Dennis Balk

Qana, Palestine Large Mixed Media Conceptual Abstract Painting

2006

From his show Hashish at Michael Steinberg Gallery (bearing their label verso) Reviewed by Roberta Smith in the New York Times. Abstract Expressionism meets graffiti photography. Cy Twombly in cyberspace. Existential physics. The trajectories of car bombs. These phrases came to mind at the show of Dennis Balk's new work, made during the last three years while he lived in Bahrain and traveled primarily in the Middle East. The show is dominated by black-on-white gestural drawings on canvas from Mr. Balk's Faith Thumbnail series. Full of graphic and even painterly nuance, they turn out to have been made completely on the computer. In a smaller room, the Exhausted and Ideographic series features gaudy, vertiginous digital mixes of colorful photographs. Originally a performance artist, he became known in the art world in the early 1990s for improvisational diagrams that brought different historical narratives into collision. One work in his solo debut at American Fine Arts in SoHo in 1992 charted the lives of Ho Chi Minh and Abraham Lincoln -- both fathers of their countries in different ways -- across white paper napkins. His 2003 exhibition at that gallery was titled ''Particles + Waves With Plausibility,'' as is a recent book of his work. Dennis Balk is an educator, visual artist, writer, media designer and playwright based primarily in New York. Balk has an MFA Degree from California Institute of the Arts. Throughout the 90s and 00s he was an Art Director and media designer for television, outdoor, print and emerging tech and social/ media at; Arnell/ Bickford Associates, Frankfurt Gipps Balkind, Foote Cone & Belding and McCann Erickson, New York. At Amster Yard, the conceptual agency within McCann Worldwide, Balk was involved in concepting high-profile campaigns that ran both domestically and internationally. As an interactive and exhibition designer, Balk has designed significant exhibition work for; Princeton University (The Firestone Library), The National Building Museum (Washington DC), The Jewish Museum (New York) and The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (Washington DC) in conjunction with the offices of James Ingo Freed. Balk has taught and lectured at a variety of Universities, most recently; UCLA in the Department of New Genres, the Università IUAV di Venezia, Yale University, Otis College of Art and Design- Public Practice MFA and as Coordinator of the Department of Fine Arts/ Computer Graphics at the New York Institute of Technology, Bahrain Campus. Since the late 80s his art work has addressed, in multiple formats (including several productions of his plays), the conditions of narrative and the narrative aspects of historicizing the present. His work has been exhibited internationally and reviewed extensively including; Artforum, Filosofia e Questioni Pubbliche, Bookforum, Art in America, Paper Magazine and The New York Times. While in New York, his primary gallery representation was with the seminal gallery, American Fine Arts. In February 2009, INOVA at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee presented the early work survey titled, “Dennis Balk - Early Work 1890-2090”. His recent publications include; “Dennis Balk/1890-2090” (2010-channel 171), “Dennis Balk The Arabian Gulf” (2010-channel 171), “ash” (2009-channel 171), “Colin de Land, American Fine Arts” (2008-powerhouse books), and “particles + waves with plausibility” (2006-powerhouse books). SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 2011 Jack Bankowsky, Rosetta Brooks, Ingrid Schaffner, Nicholas Frank, Christina Valentine, Dennis Balk, Jennifer Bolande...

Richard Snyder (American, born 1951) Untitled Mixed media painting including oil Hand signed to lower right on the back Dimensions: 22.5" W x 30.0" H x 0.1" D Richard Snyder is particularly known for his large-scale abstract expressionist paintings exhibiting vibrant colors, often applied in an irregular manner with large gestural brushstrokes. He also was an accomplished sculptor and was amongst the downtown New York art-furniture scene spawned in the 1980s by the Soho gallery ‘Art et Industrie’ founded by Rick Kaufmann. Downtown New York, circa 1977-1980 was a hothouse of creative impulses that flew in the face of restrictions and ran headlong toward riotous expression. Punk, hip-hop, graffiti or neo-expressionism, Kaufmann looked around for new talent that could create a new kind of art furniture. He felt the design of the day was so standardised, and he wanted to give voice to young artists and bring new ideas to market. After receiving a BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Snyder made his career in the fields of art and design, practicing sculpture, painting, furniture design and fabrication, interior design, cabinetmaking, construction and industrial design. Along with extensive experience in a wide variety of materials and processes, Snyder also possesses a wide range of visual and experiential vocabulary acquired in his many travels through the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Central and Southeast Asia. Snyder considers his objects to be not just about form, function, color, material and process, but rather to be fantasies with spirit, magic and story. During his seventeen years with the Art et Industrie gallery, Snyder participated in five solo shows and more than twenty group shows, which established him as a major player in the American Art Furniture movement. His pieces have appeared in numerous publications and media around the world; and they are included in numerous private collections worldwide as well as in the permanent collection of The Art Institute of Chicago. Snyder guest-lectures at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, the New School in New York, and SUNY Purchase. He was included in the seminal Magen H Gallery retrospective of Art et Industrie—a New York Movement. Art et Industrie was the first to exhibit Studio Alchemia, Shiro Takahama, and Ron Arad. The retrospective included artists such as Forrest Myers, Terence Main...

Acrylic on canvas 47 x 59 in Unstretched While Aitala´s artwork has its beginnings in the neo-expressionism, within the years it was gradually adopting all kinds of facets and style...

Mixed media on paper, framed 18 x 24 cm - 30 x 40 cm with white mat passe-partout Unique copy Signed on the front