EXHIBITION

Snap! Miami/Snap! Orlando in partnership with Opiom Gallery and CU-1 Gallery present ‘ENTRE NOUS,’ featuring the works of Tim Flach, Guido Argentini, Nick Veasey, Marc Lagrange, JeeYoung Lee, Kim Joon, Zhu Ming, Olivier Valsecchi, Dean West, Stephan Zirwes, David Begbie, and Carole A. Feuerman.

Over the past decade, Flach’s work has increasingly focused on animals, ranging widely across species but united by a distinctive style that is derived from his concerns with anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism. His interests lie in the way humans shape animals, and shape their meaning. Flach is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Norwich University of the Arts in 2013.
Nick Veasey is a British photographer working primarily with images created from X-ray imaging. Over the past decade or so he’s x-rayed more than 4,000 objects: flowers, football players, alarm clocks, tractors, even a 777. “I’m interested in how things work, and x-rays show what’s happening under the surface,” he says. “Plus, they look cool.” To get his pictures, Veasey uses industrial x-ray machines typically employed in art restoration (to examine oil paintings), electronics manufacturing (to inspect circuit boards), and the military (to check tanks for stress fractures).
Jee Young Lee creates highly elaborate scenes that require an incredible amount of patience and absolutely no photo manipulation. For weeks and sometimes months, the young Korean artist works in the confines of her small 360 x 410 x 240 cm studio bringing to life worlds that defy all logic. In the middle of the sets you can always find the artist herself, as these are self-portraits but of the unconventional kind. Inspired by either her personal life or old Korean fables, they each have their own backstory, which only adds to the intense drama.
Korean artist Kim Joon fabricates images of fragments of hollow porcelain that resemble nude bodies. Through a painstaking digital process, Kim coats the anthropomorphic forms in bold patterns from ceramic brands such as Villeroy & Boch, Herend, and Royal Copenhagen. What results are deceptively convincing surfaces complete with reflection and shadows. According to Kim, tattoos are not only physical inscriptions on the body but also signifiers of mental impressions left on the consciousness..
A pioneer of hyperrealist sculpture, Carole Feuerman aims to create visual manifestations of the inner balance and beauty of women, though is perhaps best known for her large-scale sculptures of swimmers. Feuerman has spent the last four decades sculpting monumental, life-sized, and miniature works in bronze, resin, and marble. Her labor-intensive sculptures involve working on the piece both in wax and bronze, later applying multiple coats of primer and paint in the foundry, and finishes in the studio..
The Australian-born artist Dean West is best known for his intricate and highly staged photographs that take everyday occurrences beyond the realm of natural reality. Hailed as one of the most promising artists of his generation and identified as one of the most accomplished practitioners of digital image making as an art form, West has been honored by acquisitions of his work by some of the most prestigious collections of contemporary art, including that of Sir Elton John.
Guido Argentini was born in Florence, Italy in 1966. He lives and works in Los Angeles since 1990. Argentini published five books, and his large scale photographs have been exhibited, and are collected worldwide. ‘Argentum’ pursues the investigation of a theme Argentini triggered with his first book, titled Silvereye; coating athletic models with metallic glow paint, these series highlight the beauty of powerful, gracious and aerial human bodies.
Zhu Ming’s performance work deals with the passage of time, physical extremes, isolation and attempts at communication or the futility and ephemeral nature of these attempts. John Clark describes the work as a kind of conceptualism verging on Zen absorption into the object or into the trance of the performance. He often performs inside a specially created balloon which, for example, during the performance May 8 1999 slowly fills with water.
The work of French photographer Olivier Valsecchi blurs the border between sculpture and nude photography, breathing fresh life into both genres. In his series Klecksography, Valsecchi develops this concept by creating living human sculptures inspired by inkblot tests used by Swiss psychologist Hermann Rorschach.
Vast patchwork of farmland, manicured suburban plots with their glistening swimming pools, and seemingly endless stretches of the ocean. As details become indiscernible, the landscape takes on a striking regularity and chaos turns to order. Stuttgart-based photographer Stephan Zirwes captures that perspective, rendering natural and man-made settings into stunning abstract compositions. Zirwes’ aerial photos, shot from a large-format digital Hasselbad while hanging out of a helicopter, range from richly textured farmland and industrial airfields to patterned snow and veined tributaries.
David Begbie has worked almost exclusively with the human form, primarily sculpting in steelmesh. His world-renowned figurative bodies are powerful, erotic, tactile and intimate. The steelmesh material adds intrigue yet is somehow familiar making the viewer curious to know how the perfection of form is achieved. The translucent works interact with light to create a dynamism and sense of movement, which integrates with their environment. Begbie’s perception, understanding and imagination is what is succinctly and economically contained within the confines of the simple shell which constitutes his sculpture.