THANKS TO THE MEXICAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE OF NEW YORK
“H O N E S T Y”
“H O N E S T Y”
Opening Reception
Friday December 11
From 6 – 9pm
On view: December 11 through January 10, 2010
Eyelevel BQE
364 Leonard Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.eyelevelgallery.com
Contemporary Mexican visual arts has been fixated with notions of violence and corruption for some time now. It is with welcome relief and great excitement that EyeLevel BQE presents, ”H O N E S T Y”. Centrally curated around the fictional saint “San Honesto” created by Factoria de Santos, this show is a retort against the universal corruption that fundamentally frames life in modern day Mexico.
“H O N E S T Y” Features art by Mexican artists: Vena2, Ciler, Bang Buro, Dr. Morbito, Monica Ruzansky, Gabriela Alva Cal y Mayor and Luisa Gloria Mota-Velasco. To create a new yet authentically Mexican visual culture focused on honesty all artists applied the spirit of the mirror faced saint to their respective mediums, resulting in a fascinating range of 2D and 3D work reaching for a more pure sense of self.
ABOUT FACTORIA DE SANTOS
Factoría de Santos mission is to create saints to raise awareness and positively inspire the person who prays. At Factoría de Santos we believe a better world starts within ourselves. We must take responsibility of our actions, and not wait for change in others.
www.factoriadesantos.com
ABOUT SAN HONESTO
San Honesto is the patron saint against corruption, protector against bribes and defender of truthfulness. San Honesto’s mirror face reflects the image of the person praying to him. Citizens of the world can give San Honesto as a gift to corrupt individuals to awaken a change in consciousness and improve their behavior. If you believe people make miracles happen, start praying to San Honesto for a more honest planet. Observance Day – December 9, International Anticorruption Day.
Participating Artists:
DAN FUNDERBURGH
Funderburgh is the son of two biologists; he spent several of his formative years in the mid-western United States. His wallpapers, drawings, prints and installations are driven by an unabashed love for decorative arts from around the world. Some of Dan’s wallpaper designs have been accepted into the Cooper-Hewitt’s permanent collection. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn NY.
www.danfunderburgh.com
BANG BURO
is a creative multidisciplinary studio that enjoys working in projects that reflect their interests in art, music and fashion. They produce what they like to consume.
www.bangburo.com
THOMAS TISCH
is an internationally renowned craftsman and artist. Born in Austria, he was trained at his family’s glass studio and at Glasfachschule, Kramsach. He studied art at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna and at the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY. Tomas has designed glass for, amongst others, Vitro Crystal, in Mexico, Steuben in the U.S.A, and Lobmayer in Vienna. Tomas taught at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland California and established the Cold Glass program there. His artwork is represented in the collections of the Corning Museum of Glass, the American Craft Museum, New York City, and the collection of the Cristallex Co. at Castle Lembeck, Novy Bor Czech Rep, as well private collections. Tomas has collaborated with many artist and designers in a variety of fields. He has worked with Albert Hadley, Philippe Starck, Peter Marino and many others.
www.tomastisch.org
VENA2
“There is no other redemption for humankind that acknowledging its own
divinity”
This idea underlines the structure of VENA2, a project that sees the
creative process as a quest in which the sacred permeates and shapes the
profane world, using nature as a medium for communicating with the divine.
VENA2 understands nature as the beginning and end of a Whole, referring to
the very identity of creation. Perception is what bridges divinity and the
unflagging search for knowledge, with the basic virtue of innocence
suggested as the ideal terrain for creating a purer, more direct channel
of communication with the spectator.
The artist depicts himself metaphorically as a stag climbing toward the
heights, as a mediator between the mundane and the divine, living in
resonance, in communication with the nature through his antlers. They act
as antennae communicating with trees, which contain the divine ancestral
information.
Born in Leon, Guanajuato, on October 19, 1979, he has lived and worked
there, in Tijuana, Mexico City and Los Angeles, all the while diversifying
his cultural horizons and studies in photography, design, and visual arts.
VENA2 was born in 2002. Nature as a source of inspiration and the object
of his imagery, marks not only what will be the beginning of a character,
an artist and his career but also a quest to transcend the boundaries of
aesthetics, discourse and art in order to achieve the status of journey
towards defining (redefining) his own identity. Thus, Luis Alberto Diaz
Gordoa makes this trip his own creative, spiritual and existential
process.
ABOUT SOMEWHERE UNDER THE RAINBOW
As an honesty act, VENA2 acknowledges the inevitable existence of
corruption and the fact that we live immerse in it. This work is created
in order to transcend the art status and become part of this phenomenon.
The artist intention was to create a piece that could be inserted in the
everyday life and its corruption: an intervention to the 100 pesos bill
was made, so it reflects the value of honesty over money and it has the
power to communicate it to the corrupts that receive it.
The art installation depicts the lost and search of honesty,
metaphorically as the pot of gold in the famous Irish legend of the
Leprechauns which says that this fairy creatures have a pot full of gold
hidden at the end of the rainbow, they would trick and lie to avoid
sharing it, so it is almost impossible to find one of this treasures.
Carlos Salinas, ex-president of Mexico and one of the most corrupt
politicians in the country, ran away after his period, and hid in Ireland,
where the legend is from.
www.vena2.com
CILER
Lives and works in Mexico City. The work of this self-taught artist is known as “Street Art” from the nineties. He began his career in 2005 by painting walls and public spaces in Mexico City, becoming a recognized artist. His work is driven by unique characters taken directly from the surroundings of the location of the piece. Ciler’s work goes beyond popular graffiti, each of his paintings have a treatment that denotes different processes and resources; from paint bombs exploding on the image, to the use of old posters torn down from the walls. In his work he uses wood and other elements that portray the street atmosphere.
www.cil3r.blogspot.com
ERIC MORALES
“DR. MORBITO” has been devoted to Santeria since his childhood; popular art has influenced him so much, that his current projects revolve around the religious syncretism and cultural diversity of everyday life. His projects consist of photography, objects and mainly toy design.
www.morbito.blogspot.com
MONICA RUZANSKY
Born in Mexico City, Ruzansky obtained a BA in Communications at Universidad Iberoamericana. She studied photography at Escuela Activa de Fotografía, Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City, The Academy of Art College, San Francisco, CA, and is a graduate of the International Center of Photography, New York. Ruzansky has exhibited at numerous venues, including PS122, Queens Museum of Art, Hanim Chanim Fine Arts, New York, PhotoEspaña, Spain, Centro Cultural de España in Guatemala, Palacio de Iturbide, and The Fine Art Palace, Mexico City among others. She has won various prizes such as the First Prize at the Third Yucatan Art Biennial, an Honorable Mention at the XII Mexican Photography Biennial in 2006. In the same year the first book of her photography, “De Noche”, was published in Mexico City and represented Mexico at PHOTOQUAI, the First Photography Biennial of Quai de Branly in Paris in 2007.
“With these images I wanted to find physical places in our culture where Honesty is the primary value or at least part of one’s experience. In this way I found different approaches like the spiritual point of view (here a confessional is used to purify oneself, crystal bowls to be told the truth about oneself, our past and future), and there is the scientific approach, in which I used a Polygraph test and urine tests to discover truths, and finally there is History, which is the perhaps the most ambiguous approach in terms of accuracy when telling the truth.”
www.monicaruzansky.com
GABRIELA ARTIGAS
Artigas was born and raised in México City in a home surrounded by volcanic rock. Born into a family of architects, design was innate and present during her childhood. While studying textile design, she started selling cuffs molded out of toothbrushes. The success of the toothbrush – cuff prompted her to try different material, which led to the design of a necklace for her mother. Once her creations were bought, she decided to create her first collection “21.” Gabriela currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Each style is produced and each piece is respectful of its individual components. There is no set formula to the design process; the materials’ similarities and differences plays off one another and influence the arrangement. “It’s not about inspiration, but about the conversation one has with materials. It’s about the process of sitting down and playing with surfaces, shapes, textures and how this relates to the body,” says Gabriela of her creative process. This sensibility is evident in her almost armor-like design, achieved solely though organic materials. In October 2006, Gabriela was the youngest designer to participate in Gen Art’s Fresh Faces in Fashion in Los Angeles. She was also the only featured designer in the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles first ever store catalogue. Gabriela was the only accessory designer featured in the Los Angeles Time’s review of spring’s 2008 Fashion Week.
www.gabrielaartigas.com
GABRIELA ALVA CAL Y MAYOR
Gabriela has always enjoyed how things look through different levels of focus, through a microscope, through a colored filter; not having a 20/20 vision is a tool for her. When she sees things from afar, she always thinks they are something else, until she comes close. Finding out what she saw at a first glance, sometimes seems more interesting than what they really are. It is through the translation of meaning and shape that Gabriela finds herself constantly working.Gabriela has been recipient of the Stephen Sprouse’s Scolarship for printmaking, participated in the 27th Bronx Artist’s in the Marketplace, and recently publishing house Cuarta Pared guide for emerging artists; CUADRO.
Gabriela expresses about her piece for Honesty; “I began to do some brainstorming about ideas to approach San Honesto and Honesty; I started with a signal mirror, but that didn’t fulfill what I wanted to represent, then I made an embossment with San Honesto and wanted to do a similar version of when Juan Diego unfolds his clothes and the image of the Virgen of Guadalupe appeared.
At the same time I started collecting pocket mirrors, and it seemed to me, that particularly in our culture it would be wise to unlearn being dishonest, and start being honest; my mirror to honesty begins with a pocket mirror. With a mix of faux finishings and perceptions of honesty, in regards to women’s beauty, I did a study with around how we are taught that untold truths, embellished lies make less harm.
www.leairbag.com
LUISA GLORIA MOTA-VELASCO grew up in Mexico City, thinking it was the must corrupt city in the world, after traveling she realized the disease of corruption was consuming the entire world. Luisa graduated from her Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan in 2006. For her thesis project she created San Honesto, Patron Saint Against Corruption, Protector Against Bribes and Defender of Truthfulness. San Honesto´s face is a mirror. Every time you pray to him, you see yourself reflected. In order to end corruption, we have to stop blaming others, start believing in ourselves and become examples to follow. Luisa, the co-founder of Factoría de Santos, currently works creating saints to inspire people to believe in themselves.
www.factoriadesantos.com
TOM SMITH
Graduated from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore and received his masters of fine arts from the School of Visual Arts, New York. During his studies, Tom spent time abroad in Ireland, France and Argentina. Upon his arrival in New York in 2006, Tom assisted fine artist, Carroll Dunham. He currently works for an art studio in Soho, where he experiments in printmaking.
www.tomsmithart.com
Each PULSE show, 10 artists are chosen to be featured in the “imPULSE” section of the show, showcasing the brightest up and coming artists in the contemporary field. This 2010 PULSE show will feature Gabriela Alva, who is presenting a complex and humorous mélange of print, installation, and sculpture work. Combining her fine tuned material sensibility, and a social commentary that moves between humor and critique this feature showing is a highlight in this promising artist’s career as well and an indication of great things to come. Don’t miss her work at Pulse Booth I-9.
This month in Brooklyn, there are two galleries offering Contemporary Mexican Art on the topic of Mexican life and various challenges thereto. In Mexico, escalating violence and political malfeasance are common occurrences. The collision of complex issues including poverty, pervasive corruption, kidnapping, extortion and a wearisome drug war, has created a ‘perfect storm’ of adversity for its citizens. It is from within this context that these two shows originate.
Julien Gardair is an artist who expresses himself equally well in a diverse array of mediums. Paintings come from paint coatings, rubber stamps, and layering appropriated media. The installations highlight his playfulness, where hands could be
Tom Smith’s recent collages combine two or more found superhero images which possess special powers and defy physical boundaries.
