More featured artists at Art New York!

There are still two more days of Art New York at Pier 94! If you have not yet visited us at booth B203, make sure to stop by before 8 pm tonight, or 6 pm tomorrow, EST. We are featuring the work of some amazing artists, four of which physically construct what they photograph. Their processes span elaborate set design, painstaking digital collage, and arranged found materials.

Clarissa Bonet
In 2014, Bonet embarked on her second ongoing project, Stray Light, which looks at the anonymity of people in their homes at night. The artist photographs once the sun sets, capturing the colorful glows from hotel and apartment windows. Back in her studio, she carefully constructs each image from multiple photographs, transforming the urban cityscape into a constellation, as the mind tries to organize the information presented. Ultimately, the viewer is left dazzled by the glow emanating from windows that fill the city skies, much like the stars do on a clear night, far away from the lights of an urban landscape.

Laurent Millet
For more than twenty years, Laurent Millet has channeled his innate curiosity to create photographs that question the way objects appear within space and time. Citing R. Buckminster Fuller and Denis Diderot among his influences, Millet creates an artistic vocabulary through metal wire, vineyard posts and barrel hoops – objects prevalent in the coastal town of France in which he resides. His 1997 series, Petites Machines Littorales, addressed his surroundings, as he transformed the sea into a place for scientific experimentation, creating contraptions that suggest a way to measure water or listen to fish. These “machines” invite curiosity and questions, much like a child experimenting in a science lab.

Screen Shot 2017-05-05 at 3.29.26 PM — Petite Machine Littorale du 13 mai II, 1997 © Laurent Millet

In his 2000 series Les Cabanes, Millet continues to build structures in the water, yet this time they appear to be bridges, ladders, architectural pieces and fences, suggesting a relationship between water and sky. The 2002 series, La Chasse, features objects that could be used to trap, to capture that which is hard to contain. And finally, in his 2014/15 series, Somnium, the artist photographed himself with geometric objects, polyhedra, that he fabricated. These images seem paranormal yet familiar, as the artist engages with objects hovering in the air, recording his encounter.

Screen Shot 2017-05-05 at 3.39.32 PM.png — Somnium, 2015 © Laurent Millet

Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison
Much has been written about Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison, the husband and wife duo who met as students in New Mexico. She was studying dance and metalsmithing, while he was focused on photography. Within a few years of graduating, they gained instant recognition for their collaborative works that presented constructed and choreographed scenarios about mans effect on the landscape.

Logic_of_Spring, 2015 — Logic of Spring, 2015 © Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison

Creating a genre unique within the photo world, the ParkeHarrisons construct fantasies in the guise of environmental performances for their Everyman – a man dressed in a black suit and starched white shirt – who interacts with the earths landscape. Tapping into their surreal imagination, the artists combine elaborate sets (which can take months to construct) and an impeccable sense of wit and irony, to address issues about the earth and mankind’s responsibility to heal the damage he has done to its landscape.

Riverview, 2015 © Robert & Shana ParkeHarrison

Their newest series, Precipice, combines their love of theater and performance. In each image, we see a man bearing witness to his own desires and struggles. By creating environments specifically to photograph, the artists address issues about the earth and our responsibility to heal the damage we’ve created, while investigating the human condition. This ideology has remained a constant, and is why they are so greatly admired. As the artists state: “The stage offers endless narrative possibilities and favors contradictions – hope and despair, desire and failure… to explore the fragile human condition, and the overarching shadow of environmental destruction. Perhaps the only true hope for our world and our human spirit rests in our ability to imagine.”

Gregory Scott
Gregory Scott has always blurred the lines between painting and photography. In 2008, upon receiving a Master of Fine Art from Indiana University, Gregory Scott stunned the art world with his mixed-media video works that combined installation, photography, performance, video and painting. As more and more artists blur the lines between medias, Scott has taken the idea to a whole new level, presenting video-based wall pieces that are humorous and poignant, contemplative yet accessible.

Gregory Scott builds sets in his studio that serve as his subject. In these sets, he records himself performing a variety of scenarios that are then edited into 6-10 minute videos. The sets are then photographed, and the resulting wall piece is a mounted photograph with a cut out for a monitor on which a video plays, and a painted element appears on the photographic surface. In each video, he shows how he constructed the set that he photographed, breaking down the barrier between maker and viewer. All of the hardware is attached to the inside of the frame, making his works self-contained.