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Born in Milan in 1960, he moved to London when he was 19. Franko B graduated at Chelsea College of Art and Design and he has been creating works across video, photography, performance, painting, installations, sculpture and mixed media since 1990. An undisputed protagonist of the ICA, the epicenter of London’s more radical and avant-garde artistic projects, Franko B’s background is the romantic punk of the British capital of the ’90s. Professor of Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Macerata since 2009, he has taught courses and lessons in some of the most important international art schools.
He performed in some of the most prestigious international contemporary art insitutions, like Tate Modern, London, 2003; ICA, London, 2008; South London Gallery, London, 2004; Palais des Beaux-Arts / Palais voor Schone Kunsten, Brussels, 2005; Beaconsfield, London 2001; Galleria Luciano Inga-Pin, Milan, 1998 and again in Mexico City, Berlin, Copenhagen, Madrid and Vienna. His most recent performance was held at the Royal College of Art in London in 2010. He also exhibited at: RuArts, Moscow, 2007; Victoria And Albert Museum, London, 2006; Tate Liverpool, 2003; Contemporary Art Center, Copenhagen, 2002.
In 2010 the PAC of Milano curated his first solo exhibition in an Italian public space. For the opening of the exhibition entitled I Still Love, he created the performance called Love in times of pain.
Among the monographs to him dedicated we remember: Franko B, Costa Nolan / Virus & Mutation, United Kingdom, 1997; Franko B The Performance Work, Black Dog Publishing Ltd, London, 1997; Oh lover boy, photography by Manuel Vason, Black Dog Publishing Ltd, London, 2001; Blinded by Love, Damiani, Italy, 2007; I Still Love PAC exhibition catalog 2010, Italy, curated by FAM, Published by 24 Ore Cultura, Italy. In 2003 he published a photographic project entitled ‘Still Life’.
His works are present in the collections of the Tate Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the South London Gallery, Modern Art Museum in Tel Aviv and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Milan.
Letizia Battaglia was born in Palermo, and she began her career as a journalist in 1969, working for the newspaper L’Ora in Palermo. In 1970 she moved to Milan where she worked as a photographer for various newspapers. In 1974 she returned to Palermo and she created Agenzia Informazione Fotografica with Franco Zecchin. She has exposed in Italy, in Eastern Europe, France, United Kingdom, America, Brazil, Switzerland, Canada.
Awards:
1985 Eugene Smith Grant Award, New York;
1986 New York Times Award;
1999 Mother Johnson Achievement for Life, San Francisco;
2007 Dr. Erich Salomon Preis, Germany;
2009 Cornell Capa Infinity Award, New York.
Publications:
Siciliana, Belvedere Electa, 2006;
Passione, Giustizia, Libertà, Federico Motta Editore, 1999;
Dovere di cronaca (with Franco Zecchin) Peliti, 2006.
Letizia Battaglia. Sulle ferite dei suoi sogni (On the wounds of her dreams), Bruno Mondadori, 2010
Some exhibitions:
1986 – Palermo amore amaro, Palermo.
2002 – Fotografie dalla Sicilia, Cantieri Culturali della Zisa, Palermo.
2003 – Sorelle, Passione, giustizia e libertà, Amsterdam, Olanda.
Omaggio a Letizia Metis-nl, Amsterdam, Olanda.
Expo Fotografe Italiane, Hasseblad center, Germania.
2006 – Passione, giustizia e libertà, Torino.
2006 – Siciliana, Galleria Belvedere, Milano.
Dovere di cronaca, Festival Internazionale di Roma.
2011 – Letizia Battaglia 1974 – 2011, palazzo Chiaramonte, Palermo pride
2010 -Attraverso le tenebre: Goya, Battaglia, Samorì – Raccolta Lercaro, Bologna, Galleria d’Arte Paola Meliga
2012 – Letizia Battaglia / Francesca Woodman- Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia
2014 – Letizia Battaglia: Breaking The Code of Silence, Open Gallery Eye, Liverpool
Assistant of Enrico Scippa’s studio in Milan. He has a degree in Arts and Anthropology of the Holy earned at Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. He studied for one year at the Shen Yang University, in China.
From 1999 to 2008 he participated in different exhibitions like Collettiva “Venti x Venti” Officina Lineadarte, Napoli. “Collettiva arte contemporanea italiana” Galleria La Pergola Arte, Firenze. Collettiva “Il logos e la mano” Spazio Finazzi, Chiuduno, Bergamo. Collettiva “Fratelli” Galleria Il Chiostro Arte Contemporanea, Saronno. Collettiva Spazio Classimmobili via Biancamano, Milano. Fuori salone “Le case dell’arte”, curated by Andrea Del Guercio. Collettiva, “Il viaggio” Studio Eredi Pappalardo, curated by Andrea Del Guercio. Collettiva ”Il libro d’artista“ Museo di Gibellina. Personal exhibition, Galleria Luxun, Shen Yang, China. Collettiva, Galleria 798, Beijing, Cina. 14° Concorso nazionale di calcografia, Gorlago – 2° classificato. Concorso “Arte Sacra” Trezzano, Brescia – 2° classificato. Collettiva “Il giullare di Dio” Palazzo Carini, Palermo. He participated in “7th Small Engraving International Salon Florean Museum”and in “Postcard” Maramures – Romania. “Diart” Collezione Arte Sacra Contemporanea Seminario Vescovile della diocesi di Trapani. Biennale di incisione 2004 a Venezia. “Diart” Collezione Arte Sacra Contemporanea Seminario Vescovile della diocesi di Trapani. Collettiva, Akademie der Bildenden Kunst, Norimberga, Germany. Collettiva, Teatro Politeama Galleria d’Arte Contemporanea, Palermo. X° mostra “Collettiva di pittori”, Ristretta, Messina. Collettiva Villa Oasi, Sala dei vetri, Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto, Messina. He illustrated “Frecce di Luce”, a book of poetries by the Bishop Francesco Miccichè, Ed. Pozzo di Giacobbe, Trapani.
Matteo Carassale’s passion for photography was born very early, looking at the slides and pictures of his father, who was a photographer.
He was twenty when he attended the Italian Institute of Photography in Milan, to complete his education. After this experience he has served as assistant to several photographers, but within a short time he decided to follow a different path.
He started travelling constantly, driven by curiosity and by a continuous photographic research, looking out for details, being sensitive to light and to the human being.
Since 1997 he collaborates as a professional photographer with several Italian and foreign major newspapers; the main themes of its services are: portraits, journeys, food, interiors and green.
T-yong Chung (Tae-gu, South Korea, 1977) lives and works in Milan. In 2016, he participated in the ACAW, Field Meeting, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Asia Society, New York and in the Gangjeong Contemporary Art Festival, The ARC, Tae-gu (South Korea). His works have been exhibited at the Lissone Museo d’arte contemporanea, Nuovo Spazio Espostivio of Casso as part of the Dolomiti Contemporanee festival, Fondazione Spinola Banna of Torino, as well as the Galleria Civica d’Arte Contemporanea of Trento. The artist also held solo exhibitions at Otto Zoo gallery, Milan, MARS, Milan and the Car Project Gallery, Bologna. He has additionally participated in various residencies and workshops in Italy, including at the Museo Carlo Zauli of Faenza, at the Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice and Madeinfinlandia in Pergine Valdarno.
Photo: © Ugo dalla Porta
Martha Fiennes is a writer, artist and above all filmmaker who can boast of a prestigious award-winning career. She has directed two very high-profile feature films: the sumptuous period film Onegin (1999) with Liv Tyler and Ralph Fiennes which won an award at the Tokyo Film Festival and was also nominated for the BAFTA (Best British Film) in 1999. Chromophobia, on the other hand – with an international cast from Penelope Cruz to Damian Lewis and Kristin Scott Thomas – was written and directed by Martha Fiennes and was the film that closed the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.
Since 2011, Martha Fiennes has been working on a series of futuristic and experimental projects which take advantage of the possibilities opened up by new technologies. With the aid of the producer Peter Muggleston, she has developed SLOimage, a system which lets images literally come to life according to a computer-calculated algorithm. Fiennes uses technology without complexes, creating sophisticated video projects which break down the boundaries between conventional cinema and art.
The first creation in SLOimage was Nativity which debuted at the V&A in London, to then be publicly visible at Covent Garden (10 November 2011 – 2 January 2012), at the National Gallery, at Sotheby’s, in both the London and Paris head offices, and at least reaching the Venice Biennial in 2017.
Photo © Anthony D’Angio
Cesare Fullone lives in Milan, where he earned a degree in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera. He believes that art is a restless language, always in tension, a poetic and ethic way to see and to interpret reality. “Stati di pericolo” (“States of Danger”): chains and barbed wire, metal powders, punches and nails, but also, camouflage paintings, x-rays and “Acids”. He chooses powerful icons, he explores bodies as landscapes, worlds and modified objects. Works that simultaneously attract and disturb: hypnotic images from which you can’t turn away from. In 2009 Fullone made an installation called “Dal Creato al Ri-creato” (“From Creation to Re-Creation”) in which a primordial nature appears, represented in black and white, with a simple and clear graphic; an intricated nature, an incomprehensible and unspoiled nature, which follows mysterious laws.
Photos, videos, posters, magazines, Cesare Fullone manufactures and activates imagination, the escape from the allocation of an I, the fracture of the rock walls of the recognition.
Among his solo exhibitions: “Sulla rotta degli Spraysages”, Rome; “Stato di pericolo”, Genoa; “Schieramenti”,Turin; “Insonnia”, Milan; “Paesaggi umani”, Zagreb; “Boxeur”, Milan; “Dal Creato al Ri-creato”, Milan; “Come farfalle ferite”, Milan; “…le rose nel giardino di rose che è soltanto nostro”, Milan.
Many are his participations in collective exhibitions, including: the Aperto section of the Venice Biennal, the Rome Quadrennial, MART of Trento and Rovereto, Pavilion of Contemporary Art in Milan, Pitti Immagine, Stazione Leopolda, Florence, Museum of Contemporary Art of Zagreb.
People who wrote about his work:
Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Renato Barili, Matteo Bergamini, Franco Bolelli, Achille Bonito Oliva, Antonio Caronia, Manuela De Cecco, Edoardo Di Mauro, Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Roberto Daolio, Lucrezia De Domizio Durini Dorfles, Silvia Evangelisti, Carlo Falciani, Elisabetta Longari, Teresa Macri, Filiberto Menna, Marco Meneguzzo, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Luis Francisco Perez, Roberto Pinto, Gabriele Perretta, Mimmo Rotella, Lea Vergine, Angela Vettese and others.
Born in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1975, Ruediger Glatz developed an interest in photography as a form of artistic expression in 2000, after having previously been an active graffiti writer. Setting out from this most traditional form of documentation, he proceeded to develop his own personal idea of photography as a conceptual portrait, photographing almost exclusively in black and white and using extended and mutiple exposure to emphasise his vision through the flow of time.
Since 2009 he has been working a project entitled The New Black, conceived as a portrait of the world of fashion. In that context, since 2012 his lens has recorded all the performance projects devised and developed by curator and fashion historian Olivier Saillard with the performer Tilda Swinton: The Impossible Wardrobe, Eternity Dress (2013), Cloakroom (2014), Sur-Exposition with Charlotte Rampling (2016) and Embodying Pasolini (2021–2).
His most important exhibitions include: his one-man shows: Sehr Gute Hunde, Forum Kunst Rottweil (2010), Wonderful World, Kunst/Halle Heidelberg (2011), Confrontation – Dark Thoughts and Moments of Light, Golden Hands Gallery Hamburg (2015), Characters, Palazzo Gianfigliazzi Florence (2017) and Addicted2Click, Barlach Halle K Hamburg (2021). He has also taken part in the following collective exhibitions: The Walls Belong To Us, Powerhouse Arena New York (2007), Young Blood, Forum Kunst Rottweil (2008), Tomorrow Ain’t Promised, Heidelberger Kunstverein (2009), Insights3, Kunst/Halle Heidelberg (2012), Cafe De Flores, Galerie Anne & Just Jaeckin Paris (2016) and Les Images Perdues, Arles (2020).
He has been living and working in Hamburg since 2014.
Graduated in Architecture, Francesco Jodice began working with photography since 1995. His research is focused on the analysis of the new relationships between social behavior and the urban landscape in different geographical areas. He gives life to projects such as “What We Want” (1997), an atlas on the urban and social behavior through fifty cities in the world, “Secret Traces” (1998), a photographic research based on the shadowing of ordinary people caught in their daily routes. He’s a founding member of Multiplicity, an international network of artists and architects which develops interdisciplinary researches on the processes of transformation of the urban condition and of the social behavior: concerning this project he has exhibited some projects: among others, “USE” (2001) at the Triennale, Milano, “Solid Sea” at Documenta XI (2002) and “Tokyo Voids” (2002) at Rice Gallery in Tokyo. The publishers Skira and Thames & Hudson published in 2004 the first part of the photographic project “What We Want”, already presented at Museo Pecci in Prato in 2001. His film “São Paulo_Citytellers” participated in the São Paulo Biennial in 2006 and the Global Cities exhibition at the Tate Modern in London in 2007. In 2008 he participated in the exhibition “Per una Collezione di Fotografia” at the Castello di Rivoli; he was invited to the Fair Play Festival of Lugano and he participated in the Biennial in Brussels. Always in 2008 he was invited by Art for The World and the United Nations to participate in the creation of the film project “Stories on Human Rights”, to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary of the Chart of Human Rights; the project was presented at the Théâtre National de Chaillot in Paris. In 2009 he exhibited the movie trilogy “Citytellers” (São Paulo, Aral, Dubai) at the MAMBO in Bologna and in 2010 at the MADRE Museum of Naples. He participated in Documenta Kassel, the Venice Biennial, Liverpool Biennial, Bienal de São Paulo, ICP Triennial of Photography and Video in New York; he exhibited his work at the Tate Modern in London, Reina Sofia in Madrid, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Castilla y León MUSAC, Mambo in Bologna, CCA Tel Aviv, Winzavod center of Moscow and the Prado in Madrid; His films have been screened out of competition at Film Festivals in Tokyo, New York, Rotterdam, Sydney.
Sandro Kopp (Heidelberg 1978) lives and works in the Scottish Highlands. Kopp’s work has been exhibited internationally in prestigious galleries like Lehmann Maupin, New York; Victoria Miro, London; Antoine Laurentin and Eric Dupont, Paris. He participated in many group shows Ha partecipato a mostre collettive within international institutions like London’s National Portrait Gallery and Edinburgh’s Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
David LaChapelle ( Fairfield, 1963) is known internationally for his exceptional talent combining a unique and hyper-realistic aesthetic with profound social messages.
La Chapelle’s photography career began in the 1980s when he began showing his artwork in New York City galleries. His work caught the eye of Andy Warhol, who offered him his first job as photographer at Interview Magazine. His photographs of celebrities in Interview garnered positive attention, and before long he was shooting for a variety of top editorial publications and creating some of the most memorable advertising campaign of his generation.
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From the ‘80s, after a brief conceptual experience, he totally devoted himself to painting carrying on an original and solitary research on the metamorphism of matter, on the purity of color and on the energy of light.
This is how “Eden” are born: medium and large sized paintings where abrasions, cracks, sedimentations and cascades of pure colors offer to the viewer abstract landscapes untouched like on the first day of creation.
He exhibits with solo show in private galleries and international museums, including:
2017
Ludwig museum in the Russian state Museum, St Petersburg
Contemporary art Museum MAXXI Rome
Ekaterina Foundation Moscow
2016
Castello di Miramare Trieste
2001
Fondazione Stelline Milano
2014
Saatchi & Saatchi Collection London
2012/ 2017
Opera gallery, New york, Miami, Seul, Monaco, Geneve, London, Dubai, Singapore, Aspen, Paris
2011
Italian Art 54^Biennale internazionale di Venezia
2009
Arte Europea 52^ Biennale internazionale di Venezia
Ottavio Mangiarini was born in Brescia in 1990, he lives and works between Brescia and Milan. He has a degree in Visual Arts and Painting, earned atAccademia di Belle Arti di Brera di Milano and he works with many Italian and international galleries, where he exhibits his research in painting.
Mr. Brainwash, the pseudonym for Thierry Guetta (French, b.1966), is a Pop artist and videographer. Mr. Brainwash was born in Garges-lès-Gonesse, Paris, France, but relocated to Los Angeles with his father and several siblings when he was 15, after his mother passed away.
His interest in graffiti was spurred by a visit to France in 1999, where he learned that his cousin was the infamous street artist Space Invader. Having developed a knack for filming, Mr. Brainwash started to record the nightly escapades of Invader and other street artists, such as Shepard Fairey, whose OBEY posters appear in many cities across the globe, and the mysterious Zevs.
In 2009, Mr. Brainwash met with Banksy and assisted him in launching his Los Angeles show Barely Legal, which was attended by notable celebrities and art collectors. The two artists afterwards decided to make a documentary detailing life in the secretive graffiti art scene. The documentary would include shots of Invader taken by Banksy and Mr. Brainwash himself. The result was the Oscar-nominated documentary Exit through the Gift Shop, which debuted at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. The film depicts the meteoric rise of Mr. Brainwash in the street art scene, with some of his works, such as the portrait of Jim Morrison, selling for US$100,000, and his Charlie Chaplin painting estimated to be worth between $50,000 and 70,000. Following the success of the film, Mr. Brainwash gained massive following with his exhibitions such as the one held at the Opera Gallery, London, selling out within two days. Musicians such as Madonna and the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers are also fond of the artist; Mr. Brainwash has been hired for several promotional projects.
Sebastiano Mauri was born in Milan in 1972. Coming from an Italian-Argentinian family, he lived and worked for years in Milan, New York and Buenos Aires. He graduated at the film school of the New York University and thanks to his short films he won the Warner Brothers Award and the Martin Scorsese Post-Production Award. He studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London and at the Art Students League of New York. As a visual artist, his works have been exhibited in galleries and museums around the world. His first novel, Goditi il problema (“Enjoy the issue”), was published by Rizzoli in 2012.
His work has been exhibited at the MART (Museum of Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto), MNAC (National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest), CACT (Center for Contemporary Art in Ticino, Bellinzona, Switzerland), CCEBA (Centro Cultural de Espana de Buenos Aires), VIA FARINI (Milan), KSA: K (Centre for Contemporary Art, Chisnau), FAC (Fundacion de Arte Contemporanea, Montevideo), CCR (Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires) Papesse Palace (Siena), Centro Cultural Borges (Buenos Aires), X Bienal de la Habana, Spazio Oberdan (Milan), Santral Museum (Istanbul), Centre Pompidou (Paris).
Recent solo exhibitions:
Michela Rizzo Gallery, Venice. – OttoZoo, Milan – MACRO – Art in the Lobby, Rome – OZ, Hotel Locarno, Rome – Rooms – Tender to Young Art, Milan – Have a window, Turin, Italy – Capri Palace Hotel, Anacapri- Braga Menendez Arte Contemporaneo, Buenos Aires – Plotting, Buenos Aires – Faena Hotel in Buenos Aires – MACRO Museum, Rosario, Argentina – Lotus Art, Rome
Born in Milan in 1984, he studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera where, in 2011, he obtained the Diploma di Laurea Specialistica al Biennio di Arti Visive (Visual Arts).
Crucial to Marco Paganini is the composition, the aesthetic balance between the components, the perfection of immobility, the network of cross references with which he seeks to engage the viewer. The art works are subtle: projections of emotions between seeing and the unseeing, the visible and the invisible , between fantasy and reality between seeing and the unseeing, the visible and the invisible, between fantasy and reality.
Numbers, stories, secrets, distances: a classification that envisages a map made of thousand geographies and no single storyline.
Among his works: Geometrie dell’assenza, Sull’invisibile, Ultimo Quarto, Un segreto, Salon Primo.
Frenchman Gérard Rancinan is an internationally recognized artist and photographer. His photographic works are included in great contemporary art collections and displayed in prestigious museums the world over. A wakeful witness of the metamorphoses undergone by humanity, Rancinan observes the world and delivers an uncompromising critique of the humours of the “Modern”.
Through his protean photography, in which form and content are always linked, Rancinan seeks to translate the questions attached to the deviances and contradictions of society. He never gives absolution, and, in spite of the occasional cruelty of his gaze, he never fails to show everything.
“Free thinker” is assuredly the only title to which he lays claim and to which he dedicates his life and work.
He is known not only for the relevance of his oeuvre, but also for the monumental size of his photographic works.
Rancinan is an Officier des Arts et Lettres and has won, among other things, six World Press awards.
His work has been featured in exhibitions at, among other places, the National Portrait Gallery in London; the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco; the Shanghai Himalayas Museum; the Louvre Lens, France; the Fondation Pinault de Dinard, France; the Oscar Niemayer Museum, Curitiba, Brazil; the Muséé des Arts et Métiers, Paris; the Danubiana Meulensteen Art Museum, Bratislava; and the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
Born in Bergamo, she graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan, and she got a specialization in Communication and Organization of Contemporary Art, always at the Academy of Brera.
She lives and works in Milan.
EXHIBITIONS AND PERFORMANCES:
– Art Live 4, Turin, (performance) – curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) – – Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo 2004
– Sleeping Anna-Lisa Riva (performance) – curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) – Milan, gallery BnD 2005
– Perdere la testa, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) – Milan, Galleria Lattuada 2005
– Punto a giorno, punto a croce… – curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) – Milan, Bel Art Galery, 2006
– A…mano, curated by Matteo Bergamini, Milan, the former church of San Carpoforo, 2007
– Annisettanta, sezione Corpi nell’arte, arte nel corpo, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM), La Triennale di Milano, 2007
– Tutto in un giorno…Poetiche della precarietà, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti (FAM) – Milan, Hall of Columns, 2008
– Passaggi di Stato, curated by Matteo Bergamini, Pavia, Palazzo del Broletto, 2009
– Target with seven faces, curated by Martina Cavallarin, Rome, Galleria Emmeotto, 2009
– Sull ‘invisible … -Avvistamenti, appuntamenti and dissolvimenti dell’arte contemporanea, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti, Milan, Gallery of Contemporary Ciocca 2010
– The Wall FAC room, Milan – May 27, 2010 curated by Matteo Bergamini
– Giorni e Segreti, solo exhibition, Spazio Zanuso, Milan, February 2011, curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti
Carmine C. Sabbatella Born in 1982, he lives and works between Milan and Sala Consilina (SA). He graduated with honors at Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Visual Arts under the guidance of Master Stefano Pizzi and specialized in Contemporary Art and Anthropology of the Sacred with the critic Andrea B. Del Guercio and theologian Msgr. Pierangelo Sequeri. From 2003 to 2008 was tutor and since 2009 is Image Designer at Brera Academy. The expressive path prepared by Sabbatella during these years of intensive research and investigation has seen a proliferation within different thematic areas and plastic choice factors ranging from stone to iron, digital printing and photography. Sabbatella occurs in the system of contemporary art with an artistic and cultural project, strictly characterized by the three expressive technical components, which interacts with the different values of aesthetic enjoyment. The artist has exhibited in numerous Italian and foreign museums; one of his works is present in the Barrique collection’s Museum, Orestiadi Estate in Trapani. In 2011 wins the Ricoh prize; in 2012 realizes the first advertising campaign Tendercapital Italy; in 2013 wins the 1st prize of the International Symposium “the days of Stone” in Padula (Sa); in 2014 renders the table “Vara” of Luca Scacchetti for Tecno, in 2015 is selected for the PDA “art Park” Milan Expo 2015 and participates in FREEgoriferi – Free to feed art – ART project in Venice. He presents two solo on his innovative technique of needle-engraving: in 2009 “Iron Pages” in Milan at Contemporary Academy Gallery by Andrea B. Del Guercio and 2012 “Agoincisione” CityArt space in Milan edited by Jacqueline Ceresoli. In 2014 he exhibited “The Last Supper” by Andrea B. Del Guercio, at OffBrera space.
Mario Schifano is an acclaimed Italian artist. He started attracting interest realising monochrome paintings which conveyed the idea of a monitor and showed numbers, road signals, logos like Esso or Coca Cola. Enamel, acrylic and big sizes characterise his work, as long as the use of packaging paper on canvas.
In 1962 he did his first journey to the USA, he discovers and meets artists such as Frank O’Hara, Jasper Johns, Rothko, Andy Warhol, Gregory Corso, whose influence is clearly noticeable in Schifano’s work.
His paintings from the Sixties are still relevant today more than ever. Among the most memorable works, the series dedicated to brands and logos, bicycles, flowers and nature.
Bert Stern, (Bertram Stern), American photographer (born Oct. 3, 1929, Brooklyn, N.Y.—died June 26, 2013, New York, N.Y.), redefined commercial photography in the U.S. and shot iconic images of such celebrities as model Twiggy and actresses Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn. His most famous photographs, however, were those taken of Marilyn Monroe for Vogue magazine just six weeks prior to her death in 1962; the images, known as “The Last Sitting,” were published in photo collections in 1982 and 2000. Stern began (1947) his photography career at Look magazine, but in 1949 he left his position as assistant art director to become the art director at Mayfair magazine. After serving for a short time in Japan during the Korean War as a movie cameraman and photographer, Stern returned to New York City as a freelance photographer. His photo taken for a 1955 Smirnoff vodka advertising campaign—of a martini glass shimmering in front of the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt—was his first major commercial achievement and pioneered the use of simple yet conceptual art in the advertising industry. He later worked for Pepsi-Cola and Volkswagen as well as Vogue, Esquire, and Glamourmagazines. Stern directed a documentary about the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959); in 1999 the film was selected for the U.S. Library of Congress’s National Film Registry.
[text from Encyclopaedia Britannica]
Graduated with honors from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, since 2004 he collaborates with TheBagArtFactory artistic group. In 2007 he joined the TDK Crew, the historic group of Milan murals writers, renowned as one of the strongest and deep-rooted realities in the Italian graffiti writing’s scene.
The artistic and cultural background of Federico Unia is strongly linked to his birthplace: Milan. As he explains, the city is enchanting, intriguing and ravishing, just like a beautiful and shady woman. The wonderful and damned metropolis, confounding and dazed by heterogeneous advertising, gave boost to the outcropping of that peculiar artistic language, kept inside for a long time in a sort of contemplative incubation. His artistic identity stems from the collective experimenting of the pop art and the reflection over disrupting New Dada ideas. Federico draws inspiration from the reinterpretation of poster-art carried out by Nouveau Réalisme’s affichistes -first and foremost Mimmo Rotella-, from Rauschenberg combine-paintings and from Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein reworking of popular icons, to end up with a unique modus-operandi, modeled through the street art filter and his creative reuse of artistic languages. The result is a hybrid Urban-Pop creation, which emphasizes his ability of mixing different styles and techniques and expresses an impressive creative insight.
Antonio Marras was born in Alghero, on Sardinia, where he lives also today. The island has always deeply influenced his aesthetic.
Antonio Marras draws, collects fragments and inspirations for his future works, a way to track maps and mark the territory, to arrange voices and silences. A voyage to metamorphosis: it is the idea of traveling, in fact, that assumes an important role in defining the boundaries and the shapes of contemporary art. As a continuous flow, as a movement that goes beyond the barriers, as an escape from control strategies, like an interstitial space.
He debuts with his prêt-à-porter in March 1999 in Milan. Numerous are the raids in art, literature, poetry: the “Trama Doppia” project, “Llencols de Aigua” with Maria Lai, “Uno più uno meno” with Claudia Losi, “Il racconto della forma,” “Minyonies “,” Noi facciamo. Loro guardano” with Carol Rama,” Les Funerailles de la baleine “,” Corps exquis”. In 2006, the Sandretto Re Rebaudengo Foundation in Turin hosts the photographic exhibition “Antonio Marras, ten years later”.
In 2009, during the Salone del Mobile he curates an exhibition entitled La Bea for Il Sole 24 Ore and the same he designs the costumes for Luca Ronconi’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
He participates in 2011 in the Venice Biennale with an installation in the Italian pavilion entitled Archivio Provvisorio. In 2012 curates the setup of Lea Vergine’s Un altro tempo at MART in Rovereto.
The same year in December, he is the protagonist of the exhibition Vedetti, credetti with Lucia Pescador curated by Francesca Alfano Miglietti.
In June 2013 he received a honorary degree in Visual Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan.
The exhibition The Game, Antonio Marras/Andreas Schulze took place in 2014 at Galleria Case d’Arte in Milan.
Carol Rama, in full Olga Carolina Rama (born April 17, 1918, Turin, Italy—died September 25, 2015, Turin), self-taught Italian artist who achieved great public success later in life with her evocative and psychologically intense depictions of women that celebrated an overt eroticism.
Rama was the youngest daughter of Amabile Rama, a small-scale manufacturer in Turin’s bicycle and automobile industry, and his wife, Marta. Rama’s early years were marked by economic and personal upheaval. Her father’s company went bankrupt while she was a child (he would commit suicide in 1942), and her mother was admitted to a psychiatric clinic in 1933, followed by her legal separation from Rama’s father. Rama began working diligently as an artist about 1933, largely in watercolour on paper, with raw and intuitive explorations of the body that were both expressionist and psychological. Images of women without limbs, clinics with restraining beds, and a depiction of her nude mother defecating all reflect a consciousness under stress.
Although Rama received no formal or academic training, she did strike up an important friendship with Felice Casorati, the foremost painter in Turin at that time. Though Casorati provided Rama with encouragement rather than training, he did expose her to the workings of the art world and set in motion Rama’s move toward her first public exhibition in 1945. That exhibition, held at the Galleria Faber in Turin, has become the stuff of legend: it was closed by the Turin police for obscenity before it opened; her work was confiscated; and some, it is said, was destroyed. Rama continued to exhibit her work throughout Italy in the following decades (including the Venice Biennales of 1948, 1950, and 1956) and formed close friendships with the Italian poet Edoardo Sanguineti and American expatriate Surrealist artist Man Ray.
By the 1970s, when her work had largely moved toward abstraction, she had begun to achieve wider recognition and exhibited in France, Germany, Sweden, and the United States, where her acquaintances included Andy Warhol, Orson Welles, and Liza Minnelli. A major reconsideration of her work as a self-taught visionary artist occurred in the 1980s when Italian critic and curator Lea Vergine saw in Rama’s early work themes that contemporary feminism had reinvigorated: a haunting and complex reclaiming of the female body from the male gaze and an attendant embrace of its sexuality. That new interpretation—accompanied by a broader mainstreaming of self-taught artists, who earlier in the century had usually been described as folk, naïve, or outsider and had later been called nonacademic, self-taught, or visionary—led to international acclaim for Rama, as manifested in several large retrospectives (including in Amsterdam in 1998 and Turin in 2003). She received the Golden Lion award for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale in 2003, and a 2014 traveling exhibition of her work opened in Barcelona.
Source: Britannica.com
Carol Rama’s website: archiviocarolrama.org
Zubair Ansari, known to the art world as Zoobs, is a contemporary artist renowned for his celebrity portraits that explore the complex relationship between parent and child, life and death.
Born in Chelsea, London in 1972, the early loss of his father and his belief that he will someday be reunited with him would later factor into his artwork. As a teenager, Zoobs was fascinated with images of perfection, showing an interest in fashion and photography.
He studied Fine Art at Slade School of Art and later gained a first class BA Honours degree in Graphic Design and Photography with a commendation in Art Direction at Kingston University in London. In the late 90’s, he was awarded a scholarship to train under the mentorship of the renowned image-maker and colour-creator Serge Lutens at Shiseido Cosmetics International in Tokyo and Paris.
It was during this period he began to explore societies ongoing preoccupation with perfection and its correlation to the stability of the human persona. He employed varied practises of performance art, sculpture, painting, photography and graphic design.
Early works such as Dream Lover (2003), The Gambler (2003) and Fame (2004) caught the eye of Guy Hepner, who brought him to public attention in the 2004 Here/Now exhibition where he was featured amongst leading international artists and photographers such as David LaChapelle, Takashi Murakami, Rankin and Mario Testino.
His first solo exhibition in 2007 Ego Is The Enemy at The Salon Gallery, London marked the end to his exploration for perfection. The exhibition featured work such as The Eye (2003), I Dream Of Madonna (2004), Don’t Look Back (2005) and Morgue (2006)
This final bow welcomed in a new stage in his career that has now become what he is renowned for.
Until recently he has delved into a subject close to home, that of the complex relationship of parent and child, life and death and it’s the impact on personal development. Through highly stylized photography, graphic design and painting combined with autobiographical poetry and prose, he created works such as Hollywood Scroll (2009), Gaganess (2010), Golden Pussy Cat (2010), Pink Aleph (2011), and Emerald Aleph (2011),
In a 2012 he created a series of canvassed celebrity portraits who earned their place due their own personal child/parental struggle for his 2012 solo exhibition Remix at Mew 42 Gallery, London. The exhibition featured Madonna in Madonna and Express Yourself (2012), Amy Winehouse in Back From Black (2011), Elton John in Elton Magic (2011), Prince William in King of Pop (2011), and Kate Middleton God Save The Future Queen (2011), purchased by Dolce and Gabbana and currently showcasing in their flagship store in Bond Street London, The portraits use his signature techniques to reveal images that are layered with splash points of exploding colour which partially mask and partially reveal the subject, using his signature autobiographical poem ‘I Look For You’.
He now lives and works in between London, New York, and Los Angeles.
www.iamzoobs.com
His work has been exhibited at many institutions including:
1997 Shiseido Ltd ‘From Designers’ exhibition / Ginza Space, Tokyo
1998 Shiseido Ltd ‘From Designers’ exhibition / Ginza Space, Tokyo
2001 An Ideal of Perfection / Red Fort, Lahore
2004 Here and Now / Guy Hepner Gallery London
2005 Photo London / Royal Academy of Art
2007 Ego Is The Enemy / The Salon Gallery, London
2010 Zoobs vs Lodola / Opera Gallery, London
2011 One Is The Magic / Opera Gallery, London Blakes Hotel, London
2012 The Optimist – An art exhibition for world aids day, East Gallery, London 2012 Jungle City / Manhattan, Guggenheim, NYC
2012 Remix by Zoobs / Mews42 Gallery, London
2012 Hallowed Be Thy Name / Mews 42 Gallery, London
2012 Arts For India / Group show / Saatchi Gallery, London
2013 Consolidate The Experience / Ivy Brown Gallery, New York City
