ZONAMACO

Alejandro Almanza Pereda was born in Mexico City in 1977, he has a Master’s degree in Arts from Hunter College, New York. He lives in Guadalajara Mexico. Alejandro has been influenced by living in different parts in Mexico and United States of America. He grew interest in how different cultures perceive danger and risk. Almanza’s endeavor focus on materiality concepts by challenging objects conceptually and physically in Sculptures and underwater photographs and videos. His work explores the culturally specific paradigms of safety, danger and architecture through the juxtaposition and pairing of materials and objects. These juxtapositions achieve a sense of tension from makeshift environments with specific connotations, such as fragility, value, weight and power. He integrates mundane materials into large-scale sculptures that challenge both the durability of the objects and his ability to create a stable structure. His frequent use of neon light-tubes, for instance, is due in part to his interest in the simultaneous fragility and strength of these objects that are easily shattered but, in some positions, can withstand significant pressure. Finding inspiration in the objects he selects, Almanza Pereda eschews narrative and prefers to focus on materiality. Though his work is influenced by Dutch still-life painting, it can touch on the surreal, especially in more recent work that experiments with underwater photography. He has done solo shows in different institutions like San Francisco Art Institute; Museo El Eco, Mexico City; Art in General New York; Stanley Rubin Center, El Paso TX; College of Wooster Art Museum Ohio; ChertLüdde in Berlin. His work has been featured at the Istanbul Biennal, ASU Museum; Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City; Dublin Contemporary 2011; 6a Bienal de Curitiba Brazil; El Museo del Barrio and the Queens Museum, both in New York. Alejandro has attended the Skowhegan and Bemis Art Residencies program as well as a grant recipient of the CIFO Grant Program, the Harpo Foundation Grant program and the Harker Award for Interdisciplinary Studies. His work was featured in Art 21 close up series. He is currently a member of LA RUBIA TE BESA an Art band project.

Andrea Galvani was born in Italy in 1973. He lives and works between New York and Mexico City. Adopting a cross-disciplinary approach that often draws upon scientific methodology, Galvani’s conceptual research informs his use of photography, video, drawing, sculpture, sound, architectural installation, and performance. His work seems to heighten awareness, articulate and extend the limits of sensory perception. Investigating relationships between fragility and monumentality, temporality and continuity, visibility and invisibility, his projects are documents of interventions orchestrated on site. Modifying and distorting natural surroundings, Galvani transforms the environment into a laboratory for physical experiments, cerebral observation, and collective action.

Galvani has exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum, New York; the 4th Moscow Biennial for Contemporary Art; the Mediations Biennial, Poznań, Poland; 9th Biennial of Contemporary Art of Nicaragua; Art in General, New York; Aperture Foundation, New York; The Calder Foundation, New York; Pavilion – Center for Contemporary Art and Culture, Bucharest; Mart Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Trento; Macro Museum, Rome; GAMeC, Bergamo; De Brakke Grond, Amsterdam; Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen; Sculpture Center, New York; among others. His work is part of major public and private collections in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa, including: the Permanent Collection at the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; Deutsche Bank Collection, London; Artist Pension Trust, New York; the Contemporary Art Society, Aspen Collection, New York; the UniCredit Art Collection, Milan; the Permanent Collection of the United States Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, DC; the Mart Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto; the 500 Capp Street Foundation, San Francisco; MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome; The Armory Show, New York and MACRO Testaccio, Rome.  He was a visiting artist at New York University, and has completed several artist residencies in New York, including Location One International Artist Residency Program, the LMCC Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and the MIA Artist Space Program/Columbia University School of the Arts. In 2011, he received the New York Exposure Prize and was nominated for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize. In 2016, the Mart Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Trento and Rovereto presented Galvani’s first mid-career retrospective in Europe. In 2017, his work was selected to represent the Deutsche Bank Collection at Frieze New York. In 2019, he was awarded the prestigious Audemars Piguet Prize.

Levi van Veluw was born in the Dutch town of Hoevelaken in 1985 and studied at the ArtEZ Institute of the Arts in Arnhem. He lives and works in Amsterdam. Since graduating in 2007, he has produced multi- disciplinary works that spans scenographic installations, photographs, videos, sculptures and drawings. Van Veluw bases his practice around the idea of an alternate reality, creating a visual laboratory where both order and chaos are present. The artist has extensively investigated the relativity of matter and draws on scientific theories and physics to approach various existential dilemmas. His dark and sensory installations encourage the viewer to reflect on the development of a new knowledge, stemming from the desire for a regulated universe, while acknowledging the rational impossibility of total control.

Among his personal recent exhibitions we remind: Videocittà Rome, Italy (2021); Eduardo Secci, Florence, Italy (2020); Rijksmuseum Twenthe, Enschede,The Netherlands (2020); Praz-Delavallade, Paris (2020); Het HEM, Zaandam, The Netherlands (2020); Tenuta Dello Scompiglio, Lucca, Italy (2019); Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Bignan, France (2018); La Galerie Particulière, Paris (2017); Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam (2019); Rosenfeld Porcini Gallery, London (2016). Among group shows we remind: Museo Kranenburgh, Bergen, The Netherlands (2017); labellisée Normandie Impressonniste, Jumièges, France (2016); Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, the Netherlands (2016); Maddox Arts, London (2015). Van Veluw’s works have also been widely shown at international art fairs such as Zona Maco (2018); The Armory Show, New York (2017); Art Brussels (2016); Chicago Art Fair (2016); Volta Basel (2012) and the Barcelona Loop Fair Barcelona (2014). The work of Levi Veluw has been exhibited internationally in leading museums and institutions, and is included in both public and private collections, including the Borusan Contemporary Collection, Caldic Collection, Ekard Collection and KPMG Art Collection.

Marco Tirelli was born in Rome in 1956. He currently lives and works in Rome and Spoleto. He’s member of the National Academy of San Luca and of Accademia dei Virtuosi of Pantheon. Tirelli attended the Accademia di Belle Arti and graduated in Scenography with Toti Scialoja. Recent solo exhibitions include: Marco Tirelli, House of Art Ceské Budejovice, Czech Republic (2020), Marco Tirelli, Axel Vervoordt Gallery, Kanaal, Belgium and Hong Kong (2018); Marco Tirelli, Palazzi Comunali, Sala delle Pietre, Todi (PG); Marco Tirelli, MAMC Musée d’art moderne et contemporain Saint-Etienne Métropole, France; Marco Tirelli, Fondazione Pastificio Cerere, Rome (2016); Osservatorio, Fondazione Pescheria – Centro Arti Visive, Pesaro (2014); Marco Tirelli. Immaginario, Istituto Nazionale per la Grafica, Palazzo Poli, Rome (2013); Macro Testaccio, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Rome (2012); Museo di Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2010). Recent group exhibitions include: Il Fregio dei Carracci. Opere a confront, Palazzo Fava, Bologna (2019); Lo spazio dell’immagine, collezione e nuove acquisizioni, MAXXI, Roma (2018); The Hilger collection 1st part. Works on paper and wood, HilgerBROTKunsthalle, Vienna (2016); Di mano in mano, Casa delle Letterature, Rome (2016); Proportio, Palazzo Fortuny, Venice (2015); Biennale di Kochi Muziris, India (2014); Iconica, Arte Urbana al Foro Italico, Rome (2014); Opere della Collezione permanente/1, CAMUSAC, Cassino (2013); La Grande Magia, MAMbo, Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna (2013); La magnifica Ossessione, MART, Rovereto (2012); MACROwall: Eighties are Back!, MACRO Museum, Rome (2012); Spazio. Dalle collezioni di arte e architettura del MAXXI, Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2010); Le collezioni 1958 – 2008, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome (2010); Détournement Venice 2009, LIII Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte – Parallel Event, LaBiennale di Venezia, Archivio di Stato, Venice (2009). He also participated in important international biennials such as the The Bienal de São Paulo (1991), Sydney (1990), and Paris (1985). In 2013 he participated to Venice Biennial at Italian Pavilion ”Vice Versa” exhibition.

Joshua Hagler (1979, Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho, United States) lives and works in Roswell, New Mexico, where he moved in 2018 as a grant recipient of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. He graduated from the University of Arizona in Tucson with a degree in visual communications. Self-directed research and travel inspire the artist career determining how he integrates creative influences with life experience. He explores subjects including his middle American upbringing, the 19th-century exploration of North America, modern science fiction, and the traditions of Italian religious art.  Hagler confronts ideas of extreme religious experience and notions of wider cultural and social identities. He conceives large-format canvases with scenes often distorted by gestural smears of fluid brushwork that enter into realms of abstraction. His paintings, sculptures, videos, and animations have been exhibited internationally: “The Living Circle Us”, curated by David Anfam, Unit London, London, 2021; “Drawing in the Dark”, Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas, 2021; “Love Letters to the Poorly Regarded”, Roswell Museum and Art Center, Roswell, 2018; “The River Lethe”, Brand Library & Art Center, Los Angeles, 2018, “With Liberty and Justice for Some”, Children’s Museum of the Arts, New York, 2018; “Dreams and Fevers”, Torrance Art Museum, Los Angeles, 2018, among others. In 2021, he released his first monograph entitled “This is the Picture”. Furthermore, he is also an author of poems and essays.

Kevin Francis Gray was born in Northern Ireland in 1972. He currently lives and works between London and Pietrasanta.

Kevin Francis Gray has generated bodies of work which address the complex relationship between abstraction and figuration. At the core of the artist’s practice is an interrogation of the intersection of traditional sculptural techniques and contemporary life. Rather than working towards ideals of beauty or memorial, Gray attends to the psychological effects, often relying on textural surfaces rather than facial or bodily expressions. Furthering Gray’s decade of working with marble, his new work pushes the possibilities of the artist’s sculptural practice into new territories of physical and psychological expression.

He received his BA from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin (1995) and the School of Art Institute in Chicago (1996), and then went on to earn an MA in Fine Art from the Goldsmiths College in London. He works closely with the Giannoni marble studio in Pietrasanta, renowned for its use of sculpting techniques that date back to Canova and Michelangelo. His works have been included in exhibitions at the Royal Academy, London, UK; Sudeley Castle, Winchcombe, Gloucestershire, UK; Museum of Contemporary Art of the Val de-Marne, Paris, France; Nieuw Dakota, Amsterdam; Palazzo Arti Napoli, Naples, Italy; Musee d’art Moderne, Saint-Etienne, France; ARTIUM, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain; Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel; and Art Space, New York, USA.

Radu Oreian was born in 1984 in Tarnaveni, Romania. He currently works and lives in France. He awarded his first degree in 2005 at the University of Art and Design of Cluj-Napoca and he continued his studies at National University of Art of Bucharest where he graduated in 2007. Radu Oreian’s practice has at its core the classical mediums of drawing and painting and explores the way history, ancient myths and archives shape our society and our understanding of humanity. His ‘Molecular Painting’ are a miniature-like format of works that pulsate with details and thus intend to draw the viewer’s eye deeper and deeper into the fabric of the paint and hopefully deeper and deeper into the nature and meaning of painting. The red thread that runs through Radu Oreian’s works is creating a new, meditative visual imprint of a peculiar density that appears to exist in a pulsing state of tension and relaxation. Radu Oreian has been the protagonist of several solo-shows: SVIT Gallery, Befriending the memory muscle (Prague, 2020, with Ciprian Mureşan), Gallery Nosco, Microsripts and Melted Matters (London, 2019), Gallery ISA, Farewell To The Thinker of Thoughts (Mumbai, 2018). Among his institutional projects: La Fondazione, Project Room (Roma, 2020, solo-show), The Last Agora, Plan B Foundation (Cluj-Napoca, 2019) and Chasseur d’Images, Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Paris, 2019). Among his group shows: One in a million, Gallery Nosco (Marseille, 2018) and On The Sex of Angels, Nicodim Gallery (Bucarest, 2017).