Arte Fiera Bologna, Italy at JONATHAN LEVINE GALLERY

Arte Fiera
Bologna, Italy

International Contemporary Art Fair

January 28, 2011 through January 31, 2011

Jonathan LeVine Gallery is pleased to participate as exhibitors this year at Arte Fiera in Bologna, Italy. With a selection of works by ten artists from our program, including :

Alex Gross
Eric White
Fulvio Di Piazza
James Marshall (Dalek)
Jeff Soto

Josh Agle (Shag)
Marco Mazzoni
Shepard Fairey
Tara McPherson

For more information about the fair, please visit:
http://www.artefiera.bolognafiere.it/en

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Alex Gross is currently based in Los Angeles, California. In 1990, he received a BFA with honors from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Since then, he has exhibited at various galleries across the globe. In the summer of 2007, Gross’ first retrospective museum show was held at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, California. Gross is a recipient of the prestigious Artist Fellowship from the Japan Foundation, and several faculty grants from Art Center College of Design. In 2006, Chronicle Books published The Art of Alex Gross, the artist’s first monograph. Discrepancies, Gross' second fine art book was published by Gingko Press in 2010, titled after—and released in conjunction—with Gross' solo exhibition at Jonathan LeVine Gallery.
Eric White was born in 1968 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He received a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design in 1990. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work has been exhibited at MACRO Museum in Rome and American Visionary Museum in Baltimore. He has participated in charitable group exhibitions such as STAGES (which traveled to Paris and New York) and benefits the LIVESTRONG Foundation, as well as consecutive years in the annual Re*Generation auction, benefitting homeless youth.
Fulvio Di Piazza was born in 1969 in Siracusa, Italy. He studied at Urbino Art Academy and participated in the Quadriennale exhibition in Rome in 2008. He currently lives and works in Palermo, Italy. His whimsical paintings depict rivers running through sunny nature-scapes, forests populated with wildlife and lush green woods that stretch far beyond the horizon. With extraordinary detail and depth, the fantasy realm of the artist’s saturated woodland scenes are revealed through his imaginative anthropomorphized plant life as distinct faces emerge from unsuspected hills, rocks and tree trunks, sprouting limbs rather than branches.
James Marshall (Dalek) was born in 1968 in New London, Connecticut and is currently based in North Carolina. He was raised in a military family who moved frequently along the East Coast throughout his childhood and later lived in Hawaii and Japan. In his youth, Marshall turned to punk rock, skateboarding and graffiti subcultures for inclusion and identity. His Space Monkey character was born out of graffiti, which he discovered in 1994 in the rail yards of California and later in Chicago. After an education in anthropology and sociology, followed by receiving a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1995, Marshall worked under the name Dalek to merge street art with influences from animation, Japanese pop, and the energy of the urban punk scene. In 2001, he reached a major turning point in his studio practice while working as an assistant/apprentice to the world-renowned artist Takashi Murakami. Marshall’s work has been shown in galleries and museums across North America, Europe and Japan.
Jeff Soto was born in 1975 in southern California, where he currently resides with his wife Jennifer and two daughters. In 2002, he graduated with Distinction from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. In 2008, his work was the subject of an exhibition at the Riverside Art Museum. Through his work, Soto communicates profound visions and fears, nostalgia of his youth, as well as themes of love, lust, and hope. His distinct color palette, subject matter, technique and bold themes resonate with a growing audience. Inspired by childhood toys, the colorful lifestyle of skateboarding and graffiti, hip-hop and popular culture, his representational work is simultaneously accessible and stimulating. Soto creates visual mythologies with ominous, quasi-divine apparitions, whose organic tendrils writhe from the cavities of their smoking, robotic shells and whose lumbering frames preside over sprawling urban landscapes. Dramatic lighting, textural richness and a sophisticated palette are his hallmarks. Soto’s sculptural sensibility and improvisational, grafitti-informed method of working is often reflected through his rich wall-cluster installations, which are an amalgam of disjointed storytelling and playful formalism.
Josh Agle, also known as Shag (a contraction of the last two letters of his first name and the first two letters of his last) is a painter, illustrator and designer, based in Southern California. His initial intention to establish an illustration career became sidetracked when his original paintings began to garner considerable attention from galleries and collectors around the world. Since 1997, Agle has had numerous successful gallery exhibitions in the United States, Europe, Japan and Australia. His artwork has been published in several books, been the subject of a documentary film, as well as a musical. Currently the artist paints in a large studio with panoramic views of a wooded valley in the hills above Los Angeles, part of a mid-century modern home which he shares with his wife and two children.
Marco Mazzoni was born in 1982 in Tortona, Italy, and is currently based in Milan. His portraits feature isolated figures floating within empty white space or solid color backgrounds, facial features are often obscured by the wings of birds and butterflies, or the leaves and petals of floral studies. He takes a realist approach to skillfully render the faces—a focal point of his subjects, while unpainted silhouettes subtly suggest the shapes of their bodies, creating a dichotomy that is both lush and delicate.
Ray Caesar was born in 1958 in London. At an early age, his family moved to Toronto, Canada, where he currently resides. From 1977—80 he attended Ontario College of Art, followed by 17 years from 1980—96 working in the art & photography department of the Hospital For Sick Children in Toronto, documenting disturbing cases of child abuse, surgical reconstruction, psychology, and animal research. Coupled with inspiration from surrealists Kahlo and Dali, Caesar’s experiences at the hospital continue to influence his artwork. His haunting imagery is created digitally using 3D modeling software called Maya, mastered while working in digital animation for television and film industries from 1998—2001. In 1999, Caesar received a Primetime Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Special Effects in a series.
Shepard Fairey was born in Charleston, SC in 1970. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles. In 1989, as a student at the Rhode Island School of Design, Fairey launched an ambitious campaign of stickers featuring the wrestler Andre the Giant and became internationally known using the slogan The Medium is the Message in his Obey Giant street campaign. In the two decades since then, his artwork has been exhibited in numerous galleries, museums and collections around the world. His propaganda has grown into a design empire, encompassing stickers, posters, clothing, skateboards, stencil-based street art, and film. Founder of Studio Number One, a design firm in Los Angeles, Fairey has worked with numerous high-profile corporate accounts. In 2005 he was a resident artist at The Contemporary Museum in Honolulu. More recently, he designed the iconic “Hope” graphic for Presidential elect Barack Obama used during the candidate’s campaign in 2007-2008. In January 2009, during inauguration week, the “Hope” image was acquired by the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and became part of their permanent collection. In February of 2009, a mid-career survey of Shepard Fairey’s work over the past 20 years was the subject of his first museum exhibition at The Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In 2010, the show traveled to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH.
Tara McPherson, born in San Francisco in 1976 and raised in Los Angeles, is a painter, poster artist and freelance illustrator currently based in New York. In 2001, she received her BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA with honors in Illustration and a minor in Fine Art. McPherson’s artwork has been exhibited around the world, featured in numerous magazines and publications. An image of her Searching For Penguins painting was published in a New York Times article about Jonathan LeVine Gallery in March of 2010. As an illustrator, McPherson has created comic art, covers, advertising and editorial illustrations for DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Warner Brothers, HarperCollins, Bloomsbury, Kidrobot, Punk Planet, Dogfish Head Brewery, and Nike among others. She’s produced numerous gig posters for musical artists and rock bands such as Beck, Modest Mouse, Mastodon, Death Cab for Cutie and many more.