nuartlink: Installations

Exhibition extended through Tuesday May 7th . 2013

The JAR Project Space . 226 East 54th Street, NYC, 8th Floor 

Oswaldo Maciá (b. 1960, Cartagena, Colombia) lives and works in London.

Maciá describes his modus operandi in the following statement:‘In my work I seek to question assumptions about knowl- edge and perception.The ways in which we attempt to understand our place in the world is structured through conven- tions and expectations that often overwhelm our own direct perception of what surrounds us. I am particularly concerned with how external stimuli we receive from the world are translated into images and information through our senses, often mediated by what-we-think-we-know.Throughout my sound-sculptures, smell-sculptures, videos and installations I aim to create encounters that initiate and reflect upon multiple relationships with what-is-believed-to-be-reality. My work sets out to complicate what we know, offering proposals to look harder, listen more acutely, and pay attention to the senses in order to think deeper about the structures of knowledge we rely on to construct that which is taken for knowledge.’

Maciá received his BA degrees from the School of Fine Art, Cartagena De Indias, Colombia, (Fine Art), Llotja School, Bar- celona, Spain, (Mural Painting) and Guild Hall University of London, England (Sculpture), followed by a Masters in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London in England.

His works have been exhibited in prestigious exhibitions such as Manifesta 9,Genk,Belgium (2012);Kunsthal KAdE,Amers- foort, Netherlands (2012); XI Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador (2011) where he was awarded the annual prize; a solo presen- tation at Museo de Arte Moderno Medellin (2011); 8a Bienal do Mercosul, Porto Alegre, Brasil (2011), XVIII Rohkunstbau, Macht, Schloss Marquardt Potsdam, Germany; Digital Art Center,Taipei, New Narrative,Taiwan (2011); Espaivisor,Valencia Spain 2010; Bienal Pontevedra Utropias, Pontevedra Spain (2010); Fundacion Banco Santander, Madrid, Spain (2010); as well as Liverpool Biennale, the 51st Venice Biennial, the Shanghai Biennale, the VIII Bienal de La Habana,Thessaloniki Bien- nale in 2009, the Museo Nacional Centro deArte Reina Sofia and the Whitechapel Gallery. Maciá’s works are in a number of international collections, including Tate and Daros Latinamerica Collection.

Gail Biederman (b. 1977, Bridgeport, CT) lives and works in Croton-on-Hudson, NY.

For Biederman, mapping is a means to examine identity and relationships as well as physical terrain. Mapping is both a form her work inhabits and a strategy through which it evolves. As Biederman says, “as I work, the messiness of real life mixes with abstract information. The autobiographical and the geographical fuse, and the border between interior and exterior dissolves.” Reconstructing places, personal experiences, and memories, her pieces become visual diaries, encoded narratives, even a type of portraiture.

While Biederman’s work is derived from objective sources — maps or charted information — it is mediated by an intuitive and sometimes playful approach to the interpretation of that content.The materiality of her pieces, like the sensuous use of felt, offers a striking counterpoint to the more conceptual aspects of the work.

Biederman received BA degrees in Art History and Studio Art from Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT. Last year she had solo exhibitions at Real Ar t Ways (Har tford, CT) and Wave Hill (Bronx, NY). Previous solo exhibitions include Ar tspace (New Haven, CT) and Westchester Community College (Valhalla, NY). Her work has also been shown in group exhibitions at the Bronx Museum of Art, the Katonah Museum of Art, Islip Art Museum’s Carriage House, Smack Mellon, Cuchifritos, and Exit Art. Biederman participated in the Bronx Museum’s Artist in the Marketplace program, as well as several residencies in New York City, including the Special Editions Residency at the Lower East Side Printshop, the Artists Alliance Rotating Studio Program, and, most recently, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Swing Space Residency on Governors Island. 

Set up in 2011,The JAR Project Space was conceived by photographer and digital artist Lavinia Branca Snyder.The JAR project gallery is a space within a space, located in Lavinia’s studio workshop in an office building in mid-town Manhattan. In creating the project space, her goal is to give access to artists, curators and other friends to a space in which to exhibit art in a non-commercial environment.To let each one pursue their own distinctive creative idea in a collaboration centered on realizing their vision.