-scope Basel
art fair featuring Guerra de la Paz, Ivana Brenner, Jack Balas, Juan Doe, Victoria Campillo, and Ward Yoshimoto
Curator Lynn del Sol
Run Dates: June 3rd - June 8th 2008
Opening Reception: Wednesday, June 2nd 2008 12pm
Location: -scope Basel
Directions: Uferstrasse 80 CH-4057 Basel Switzerland
For additional information, a price list, hi-rez images, and/or an artist press kit, please contact us
Art in the new millennium faces the great challenge of inventing a new mechanism of recycling art theories. The desire to bring "theory to life" or to make practical use of it is inspired by the cultural logic of late capitalism. Logic generally also brings about criticism, and many contemporary artists often describe their practice as a kind of social criticism. It is their way of responding, resisting and at times creating great change. In a way, artists today outrun the art critics at creating a true discourse in the field.
CTS presents a focused art fair presentation that explores a trend throughout the year of 2008 in which contemporary artists are engaging in questions about what our world may look like in the future and how art will remain relevant in this new hyper-commercialized world. The works selected thoughout the year will highlight the heightened awareness that artists have, not only within themselves but between that cross-generational germination that influences and contextualizes art into a place in history. Loneliness, empathy, fragility, hopefulness, and yearning characterize the complex and rich state of our future.
The exhibition will feature sociopolitical sculptures by the well-known Cuban artist team Guerra de la Paz, conceptual text-based painting by American satirist Juan Doe, noted figurative American painter Jack Balas, Spaniard photographer Victoria Campillo, suburban assemblage totems by American Ward Yoshimoto and the exciting organic sculptures by Argentine Ivana Brenner.
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about the gallery: CTS is quality art on the move. Championing provocative content driven work by local and international mid-career, underrepresented, and emerging artists in all media. Our goal is to build an infrastructure that knows no boundaries, one that carries the torch of modernism acting as a vehicle for dreamers, a cultural meeting place for great minds, an international community of interconnectivity and expandability.
about the artfair: Building on the success of its international art fair program, -scope art fair is proud to announce the return of its most successful art fair, SCOPE Basel 2008, June 3 – June 8, 2008. Situated directly on the Rhine river, SCOPE Basel’s 60,000 square-foot, air conditioned, glass faced pavilion is within walking distance of Art Basel 39. Serviced by shuttle, water taxi and pedicab, SCOPE Basel will present its most international fair focusing on emerging galleries from all over the world.
about the artist: Guerra de la Paz is the composite name that represents the creative team efforts of Cuban-born artists, Alain Guerra and Neraldo de la Paz. What began as an idea for two individual artists to share a working studio in Miami's Little Haiti, has become an ongoing collaboration that has evolved into constant experimentation. The recipient of the 2008 SCOPE Foundation Grant for artist project “Under the Banyan Tree,” they are are represented in the Satchi Collection (London), 21C Museum Foundation (Louisville, KY), Frost Art Museum (Miami, FL), Miami Art Museum (Miami, FL), and The Cintas Fellows Collection.
about the artist: Ivana Brenner was born in 1982 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Throughout her adolescence, she lived between the city of Buenos Aires and her family’s hometown of Baradero, in the countryside. She received a rigorous traditional education at the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires, where she graduated with honors from Universidad de Buenos Aires (2004).
Installation view -scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland. 2008. Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
Installation view -scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland. 2008. Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New Yorkabout the artist: Juan Doe an artist that strains the boundary between painting, propaganda, polemics, and philosophical discourse in art. He encapsulated a new age aesthetic through his command of the graphic process but with the masterful execution of a painter. His images are non-negotiable, they cannot be interpreted or postponed; they exist now, for the oxygen of the viewers eyes. A recipient in 2007 and 2008 of an individual grant in visual arts from the Bronx Council of the Arts, he is represented in the Bronx Museum (New York).
about the artist: Ward Yoshimoto commingles American and Japanese traditions and craftsmanship in his deft assemblages of found objects. Referencing Dada, Surrealism, and Pop, as well as the turbulent social and political landscape of his youth, Yoshimoto’s wry constructions address an ongoing history of cultural displacement with equal parts iconoclastic brio and meditative, almost obsessive rigor. In this singular brand of contemporary suburban folk art, cocktail stirrers, crucifixes, clocks, and pool balls assume formations as whimsical as they are poignant—the detritus of the American Dream washed ashore, picked over, and reassembled in an attempt to piece together a sense of identity amid the constant flux of contemporary life. Born and raised in Los Angeles he attended CSU Dominguez Hills as a design and studio major, in 1985 received his BFA in photography from The Art Center College of Design, (California) and 1999 he received his MFA in sculpture from Brooklyn College.
about the artist: Victoria Campillo is a kind of mad scientist, working in a dizzying almost schizophrenic pace creating series of photographs that number in the hundreds. The themes are limitless, countless, immune to repeating yet are based wholly on the idea of repetition. In many of her series - Intimacy (2006), Pigs (2005), and Kids (2005)- she establishes a formal relationship between our most important contemporary and modern artists, and everyday vernacular objects. Within the works she asks what would be the singular defining mark that would identify an artist without a moment of thought. What defines these great artistic personalities? And how can she, an artist herself, add to their well-established diction. Through the use of tongue and cheek antics she manages to not only trick our eye but to amuse our mind.
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Ward Yoshimoto, Albert's Lesson, 1989, Mixed Media Assemblage, 48x25x15in (122x60x36cm)
Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
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Guerra de la Paz, Martin (from the series Friends and Family), 2007, acrylic on linen, 14x11in (36x28cm)
Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
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Juan Doe, Artist Knows Best (from the series SOAP) 2008, enamel on canvas, 15 canvas in total, each 24x24in (61x61cm) Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
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Jack Balas, Long History, 2008, oil, enamel on canvas, 40x48in (102x122cm) Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
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Ivana Brenner, Sin Titulo (jade), 2008, solidified oil paint on acrylic laser-cut base, 15x15x2in (36x38x5cm)Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
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Victoria Campillo Jackson Pollock (From the Series Intimacy) 2006, lambda print 100 images in series, each edition of 3, 19x24in (48x60cm) Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York
Installation view -scope Basel, Basel, Switzerland. 2008. Image courtesy of {CTS} creative thriftshop, New York