Christto & Andrew Espai Tactel
Christto & Andrew, Reality Needs an Observer, 2018, Espai Tactel
Christto Sanz (Puerto Rico, 1985) and Andrew Jay Weir (South Africa, 1987) met each other in 2009 in Barcellona, where they both used to study. They now live and work in Doha, Qatar. Christto & Andrew’s practice evolves as a symbiotic process strengthened by a cross-pollination of their differing backgrounds. Together they produce photography, mixed media objects and videos exploring social identities, the media and reinterpretations of history. Since the inception of their collaboration in 2012 they have exhibited at Katara Art Center, Doha (2014); Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, (2015); Espai Tactel, Valencia – Spain (2016), East Wing Gallery, Doha (2016), Unseen Photo Fair and Festival, Amsterdam (2016); Museu Nogueira da Silva, Braga – Portugal (2016); NRW Forum, Dusseldorf (2016); NonostanteMarras, Milan (2016); Kraftwerk, Berlin (2017). In 2014 they were selected by Foam Magazine as Foam Talent. In 2018 they got shortlisted fot the New Discovery Award of Les Rencontres de la Photographie Festival in Arles and presented by Espai Tactel at Swab Art Fair.
Sandra Lane Square Projects
Sandra Lane,
Sandra Lane completed an MFA in Sculpture at the Slade School of Art and a BA in Fine Art Drawing at Camberwell College of Art, London. In 2017 she was awarded the Sidney Nolan Trust Residency, and the Acme Studio Award in 2013. Sandra Lane looks for vulnerability and absurdity in simple shapes. The objects she creates are often the result of what a particular material can be made to do, such as a puddle of liquid set firm; but also taken to their limits until they teeter or crumble. She is fascinated in the shifting viewpoints of changes of gravity and scale, influenced by the work of Franz West and Rose Wylie.
She began making shoes from clay in response to thoughts about her younger self. The Walking Shoes are from a memory of the impractical shoes she would wear to walk through the countryside. This led to an exploration of femininity, self-image and identity in her work. Where does identity lie? Is it in one´s choice of big yellow shoes or in the particular shade of lipstick one wears? Does being a natural blonde automatically confer goodness or authenticity? The Walking Shoes are informed by the absurdity of such reflections, and create a subversive undermining of symbols of femininity. Recent shows include: Weltanschauung, Copeland Gallery, London, 2018; If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Roaming Projects, London, 2018; The Orchid and the Wasp, Kalmaket 8, Amsterdam, 2017; Telling Tales, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London, 2017; XL, Hotel Elephant, London, 2016.
Alejandro Rosemberg Granada Gallery
Alejandro Rosemberg, still life n°8, 2009, Granada Gallery
Born in Córdoba, Argentina in 1981. Alejandro attended The National University of Cordoba, where he obtained a degree in Fine Arts, at the same time forming himself with master Claudio Bogino in the classical method of painting based on the tradition of the great Italian masters. He furthered his education on color under Graydon Parrish, at the Grand Central Academy of New York. His works are presently being exhibited in the United States and Canada, respectively represented by Principle Gallery in Virginia and White Rock Gallery in Vancouver.
Passionate about teaching the techniques he uses, that are based on an academic focus, he invests much time and dedication to his drawing and painting classes and workshops, held in the US and Buenos Aires. He was recently awarded First Place at the ARC Salon and his works have been included at important museums such as the MEAM from Barcelona, Spain, and the National Museum of Fine Art (MNBA) from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He considers himself a realist painter. Many think that his works look like photographs and categorize them as being Hyperrealism, but Hyperrealism is not a technique but an artistic movement which tries to reproduce reality with photographic objectivity and quality. On the contrary, his intention when he paints is not photographic but pictorial, using technique as an instrument to express a particular vision of the world. In that sense, he chooses realism because of its accessible language which, like a bridge, facilitates the connection between the painting and its spectators: it allows them an approach to art without requiring any previous knowledge. Alejandro feels that painting is a way thinking, and that the images are texts. Through his works he reflects upon the world in which he lives and on the space that art occupies in it, working particularly on two concepts: beauty in an ample sense and craft as its support; values that have been devalued throughout the last century and yet so necessary to the development of human beings and art.
Julia Llerena Galeria Rocio Santa Cruz
Julia Llerena for Galeria RocioSantaCruz, Swab Art Fair 2018, MANGO Prize, winner artist
Julia Llerena (Sevilla, 1985), completed her BFA studies at the University of Seville, the University of Barcelona and the Florence Academy of Fine Arts (2003-2008). In 2014, she earned a MA in Creation and Research from the Complutense University of Madrid. In 2017, she won the Circuitos Award in Madrid and a place at the Blueproject Foundation residency programme in Barcelona. Llerena participated in several exhibitions, such as L’efecte vora, curated by Anna Dot at SAC (Sant Andreu Contemporani, Barcelona), and DISRUPT, curated by Marlon de Azambuja at Rodriguez Gallery (Poznan, Poland). In 2017-2018, she presented Home, una cuestión global at the Sala Santa Inés of Seville, and in 2018 the Blueroject Foundation of Barcelona showed her last project titled Stratum Zero. Llerena currently lives and works in Madrid.
Julia Llerena’s artistic practice blends elements of archive work and archeology. She works with objects found in the sorrounding environment, vestiges of the everyday through which she creates an orderly personal archive following the logics related to language and affections. In the project presented by RocioSantaCruz at Art Nou 2018 “The whole as an object”, the artist deepens in her research the possibilities of resignification that these seemingly valueless discarded objects can offer: fragmentary elements that are presented as witnesses of the consumerist culture and behavior of our contemporary civilization, which are subject to an order based on their material and aesthetic qualities. Llerena’s projects draw from strong philosophical-literary roots and Georges Perèc imposes himself as one of her main references. The French writer sets out in Life a user’s manual (La Vie mode d’emploi, 1978) a series of descriptions that, articulated according to combinatorial art, become an exciting way of describing the universe starting solely from the elements found in a house. Llerena appropriates this methodology and adapts it to her field of work in order to “give a false habitable appearance to the Infinite”.
Another of the fundamental pillars of her artistic discourse is Jacques Derrida and, more specifically, the consideration he makes in Derrida for Architects – Thinkers for Architects (1986) about deconstruction as a way of construction related to writing and language. Following this line of thoughts, some of Julia Llerena’s pieces establish morphological relationships between objects and letters in order to contribute to the resignification of what, in other circumstances, would be nothing more than a waste material.
Tashi Brauen Goldberg Galerie
Tashi Brauen, Relief 8, 2018, Goldberg Galerie
Tashi Brauen lives and works in Zürich. He creates photographic images that isolate, recontextualize and re-present industrial and mass produced objects of everyday use.These objects are often phisically transformed and/or repainted before being photographed. This process explores the plasticity of found objects in a sculptural and painterly sense. The work tends to comment on psycological aspects of the relationship between people and objects of everyday use.
Brauen usually works intuitively and begins his work process by taking photographs of disassembled (or not) common industrial objects in his studio.These objects and/or parts are sometimes repainted and modified. At a later stage he begins a selection and editing process where he chooses specific images that he find suitable as final works. In some instances Brauen chooses some of the objects to make part of sculptural constructions or installlations.
The objects Brauen chooses for his work are objects that catches his attention for the form, shape, design and color. He starts thinking about the possibilities and plasticity of the object to be transformed and recontextualized in his work. During his residence at RU he will be looking for objects and materials in the New York city area to be transformed and used in photographic compositions and sculpural arrangements to be photographed. This process becomes particularly interesting in a new city environment that he is not familiar with.
