Review:

On Shelter Island, Three Shows Go Figure

Interviews

2005 Fashion Television – 4 minute interview, April 2nd
2005 Toronto Living - 31/03/05 Featured story

STYLIN'
Proposal for a group show curated by Ombretta Agrò

*fash.ion : a: a prevailing custom, usage or style b (1): the prevailing style (as in dress) during a particular time (2) : a garment in such a style c: social standing or prominence esp. as signalized by dress or conduct.
(Definition from the Webster Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary)

STYLIN’ is a group show that explores the definition of Fashion and Style and their many embodiments in today’s society. It also investigates the long diatribe about the connection between the art and the fashion worlds, which goes back to at least a century. Many of the leaders of the most important 20 th-century art movements, especially Futurism and the Bauhaus, had no limits on what was visually interesting. They designed furniture, cups and vases, wallpapers as well as clothes. In present times this interaction takes many shapes. Recently the W magazine asked, for their September issue, 17 contemporary artists such as Tom Sachs, Chuck Close, Takashi Murakami and Richard Prince, among others, to contribute original work to a 40-page portfolio of supermodel Kate Moss.

Many are the pros and cons about the love-hate relationship between these two worlds, and even more numerous are its supporters and detractors. Often designers have drawn on art – one of the most recent examples being the new Louis Vuitton’s bags designed by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami - but such borrowings, to many in the art world, serve only to reinforce the idea that fashion exploits art.

The 7 international artists involved in the exhibition approach this subject matter from very diverse angles, using a broad range of media. They explore new possibilities of connecting with fashion: they want to open new doors and stimulate questions, more than providing the answers. For some of them the link to fashion is more evident and direct and stands on neutral ground. Others borrow some of its recognizable logos and trademarks and use them to question the manipulation of mass thinking and the consequent desire of the public to conformity.

The works span from the sophisticated paintings by American John Grande in which he portrays the mannequins that inhabit the famous Christmas windows at Saks Fifth Ave. and Macys department stores in New York City, to the lush and erotic performance, photographs and drawings of Norwegian Cecilie Dahl from the series Clothes for a Summer Hotel. This work, that has many layers, explores the meaning of being dressed or undressed and how our clothing facilitates certain communicative role. Photography is also the medium used by Italian Laura Masserdotti who, in Pilatestyle, portrays her models executing Pilates exercises wearing designers clothes. Masserdotti in her entire body of work identifies in the human body the vehicle that defines our self-identity. As the artist states: “Nothing better than clothes and fashion reflect the fragmentized and ever changing contemporary identity”. Another Italian, Maia Anthea Marinelli, follows a similar approach in the performance Let’s get pretty and the jewels the artist designed with Roberto Daffigo to symbolize the fetish element in art culture. The action, in which the artist stands naked in the room, while two assistants fit her with a dress of metal thread which slowly immobilizes her, is a metaphor for fitting into social and cultural restrictions. The video is present with Spanish Cristina Lucas who will screen Sisters Barbie Open the Door of their Vienna Apartment. Lucas’ works deals with the idea of power and the social status-quo that derives from its achievement. Its two main characters are two stylish Barbie-dolls who live a very fashionable life, in a very fashionable Mies van der Rohe looking house surrounded by artworks by the trendiest artists of the moment.American Navin Norling, also uses symbols and icons and the American way as the fabric of his modular painting installations, mixing street culture classics such as graffiti and pop imagery with haute-couture logos. Canadian Jason Baerg intuitively responds to the vehicle of culture itself with his poignant series: What Is. The work (photographs and a video projection) investigates questions aroused by issues that bombard us through the media every day. Media: a contemporary compass to global conscientiousness. It is an invitation to the viewer to engage in public discussion. The action encourages cross analysis of varied opinion, the fashion world being one of the major arenas in which this private/public interaction evolves.

This project was made possible thanks to the generous support of: 3M, Prada, Code Management, and many more (the list of sponsors to these days is not complete)

The show will be on view from December 3-7, 2003 , with the following hours: TBD. Opening, December 4, 7pm - Midnight. Location: 3841 NE 2 nd Avenue, Suite 203 , Miami , FL , 33137 T: 305-572 1101.

Code Management ( www.codemgt.com ) , a cutting edge fashion production company, will host the exhibition in their Miami headquarters located in the heart of one of Miami trendiest neighborhood, the Design District. The exhibition will take place during the world renowned Miami Basel Art Fair ( www.artbasel.com ) , one of the leading contemporary art fairs that comes back to Miami after its successful debut in 2002.

For more information about the project please contact Ombretta Agrò (curator) at 212-473 4464 or oma@rnapartners.com

From the Art Basel Miami Beach V.I.P event-list:
Art Loves Design
Miami Design District
2nd Avenue and 40th Street, Miami

Dacra's Art Loves Design Maps will guide you through the night's and week's many performances and exhibitions while you enjoy live music, food and unexpected surprises at every turn. That evening two city blocks in the Design District will be closed for the public to enjoy the various art exhibitions, galleries and design showrooms, music and cocktails. One of this year's highlights will be the opening at the Moore Space on the evening of December 4 of a project curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist. The Moore Space, located on the second floor of the historic Moore Building is a nonprofit art space founded in 2001 by Rosa de la Cruz together with Ivelin and Craig Robins.  This experimental art space, directed by Silvia Karman Cubiña, invites guest curators as an integral part of its exhibition program. Also opening on December 4 will be a new collaborative work by John Baldessari, Lawrence Weiner and Julião Sarmento.  Rirkrit Tiravanija will create a new performance piece that evening. Jeffrey Deitch will present a Hip Hop Baroque chapel created by the artist Kehinde Wiley. The Guadalajara ceramic factory of José Noé Suro will present an exhibition curated by Patrick Charpenel of works produced by the factory for important contemporary artists.  IN thIn addition to these exhibitions there will be other exhibitions of Miami artists throughout the Design District and the Buenos Aires based store, Puro Diseño Argentino, will showcase the works of 125 leading Argentine designers and artisans.  All these exhibitions and the Design District showrooms will be open throughout the week of Art Basel Miami Beach. ( list to be updated)

Jennifer and Filippo Fossati are pleased to announce the opening at Esso Gallery of the group show “Portraits”.

The exhibition includes portraits by more then 50 different artists, different histories, backgrounds, ideas and media. Investigating how this very traditional theme gets re-interpreted in contemporary art, we’ve put together these differences to show how a practice that is the first, most debated and common, in art history has changed over time.

Portraiture began a very long time ago to satisfy the necessity of delivering to posterity the physical appearances of the dead (the earliest forms known to us are in fact the clay, wax or metal masks directly traced from dead faces). The Romans were already using portraits as an instrument of propaganda. The figures of philosophers or emperors posed in hieratic and solemn forms had not just the intention of immortalizing the appearance of that person, but also to idealize the human, psychological and moral image for that person to leave behind. From then on the meaning of the portrait has changed according to the patron or the artist’s ideas and the issue would be too long of a discussion for a press release.

The portraits shown here belong to different classes, the referent for some is sentimental or idealist and they result charged with tension because their subjects belong to live experience, to emotion. The more interesting to us are the ones born from a meeting between impression and idea, between visual suggestion and intellectual approach.

The exhibition features works by: Vito Acconci, Giovanni Anselmo, Joseph Beuys, Slater Bradley, Alighiero Boetti, PierPaolo Calzolari, Julia Margaret Cameron, Daniela Comani, Benjamin Cottam, Ann Craven, Robert Crumb, Pamela Davis-Kivelson, Giuliano della Casa, Phil An Derer, Jennie Dubneau, Arturo Elizondo, John Gibson, Dan Graham, John Grande, Jitka Hanzlova', David Humphrey, Alfredo Jaar, Alex Katz, Thorsten Kirchhoff, Franz Kline, Joyce Korotkin, Carter Kustera, Ketty La Rocca, Matvey Levenstein, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Robert Mapplethorpe, Matt Marello, Amedeo Martegani, Juan Matos Capote, Randy Moore, Nzingah Muhammad, Ugo Mulas, Paolo Mussat Sartor, Luigi Ontani, Dennis Oppenheim, Meret Oppenheim, Giulio Paolini, Maurizio Pellegrin, Paolo Pellion, Giuseppe Penone, Federico Pietrella, Barbara Pollack, Florio Puenter, Carol Rama, Giada Ripa di Meana, Hanneline Rogeberg, Junya Sato, Salvatore Scarpitta, Floria Sigismondi, Francesco Simeti, Ena Swansea, Jim Torok, Mark Turgeon, Not Vital, Roger Welch.

For further information or visuals contact the gallery or check our web-site at http://www.essogallery.com

FASHION IMITATING ART IMITATING LIFE
BACK Magazine

By Monika Burman

More than a simple intersection of fine art and fashion, New York City artist, John Grande’s The Women Behind the Windows, is a head-on collision for your cerebral and style senses.

John Grande was born in Huntington Long Island in 1969 and studied at Suffolk Community College and earned a BFA in illustration at The School of Visual Arts. He has been immersed in fashion and fine art photography for years, having worked for numerous high-end publications, and high-profile photographers.

His past Experience is apparent in the high-gloss quality of his paintings with their luminous glow and enigmatic subjects. Grande’s uncommon talent for distilling images into their finest most intense rendering is best seen in this series of oil paintings.

Based on the window displays of New York City ’s 5 th Avenue , the paintings depict fashion, and are fashioned in a distinctive style that elevates the mass-produced inanimate figure to the uniquely beautiful and rare model we’re used to viewing as a fashion icon.

It’s easy to miss the mannequin-cues, the seams between the head and neck, the arms and shoulders, when faced with such glamour. The rich colours create visual depth and a lush environment in which these figures come alive. Grande presents women – like Even in “The Garden”, Cathy in “lost Love”, Samantha in “Sunset Dreams, and Margot in “The Albion” – not mannequins. They have the dimension and interest associated with real personalities. The women are sexy, aloof, provocative, thoughtful, demure – most of all, believable. We read their facial expressions, envy their individual style, and dream about having faces as perfectly symmetrical and features as well defined. They are, without a doubt, beautiful.

And it’s this quality of beauty that so freshly fuses art and fashion in Grande’s work. His high-realist style is reminiscent of classical portraiture in its ability to tune into the fine details that animate paintings. The women are painted under the bright light of the window displays, with dramatic contrasts of light and dark, creating the mystery and grandeur of interesting poses and sharp drama. The close-ups are framed like a silent secret between strangers – private, without a confronting gaze. Other paintings range from momentary sideways glances, to full-frontal boldness, and distant pensive pining for life beyond the glass.

The Women Behind the Windows are meticulously created like the cultured couture they wear, and this series provides a new context for objects imitating life in the throwaway culture that dismantles and rebuilds, from week to week, a new style. Grande’s paintings are permanent memorialization for the fleeting beauty that is fashion and fashionable.