For more information about (e)merge including the schedule, event line-up and to purchase tickets in advance, visit East City Art’s (e)merge art fair page by clicking here.
Honfleur Gallery, a project of ARCH Development Corporation, will be showing the works of three artists- Gustavo Diaz Sosa, John K. Lawson & Stephan Laplanche. The photos below are all courtesy of the gallery.
.
Gustavo Diaz Sosa
Gustavo Diaz Sosa was born on July 20th in Sagua Grande, Cuba. In 1998 Gustavo was accepted by the Academia Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Academy of Fine Arts) “San Alejandro” in La Habana, Cuba. He became familiar with contemporary discourse on emerging art in Cuba. During this time, he was able to showcase his work at several solo exhibitions and in August of 2000 was honored with the presence of Fidel Castro at the exhibition titled “Tiempo, entre silencios pictóricos” (Time in between silent drawings). The critics and the press facilitated the public recognition that would lead his career expansion. He became involved in collective projects and in the making of murals, traveling in the company of other artists to Quito, Ecuador, mounting an exposition at the Capilla del Hombre (Chapel of Man) in an homage to Oswaldo Guayasamin the painter and traveling to Italy, showcasing his work at the Artistic Primo Liceo of Turin. Gustavo Diaz Sosa graduated with the golden title in 2002. He has since moved to Spain, exhibiting widely, invited as a resident artist at Arteleku in San Sebastian, and settled in the outskirts of Madrid, where he lives and works today.
John K. Lawson
John K. Lawson is a modern artist with old world sentimentality which translates into cohesive, thoughtful bodies of work. From his installation based bead works to his multi-media collaborative efforts, Lawson explores his art on varying levels. More often than not, his work is influenced by his life’s experiences and the current social climate. John K. Lawson was born in Birmingham, England, in 1962 and raised mostly in the countryside until his family moved to South London when he was a young teenager. He first came to America on a student exchange program in engineering at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. There his artistic abilities were encouraged, and he returned to England two years later to concentrate on landscape painting. Eventually, Lawson was drawn back to the Deep South, and soon became part of an underground art culture in New Orleans that included working in tattoo, T-shirt and mural designs long before these mediums became mainstrean.
Stephan Laplanche
Stephan Laplanche’s abstract paintings stand outside the trends of the contemporary art scene, continuing, and expanding on, the work of the Second Generation of American abstract expressionists such as Diebenkorn, Norman Bluhm, Alfred Leslie and Joan Mitchell. Laplanche attended the classes of the Janos Ber Workshop in 1985, where he learned observation, charcoal drawing and oil painting techniques. His pictorial approach was drawn from striving to solve issues of composition, masses, rhythm and expression. Moved by the emotional impact contained in the works of Sam Francis or Bram Van Velde, Stephan Laplanche immersed himself in all aspects of visual abstraction, convinced of his own need to explore its freedom and expressiveness. Laplanche’s work stands at the crossroads between self-assertion, Hartung’s ‘action on canvas’ and withdrawal. A particular attention is given to randomness, as well as the unequivocal respect owed to matter. These back-and-forth exchanges strengthen Laplanche’s confidence in the canvas as a place of discovery, enabling him to find a deeply personal language, with color materializing it in terms space and battlefield.
.
.
.
