Anna Shteynshleyger, Masha, 2002. © Anna Shteynshleyger, Courtesy the artist.

Perspectives 2012, opening on January 20 at the International Center of Photography (NY), is the second installment of an exhibition series that focuses on innovative artists working in photography and video. These small group exhibitions highlight the individual ideas and achievements of an engaging and eclectic group of talented artists. The aim of the series is to stimulate conversations about contemporary art and to showcase outstanding artworks that might not otherwise come to wide attention.

Chang The Jiang Family. Left: Fuzhou, China, 2004; Right: New York City, 2008. © Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos, Courtesy of Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos and Chi-Wen Gallery, Taipei

Perspectives 2012 includes works by three artists—Chien-Chi Chang, Greg Girard, and Anna Shteynshleyger —who explore what happens when tight-knit cultural communities are transplanted to unfamiliar geographic locales. Each artist is represented by a group of prints selected from a much larger body of work.

Greg Girard, B-52 (Memphis Belle IV), Andersen Air Base, Guam, 2008. © Greg Girard, Courtesy the artist and Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver and Toronto.

“Each of the photographers in this exhibition brings a highly personal vision and sensibility to the subject they have chosen,” said ICP Curator Christopher Phillips, who organized Perspectives 2012. “It is only when we step back that we realize they are all exploring aspects of one of the most distinctive social phenomena of our times.”

Perspectives 2012 is on view from January 20, 2012 through May 6, 2012

Go to Freight and Volume and see this show in its last week!

Check out the rad animation Andrew did: Talking to a Fish

Andrew Guenther has exhibited widely in New York, LA, and internationally, including: “Standing in Water up to the Shins, Your Foot Looks at a Minnow and Says,’Look What I Have Become!’” at David Castillo Gallery, Miami, and “The Slap of Bird Shit On Wet Pavement” at Mogadishni, Copenhagen. Guenther was born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois, studied undergrad in Wisconsin and Rome and received his MFA at Rutgers in 2002. He curated an artist’s storefront space, Arts Tropical, in Brooklyn for a few years. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, and is a proficient urban gardener who grows his own tobacco, berries, and grapes.

Reclining Plate Face, 2009 ©Andrew Guenther

Paper Plate people, hotdogs and drug paraphernalia. These are some of Andrew Guenther’s subject matter. Referenced from his own life and pop culture, his work is highly personal even though it may seem even the slightest bit anonymous. Guenther’s unique aesthetic sensibility combined with vibrant colored drawings and paintings, immediately grab the viewer. His silver gelatin photographs look like they could have been taken decades ago. His latest sculptures of fish and naked ladies accompanied by a photograph of the full moon seem pure and earthly.

Andrew Guenther is based in Brooklyn and was born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois. Andrew has exhibited widely both in the US and abroad, and curated an artist’s storefront space in Brooklyn for a few years called Arts Tropical. He is represented by Freight and Volume Gallery in New York.

Carissa Pelleteri: Your art seems to be inspired by your everyday life and surrounding objects. What do you do regularly that inspires you, which is manifested into your work?

Andrew Guenther: I do a lot of things regularly—my schedule is pretty predictable and my likes and dislikes are very idiosyncratic. I don’t think any of these things manifest themselves in my work. I walk a lot. Walking is where I do most of my thinking and I’m alone with my thoughts. I guess it’s this byproduct of walking that translates most often into my work. Since I don’t write things down on the walk, the only things that fall into my art practice are the things that stick.

American Medicine II, 2009 ©Andrew Guenther

CP: While some of your work may be viewed as humorous and wacky, it also holds a kind of pure, raw sexual energy…and some escapism. Hotdogs, Plate Faces with women’s bare chests…American Medicine. What are you saying to us?

AG: It’s interesting that you picked up on the escapism. One’s own thoughts can be both visionary and toxic. I make my work for myself, first, and I’ve always felt like an outsider watching things develop around me. I still take responsibility for my actions and thoughts but I think a lot of my own mental energy is tied to the greater public consciousness and that is when people can relate at some level to what I am doing.

For me, “American Medicine” suggest everything that is right and everything that it wrong. Medicine is supposed to relieve or cure illness. It can also damage parts of the body while working on another.  “American Medicine” is apple pie, macaroni and cheese, baseball bats, rock music, anything bought or sold, water in plastic bottles, meth, illegal firearms, foreign policy etc. I think “American Medicine” is the title of an unwritten poem that crept it’s way into a few artworks that I did.

Hotdog Nap, 2009 ©Andrew Guenther

Cork with a Whisker, 2010 ©Andrew Guenther

CP: How did “Hotdog Nap” and “Cork with a whisker” come about?

AG: I work very intuitively. “Hotdog Nap”—saw the light, had the sausage, and set up the tripod. “Cork with a Whisker” came out of a family conversation at the kitchen table. I found a whisker near the window where the cat suns herself and there was a champagne cork rolling on the table. We were talking about street vendors hawking products in the city and I put the two items together as a joke, exclaiming “get your cork with a whisker here!” The object became very special to me as something that should never exist. I’ve been collecting the whiskers for about three years now and have about 12 different sculptures.

The Painter, 2008 ©Andrew Guenther

CP: In the drawing: “The Painter” this character has a face. When did you decide to stop creating faces of physical beings in your work? Why was the plate face born?

AG: I still make drawings of the figure in “The Painter” but he is really skeletal and cartoon-ish with his bulging eyes and flailing tongue. He’s this over-sensitive drug addled investment banker that takes long lunches in the park to stare at women or smoke DMT in the bushes.

But you are right—I have stopped working with the face of the figure because I don’t want to conjure the spirit of someone I don’t know. I’m superstitious like that. I don’t draw from photographs or use friends in the work anymore, in particular, because I believe that the rendering of a face carries a spirit of an individual whether invented or from reproduction. I don’t want to fill up my studio with this spirit energy–I don’t know if the conjured entity is good or bad.  It sounds kind of foolish but when you are sitting in front of a painting and you have drawn this face staring back at you in convincing detail, you know that that person exists or has existed somewhere. The plate faces give me this blank, unaffected and childish playfulness, so that I can focus on composition.

Bite Me, 2008 ©Andrew Guenther

Horse, 2010 ©Andrew Guenther

CP: The vibrant color scheme in your paintings, drawing and sculpture work is fantastic. The inspiration and execution in your photographs is played out a bit differently. Why photograph in black & white and not in color?

AG: I feel that I am able to use photography in trade for some things I used to do in painting. I like to keep the paintings uncluttered with cultural references and black and white seems to have a documentary aspect to it—very to the point. I also like the relief of not having to decide how to depict specific objects or things.  I could never paint the horse to get the same weight the photograph carries. I could have probably done a linear study in pen and paper of Hotdog Nap to achieve the joke layer, but I would have never shared that afternoon light pouring over the textured fabrics of the headboard and sheets. I also like the immediacy of the photograph despite the long process from camera to paper.

CP: Tell me about the plate face made in gold and silver leaf. (I love it). Your latest sculptures are in a simple, pure white base. Why the more minimal aesthetic versus the colorful work?

AG: I have been attempting different methods to work over the photographs in the studio for some time. The paper is difficult to work with in a lot of media. I like Araki’s take on using different media over the photograph, but even his end up as simple color splashes or stains. In working with photography I have also found the medium is most often approached very traditionally. Much like a ceramics studio where everyone is using these earth-tone glazes over things that look like pots. I always enjoy perversions of a medium—sort of like when I tried to get screaming active guitar pickups in a traditionally buttery sounding Les Paul.

Tropical Hotdog, 2010 ©Andrew Guenther

CP: Can you tell me about your recent show in Japan?

AG: Japan was very exciting and overall the show was received very well. It was my first trip to Japan and I had all these ideas about the country beforehand. I think media and film had filled my head with a neurotic city with busy and frantic people. I found Tokyo and the vicinity to be one of the most relaxing places I have ever been. Returning to NYC, I found my appetite sickened by what I was eating before I left. There is a special level of care and quality put into food in Japan, presentation aside, that I would feel better after eating basashi [raw horse meat] rather than a slice of New York pizza. I could see myself living there for a few months of the year. In relation to my work, I feel that some of the humor was mis-interpreted or lost, but I think parts of it were appreciated in a different way—the more serious and poetic elements.

Plate Face, 2008 ©Andrew Guenther

CP: What can we expect to see at your show at Kaycee Olsen Gallery in Los Angeles this coming May?

AG: Papier-mâché plate face lady reliefs, formal color paintings, and small photographs to carry out the narrative. I just found out today that papier-mâché is French for chewed paper . . . so I think it is perfect for the plate faces. I originally started to use papier-mâché because of its low environmental impact versus slabs of paint.

Artists site: guentherart.com

© Therese+Joel, "Adrian & Lyoka"

The first exhibition to be presented at the gallery’s new space in Chelsea. On view from March 4 through Spring 2011, the exhibition explores sexual attraction and physical beauty as it relates to modern everyday existence across the globe through the work of twelve acclaimed photographers, collectives and duos.

CASS BIRD / BRIAN FINKE / CAMILLE VIVIER / CAROLL TAVERAS / CHRISTIAN WEBER / ELLEN JONG / JOSEPH SZABO/LØBER NØGEN / SANDY KIM / STEPHEN IRWIN / THERESE + JOEL / YISOOK SOHN / ZED NELSON

F.L.O.A.T Gallery, 300 west 22nd street, NYC

This month, I had the opportunity to have a studio visit with legendary photographer Martha Cooper.  We sat and “talked shop” about photography and New York City, thirty years back and now. I always knew of Martha Cooper, but there were things about her photographic career I only learned of that day. The 1980’s movie Beat Street – little did I know that she was the still photographer.  Perhaps she is best known for her extensive coverage of the early Hip Hop days, as it emerged from the Bronx. These images have been published worldwide, helping make Hip Hop the predominant international youth movement it is today. Looking at her collection of images and many published books,  (Street Play, Subway Art and New York State of Mind – to only name a few) it is evident that Martha had the desire to document NYC simply as it was, making images which hold views of complete authenticity which add to historic preservation.

Martha’s work has been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide and published in numerous magazines from National Geographic to Vibe. She lives in Manhattan where she is the Director of Photography at City Lore, the New York Center for Urban Folk Culture. For the past five years Martha has been shooting a personal project in SoWeBo, a neighborhood in Southwest Baltimore.

Carissa Pelleteri: When you moved to New York in 1975 what neighborhood did you live in and why did you choose to spend a lot of your time documenting in the Lower East Side?

Martha Cooper: In 1975 I was married to an anthropologist and living in Rhode Island where he was teaching at URI. I was the staff photographer for two weekly RI newspapers but wanted to come to NY because that’s where all the editorial work was at the time. I didn’t know anything about the city but answered an ad in the Village Voice to share an apartment for 3 days a week. It happened to be on the Upper Westside. So I began commuting back and forth. Eventually I got my own apartment and a staff job with the New York Post. I continued to commute back and forth for 5 years until my (now-ex) husband managed to get a teaching job at Fordham and move to NYC. The Post was on the Lower East Side so I often drove through Alphabet City at the end of the day looking for photos to use up the remaining film in my cameras before going back to develop the rolls at the end of the day.

CP: While making the images that wound up becoming “Street Play” were you pretty much the only photographer (and woman) on the street with a camera? Many of the children, if not aware, seem to trust you taking these pictures. What was your approach?

MC: At the time that part of the Lower East Side looked like a war zone with whole blocks of abandoned buildings and vacant lots. It was known as an area of crime and drugs and people were afraid to go there at all much less with a camera. My approach was simply to drive around until I saw something I wanted to shoot and then get out and shoot. If you hang in long enough people usually ignore you and go back to what they’re doing. If things looked dicey, I could always hop back into my car. I’m doing the same thing today in Baltimore – but on foot.

CP: Tell me about the fateful meeting with Edwin (HE -3).

MC: One day one of the kids whom I’d previously photographed with his pigeon coop showed me a little notebook of drawings and asked me why I didn’t take photos of graffiti. He explained that he was practicing variations of his nickname, HE3, to paint on a wall. Until that point I hadn’t understood that kids were writing their names. The idea that kids were designing graffiti in notebooks fascinated me. HE3 offered to introduce me to Dondi–and the rest, as they say, is history…

CP: At the time, did you have any idea that the images you were making would have a dramatic impact on graffiti, the artists, hip-hop and its now worldwide phenomenon?

MC: Actually I thought the exact opposite. I thought I was photographing something that could only happen in New York City and that it would disappear quickly.  I wanted to make a record of it in the spirit of historic preservation.

CP: When did you step away from the graffiti/hip-hop scene and for those 20 or so years, what were you working on?

MC: After Subway Art was published and Hip Hop became mainstream, I was no longer intent on photographing it as plenty of other photographers had jumped in. Also I’d left the Post so needed to get paying work to support myself. I’d always wanted to work for National Geographic so set my sights on that. For a while I was traveling a lot doing freelance assignments for them in exotic places like Ellesmere Island in the high arctic. I was also shooting some mundane corporate PR assignments to pay the bills.

CP: What do you think about a street photographers role in NYC now, compared to 30 years ago?

MC: Today, at least in NYC, everyone has a camera and is a street photographer. On the one hand it’s fascinating to look, via sites like Flickr, at what people are seeing on the street but on the other, there’s an incredible glut of photos.

CP: Your recent ongoing project in Baltimore has a similar feeling to the images made in the late 1970’s/80’s.  Why are you documenting in Baltimore?

MC: I wanted to get back to the kind of photography I felt I was best at–candid shots of people doing things on the street. I needed to pick a place where there was a lot of street life. Baltimore is my hometown, so I decided to try to document a neighborhood there. I wanted to be able to go back repeatedly and shoot as it changed over time and to be able to interact with the people I was photographing. Over the past five years I’ve made about 125 trips to Baltimore on the bus.

CP: Any images, projects or persons that are especially close to your heart?

MC: My 21 year old cat, Pancho.

CP: Tell me about your next exhibition / project / book.

MC: I always have a lot of irons in the fire. I’m working on a book with my 1970 Japanese tattoo photos with a Swedish Publisher, Dokument. Also I’m preparing for two shows in LA in April. One is the Art in the Streets show at MOCA and the other is at the Carmichael Gallery. That one is called Martha Cooper Remix. I’ve asked graffiti and street artists to choose one of my photos and reinterpret in their own style. I’m also going to have a show at Viva House, a soup kitchen in SoWeBo, my Baltimore neighborhood.  I wanted the people in my photos to be able to see what I’ve been up to.

Artists link: 12ozprophet.com/index.php/martha_cooper

Over the course of seven years, photographer Timothy Briner created “Boonville”, taking place in six different towns spread across the U.S. from New York to California. During this unique solitary road trip, his itinerary consisted of New York, North Carolina, Indiana, Missouri, Texas, and California. Importantly, Briner did his best not to be an anonymous traveler just passing through, he chose to ground himself within the communities for weeks and months at a time. He became familiar and close with the locals and was fortunate to get to know the rhythms of their everyday lives. Within the portraits of hunters and smoke stacks, Briner has a clear opinion, which is never condescending or reductive. These images of different zip codes all with the name Boonville form a unique series of the commonalities of small towns in contemporary America, as seen from the inside. Currently, he has a solo show of the work at the Brauer Museum of Art in Valparaiso, Indiana and a trade edition of the book is in progress.

Briner was born in Indiana. He currently lives in Brooklyn, and is represented by Daniel Cooney Fine Art in New York.

Carissa Pelleteri: What originally spawned Boonville? Which Boonville city did you first visit?

Timothy Briner: In 2003 I vacationed near the Adirondacks Mountains in the Village of Boonville, New York. My girlfriend at the time had access to a cabin there.  After spending a few weeks in Boonville, NY, I fell in love with the landscape and the people. It’s a fairly reserved and quite community, but I felt there was something mysterious happening just beyond the surface, something I was not going to be able to access in just a few days or weeks. I went back a year later for another visit and I quickly became obsessed with the town.

After four years of conceptualizing and developing the project, I finally arrived in Boonville in 2007. This time it was Boonville, Missouri. I spent a month in MO and went on to Boonville, North Carolina; Boonville, New York; Boonville, Indiana, and I returned to Boonville, Missouri for a few weeks before arriving in Boonville, Texas. I ended my travels in Boonville, California, in 2008. The amount of time I stayed in each town varied between 30-90 days.

CP: Are you in regular contact with anyone that you photographed?

TB: I’m in contact with many of the people I photographed, as well as people I lived with along the way, some more than others.

CP: Tell me about the boy with the dairy cows. I understand he passed away after you took his portrait.

TB: Kody.  I lived with Kody and his family for about a month while I was in Boonville, New York. My time with them was the most memorable of my entire trip. Kody passed away six months after I left NY due to a dirt-bike accident. The first edition of the book I made for the project was dedicated to Kody.

CP: What town was the WWIII image photographed? Any story behind this?

TB: WWIII was taken in Boonville, Missouri. I was on a walk one day and noticed it behind a bread factory in town. I went back that night and took the picture. I’ve made up a number of stories in my head regarding this image, but I have no hard evidence regarding who wrote it or why.

CP: Throughout this series, I see this remarkably similar feeling amongst all the people and places.  Did you choose to create this feeling or was this a commonality presented in each town?

TB: The common thread between each town is an important part of the project. I had a list of certain types of people and places I was looking for, but I explored many aspects of each town. The continuity really came together in the final edit.

CP: Since your solo show at Daniel Cooney, which was a success, are there other plans for Boonville?

TB: I currently have a solo show of the work at the Brauer Museum of Art in Valparaiso, Indiana. I’m also working on a trade edition of the book.

CP: What are you working on now?

TB: Since having my first child in July, I’ve been spending a lot of time working from home. Many things are still just notes and drawings in my journal. But I have a few projects nearing the finish line.

CP: How did Boonville impact you and does it have any influence in your current projects?

TB: During the year traveling and shooting Boonville, I came to understand my art and myself in a new way. Although some of the projects I’m currently working on look and feel different then Boonville, I can connect them directly to what I learned while making that work.

Artist website: timothybriner.com

© Sam Falls, courtesy of Hassla Books

There’s a new gallery in town. If you haven’t heard of F.L.O.A.T Gallery (which means Four Legs of A Table), Brooklyn’s newest creative enterprise, the gallery opens their second show this weekend: Picture Books. A collaboration with four dynamic independent photography publishers – Hassla Books, JSBJ, Lay Flat and Seems – together will present small-run photography publications that express the visions of their featured artists and exist as works of art themselves. Limited edition prints curated by F.L.O.A.T will be available for sale throughout the duration of the exhibition. The first show, “Factory of Dreams” was a solo show by photographer Stefan Ruiz. For photography and independent book publisher lovers this show is not too be missed. The opening reception is Saturday, December 18th from 6-8pm and will hold a book sale, introducing a selection of limited edition prints.

Picture Books is curated by Caroll Taveras and Meagan Ziegler-Haynes and runs through January 16th, 2011. For more information please contact 646-239-8834 / info@thefloatgallery.com

F.L.O.A.T GALLERY • 539 ATLANTIC AVE. BROOKLYN, NY 11217 • THEFLOATGALLERY.COM

"Wild Child Hand Style" 2010, © Jose Parla

Artists and brothers, Jose and Rey Parla each have unique and recognizable visions. Born into a family of Cuban exiles, they moved to Puerto Rico at very early ages to return to Miami again before they were teenagers. They both currently live and work in Brooklyn, NY. Two weeks ago I had a studio visit with Jose and Rey. Knowing each other since the year 2000 we caught up about their latest projects. It was such a thrill to see all of the work – finished or in progress, their work truly moves me.

Jose’s bodies of work, particularly his paintings, are a combination of memories and experiences, from the many cities he has moved through since childhood and throughout his life. Through these diverse locations, each painting holds the textures, colors and pulse of each place. The walls in which he draws direct inspiration from, hold years of decay and neglect from the layers of paint, to decades of old posters.

"Scratch Graph 1" 2007, © Rey Parla

Rey creates abstract works, which combine film, photography, paint and ink materials. These images are not computer-generated, but are hand-manipulated experimental motion picture based works that create a new kind of a “non-photo” photograph.

Jose Parlá’s works have appeared in major exhibitions in London, New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Paris, and recently in Stages for the Livestrong Foundation at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris, Deitch Projects, New York, and O.H.W.O.W in Miami. This summer both Rey and Jose were part of the traveling exhibition, The New Grand Tour at Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery.

Just in time for Art Basel, The Parla Brothers will be showing at: It Aint Fair 2010, O.H.W.O.W Gallery, Art Basel Miami Beach 2010 from December 2 – January 8, 2011.

"Calle Luna" 2003, © Jose Parla

"International Hermetic Celestial System" 2005, © Jose Parla

Carissa Pelleteri:  How is it working together as brothers?

Jose Parla: Rey and I have been having conversation about art and philosophy since we were kids. We’ve always been best friends and also kept great friends around us who are creative and share into our lifestyle as artists.  It is very natural for us as brothers to build work together. We’ve often felt that it is, us against the world, and that we are lucky to have each other. We both love making art and use art as a way to defeat our struggles.

Rey Parla: José and I have been working together since our early teens. We have always encouraged and inspired each other to set challenges for personal creative work that carries in it a dialogue for our ongoing conversations about life and art. Working together once again is a natural progression through time that has further matured into a mutual synergy of thoughts and ideas we have fun in sharing with each other.

" Homage to Stan Brakhage's Love Song" 2010, © Rey Parla

CP:  In the earlier years Jose, you painted the walls with the name “Ease” and Rey, you experimented with Super 8 film and shot photographs.

JP: The name Ease comes from 1983 when I first got introduced to Hip-Hop culture by our friend Jesus Ortiz in Miami. He and Rey gave me the name one day after school when we were practicing break-dancing. I used the name Ease for 25 years steadily and after our father passed away, I used the name less and less. Now I use my given name being that it is the same as my father’s name.

RP:  For a while I wrote – Faz, but after voluntarily deciding to document the writing scene in Miami starting in the early 1980s and successfully creating an archive of photographs of the writing subculture in our hometown, I then fully turned my lens on my brother José. I was using various cameras back then and it was all from a self-taught perspective. The documentation on Super 8 film was also DIY. I was involved with the Alliance Film & Video Co-operative on Miami Beach and was able to rent Super 8 and 16mm cameras after taking some courses there. My first Super 8 film was a short abstract documentary on José, titled:  An Experimental Introduction to a Segmented Reality. I continued to document our friends and José painting and also worked on three short absolute films in the tradition of Visual Music animation. The films were all screened at film festivals and galleries in Miami during the 90s.

"Writers End Pages" Sketch book 2000 - 2008, © Jose Parla

CP:  Jose, When did you have your first inclination to take your street graffiti to canvas on a grand scale?  Was there a magic moment or chain of events that lead to this?

JP: What I was doing on walls around the city was always the same as painting on canvas to me.  The only difference is that people were interested in collecting the canvases. At the same time I was painting walls, I would keep sketchbooks and would also practice painting on canvas since I was very young.  During the mid-eighties I was aware of the work New York writers like: Lee, Futura, Crash and Daze and even Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Keith Haring were making. I was interested in making works on canvas and at the same time to remain very true to painting around the city as well. The first time I was part of an underground art exhibition was probably in 1988 before I earned a scholarship to study art in Savannah, Georgia.  By 1989, although I was still heavy into painting walls, I was making paintings on canvas in a grand scale as well.

"Brothers Back 2 Back" 2006, © Jose Parla

CP: Tell me about “Brothers Back 2 Back.”

JP: The painting, Brothers Back to Back, was made in 2006. This painting is made in the style of a palimpsest and is layered with the writing of many memories shared between Rey and I as brothers growing up in Miami. There was a lot of tension and danger in the streets when we were kids, and maybe it is still like that, but not quite like in the 1980s I think.  Brothers Back to Back was the saying we had to mean we would protect each other. Its meaning was that we could see if anyone was coming at us from any direction. Originally I made a drawing in 1987 that was of Rey and I standing in B-Boy poses with our backs to each other.

CP:  Jose, your paintings come from locations around the world and life experiences.  Are there specific cultures or subcultures, which have had a major impact in your work?

JP: Traveling in general has always been a major part of my inspiration. Even as kids, traveling into new neighborhoods and discovering new places to paint was a great experience.  We were together with a crew of other artists searching and discovering new hidden train tracks, freight trains, trucks, or rooftop walls around the city on which to paint.  This expanded as I evolved into traveling to other cities to go paint as well. Later on after seeing so many parts of different cities, I had noticed that so much of what I was looking at was deteriorated walls, abandoned buildings, old train stations, with mold on the walls, rust marks, years of writing on walls layered over each other, paint peeling away and exposing written tags underneath, layers of posters also peeling and exposing more of the walls’ histories.  During my travels I would see walls like this everywhere in London, Tokyo, Beijing, Havana, Istanbul, San Salvador and many other cities.  All of this started to inform my paintings.  A painting professor of mine once said that a painting must have history within it and I liked very much her philosophy.  I wanted to create transparencies in my work and by using the walls as a point of departure I felt it was natural being that at that point I had been around walls for most of my life.

"Soho, Manhattan Circa 1981" 2008, © Jose Parla

CP:  Jose, tell me more about the Concord Project, commissioned by the city of Toronto. Those murals are huge!

JP: The two mural paintings were commissioned by Concord City Place in Toronto for the lobbies of two residential buildings. One is sixty-five feet in length and the second is thirty-five feet in length. I made them both in my Brooklyn studio and we recently installed them in their permanent location in downtown Toronto.  The larger one is titled:  The Names that Live and Sometimes Fade while Time Flies.  This is a painting made of layers of names. The painting pays homage to artists who I admire and have worked with, some who are friends as well.  The smaller painting is titled:  The Bridge. It pays homage to the city, which to me is like a bridge, which allows me to get across and to do the things I dream of.

"Intuitive Provocation. Redacted Frame No. 9" 2010, © Rey Parla

CP:  Rey, what are your influences and inspirations in how you create your work?

RP: During my teenage years and up to my early twenties, I really enjoyed and thought about the work of Futura 2000 as well as the writers influenced by a style called, Computer Rock.  We didn’t fully call this Graffiti back then, the media labeled it that way. For us it was a self-taught, DIY realm, maybe we can even call it outsider art or folk street art created on the subway trains of New York City during the 70’s and 80s.  The colors, the abstractions and the idea of art moving and being viewed momentarily was and remains a hyper kinetic influence that is substantial to my artistic vision.

I was turned on to filmmaking by my father who had made some short films at the ICAIC (Cuban Institute of Cinematographic Art and Industry) and began to film my friends and brother José doing their works on walls in around Florida, Georgia and New York State.  Only after I was heavily involved and living the art of documenting the writing subculture in Miami and the East coast, and being influenced by my brother’s painting philosophy and methods did I accidentally create a film titled: Sporadic Germination.  The experience of making and screening this film along Stan Brakhage’s work and the work of Jose Antonio Sistiaga from Spain at The Miami International Film Festival:  The Avant-Garde Returns, introduced me to the vast experimental film canon world wide.  These early experiences continue to influence and inspire me to create new works.

"HYPER. Scratch Graph" 2010, © Rey Parla

CP:  Rey, tell me about your new work HYPER:  Scratch | Graph, which is being shown at O.H.W.O.W.’s  It Ain’t Fair group show.

RP: This particular new piece continues my physical “haptic” approach to image making. I have always been interested in opacity, transparency, the layering of marks, and their effects. With this work I have combined various working methods from light experiments conducted in my motion picture based works where I have manipulated both positive and negative space. I am drawing with light and also creating a new kind of photograph.

The inspiration for HYPER: Scratch | Graph comes from the idea of capturing the times now. Our story now is one of hyperkinetic activity of interconnected networks, firewalls, masks, sub-pseudo identities, waves of psycho-geographical mental layers continuously discovering and exploring the new sea of shared knowledge.  Lines, human lines and boundless borders.  A handcrafted mirror reflecting the image of the world as we know it.  The work is about the future of now which registers our constant flux, our movements and at the same time a hyper static contraction into a memory of the past, a part of death and rebirth that seem to always inform the human condition, the piece is an abstract representation of our present nature.

artists website:

joseparla.com / reyparla.com

"Kon Would Rather Eat A Palm Frond On Slater's Birthday Than Drink Muddy Water"

Pablo Power merges text, photography and painting to echo the ephemeral life of the unseen. Passionate about documenting not only the lives but also the lifestyles found just outside city limits, Power submerses himself in grimy subculture and finds that it isn’t so bad. Rather than criticizing his surroundings, Power focuses on capturing moments and regenerating their energy. As a teenager in Miami he experimented with a myriad of disparate offerings to the street. Exploring a range between public subversion and permanent collaborative commissions for Miami Dade Transåit, Power eventually settled on what would be his focus and obsession for years to come: spontaneous bombardment of all accessible space, stationary or mobile, with his “visual mantra.”

"Gang Signs And Other Enigmatic Puffmutterings"

Power began taking photographs of friends such as the “Inkheads” crew, and quickly began incorporating these photographs into studio work, experimenting with texture and medium. Thick acrylic paint strokes are juxtaposed with finely-printed marker lines which become incidental to the photograph. Each facet of the picture melds into the surface, collapsing upon one another to form an interwoven image. Finally applying the last layer to his works, Power attaches found objects, a physical, literal record of his travels. His current work is a culmination of his extensive photographic efforts and bears similarities to his work as a young street artist. Today, Power’s message is as raw and powerful as ever. Pablo’s work was recently exhibited in Re:Form School produced by The Hole Gallery and will be showing with 800lb. Artists at Splashlight Studios from November 1st to December 31st.

"Half A Face Brings Alex Full Circle"

Carissa Pelleteri: What did you begin first? Photographing or Painting?

Pablo Power: I started out with painting. Originally, in the street, but as time went on I began painting on canvas in a style that was influenced by the work in the street, but was more of an experimentation with color and texture. My first photography came later, and in the beginning was strictly a way to document the work in the street. Over time I start noticing that a lot of what I had first considered background in those photos was actually much more interesting than what I had painted on the walls and became the subject of the photos. I was also very fortunate to have spent those years around a very colorful group of friends, who were all very entertaining to document.

CP: How did your process of combining painting and photography come about?

PP: Mostly as a way to objectify the imagery that I was seeing in my head and provide myself the ability to reach out and touch things I was imagining. Over time I’ve experimented with a lot of different media and never been totally satisfied with the direction any one of them were heading, so I finally started wondering what they all would look like together.

"South Carolina Sex Offenders And San Franciscan Toilet Paper Vesture"

"Goodbye Goldsmith/Hello Goodthings/You Helped Me While You Hurt Me"

CP: Why do you think you are drawn and intrigued by the grimy subculture of your subjects?

PP: The subject matter of my work is really just concomitant to me not only being drawn to, but from a grimy subculture. The photographs and other work came after the fact of me already being in the margins of civilization, then bringing a camera out there. Later on, I did dream up some projects that had more concept and ambition behind them, the time I spent in Reno for instance, but even that stuff was really just pictures of places I’d be if left to my own devices.

CP: To become fully immersed in the scene you were making these photos of, did you change your appearance or lifestyle to blend in and relate to them?

PP: Not really. I did a series of photos in Miami with some pretty tough characters at a time when I would usually wear T shirts with cartoon bunny rabbits and was giving myself the stupidest haircuts in the world. On the other hand, I more recently did a similar project in Reno, but wasn’t shaving, bathing, or changing my clothes for weeks at a time. It did help me to blend in with the paranoid vagrom that I was photographing, but I actually would have done it out of laziness anyway.

"I was born screaming and I'm still screaming" (detail)

"I was born screaming and I'm still screaming" (detail)

CP: Has anything crazy or life threatening happened to you during any of your photo making adventures?

PP: I can’t say that I’ve ever really felt that my life was threatened, but have definitely had many crazy experiences. Best of all though, I’ve had the opportunity to meet some very nice folks who have been kind enough to show around a stratum of society that few people outside of it get to see.

"I Am A Highwayman. Along East Fifth Street I Did Ride"

CP: Is there anything you wish you did differently during the making of this series?

PP: I guess that’s an impetus behind continuing to experiment with these pieces and seeing how they evolve. Each time I finish one I see something that I’d like to do differently and try to make it happen in the next piece.

artist website:
pablopower.org