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Stanza
A Guide to the Past - British Abstract art oil painting cityscape mapping black

2010

About the Item

This stunning large abstract oil on canvas oil painting entitled A Guide to the Past is by London-based artist Stanza. Based on his interest in landscape, cities and surveillance this painting was created in 2010 and is an excellent example of his work. Stanza is a practising contemporary artist who has exhibited worldwide over the past thirty years and won numerous awards. This painting and other artwork we have on our website are being offered for sale for the first time so it is an opportunity to purchase work from an internationally recognised contemporary artist. Provenance. Artist's estate. Unframed the image size is 24 inches by 16 inches and in excellent condition. Stanza is interested in the urban landscape, data, networked systems and how we are all connected. These themes are depicted in his artworks (paintings, digital artworks, and large installations ) and have been constant over the last forty years of his work. Stanza is based in London but recent exhibitions include solo shows in Samek Art Museum USA 2023, HNF in Paderborn Germany 2023, and new AI artworks in the Deutsches Museum 2023. Selected painting and digital works in Jarvenpaa Art Museum Finland digital art installations in France, Holland, and Spain, and lectures in Saudi Arabia and Germany. 2022. Work has also been shown at: the Bruges Museum Venice Biennale Italy: Victoria Albert Museum UK: and Tate Britain UK. Context. What the artwork is about. This series of artworks represents newly created imaginary cities from Stanza Studio selected and presented here. The cities we inhabit disclose our behaviour in these systems. What you see in the artworks are fused layers of city patterns. These lines, grids, and shapes form the design of the city. Stanza sees these forms as the marks we have made and left behind on the landscape as drawings. In essence, the artworks could be said to represent the scars on the landscape that we have created by our living actions or agency. They all have in common that they depict maps with layers of data and mixed information, and they juxtapose various systems of the landscape. These are all based on real cities and use remediated or fused data. These artworks become poetic interpretations of places we inhabit. They might first appear to us as abstracted forms created randomly, however, they are part of the fabric of the design of our global cities. These imaginary cities belong to a long-standing interpretation of the landscape we inhabit. Some artworks merge city data with other cities to create a hybrid multi-layered imaginary city. These images also play with the relationship of scale, from the micro to macro. Here the city becomes a living organism; it's alive, always moving towards the edges of space, alive in a viral sense all mixed to create a poetic understanding of the world. 'The integration of digital technologies with the public domain reveals further relationships, and as such the Stanza artwork provides a catalyst not only as a creative medium in themselves but as instruments to inform new urban experiences' (Brook, Dunn, 2011, p.108). Furthermore, the artwork demonstrates how we are complicit and thus entangled in the surveyed and monitored technological layers that the artworks are communicating and fit seamlessly into what Stanza calls panoptic aesthetics. What becomes real are the art installations, sculptures and paintings that Stanza exhibits. Biography Dr Stanza (b 1962) (PhD, MA, BA, Cert Ed, PG Dip) is an internationally recognised artist, who has been exhibiting worldwide since 1984. Educated in art at Goldsmiths College in the early eighties he later went on to study at Greenwich University and Central Saint Martins Art College London. Stanza returned to Goldsmiths College as an Art and Humanities Research Council arts research fellow. Stanza is an independent practising artist. His mediums include; netart, paintings, videos, installations, software systems and public artworks. His artworks have won twenty international art prizes and art awards including spanning a forty-year practice:- Vidalife 6.0 First Prize Spain. SeNef Grand Prix Korea. Videobrasil First Prize Brazil. Cynet Art First Prize Germany. Share First Prize Winner Italy: Stanzas art has also been rewarded with a prestigious Nesta Dreamtime Award, an Arts Humanities Creative Fellowship and a Clarks bursary. Numerous commissions include work for Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Watermans Art Centre, FACT, and the Open Data Institute. His artworks have been exhibited at over one hundred exhibitions globally. Participating venues have included:- Deutsches Museum, Venice Biennale: Victoria Albert Museum: Tate Britain: Mundo Urbano Madrid: Bruges Museum: TSSK Norway: State Museum, Novosibirsk: Biennale of Sydney: Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo Mexico: Plymouth Arts Centre: ICA London: De Markten Brussels: Transport Museum London: QUAD Derby: Ars Nova Museum Finland. Dr Stanza AKA Steve Tanza (PhD, MA, BA, Cert Ed, PG Dip)
  • Creator:
    Stanza (1962, British)
  • Creation Year:
    2010
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 16 in (40.64 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)Depth: 2 in (5.08 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    London, GB
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU853113047042

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