Artists

Zazie

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:06:46 +0000

Living between Paris and Rome, Zazie is a young designer and a photographer with her own label founded when she was 20 years old. In two years Zazie's studio is now located beside her mother's one, in a beautiful venue close to the Botanical Garden in Rome, where she uses to pass by, always filled with culture, breathtaking views and expansive tempers. Her drawings, all handmade, give to the interior design collection a very peculiar style, evoking the co-existence of separate worlds: aquatic and aerial, with a new shape of the sun, reassuring and colorful. She uses bamboo picked from the garden, juta canvases, raw leather, and invents effective solution with minimal ergonomics, new commodities with a visionary touch and a great choice of rough fabric for bedlinen, shoes, clothes, bags and Mongolian poufs, that seems to come from a dreamland.

Giorgio Vigna

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:03:59 +0000

Giorgio Vigna was born in Verona, Italy 1955.
He is an artist and designer. He creates jewellery and< sculptures. It's artistic course winds around shapes and materials that add resonance to his power of imagination, using elements from nature that echo its most primal and primordial aspects. He operates on the borderline between real and imaginary worlds. His creations are filled with the fascination of objects that inhabit dreams - familiar, yet alien at the same time.
Vigna has continued his research in the field of jewellery and sculpture while developing his interest in design, producing sculptures that are often also objects for everyday use.
His interest into the world of glass has been developed collaborating withVenini, Iittala and Salviati.
He produced designs and costume jewellery for operas, films as well as theatre and television productions, and he also created special jewellery collections for international fashion designers.
His work has been widely featured in books, magazine articles, professional journals, and press world-wide. Giorgio Vigna has exhibited at many major museums, galleries and internatinal exhibitions including the following: Museo Pecci, Prato, Italy - Museo Correr, Venice, Italy - Designmuseo, Helsinki, Finland - Museum of Art, Toledo, Usa - Schmuckmuseum, Porzheim, Germany.
Giorgio Vigna teaches, gives conferences and presides over workshops in Italy and abroad. He lives in Milano.

Fabien Verschaere

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:02:39 +0000

Fabien Verschaere was born in Vincenne (France) in 1975 and lives and works in Paris. He has been exhibited extensively since 2000, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Prague Biennale, Centro per l'arte contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Italy, the Montreal Biennale and recently at the Lyon Contemporary Art Museum. His most recent museum exhibition was at the Baltic Centre of Contemporary Art in Newcastle UK. His work needs to be seen as a whole and as a continual series of personal mythologies. Through blending recurrent symbols such as mermaids, dwarfs and objects together, Verschaere evokes human conditions and experiences whilst assembling a dreamlike theatre that is both intimate and personal. Although Verschaere's work seems to be based on contradictions, attractive and repulsive, exotic but banal, dangerous yet exciting, meaningful though derisory and insignificant, his remarkable observations and unusual depictions of characters and situations provoke ambiguous feelings within his viewers. The result is a body of work with strong foundations and unexpected encounters.

Joep van Lieshout

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:00:47 +0000

Joep Van Lieshout was born in 1963 in Ravenstein, Netherlands. He studied at the Academy of Modern Art, Rotterdam; Ateliers '63 in Haarlem and Villa Arson in Nice. in 1995 he founded AVL (Atelier Van Lieshout) in Rotterdam that works in the field of design, architecture, and contemporary art. AVL got worldwide known for their installations of self-sufficiency-mobile homes. In 2001 AVL founded 'AVL ville', a 'free state' in Rotterdam's port, which offers housing to people who work in the studio. After a year, when they've shown that they're 'serious', they can also build a house according to their own design (materials paid by AVL). They will have to build the structure themselves and don't have to pay rent. The work of atelier Van Lieshout is part of the collection of Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Centraal Museum, Utrecht Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven Centre of Contemporary Art, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Fnac, Paris, M.A.C., Marseille, Moma, New York Prada Foundation, Milan, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds. His small notebook is hermetically sealed in a white ball of foam rubber

Paolo W. Tamburella

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:58:41 +0000

Paolo W. Tamburella was born in Italy in 1973. He lives between Rome and London and explores the changing role of human rights in the world. He is selected to participate the 2008 Singapore Biennale curated by Fumio Nanjo, Joselina Cruz and Matthew Ngui, Blk9 Singapore. He showed with Annina Nosei a New York, American Academy a Roma, International Biennial of Graphic Arts, Galerija Alkatraz, Ljubljana and Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene d'Alba in the Group Show Inscriptions curated by Jimena Acosta. Taking as a point of departure the worst war-zones worldwide, the artist Paolo W. Tamburella, offers a compelling new perspective on the origin of today's most critical international issue. The last installation Post-Card is build up around 2 main totems, each 5mt long, 3mt high offering to the viewers more than 180.000 postcards from Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Darfur. People are invited to take one each or more. The interaction with the public, crossing the Railway Station everyday for one month, pushes the meaning of the work into new realms. Without being violent nor heavy, the artist always finds out what are the weakest spots of society and hit on them. Like many other works his installations reveal the truth and not stick to convenient or polite lies.

Suncica Perisin Tomljanovic

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:57:03 +0000

Suncica Perisin Tomljanovic was born in Split (Croatia) in 1983. She lives and works between London, Rome and Mexico City. After the Skola Dobrise Cesarica, Zagreb, Croatia and the King Edwards The VI School, Lichfield, U.K. She took the Master B.A. St. Martins College of Art&Design. She had a Solo show at the Croatian Embassy in London in 2006, and 2 months residency at AKA Rome, she just had a Solo Show at Arcaute Arte Contemporaneo in Monterrey, Mexico curated by Raffaella Guidobono. In Summer 2007 she did a group show in Spazio Thetis in Venice Biennial curated by Elena Agudio and a Solo Show at the Diocletian Palace in Split, Croatia. Having shown in many live performance during the last three years she was performing at the 59 Rue Rivoli, Paris Election Libre.

Maia Sambonet

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:52:41 +0000

Maia Sambonet was born in Milan in 1981 and trained at Central St Martins College of Art&Design, London. She lives and works between London and Italy. Maia's work often involves text and book-art and relies on the need for istinctual process, yet continually questions notions of finite detail and artistic integrity. Her research explores the boundaries between drawing, writing and performance, witnessing the ways they merge in an experiential whole.
Recent pieces have seen whole theatre sets drawn meticulously into miniature. Prior and throughout her studies Maia collaborates with a range of editorial and theatre projects, such as the Architectural Review Lotus International and Rizzoli, Teatro Litta and Franco Parenti in Milan. In London she contributes to many site-specific performances among which PunchDrunk's Faust, Wapping, 2006.
Maia has her first solo exhibition 'Unlimited' at AKA, Rome, curated by Raffaella Guidobono. She is now in the process of devising a site-specific show in London inspired by the biblical story of Jonah in the whale and preparing an exhibition of little paper theatres (Teatrini) in Milan.

Guendalina Salini

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:51:06 +0000

After graduated B.A. Fine Art at Byam Shaw School and a Master at Middlesex University she was widely shown at Sprovieri Gallery in London, Auditorium e Temple Gallery in Rome, guest at Locarno Festival in 2007 and in Wrap! For the International Festival Cinema in Rome. The notion of restoration is central to the work of Guendalina Salini. However restoration here is not to be understood as historical reconstruction, rather it serves to disclose the internal dynamic which is at the genesis of the image. The work brings into play images belonging to the history of art and recontextualise them. By "redrawing" the image the artist intends to open it to a spatial-temporal suspension, a suspension that places the emphasis on the process of art itself.

Véronique Ovaldé

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:48:36 +0000

Véronique Ovaldé lives and works in Paris. She is the author of the novels Et Mon Coeur transparent, soon to be translated by Minimumfax Publisher, and since 2000 she wrote The Sleep of Fishes (Les Sommeil de Poissons), All Things Shimmering (Toutes choses scintillant), and Generally I Like Men (Les hommes en général me plaisent beaucoup). Kick the Animal Out (Déloger l'animal), originally published as by Actes Sud in France and Leméac in Canada, is her fifth novel. Her vivid imagination construct her own explanation of human contradictions. Ovaldé reflects on desire and consumption, passion and lost, ubiquitous and living matter experiences. Quoting her, she tells "stories to link thinks together and inseparable, knowing how to construct a powerful plot, throughout malleable sentences and movement, giving each characters depth, breathing mysterious and unshakable life." The novels analyses situations, behaviour and gestures of our humanity and proposes a new world in which we can ben liberated from the image of an idealized body or a structured way of think.

Simon Njami

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:47:12 +0000

Simon Njami is an independent lecturer and art critic, and is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Revue Noire. He is also a consultant in visual arts for the Association Française d'Action Artistique. His extensive publications include essays in the catalogue for the Sydney Biennale and contributions to a wide range of other exhibition catalogues. Njami has been the artistic director of the Bamako photography biennale since 2001, and was curator of the first African pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale in 2007. He has curated numerous exhibitions of African art and photography, including Africa Remix, which is touring the world. He is the curator of the current Johannesburg Biennale.

Caterina Nelli

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:44:40 +0000

Caterina Nelli was born in Rome and studied at Central Saint Martins College of Art and at Camberwell College of Arts. In 2003 she was selected in competition for Art Films and Documentaries, Locarno Film Festival. Her last solo show in 2006 was BIT at Adriano Olivetti Foundation for the 'Foto-Grafia International Festival of Rome', curated by Raffaella Guidobono, 2004 'Openness Gallery' curated by Paola Zampa. Group exhibitions include: 2005 Venice - 'Biennale di Venezia', curated by Philippe Daverio, 2006 'Premio Michetti Laboratorio Italia Fondazione Michetti', curated by Philippe Daverio; 2006 'Crave'.

Sebastiano Mauri

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:33:05 +0000

Half Italian, half Argentinian, Sebastiano Mauri lives and works between Buenos Aires and Milan. He has graduated with honors from NYU with a BA in Film and TV, he has directed various shorts which have won the Warner Borthers Award and the Martin Scorsese Post-Production Award. He has studied fine arts at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London and the Art Students League in New York. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento (MART), The National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest (MNAC), Center for Contemporary Arts (KSA:K, Chisnau), The Center for Contemporary Art of Ticino (CACT, Bellinzona), The Recoleta Cultural Center (CCR, Buenos Aires), Via Farini (Milan), Foundation for the Contemporary Arts (FAC, Montevideo), The Spanish Cultural Center of Buenos Aires (CCEBA), Espacio Casa de la Cultura (Buenos Aires), La Milanesiana 2007 (Milano, Teatro dal Verme), Palazzo Delle Papesse (Siena), The Triennale di Milano.

Antonio Marras

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:30:57 +0000

Born in Alghero in Sardinia in 1962, Antonio Marras is one of the most interesting of today's fashion designers. He had no formal schooling in fashion but, via his father's fabric store, developed enough of a passion for textiles to convince an entrepreneur from Rome to back him to create his first ready-to-wear collection in 1988 named Piano Piano Dolce Carlotta - after the Robert Aldrich horror movie of the '60s. Winning the contemporary Linen prize for a wedding dress that revealed the Sardinian influence which is his trademark, in 1992 he decided to concentrate on one collection, finally making his haute couture debut under his own name in Paris in 1996. Marras continues to make Sardinia his home, living and working with his extended family in a home-workshop overlooking the sea.

Javier Marías

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:27:20 +0000

Javier Marías Franco is a Spanish novelist, translator and columnist, born in Madrid. After attending the Complutense University of Madrid Marías turned his attention to translating English novels into Spanish. Some of the authors whom he translated include John Updike, Thomas Hardy, Vladimir Nabokov, and Robert Louis Stevenson. In 1979 he won the Spanish national award for translation for his version of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. After returning to original composition Marías won the 1997 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for his 1992 novel A Heart So White. He was elected to armchair 57 of the Real Academia Española (Royal Spanish Academy) in 2006.

Ross Lovegrove

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 17:24:01 +0000

Ross Lovegrove was born in Wales and studied design at the Royal College of Art, London. In the early 80's he worked as a designer on projects such as walkmans for Sony and computers for Apple. When he moved to Paris he was invited to join the Atelier de Nimes, consulting to - amongst others - Cacharel, Louis Vuitton, Hermes and Dupont. Returning to London he has completed projects for many furniture, industrial, and product manufacturers. He is the winner of many international awards and his work has been published and exhibited internationally including the MOMA in New York, the Guggenheim Museum NY, Axis Centre in Japan, Pompidou Centre in Paris and the Design Museum in London.