Christian Berman
Christian Ruiz Berman "Mirage for Kokichi" Acrylic on panel 5"x7" 2017
I was born in Mexico City in 1982. I have a BA from Duke University, and later completed a masters degree in landscape architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. I’m currently completing my MFA in painting, also at RISD. I have worked in environmental conservation, landscape architecture, art education, and public art. If life is a vast broth of chaotic acts and tangled reactions, making art is how I chart my way through the soup. Because I was forcefully removed from my homeland of Mexico and from much of my family at a young age, I became accustomed to localizing my identity within a precarious juncture of memory, fact and fiction. My work draws from personal histories of migration and adaptation, and I’m interested in the emotional and communicative power of the image. While I consider myself essentially non-religious, I am fascinated by the role of visual representations and symbols in mystical and shamanic practice, and have recently become quite interested in the intersections between contemporary philosophy and eastern/buddhist tradition. I consider my work meditative in that it strives to dissect and understand the components of my experience and of my cultural and aesthetic legacy in a way that might give a greater understanding of the whole. While I use symbols, architectures, and snippets of stories that are deeply personal and autobiographical, I want my paintings to embody a shared experience. The ability for the viewer to live their own life inside my work is extremely important to me, as is the work’s potential to inspire new narratives. The 20th century Indian philosopher J. Krisnamurti speaks about the importance of what he terms “joyful discontent.” This concept involves the abandonment of a quest for stability and security, which he deems are forms of premature death. I try to approach painting as someone that is always discontented, not with my station or success, but joyfully discontent because of a desire to know more, to learn more, to see more. I am also deeply influenced by the current writings of feminist philosophers like Karen Barad and Donna Haraway, who strive to build an ontology and worldview that privileges intra-actions and entanglements between things and systems rather than a reality built upon discrete objects and hierarchical actions. Barad writes about describing reality as an apparatus, in which each person, animal, relationship, and mechanism is an essential component of the present moment. She writes about the tentacular and woven nature of agency, as well as about humanity’s need for new symbols and figures that better reflect our current knowledge of quantum physics and the nature of reality and the mind. If there is a need for new symbols, new words, new ways of seeing things, how can I add to the conversation as a painter?
www.cruizberman.com
Gaby Collins-Fernandez
Gaby Collins-Fernandez Family Portrait Sphinx oil, acrylic and digital photocollage on terrycloth 38" x 40"
Gaby Collins-Fernandez (b. USA, 1987) is an artist living and working in New York City. She holds degrees from Dartmouth College (B.A.) and the Yale School of Art (M.F.A., Painting/Printmaking). Her work has been shown in the US and internationally, most recently at the Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama Nathalie Karg Gallery, Danese Corey, and currently in an exhibition at the Institute of Sacred Music at Yale University. Her work has been discussed in publications such as The Brooklyn Rail and artcritical. She is a recipient of a Fellowship at Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, and a 2013 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Emerging Art Award. Collins-Fernandez is also a writer whose texts have appeared in publications such as the popular Painting on Paintings blog, The Miami Rail, and The Brooklyn Rail. Her translations with Kimberly Kruge of Golden Age Spanish sonnets was published in 2015 in Riot of Perfume. Collins-Fernandez is also an editor and founder of Precog Magazine, and is a co-director of the New York-based art and music collaborative, BombPop!Up. Her work is in the collections of the Bowdoin Museum of Art, Maine, and the Alex Katz Foundation, NY.
www.gabycollinsfernandez.com
Alika Cooper
Alika Cooper , Wet Suit IV and Wet Suit V, Bronze, 2017, exhibited at Situations gallery, ny, ny, 18”x 8”x 8” each
ALIKA COOPER ALIKA COOPER (b. 1979, Guam) lives and works in Los Angeles. She received both her MFA and BFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. Solo and twoperson exhibitions include Madeline Cake SITUATIONS, New York; Wet Suits Good Weather Gallery, Little Rock; Have A Sex fort gondo, Saint Louis; The Disguised Edge MULHERIN, Toronto; UPBRAID Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and GLASS Eleanor Harwood Gallery, San Francisco. She was the recipient of the Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant, the MagicTrillium Press Yesland Prize, and the Jack and Gertrude Murphy Fellowship. She has participated in The Viewing Program at The Drawing Center, New York; MOTION PICTURE at The Saint Louis Art Museum; and was Artist in Residence at Galleria Studio Legale in Marzano Appio, Italy.
Alikacooper.com
Tracey Goodman
Tracey Goodman_Shadow is the blue patch where the light doesn't hit (Annie Dillard)_mixed media_2016_4000sq ft_Governors Island
Tracey Goodman was born in Warren, Ohio. She lives in Harlem and works in Bronx. She received her MFA from NYU and her BS from RIT. She has participated in numerous residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, LMCC Workspace, MacDowell Colony and the AIM program. She received a NYFA Grant in 2013. She has also solo exhibitions at LMCC’s space on Governor’s Island, Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, Regina Rex, and Locust Projects in Miami. She has been included in the numerous group exhibitions including: “Interrogations, Interventions and Modifications” at Albright College and “Invisible Ink”, CTSQ LIC.
traceygoodman.net
Asuka Goto
Asuka Goto, lost in translation, 278, pencil and collage on paper, 2017, 10x13 inches.
Asuka Goto received an MFA in Sculpture from Tyler School of Art and a BA and Post-Baccalaureate Certificate from Brandeis University. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2008 and was a Workspace resident at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council in 2009/2010. She has also participated in residencies at the Joan Mitchell Center, HomeBase Berlin, Sculpture Space and the Vermont Studio Center. Goto has received several awards including the NYFA Artists' Fellowship (for Architecture / Environmental Structures / Design), the Jerome Foundation Travel & Study Grant, and the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant. Her work has been exhibited at NURTUREart, BRIC, the Central Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library, the CUE Foundation, TSA NY, and 92Y Tribeca in New York; at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia, PA; at Real Art Ways in Hartford, CT; and at the Globe Gallery in Newcastle, England. In addition to her individual studio practice, Goto has worked on several interdisciplinary projects with choreographer Joanna Kotze. Most recently, she contributed to FIND YOURSELF HERE, a work by Kotze that explores the intersection between dance and visual art. FIND YOURSELF HERE premiered at the American Dance Institute (ADI) in April 2015 and had its New York premier at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in September 2015. Goto grew up in Boston, MA and Yokosuka, Japan and now lives in Brooklyn, NY. She is an Assistant Professor at Moore College of Art & Design in Philadelphia, PA, where she teaches in the Foundation, Fine Arts and Graduate Studies Departments.
https://www.asukagoto.com
Eric Ramos Guerrero
Eric Ramos Guerrero Lean Like A Camaro 2016 graphite and ink on paper 14"x20" first shown at the Drawing Center in 2016
Eric Ramos Guerrero’s practice is rooted in the landscapes of suburbia, notions of borders and the tropical spaces of western expansion. He received his BFA fromThe School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from Columbia University. His work has been exhibited internationally most notably at the Drawing Center, El Museo Del Barrio, PS 122, ICP New York, Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, Green Papaya Philippines and The Inside-Out Museum Beijing.
www.ericramosguerrero.com
