Cristina Vergano

Cristina Vergano is known for her paintings that blend a classical style with fantastical, surrealistic content containing layers of meaning. Author Gail Leggio said of her work, "All of Vergano's subjects—human, animal or hybrid—project warmth and intelligence; a spark of soulfulness emanates from their eyes. While many traditional allegorical figures are essentially mannequins to be accessorized with attributes, Vergano’s figures are beings that elicit a response from the viewer."

Vergano has received critical acclaim in The New York Times, ARTnews, Art in America, and New York magazine, among other publications. She was also featured, alongside Georgia O'Keeffe, Louise Bourgeois, Agnes Martin, and Yayoi Kusama, in the September 2014 article, "Wise Buys: 50 Women Artists Worth Watching," published by Blouin Art+Auction.

Born in Milan in 1960, Vergano studied at the International School of Milan, Liceo Cassini, and Università di Genova before moving to New York where she currently resides. She is represented by Tourné Gallery, and her work has been featured in the Parrish Art Museum (Southampton, NY), Islip Art Museum (Islip, NY), Anthropology Museum of the People of New York (Queens, NY), Laguna Art Museum (Laguna Beach, CA), Madison Museum of Fine Art (Madison, GA), DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (Lincoln, MA), and the Chicago Athenaeum (Chicago, IL). Vergano has also designed a line of objects for the Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY). She counts among her collectors Whoopi Goldberg, Robert and Cortney Novogratz, and Madonna.

For more information about Cristina Vergano, click here. 

Stephan Mackey

Stephen Mackey is a contemporary British artist whose dreamlike images of surreal fairy tale encounters and twisted romanticism have earned him a growing international reputation. He work conjures a time of artist Richard Dadd, taking the viewer into a new, sometimes dystopian world.

There’s a world veiled in static on the periphery of our vision, where dreams and nightmares bleed into one another. Glimpsed in flickering candlelight and whispered shadows of tangled vines in fairytales, we sense it creeping, seeping into our reality. We’ve entered the unrestful realms of British artist Stephen Mackey, where his paintings serve as portals to lands of darksome lullabies, unsettling dreamscapes of perpetual twilight evanescence. With each brushstroke, Mackey weaves secret tales of the precious and the sinister, the twisted romance of unquiet beauty.

Beneath the whimsical surface of Mackey’s paintings lies a darkness that lurks, unseen but palpable. Ethereal maidens appear to frolic with fantastical creatures, beauties dream soundly in enchanted canopied beds, and primp before shimmering mirrors. Yet, closer inspection reveals scenes fraught with lurking tension – the subtle dance between predator and prey, the maze of perils and pathways dark and bewitched.

Are these glimpses into a world existing just beyond our perception, where fairytales take a darker turn? Or are they manifestations of Mackey’s own subconscious, a shadowy reflection of the human psyche?

Beneath the whimsical surface of Mackey’s paintings lies a darkness that lurks, unseen but palpable. Ethereal maidens appear to frolic with fantastical creatures, beauties dream soundly in enchanted canopied beds, and primp before shimmering mirrors. Yet, closer inspection reveals scenes fraught with lurking tension – the subtle dance between predator and prey, the maze of perils and pathways dark and bewitched.

Are these glimpses into a world existing just beyond our perception, where fairytales take a darker turn? Or are they manifestations of Mackey’s own subconscious, a shadowy reflection of the human psyche?

Mackey's bio sums it up, “No information = mystique. That's definitely part of it, although it does sound a little contrived put like that. You can have any facts you want, but you're sworn to secrecy. Only kidding, I just hate those sites where they have a moody photo of the artist with some trenchant quote about their life and art underneath. I'm 45, married, lots of children, cats, rabbit. I'm also self-taught, so if you're going to give anything away, let it be that.  People love it, it's democratic.”

Mackey currently resides in the U.K.

 

 

Rashid Johnson

Rashid Johnson (b. 1977, Chicago) is recognized as one of the major voices of his generation, an artist who composes searing meditations on race and class while establishing an organic formal vocabulary that fuses a variety of sculptural and painterly traditions. Though he employs materials drawn from specific autobiographical contexts—including those related to African American intellectual and imaginative life—and though his practice had its beginnings in photography and conceptual art, Johnson is equally interested in testing the ability of abstract visual languages to communicate across cultural boundaries. The visceral experience of art, on formal terms, is therefore considered inseparable from the social matrix that gives rise to it. Johnson’s work is predicated upon moving freely between these two modes. The breadth and generosity of his vision has resulted in a wide range of two-dimensional and three-dimensional objects, installations, videos, and performances. 

 

Milt Kobayashi

There is a quiet sophistication in Milt Kobayashi’s oil painted canvases, summoning a pensive, ethereal feeling in the viewer.  Kobayashi’s subjects are  people from another time and place and, yet, they are strangely familiar.  They are urban dwellers lost in  thought as they take a momentary respite from their routine.  Kobayashi’s people are absorbed in the world of contemplation and meditation - making them attractively aloof.  
 
A third generation Japanese-American, Kobayashi was born in New York City, soon after that his family moved to Oahu, Hawaii, and then ventured to Los Angeles when he was eight.  After receiving his B.A. in 1970 from the University of California - Los Angeles, Kobayashi began working as an illustrator.  However he found his work, which was quite editorial in its nature, did not fit the Los Angeles commercial art market.  In 1977, Kobayashi returned to New York City.  After returning to New York, a casual visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art permanently altered Kobayashi’s artistic direction and prompted a career change.  There he saw Velazquez’s portrait Juan de Paraja.  
 
He began studying the works of Whistler, Chase and Sargent, who were also influenced by Velazquez.  Strangely enough, it was through his study of Western masters, especially Whistler, that Kobayashi became aware of Japanese art and “the Japanese floating world of Edo”.  He began studying the 16th and 17th century Japanese Ukiyo-e woodblock print masters Hokasai, Sharaku and Utamaro.  Ukiyo-e is defined as “pictures of the floating world,” depicting characters in the constantly changing motions of life.  The whole perspective of Japanese art allures him - the patterns, color harmonies, use of negative space, and primarily, composition and design.  
 

Kobayashi has received two major awards: the National Academy of Design’s Ranger Purchased Award and the Allied Arts Silver Medal.  His work has appeared in Forbes, Fortune, and Reader’s Digest magazines.  In September of 1997, Kobayashi was a featured guest artist at the Artist of America show in Denver, CO.

Lucienne O'Mara

Lucienne O’Mara’s paintings unlock the linear structure of the grid. The freehand geometry attempts to discipline and battle against the emotion and movement brought by the use of colour, and the physicality of the brushwork. The limitless potential of this single compositional method allows Lucienne to explore the boundaries of colour, rhythm, and space. Lucienne’s engagement with the repetition of squares within squares is seeking to break down visual order and imbue it with a kind of chaos and poetry more akin to our experience of life.

Lucienne was born in South London in 1989 where she still lives and works. She received a BA and MA from City & Guilds of London Art School and is currently in the final year of the Turps Banana Studio Programme.

Her work is featured in collections such as Simmons and Simmons, John Jones, and the Currell Collection. She has been the recipient of the Painter Stainer’s Prize, the Tony Carter Award, and a finalist of the Ingram Prize.

Larry Silver

Larry Silver is a New York based artist whose paintings and drawings evoke an energetic intensity. For his paintings, he uses ceramic-sprayed masonary board which allows the colors to emanate light giving his work a transcendent vibrancy.

He writes, "My paintings are predominantly constituted of oil paint mixtures, graphite and charcoal interlocking atop the surface of clay panels. It can be perceived as though the multitude of exposed layers are a diagrammatic suggestion of notation, juxtaposing the faces of neural pathways and emotive reactions to memory. The practice of pouring and sanding facades is to deliberately unveil the chronology of a painting's emotional thesis. The work is to suggest a simultaneity of time via an exploration of visual systems, self contained logic, and internalized iconography. In preserving the faint suggestions of what was erased, constructed and removed, I intend to hint at forms of psychological graffiti. It imbues something which is essentially abstract via a historical and narrative framework that communicates without being literal.

My series of drawings 'Mapping of a House/Structure and Incidence' started in the mid-2010's ascertain a similar logic in employing marks made initially through a cartographic blind contour process intended to realize structures which house childhood memories. I feel my way around the page as to explore the architecture and furnishings of the house in which I grew up utilizing charcoal- a barometer for my recollections of rooms, stairs, closets and doorways. In returning to the blind contour, more deliberate decisions are made to enhance the visual power of this trance-like exploration. My recent vision has been to interlock the drawing and painting processes in unison."

Erro

The acclaimed artist Erró (b. 1932) is considered one of the leading figures in European Pop-Art. During his long and successful career he has delved into diverse subjects in his paintings, often using an overflow of images to reflect on contemporary society of consumption, in addition to references to various political current issues.

From early on Erró was inspired by technology and science, creating works where the human and the mechanic are combined. In particular he examined how technology invades the body and how the human body adapts to the machine. The images offer questions concerning the borderlines between human beings and technology. Are these borderlines perhaps no longer there when human existence is tied to the mechanic and the very identity a collage of various technological creations, an hyperreal presence in social media, drugs cooked up in laboratories, smart-gadgets assembled in factories, the trace of chips in credit cards. The human being has become a cyborg, whether we like it or not.

The exhibition Cyborg gathers together artworks that reflect these ideas in various ways. The word is a combination, a collage of the words ‘cybernetics’ and ‘organism’. In 1960, when scientist were thinking up a new type of astronaut, the phrase ‘cybernetic organism’ was considered cumbersome. As a result it was shortened, cut and pasted into one handy word, ‘cy-borg’. At the same time these scientist where working on the technology behind the cyborg, Erró was working on art works focusing on the interaction between machines and people, often by creating a collage with people – usually women – and various machines.

The collage is very well suited to the cyborg, as the cyborgs very existence is dependent on compositions and excess. The cyborg is always a collage of some kind, de-formed and a combination of diverse images from art and toys. Even though it is already here, it is still being created and is continually changing. Many of the pieces are already here, but they keep being arranged in new ways – in addition new pieces are continually made.

Erró is an artist of the collage. Combinations characterize his work, and collages are the raw materials behind his paintings. The collages bring together different and similar objects and are always marked by an excess of some kind. Excess is also a symptom of the cyborg, it is always too much, something added, de-formed, integrated and transformed. The cyborg‘s collage shows us the familiar in a new light and makes it unfamiliar, until we grow used to it – or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jennifer Packer

Jennifer Packer creates portraits, interior scenes, and still lifes that suggest a casual intimacy. Packer views her works as the result of an authentic encounter and exchange. The models for her portraits—commonly friends or family members—are relaxed and seemingly unaware of the artist’s or viewer’s gaze.
 
Packer’s paintings are rendered in loose line and brush stroke using a limited color palette, often to the extent that her subject merges with or retreats into the background. Suggesting an emotional and psychological depth, her work is enigmatic, avoiding a straightforward reading. “I think about images that resist, that attempt to retain their secrets or maintain their composure, that put you to work,” she explains. “I hope to make works that suggest how dynamic and complex our lives and relationships really are.”
 
Born in 1984 in Philadelphia, Jennifer Packer received her BFA from the Tyler University School of Art at Temple University in 2007, and her MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. She was the 2012-2013 Artist-in-Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem, and a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from 2014-2016. Her most recent solo show, Tenderheaded, exhibited at the Renaissance Society, Chicago in the fall of 2017 before travelling to the Rose Museum at Brandeis University in March of 2018. Packer currently lives and works in New York and is an assistant professor in the painting department at RISD.

Mitchell Johnson

In a 2004 review published in Artnews Magazine, the writer Susan Emerling, describes Mitchell Johnson as "a devoted colorist able to extract visual tension from the world around him". Mitchell Johnson (b.1964) moved to California from New York City in 1990 to work for the artist, Sam Francis. In New York, Johnson studied at Parsons School of Design with many former students of Hans Hofmann: Jane Freilicher, Leland Bell, Nell Blaine, Paul Resika, Larry Rivers and Robert De Niro, Sr. Johnson adopted their reverence for art history and their emphasis on drawing and painting from life as the source of a personal direction.

Johnson’s work draws on a vastness of experience and a persistent desire to make paintings that explain the world through color and shape. He has always moved seamlessly between abstraction and representation and the art historian Peter Selz described Johnson as an artist who makes “realist paintings that are basically abstract paintings and abstract paintings that are figurative.”

Beginning in the 1990s Johnson embarked on long painting expeditions to Italy, France and New Mexico with rolls of canvas packed in a golf bag like a modern day Corot. Wading through unfamiliar landscapes, often on foot, he worked to understand the ever complex geometry of land and sky. He prevailed not to capture some ideal sense of place, but to see better and to go deeper into painting.

Moments of revelation accumulated. A more personal direction became apparent in Johnson’s work in the 2000s as there was less reporting on what he was encountering and more emphasis on the mysteries of appearances. A watershed moment occurred in 2005 when Johnson stumbled on an Albers/Morandi exhibit. As Brenda Danilowitz from the Albers Foundation has commented:

“About halfway into Mitchell Johnson’s 2014 monograph, Color as Content, there’s a portfolio of Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi paintings juxtaposed one to a page – looking at each other, so to speak. The images are not accompanied by words, but they speak eloquently of Johnson’s admiration of and debt to these two quiet yet lofty twentieth century masters. Albers shows his mastery of color, space, and form. Morandi answers with form, space and color. No words needed. In 2005 Johnson had come across an Albers exhibition in Morandi’s eponymous museum in Bologna and recognized that something remarkable occurred when these two unlikely comrades in art faced one another. The upshot resonates in Mitchell Johnson’s work of the past two decades: precisely and meticulously arranged color and form play off each other in

startling and lambent ways.”

In the 2000s Johnson began making regular trips to New England and Asia, in particular painting trips to Truro, Massachusetts. His paintings have been exhibited at various galleries in New York (Tatistcheff Gallery), Los Angeles (Terrence Rogers Fine Art), San Diego (Thomas Babeor Gallery), Santa Fe (Munson Gallery & Mitchell-Brown Fine Art)Richmond (Reynolds Gallery), Denver (Robischon Gallery), San Francisco (Hackett-Freedman and Campbell-Thiebaud), Chatham, Scottsdale (Cline Fine Art), Portland (Augen Gallery), Provincetown (Schoolhouse Gallery and DNA) and St. Helena (I Wolk Gallery) as well as numerous museums as referenced in his CV.

Johnson has been a visiting artist at The American Academy in Rome, Borgo Finocchieto, The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and Castle Hill in Truro, MA. In addition to attending Parsons, Johnson studied painting and drawing at Staten Island Academy, Randolph-Macon College, The Washington Studio School, The Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts and The New York Studio School. His paintings are in the permanent collections of 29 museums and over 700 private collections. Johnson is the subject of three monographs: Mitchell Johnson (2004, Terrence Rogers Fine art), Doppio Binario (2007, Musei Senesi) and Color as Content (2014 Bakersfield Museum of Art). A catalog for the 2021 Castle Hill exhibit is available at Amazon.com.

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Johnson's paintings have appeared in numerous feature films, mostly Nancy Meyers projects, including The Holiday (2006), Crazy Stupid Love (2011), and It's Complicated (2009).

 

LA2

Born and raised in the Lower East Side, Angel Ortiz (also known as LA2), like so many other kids would write on his desks and chairs in school. When his mother put him in the NYC Boys Club, which he loved because of the access to a swimming pool. His friends at the Boys Club were already tagging up in the streets, buses and sanitation trucks when asked him to join them in using the streets as their canvas. After that, Ortiz was tagging non-stop. He became the King of the buses and sanitation trucks. His tags were everywhere, At the age of 14, Ortiz met Keith Haring, an artist from Reading ,PA. Haring was attending The School of Visual Arts and had a studio in the Lower East Side (The Rat Studio). Of all the tags he saw around the city, the "The LA2 tag" stood out to him. He asked around to see if anyone knew whose tag it was and looked for Angel for months before they were finally introduced at Junior High School 22. Here, Haring and other graffiti artists were creating a mural. He asked if anyone knew LA2, to which SOE, Angel's friend responded and said, "I can get him for you." He went to Angel 's house, told him there is a guy with funny shorts and glasses asking for him. When he skeptically went over to the school, Haring could not believe Angel was a kid! They got along right away and loved learning from each other. Ortiz showed Haring some markers tricks- Keith did not know too much about markers, but he was the King with the brushes. It was as if they had always known each other.

Their first collaboration was that first day on a taxi hood in The Rat Studio. LA2 added his tags and crew names and asked Keith if he could add squiggly lines to add energy.  Two weeks later, Haring called Ortiz and told him he had sold the piece and he wanted to collaborate with him.  Tony Shafrazi gave him his first show with their collaborations in the Fluorescent Room.  Keith Haring then asked his mother's permission to take Angel traveling. He wrote a letter to his teacher and at the age of 15 he was exhibiting in Europe. Through Haring, Ortiz met art icons like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Richard Hambleton. They exhibited for almost seven years, but continued collaborating till Keith's passing in 1991. 

 

Angel Ortiz lives in NYC and is still creating and exhibiting world wide.  LA2 HAS done work for various museums and programs, such as the Children's Museum of Arts, the Children's Museum of East End, Apple Village Arts and the Renaissance Charter School.  

 

He believes meeting Keith Haring was a blessing for both.  Humbled to this day that it was his tag that caught Keith's eye.