Richard Rezac

Richard Rezac was born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska. Early in his life he already planned to become an artist. He later attended the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon in order to pursue his undergraduate degree. After college Rezac spent six years travelling around the country to visit museums and study art on his own. After these six years were up, Rezac attended graduate school at the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. It was here that Rezac's first three-dimensional works were created. Before this time, Rezac's work had consisted of paintings and charcoal drawings in which he tried to prefigure his sculptural concerns of the precise, quasi-geometric form in isolated space.

"Balance" is the constant and final word in any descriptions of Rezac's work and seeking balance is what Rezac describes as a primary motivation in his work. The balance of materials, formal qualities, emotional expressiveness, size, weight, placement- all of which are further brought out in the installations he designs. Rezac's works tend to leave people with a sort of old-fashioned feeling of "rightness".

(http://richardrezac.com/templatePages/bibImView.php?id=1&view=image)

Wenceslaus, 2003

Painted Wood and Steel

Lancaster, 2004

Painted Wood, Steel, and Aluminum

Glisan, 2006

Painted Wood and Aluminum

Photos/Information: http://richardrezac.com

Leandro Erlich

Leandro Erlich was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1973. At age 20, he won a grant from the Antorchas Foundation to take an advanced sculpture and installation workshop under the direction of Luis F. Benedit and Pablo Suárez. Between 1998 and 1999 he took part in the Core Program, an artist-in-residence program in Houston, Texas, U.S.
In 1999 he moved to New York and presented his first exhibition in a commercial New York gallery. Over the next two years he participated in the Whitney Biennial and represented Argentina at the 49th Venice Biennale (2001).
Since 1997, Erlich has participated in a number of group exhibitions and art biennials, including the 1st Bienal do Mercosul (1997), the 7th Havana Biennale (2000), the 7th Istanbul Biennial (2001), the 3rd Shanghai Biennale (2002), the 1st Busan Biennale, Korea (2002), the 26th Bienal de São Paulo (2004), la Nuit Blanche de Paris (2004), the 51st Venice Biennale (2005), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, Japan (2006), and the exhibition "Notre histoire" at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, in 2006, among others.
Erlich has had solo exhibitions at venues such as the Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona (2003), MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma (2006), Le Grand Café - Centre D'art Contemporain de Saint-Nazaire, France (2005), and Albion Gallery, London (2005). In 2001, Erlich presented a major architectural installation entitled "Neighbors: An Installation by Leandro Erlich" at the El Museo del Barrio, New York.
Erlich's works are in several private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Tate Modern, London; Musee d'Art moderne, Paris; 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; MACRO, Rome; and The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Fonds national d'art contemporain (FNAC), Paris.

Erlich lives and works in Paris, France, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

(website: http://www.skny.com/artists/leandro-erlich/bio/)

Smoking Room, 2006

Window and Ladder- Too Late For Help, 2008

Metal ladder, underground hidden metal structure, aluminium frames, and fiberglass brick wall

14 3/4 ft x 5 1/4 ft

Swimming Pool, 2008

masonry, swimming pool ladder, laminated glass, and water

600 x 280 x 300cm

Leigh Pennebaker

Leigh Pennebaker was born and raised in Star, Mississippi. As a child she would create fantastical fashion illustrations. At the age of fourteen she began taking figure drawing classes and a couple of years later was hired to work as a caricature artist in the local mall. Following her college graduation in 2001, Leigh moved to Manhattan to further pursue her love of art and fashion.

Leigh describes her work beautifully in her artist's statement. She says, "My sculpture deals with my lifelong fascination with fashion, women, and beauty. I view my work as three-dimensional caricature through which I channels the spirits of southern belles, divas, vixens, and ingénues. To me, style is about so much more than fabric or fashion. It's about how something is worn, and even more importantly, why. With each wire dress I explore the presence of the female form and gesture without sculpting representations of actual body parts. Instead I allude to physical bearing, spirit, and impulse through sculpted clothing. I use jagged industrial fencing and rebar tie-wire to construct to the sculpture. I am intrigued by the contrast that the materials create with the subject matter. The connotations of entrapment and bondage are juxtaposed with that of iconic feminine beauty. I also rely on the process of meticulously cutting, tying, knotting, weaving and twisting the wire to connect my art to the long tradition of womanly craftsmanship and domestic arts. Ultimately, the sharp linear quality of the wire is perfect for an expression which is both elegant and raw, whimsical yet edgy. "

(http://www.leighpennebaker.com)

Carmen

Wire and Fencing

Audrey

Wire and Fencing

Bridget

Wire and Fencing

Photos/Information: http://www.stylehive.com/tag/stylogy, http://raidersofthelostart.org/2010/11/30/leigh-pennebaker/, http://www.leighpennebaker.com, and http://www.dressaday.com/2007/03/index.html

Andreas Zybach

Image One: The project Rotating Space is based on a concept which NASA used for planning the construction of space stations well into the sixties. Wernher von Braun and other space scientists attempted to create a ring-shaped architecture in which the weightlessness of space would be replaced by a rotational force which would create its own "gravity" and thereby the impression of earth-like conditions inside.

A comparable principle in terms of constructing a controllable environment was realized 2004 at the Botanical Gardens in Munich and its greenhouses and is now on display in its second version at Johann König, Berlin. The exhibit attempts to bring the two approaches together. Soil, water and seeds are held in the scale model of the space station by means of the rotation effect already described. The growth process is facilitated by the object's constant movement. The project ends when the model comes to a standstill.

(website: http://artnews.org/gallery.php?i=304&exi=17405&Johann_K_nig&Andreas_Zybach)

Image Two: In his 2005 installation Sich selbst reproduzierender Sockel (Self-reproducing Pedestal). Comprised of clusters of inflated balloons sandwiched between a wooden latticework, the piece invites viewers to walk on its air-filled structure. With each step, an attached air pump inflates another balloon that is eventually added to the installation, causing it to grow as if it were reproducing on its own. Like Piero Manzoni's pedestal and pneumatic works, Zybach's installation draws connections between biological processes and art.

Zybach (b. 1975, Olten, Switzerland) has been exhibiting his work since 2001. He has had solo exhibitions at institutions including Johann König, Berlin; Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; and Schnittraum, Cologne. Zybach has also exhibited his work at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao; Victoria Miro Gallery, London; and in the 2006 Busan Biennale.

(website: http://ps1.org/exhibitions/view/154)

Image Three: Andreas Zybach offers the audience not glasses but a walk through a large tube made of yellow silk and polished plywood. Its self-mockingly pompous title, "0-6, 5PS," suggests that exactitude rules. Every dimension and every seam is perfect, although the path is rocky. As people walk through, they pump the floor up and down, creating the hydraulic pressure that releases streams of dark gouache onto surrounding walls.

(website: http://www.seattlepi.com/ae/article/Exhibit-lets-you-take-art-into-your-own-hands-1272140.php)

1. Rotating Space (Installation View I)

Rotating Space (detail 2), 2004-2009

Steel, electronic drive, seeds, earth

215 x 165 x 315 cm

2. Self-reproducing pedestal, 2007

inflated balloons and a wooden latticework

3. "0-6, 5PS" or "Tunnel", 2007

liquid pumps, gouache, tubes, steel feathers, plywood, raw silk, and hardware

22 x 7 feet

Mandla Reuter

The English word “plot” means not only a conspiracy and a story, but also a piece of land, an ambiguity of meanings that is played upon in Mandla Reuter’s first solo exhibition in the Netherlands. “A Plot” (2011) is an installation made of dirt and a corner post that has been brought into the exhibition space of De Vleeshal. The materials are coming from a piece of land that the artist purchased in Los Angeles, a city whose image is particularly formed by the local movie industry. This synthesis of reality and fiction is the theme the German artist sets out to define. In many ways A Plot can be seen as a diptych, one part becoming an artefact and cultural object, which is transformed and contextualized by the different venues it is traveling to. The other part, as a section on the map by definition immovable, becomes a monument of its own and offering possibilities for things to come.

At De Vleeshal “A Plot” (2011) is accompanied by “Shuteye” (2011), a soda vending machine, which is sometimes on and sometimes off. Built into the space is “The Building” (2011), an I-beam superimposing the gothic architecture with an icon of contemporary construction and seemingly the starting point of a building within the building. A slab of marble, “Untitled” (2011) marks the end of the space. This is not Mandla Reuter’s first exhibition in De Vleeshal. In 2010 with the piece

“Fountain” (2010) he brought 5,000 litres of water from Rome’s Trevi Fountain into the exhibition space during the group exhibition Psychosculptures. This time, through the video “The Shell Home” (2011) the Trevi Fountain is presented via a different fictional element in collective culture: the replica of the fountain in Las Vegas. The reproduction contains elements that play on the reconstruction of reality via its fictional version. The screen is hanging high on the wall in front of gothic sculptures which become spectators.

The artist makes us think about the concept of originality, about what is real and what is false – about the extent to which something retains its essential features even if the original has been changed. The real soil from Los Angeles is brought onto a narrative plane. The artist seems to want to turn the illusion into reality. And thus visitors to the exhibition in Middelburg find themselves walking on a piece of land from Los Angeles, looking at a Trevi Fountain which in reality is the Las Vegas replica, elements that challenge the originality of the exhibition area.

Mandla Reuter (1975) lives in Basel and Berlin. Amongst others he has taken part in “Exhibition, Exhibition” at Turin’s Castello di Rivoli and in “Sculptures Die Too” at La Kunsthalle in Mulhouse. In 2009 he presented two major projects: “Souvenir” at Berlin’s Schinkel Pavillon, and “Now sun now cloud” at the Kunsthalle in Lingen, Germany. He has taken part in the 2008 Santa Fe Biennial and the 2008 Gwangju Biennale in Korea. He is represented by Neue Alte Brücke, Frankfurt, Galerie Mezzanin, Vienna, Croy Nielsen, Berlin and Francesca Minini, Milan.

website: http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2011/04/mandla-reuter-at-de-vleeshal/#more-26912

A Plot, 2011

dirt from Los Angeles and a corner post

Shuteye, 2011

Soda Vending Machine

Coppice, 2002

Various Plants

Gerhard Demetz

In just a few years, Gehard Demetz has risen to international prominence by applying his incredible craftsmanship as a traditional woodcarver to subjects that are new and appealing to contemporary viewers.

His sculptures of children are at the same time attractive and disquieting and rendered with an amazing  perfection that is by no means rhetorical or classical. One of the most startling technical features is the construction using small woodblocks and juxtaposing finely polished parts to very rough and sketchy surfaces. This particular construction and treatment render his sculptures absolutely unique in the domain of contemporary wood sculpture and is partly responsible for the great curiosity aroused by the appearance of his work in the art world.  Since his debut in 2005,  Gehard Demetz has been invited by prominent galleries to exhibit in the United States, Spain, Germany, Korea. He has also produced monumental sculptures on commission for collectors around the world.

Born 1972, Bolzano (Italy). Lives and works in Selva di Val Gardena.

http://www.geharddemetz.com/

James Travers

It’s about the art. But where did it come from? I grew up in Woodbury, CT (the antiques capitol of the U.S.). The home of Surrealists Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy. Seven miles from Alexander Calder’s home in Roxbury, CT. Eight miles from Naum Gabo’s home in Middlebury, CT.

I remember meeting both Calder and Sage. While not from an art family, and with no art classes or training, I was still aware of the art life and wondered “Why, what’s it about?” Then I went about my life for 30 years.

I did live on a farm for a time as a young boy, and had four uncles who were farmers, and I developed visual values formed by the organic simplicity and complexity of the country outdoors. Family heritage of metalworking and mechanics-maybe it’s in the genes.

I'm a lifelong Teamster-not impressed by poseurs and verbiage.

I had some training in journalism, and I have found that editing has a

significant, direct application to the communication capability

and composition of sculpture.

My first sculpture is a self-portrait full of anguish that I felt compelled to make as a means of beginning to dispel the toxic grief that filled and overwhelmed me after the death of my first wife. It took a while for the collapse of what I had known as my life to hit me, but when it did, to survive, I had to describe the agony and deal with it. This led to my first sculpture, “March 1997”, and with it my discovery of the process of artwork.

I’ve been doing it full-time for since 2002, and loving it!!!!

Artistically I’m entirely self-taught.

Sculpture has changed my life for the better.

(http://traverssculpture.artspan.com/home)

"Everest"

25" x 18" x 11" - steel

"Tribal Warrior"
44" x 19" x 14" - steel

"Hearing Music"
48" x 36" x 28" - steel