FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Magnan Projects is pleased to present the following group of distinguished artists for our Summer Group Exhibition which will be on view from July 16 - August 22, 2009.

Alejandro Almanza Pereda:
Bachelor of Fine Arts // University of Texas at El Paso 2005

Materials, objects, connotations, situations, circumstances, conditions.
Contingent occurrences.

Alexandre Arrechea:
Trinidad, Cuba 1970. Graduated from the “Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA)” in Havana in 1994. For twelve years he was a member of the art collective Los Carpinteros, until he left the group in July of 2003 to continue his career as a solo artist.

Ameila Biewald:
Received a B.F.A. degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and studied fine art and theory at Goldsmith’s College at the University of London. She earned an M.F.A. degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. The recipient of many awards and fellowships, Biewald received a 2004 residency fellowship from the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. She has exhibited widely in the Midwest and taught at the College of Visual Arts in St. Paul, Minnesota. She is an adjunct professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Eva Davidova:
Works with the displacement and manipulation of elements – spaces, words, and bodies. Dissociating meanings, and playing with visual paradoxes and unnatural movement, she tries to question the origin and purpose of an image or an action, to take events out of their routine, and to confront viewers with their own, not previously digested, interpretations.
 

Susanna Heller:
Since the mid-1980s, the subject of Susanna Heller’s paintings has most often been her
native city of New York. Based on drawings that she makes on her habitual walks in the city,
particularly between Manhattan and Brooklyn, her works have the painterly feel of traditional
landscapes, though to this she adds a more contemporary, self-referential twist. Heller
combines elements from different drawings, and just as often from different views of the same
vista, so that each piece is an amalgam that, whether its ostensible subject is Grand Central
Station or the bridges over the East River, is also about her perceptions and the process of
translating those perceptions in paint.
 

Thessia Machado
My work is intent on lavishing high-resolution on some definitely low-tech elements.
Reflecting an interest in the behavior of humble materials in odd situations, it exploits the
margins of perception and the conventions of language. Time can be compressed to uncover
otherwise imperceptible activities, or the small and overlooked might be brought into view.
Working with animation engenders a singular relationship to time. The experience of it
becomes more tactile and non-linear. Time's discrete units—frames—can be reordered and
manipulated creating a completely artificial event, even if with actual materials in real locations.
The uncanny effectiveness of the technique, despite its simplicity, points to the limitations of
our senses and the myriad information and activities that lie just beyond them.

Sofia Maldonado:
As an Artist, she admires her country's rural landscapes, along with the chaos of the city and
the abandoned structures within them. During her undergraduate studies she painted
numerous murals, with or without permission, in abandoned buildings, barrios and indoor
spaces as a way to bring beauty to each site. By creating her own visual language with bright
colors and flowing brush strokes that simulate nature, she received recognition as a mural
painter in her country. Sofia's artwork is a blend of fashion trends, the Latina female aesthetic
and various street culture elements, such as skateboarding, graffiti, public art, reggaeton and
punk music.

Clive Murphy:
Attended and obtain a Master’s of Fine Art Degree, University of Ulster, Belfast with honors
received his B.A. in Fine & Applied Art, University of Ulster, Belfast. 1993/96; National
Diploma in Art and Design Galway R.T.C.

Maya Onoda:
Received a Master of Fine Arts, Painting Program at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn,
New York and her Bachelor of Fine Arts, Painting and Drawing Major from California
State University-Fullerton (CSUF), CA.

Ariana page Russell:
A body becomes an index of passing time. Skin reveals how bones shift, muscles loosen,
freckles and wrinkles form, and bruises appear. I am interested in this as a fashion of skin,
including the way a blush decorates one’s cheek, freckles form constellations on an arm, or
hair creates sheen on skin’s matte surface. Skin also protects us while revealing internal
emotions, offering a translucent space for adornment.

Duke Riley:
My work addresses the prospect of residual but forgotten unclaimed frontiers on the edge
and inside overdeveloped urban areas, and their unsuspected autonomy. I am interested in
the struggle of marginal peoples to sustain independent spaces within all-encompassing
societies, the tension between individual and collective behavior, the conflict with institutional
power. I pursue an alternative view of hidden borderlands and their inhabitants through
drawing, printmaking, mosaic, sculpture, performative interventions, and video structured as
complex multimedia installations.

Sean Slemon:
Born in South Africa, graduated in 2007 at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Has a Masters in Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York. Along with a  Bachelor
of Arts in Fine Art with Distinction, University of Cape Town, Micheal's School of Fine Art,
Cape Town in South Africa.