

Event URL:  http://www.agora-gallery.com/collectivecatalog/Collective_2_7_2013.aspx

Featured Artists:

Idiosyncratic Expressions

Escoto.Carrara  |  Richard Bello  |  Michael Cowdroy  |  Krzis-Lorent FrédériqueK  |  Gary Iles  |  Isha Majmudar  |  Patricia Masciotra  |  Christiane Monchalin  |  Lou O'Keefe  |  Denise Pelletier  |  Blanca Plata  |  Max Werner

Degrees of Abstraction

Jerry Anderson  |  Nick Arciero  |  Nazik Aslanyan  |  Jen Bowles  |  Michele Brunschvig Dariele  |  Wendy Carmichael-Bauld  |  Jennifer Contini Enderby  |  Anne-Marie Crosby  |  Silvana Di Martino  |  Dinah Cross James  |  Dr. Diane M. Kline  |  Warren R Mack  |  Gabriele Maurus  |  Emmanuelle Rivard  |  Jade Rougerie  |  Martyn Royce  |  Christine Sellman  |  John Sonnier

About Agora Gallery

Agora Gallery is a fine art gallery, established in 1984 and located in the heart of New York City’s Chelsea art galleries district. It is famous for showcasing a spectacular array of talented artists from around the world and around the corner, while providing quality and original art to collectors. Exhibitions are usually group exhibits, presenting the work of a number of artists, but sometimes solo exhibitions focus on the work of one particular artist. The gallery publishes ARTisSpectrum Magazine, a bi-annual magazine that is distributed to museums, galleries, art institutions and art schools around the world. It provides artists, collectors, museums, galleries, art organizations and enthusiasts with access to the work of international talented artists as well as feature articles, reviews and interviews. Agora Gallery is the proud sponsor of ARTmine, one of the most comprehensive resources available worldwide to view and purchase fine art. The gallery also runs Agora Art Blog, a blog designed to provide helpful information and advice for artists while providing a forum for artists to help one another by sharing their experiences and thoughts.

Eric LoPresti’s landscapes are investigations into the “apocalyptic sublime.” Whether rendering nuclear test sites, aerial views of the scarred desert of eastern Washington State where he grew up, or undisclosed explosions across a region’s expanse, LoPresti’s environments are ones of man-made disruption. In his new paintings, LoPresti continues his use of the color field gradient to represent another landscape in transition.  Featuring 15-foot canvas of an ominous dust cloud, No Blue Skies presents the terrifying, exhilarating moment when the shock of circumstance blinds us to both past and future.

The Grady Alexis Gallery at El Taller Latino Americano is pleased to present Infinite Regions featuring the work of Iliana Emilia Garcia, Hiroko Ohno and Diana Schmertz, three diverse artists that approach notions of space in variety of manners, literally, poetically and philosophically. The exhibition is curated by Andrea Arroyo.

Once again, Upstream is pleased to present our annual Photography Exhibit.  This year's show offers strong work in multiple photographic languages. 

The Garden is dedicated to inspiring the public by displaying and studying plant life. By displaying art that explores the connections between humans and plants, BBG's Steinhardt Conservatory Gallery advances their mission through a different lens.

Blues for Smoke brings into focus a wide range of contemporary art, music, literature, and film through the lens of the blues. Featuring the work of visual artists such as David Hammons, Zoe Leonard, and Jean-Michel Basquiat alongside the music of jazz, blues, and hip-hop legends, the exhibition considers how the blues might help us understand themes of place, performance, and identity in recent art.

Masterworks: Jewels of the Collection showcases the best of Himalayan art in the Rubin Museum's collection in their international context. This new presentation provides access to old favorites and new acquisitions and gifts. Organized geographically, it sets the diverse regional traditions of West Tibet, Central Tibet, East Tibet and Bhutan in relation to the neighboring areas of India, Kashmir, Nepal, China, and Mongolia. Highlights include a Chinese clay image of the guardian king Virupaksha.

Other highlights in the exhibition include a 12th century lotus mandala of Hevajra from Northeastern India, a historically extremely important drawing with the footprints of the founder of a major Tibetan Buddhist School predating 1217, a dated bilingual silk edict from the court of the 5th Dalai Lama, and a contemporaneous portrait of this important Dalai Lama incarnation in gold on red background. Dynamic wrathful deities range from the fifteenth-century snake-bodied personification of the eclipse, Rahula, to the extremely fierce Bhutanese representation of the protective goddess Dusolma.

Life-size facsimiles of an entire sequence of murals from the Lukhang, the Dalai Lamas’ Secret Temple near the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet, provide an exceptional opportunity for viewing Himalayan art at its most lavish and remain part of the Masterworks exhibition. The original 18th century wall paintings—inaccessible to the public until the late 20th century—uniquely depict the most esoteric of meditation and yoga practices in vivid color and detail. Created with new photographic methods by Thomas Laird and Clint Clemens, this display of large-format, high resolution pigment prints allows for even better access to the paintings than is possible in the temple itself. Their presentation at the Rubin marks the first showing in the world of prints created using this technology, and also provides the first ever opportunity outside Tibet to view life-size Tibetan murals in their relationship to portable art from the region.

Bubi Canal  Special Moment

Opening Reception: Friday February 8 from 7-9 pm
Exhibition runs February 8 - March 10, 2013


New York, New York, January 22, 2013 – Munch Gallery is pleased to announce Bubi Canal’s solo exhibition ’Special Moment’.

It is the artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City. A recent transplant but already a native, Canal has exhibited widely in Europe and has since brought his unique vision stateside.

Munch Gallery presents several of Canal’s most recent photographs, as well as select objects and video work, highlighting the singleminded focus of his aesthetic over a range of media. His photographs are exercises in saturated color and geometric form, a glimpse of a fantastical reality populated by benevolent monsters, playful mashups of human, animal and muppet. His creations are simultaneously plastic pre-fab and meticulously handmade, eerie and familiar, a fever dream from childhood.

‘Chrystelle’, Canal’s video is set against the striking natural landscape of his native Santander, his main character’s slick, vivid costuming surprisingly resonant with the vibrant elemental surroundings. At once alien and native, much like the artist himself, his work mimics life and his life is his work. He puts it best himself: “I like to create a new reality that remains connected with my life. I like opening doors onto the unknown and building something new.”


Born in Santander, Spain, Canal studied in Bilbao and worked in Madrid for several years before coming to New York in 2011. Canal is the physical embodiment of his work – magic in its purest form. His visual references range from the angular patterned sweaters and nostalgic toys of the 1980s to his icon, Michael Jackson. Canal mines his own experience, dreams, and pop culture for content and works primarily with those closest to him, not models or actors; an interior playland within an insular world.

Stina Puotinen/JAN 2013