|
For immediate release and listing:
JOSHUA LINER GALLERY TO PARTICIPATE IN
7th ANNUAL PULSE MIAMI CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR
FEATURED ARTISTS: TONY CURANAJ, DAVID ELLIS, KRIS KUKSI, TOMOKAZU MATSUYAMA,
STEPHEN POWERS, AND PEMA RINZIN
DECEMBER 1 – 4, THE ICE PALACE, MIAMI
New York, November 10, 2011—Joshua Liner Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in the 7th annual
Miami edition of the PULSE Contemporary Art Fair, to be held December 1–4, 2011, at The Ice Palace film studios.
This beautiful indoor/outdoor, multi-use venue will host individual gallery booths plus the fair’s noted series of
special installations, screenings, and large-scale artworks, including the IMPULSE section of gallery presentations
and PULSE Projects. As one of more than 80 international exhibitors, Joshua Liner Gallery will present works by
gallery artists Tony Curanaj, David Ellis, Kris Kuksi, Tomokazu Matsuyama, Stephen Powers, and Pema Rinzin.
Additionally, the gallery has been chosen to present large-scale video projections in digital 3-D by PULSE Prizewinning
artist David Ellis within the PULSE Projects program.
About the Featured Artists
Tony Curanaj, a native New Yorker, updates academic realism with contemporary subjects and themes. His still-life
and trompe l’oeil paintings in oil on canvas incorporate meticulous depictions of unconventional objects—gas
masks, robots, playing cards, firecrackers—as well as riddles and visual puns. Curanaj will show several new paintings
at PULSE Miami. His work has appeared in exhibitions at such venues as DFN Gallery, New York; Century
Gallery, Alexandria, VA, and Groeninge Museum, Bruges, Belgium; he also exhibited in 2009 at John Pence Gallery,
San Francisco.
Kris Kuksi, a Kansas-based artist and gallery mainstay, creates sculptural assemblages from curio-shop treasures
and mass-produced castoffs, such as toy soldiers, bric-a-brac, plastic figurines, and machine parts. Synthesized into
rococo tableaux, these scavenged items become idealistic fantasies that suggest the aesthetics of the Belle
Époque yet expose the crass, even mercenary, underbelly of civilization in their dark nooks and intricacies. At
PULSE Miami, Kuksi will show three new mixed-media assemblages, including The Visitation, in a preview of his
third solo exhibition at the gallery slated for March 2012. His work has been exhibited at venues internationally,
including Strychnin Gallery, Berlin, and Museum HR Giger, Gruyères, Switzerland.
Tomokazu Matsuyama, a Tokyo-born, New York-based painter, embraces his Asian cultural roots with a distinctive
contemporary playfulness. His acrylic-on-canvas works are equally influenced by the classical grace of Japanese
painting from the Edo and Meiji eras, the austerity of postwar contemporary art, and the unbridled extravagance
of Japanese and American pop culture. This dynamic, colorful synthesis challenges conventional ideas about
cultural homogeneity while contradicting strict notions of “Japaneseness.” At PULSE Miami, Matsuyama will show
recent paintings, including the vividly hued, large-scale tondo Mr. Alpha and multi-canvas work Cold Mountain and
the Foundling. His work has been included in such exhibitions as SugiPOP!–The Influence of Anime and Manga on
Contemporary Art at Portsmouth Museum of Art, Portsmouth, NH, and Changing the World Through Art at Haunch
of Venison Gallery, New York.
Stephen Powers is best known for his large-scale works that evoke vintage Americana, specifically the roadside
signage of gas stations, “greasy spoons,” and billboards. Though the typography and bright colors are familiar,
Powers replaces logos and slogans with his own pithy comments on the everyday vicissitudes of life, love, and
work. At PULSE Miami, Powers will show new large-scale, enamel-on-aluminum works as well as selected pieces
from his ongoing “Daily Metaltation” series. Powers and his contemporaries came to represent a generation of
artists defined by the 2004 Beautiful Losers exhibition, and he has since conducted such high-profile public art
projects as Dreamland Artist Club at Coney Island (Creative Time, 2004) and A Love Letter For You (2007–11): a massive
public art work which began in Dublin and Belfast when Powers was a Fulbright scholar; since then he has
continued his project in Philadelphia, PA, Syracuse, NY, and currently in Brooklyn, NY.
Pema Rinzin, a master in the art of Thangka painting, has adapted the techniques and mystical motifs of this
centuries-old Buddhist tradition to create spellbinding works of contemporary art. Essentially abstract, these
works feature the use of ground pigments made from leaves, insects, minerals, pure gold, and other exotic materials.
The imagery is characterized by intricate decorative pattern and brilliant color, which serve to advance spiritual
objectives of enlightenment and transcendence, while conveying Rinzin’s unique artistic vision. At PULSE Miami,
Rinzin will show works from his ongoing Water series, as well as the never-before-seen work Peace and Energy
(Blue). His work was included in the recent exhibition Tradition Transformed at the Rubin Museum of Art, New York.
David Ellis – PULSE Projects
As part of PULSE Miami’s PULSE Projects—a special program of solo installations on view during the fair—Joshua
Liner Gallery has been selected to present three digital video projections by David Ellis. The artist’s signature
“Motion Paintings,” including Animal (2010), OKAY (2008), and the new 3-D work Transforming Beauty (2011), will
be projected across a 25-foot expanse adjacent to the gallery booth (D-204). Conducted during artist residencies
across the country in collaboration with cinematographer Christopher Keohane, the videos comprise thousands of
individual stills of Ellis at work on large-scale mural projects. Once edited into a time-lapse digital video, the
“Motion Paintings” become works of art in their own right—objects converge and organic elements transform as
abstract and figurative scenes merge through color, sound, motion, and texture. These video works capture the
artist’s love of hip-hop, jazz, and other musical forms. Ellis interprets sound into kinetic waveforms and filigree, or
“flow,” that undulate over and around a tapestry of marks and symbols drawn from public signage, commercial
advertising, urban street art, and other sources of visual culture. PULSE Miami visitors will be provided with special
glasses to view the mesmerizing 3-D effects in Transforming Beauty.
David Ellis is an acclaimed Brooklyn-based artist and the unofficial founder of the Barnstormers collective. He has
conducted numerous public projects at such venues as MOCA, MoMA, Deitch Projects, Mattress Factory, and
Sesame Street, and was awarded the PULSE Prize at the 2011 PULSE New York art fair for his kinetic sound
sculpture True Value (Paint Fukette). On December 15, Ellis will unveil new works in various media for his debut solo
exhibition at Joshua Liner Gallery, New York. The artist has received solo exhibitions at the Huntington Museum of
Art, Huntington, WV, and Rice University Gallery, Houston, TX. His work has been included in such notable exhibitions
as Animated Painting, San Diego Museum of Art (2007); Greater New York, P.S.1/MoMA, Long Island City (2005);
and Beautiful Losers, Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (2004). His work is held in international collections
including those of Charles Saatchi and Martin Margulies.
About PULSE Miami 2011
PULSE Contemporary Art Fair is the leading U.S. art fair dedicated solely to contemporary art. Through its annual
editions in New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, PULSE provides a platform for diverse internationl galleries to
present renowned and pioneering contemporary artists, alongside an evolving series of original programming.
PULSE Miami 2011 will take place December 1–4, 2011, at The Ice Palace, located at 1400 North Miami Avenue at
NW 14th Street?. The art fair will be open Thursday, December 1 (1–7 pm), and Fri.– Sun., December 2–4 (11 am–7
pm, closing Sun. at 5 pm). For directions and other information, visit www.pulse-art.com.
About Joshua Liner Gallery
Founded in 2008 in New York City’s Chelsea Arts District, Joshua Liner Gallery presents an exciting roster of
established and emerging artists from North and South America, Asia, and Europe. These fresh voices engage with
the issues of today—globalism, new technology, politics, contemporary urban society, the environment—yet in
dynamic dialogue with the histories and aesthetics of the past. In an eclectic range of mediums and approaches,
gallery artists reveal influences as disparate as the urban street, Asian pop culture, folk art, and digital design.
Above all, gallery artists reflect the cultural crosscurrents and decentralized reality of artmaking today.
For more information, please visit www.joshualinergallery.com, or contact Elizabeth Kurita at 212.244.7415 or
elizabeth@joshualinergallery.com
|
