A Journey in Tibet - Opening at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery

"A Journey in Tibet" is a series of photographs from Laurent Zylberman which is being shown at the Sous Les Etoiles Gallery. On Thursday, March 15th, they will be celebrating the opening night from 6 pm to 8 pm, with the artist in attendance. The gallery is located at 560 Broadway Suite 205.

After the riots of 14-16 March, 2008, the photographer Laurent Zylberman and the journalist Eric Meyer were among the first westerners authorized to enter in Tibet, a forbidden region, under traumatized military guard and armed to the teeth.“ We had the desire to place ourselves in the interstices of the economic, social and religious Tibetan society, seize people’s eyes and their relationship with each other revealing a reality they cannot talk or voluntarily express” said Laurent Zylberman.

A Journey in Tibet is a series based on a 15-day mission through “The Top of the World”, between Lhasa, Shigatze, Giangtze and Namso Lake. This photographic journal describes the culture’s vulnerability, allowing us to discover significant internal contradictions of China’s policy for its “autonomous territory.” Each photo solicits strange, unexpected and profound poetry. This awe-inspiring environment in extreme conditions, settled by a very sparse population conveys a feeling of gravity and greatness.

The religious feeling and behavior of friars, laymen and laywomen are discussed, as well as Tibet's spiritual and popular rural culture, which remains largely intact today.

This confrontation nourishes introspection. It forces us to confront the necessary efforts to help both sides of this heterogeneous population, overcome their biases, and to convert the liability
of hatred into an asset of mutual respect.

The series A Journey in Tibet from Laurent Zylberman is part of the book Tibet, The Last Scream written by Eric Meyer, an accredited China correspondent for various francophone medias.

The publication of this diary and photobook, will be released in 2012 in three languages and countries (USA, France, and Spain).

The exhibition A Journey in Tibet at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery is made possible with the support of Rita Castellote Gallery in Madrid, Spain.

2012 Whitney Biennial Opens Today!

Sculpture, painting, installations, and photography—as well as dance, theater, music, and film—will fill the galleries of the Whitney Museum of American Art in the latest edition of the Whitney Biennial. With a roster of artists at all points in their careers the Biennial provides a look at the current state of contemporary art in America. This is the seventy-sixth in the ongoing series of Biennials and Annuals presented by the Whitney since 1932, two years after the Museum was founded.

The 2012 Biennial takes over most of the Whitney from March 1 through May 27, with portions of the exhibition and some programs continuing through June 10. The participating artists were selected by Elisabeth Sussman, Curator/Sondra Gilman Curator of Photography at the Whitney, and Jay Sanders, a freelance curator and writer who has spent the past ten years working both in the gallery world and on independent curatorial projects. Sussman and Sanders co-curated the Biennial’s film program with Thomas Beard and Ed Halter, the co-founders of Light Industry, a venue for film and electronic art in Brooklyn.

The Whitney’s fourth-floor Emily Fisher Landau Galleries will become a dynamic 6,000-square-foot performance space for music, dance, theater, and other events. This is the first Whitney Biennial in which nearly a full floor of the Museum has been given over to a changing season of performances, events, and residencies.

QVC Spoof for Italian Vogue

If only every shopping channel looked like this one imagined by Steven Meisel for Vogue Italia...

Photography in Motion from César Mansilla Sialer

Buenos Aires based, Peruvian born, photographer César Mansilla Sialer has one of the best photography videos I have seen in a while - but maybe thats because it isn't really a video. Rather than attempting a switch to narrative video to get his work out to the public - he has taken the art of slideshow above and beyond with his Photography Reel. The illusion of time and movement is still achieved, while highlighting his ability to capture a still image (rather than showing some new technique). Don't believe me that it isn't just a slideshow... see for yourself!

Nudes by Sophie Delaporte - Opening Sept. 22 at Sous Les Etoiles

Inspired by high fashion (and her career as a British fashion photographer), Sophie Delaporte claims that with her new series Nudes she has been able to overcome the limitations offered by fashion photography. Her photography has alway brought about a spirit of vivacity and intuition which is now translated with a new energy into graphic simplicity. Accessories such as paper, fabric, and furniture, embellish the pose of the model to create a dramatic and playful elasticity of movement. With her own colors, her way of staging, and the joy of her imagery, Delaporte lets these fashion butterflies take flight - sans clothing.

The show opens at Sous Les Etoiles Gallery in New York on September 22nd from 6:00-9:00 PM. The gallery is located at 560 Broadway Suite 205. A catalog will be released with a foreword by Vicki Goldberg, journalist and critic, who has overseen photography’s rise in contemporary art over the past 25 years.

Automaton at Hasted Kraeutler

Incredible NY photography gallery HASTED KRAEUTLER is offering a limited number of pre-release copies of Paolo Ventura's new book, The Automaton ($60) which isn't supposed to hit the shelves until2012. HASTED KRAEUTLER will have 200 advance publication copies during Paolo Ventura's exhibition The Automaton of Venice, September 8 - October 15, 2011.

The Automaton centers around an elderly, Jewish watchmaker living in the ghetto of Venice in 1943, one of the darkest periods of the occupation of the Nazis and the rule of the fascist regime in Italy. The city where the watchmaker has lived his entire life, now desolate and fearful, is the stage where this story unfolds. The photograph is actually the final product in a chain of creative processes, from initially drawing the scene in watercolor to constructing an elaborate miniature set with figurines to taking the final photograph. Paolo Ventura has been selected for the Italian national pavilion of the prestigious Venice Biennale 2011. Paolo Ventura lives and works in Anghiari, the small village in northern Italy where he grew up. He has created three bodies of work, War Souvenir (2005) and Winter Stories (2007-2009), both of which were published in books, exhibited widely and critically acclaimed, and mostly recently, Venice (2010).

See below for a selection of works from all three collections.