THE VOLTA SHOW – NEW YORK 2010 ARTIST & GALLERY INTERVIEWS WITH XXXX MAGAZINE
VIDEO Directed by INDIRA CESARINE for XXXX MAGAZINE, edited by JOHN PAUL ZUVIATE, titles by EMILIE YE JI KOO
XXXX MAGAZINE Creative Director, Indira Cesarine, interviews artists and galleries at this years contemporary art fair THE VOLTA SHOW . Artists and galleries profiled include: Federico Solmi of ADN Galeria, Sandra Bermudez of Kasia Kay Gallery, Markus Putze Jarmuschek + Partner, Ghost of a Dream at The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, Heather Cantrell of Kinkead Contemporary and Jan Hafstrom with Andreas Brandstrom Fine Art.
VOLTA NY is the American incarnation of the successful young fair founded in Basel in 2005. VOLTA NY was conceived to continue the original mandate to create a tightly-focused, boutique event that is a place for discovery and a showcase for current art production and relevant contemporary positions — regardless of the artist or gallery’s age. VOLTA NY organized by art critic and Fair Director Amanda Coulson, puts the focus back on artists through exclusively featuring solo projects.
Federico Solmi, an Italian artist based in New York, exhibits his video installation of Douche Bag City 2010. His work is graphic and highly explicit and inspired by the world around him Solmi creates satires about evil and vices that affect contemporary society and mankind. Using culled images from video games, popular culture and the Internet to create collages and in turn, original artworks. Douche Bag City centres around Wall Street anti-heroes and villains and visually critiques the American modus operandi of consumer society.
Working with the ADN Galeria, Solmi has developed within their program for young artists that strives to establish artists like himself in national and international networks. The ADN Galeria nurtures artists like Solmi and promotes the dynamic of the latest in visual arts
Sandra Bermudez – Kasia Kay Gallery
Representing art in a wide cultural context, the Kasia Kay Gallery presents artist Sandra Bermudez, an artist that in her installation “All That You Can See II” explores the nature and universality of human attraction. Her video installation features a man and a woman (the artist herself) preparing for a night on the town. The idea behind it is to formulate a dialogue concerning the private versus the public aspects of our encounters in ways that introduce an intimate aesthetic into a public sphere.
Markus Putze of Jarmuschek + Partner
Marcus Putze tells stories with his wall drawings. For this artist the gallery space becomes so much more than white space as he transforms the space his illustrations occupy into a complex dimension of painting, graphics, photography, text, crafting layers of time and invoking senses of sound and movement. He creates a strong visual world for the spectator to experience interwoven impressions of the old and new.
Ghost of a Dream at The Cynthia Corbett Gallery
For Volta 2010, The Cynthia Corbett Gallery present artist duo Ghost of a Dream, who working with sculpture and installation use everyday pop culture detritus that people use to attain their goals. This year, they have focused on the notion of the common desires and ramifications of fast, easy money and their ideas find physical form in lottery tickets. Ghost of a Dream use scratch lottery tickets that they have collected from gas stations, bars, grocery stores all over the world to denote the idea that ‘real dreams disappear as quickly as they came’.
Heather Cantrell of Kinkead Contemporary
Heather Cantrell with Kinkead Contemporary, set up a portrait studio for her installation ‘A Study in Portraiture’. This concept began in 2008 when Cantrell invited artist friends to her studio to dress up, using her many props and costumes, and have their portrait taken. Cantrell subtly references historical artworks in her portraits. Her conceptual strategy is fascinating in the sense that it combines performance, theater, painting, sculpture and translates it through one medium.
Jan Hafstrom of Andreas Brandstrom Fine Art
Born 1937 in Stockholm, Sweden Jan Hafstrom has maintained an active career as an artist, writer and critic. He studied at the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm and has shown at the Venice Biennale four times, his in 2009.
His work the Fruit and Flower Deli shown alongside his earlier work The Eternal Return, features a mosaic of visual quotes from popular culture and from the mythical worlds of a young boy’s room.
