Blue | Loy Luo Space

Color Theater - Blue

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There are ten thousand kinds of blue in a thousand pairs of eyes! Melancholy, cheerful, affectionate, ruthless, rational, sensitive, cold, romantic, dull, vivid, rigid, soft, mysterious, empty... Countless people will be inexplicably excited and eager to try when it comes to blue. The number of applicants for this blue group exhibition is beyond imagination. Among the many enthusiastic applicants, we only selected six who represent artistic experiences from different worlds. Among them are the seemingly jokes of museum-level artists, the sensitive output of emerging artists, and the consistent persistence and seriousness of acclaimed artists. Without exception, these works are exciting voices and traces from the real heart.

Artists

Janis Brenner

Janis Brenner is a multi-award-winning dancer/choreographer/singer/teacher/collagist and Artistic Director of Janis Brenner & Dancers in NYC. Known for her “meticulous artistry,” she has toured in 36 countries and is recognized for her multifaceted artistic range. Awards include: “Best Production” at the 2018 United Solo Theatre Festival Off-Broadway for her one-woman show, Inheritance: A Litany, receiving the 2019 Critics’ Choice Award from All About Solo. Brenner has received a NY Dance & Performance Award (a "Bessie") for performance in Meredith Monk’s work, Lester Horton Award for Choreography in L.A., Copperfoot Award for Lost, Found, Lost at Wayne State, awards for Teaching from Sarajevo, grants from the Fund for US Artists at Int’l Festivals, Asian Cultural Council, Trust for Mutual Understanding, O'Donnell Green Music & Dance Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance, US Embassies in Moscow, Bosnia, Jakarta and Dakar, and a commission for The Memory Project from the Whitney Museum of American Art. Brenner’s work has been commissioned or restaged on more than 55 companies and colleges worldwide and she performed with Meredith Monk and Vocal Ensemble from 1990 - 2005, 2014, recording on ECM Records. She was with the Murray Louis Dance Company working with Rudolf Nureyev, Placido Domingo, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Joseph Papp, Bat Sheva Dance Company in Israel, and Alwin Nikolais. Janis Brenner & Dancers performed throughout the US, Asia, Russia and Europe from 1989-2017. She was on faculty at The Juilliard School from 2009 - '21 mentoring the Choreographers and Composers project. She teaches at STEPS Conservatory and Marymount Manhattan College, has had long associations with Stockholm, Indonesia, Taiwan, Singapore, and served as Dance Director for Regional Dance America’s National Choreography Intensive for five summers. Her 2nd, critically-acclaimed show, She Remembers her Amnesia premiered in NYC in ’22. Her collage work has been featured on the IvyLeague Gallery’s online “Fame” exhibition, 92Y’s student exhibition ‘24, the Susan Eley/Fine Art gallery in NYC in 2022, and a month-long run in 2023 with Ms. Brenner’s curated Salon performances at Loy Luo Space. www,janisbrenner.com

Three months before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in the United States, I had begun a long-awaited visual art project to document my artistic history and journey—a kind of autobiography –through the medium of Collage. The desire to honor the diverse artists I have worked and collaborated with over the course of decades in dance, music, theatre and design, developed into a larger vision of “choreographing with collage” that now includes work specifically developed as a response to the pandemic in my hometown of NYC and numerous, “escaping NYC” visits Upstate. Along with the use of both current and historic photos of myself and others, I honor the unique perspective I bring to this visual artwork through elements that go into Dance and Choreography as an art form: space, time, shape, motion, form, structure, color, detail, and design. It has been a revelation to discover the overlapping relationships between the art forms. During the last 5 years, this work has been a lifeline as a performing artist who, like many others, had to transfer much of her creative impulses and visions into a newly-discovered, deeply rewarding way to pay homage to the artistic journey. The performer/creator is very relieved and grateful to be back as well. “Art is the highest form of Hope.” Gerhardt Richter

Aphrodite Désirée Navab

Navab received her BA magna cum laude in Visual Arts from Harvard College in 1993. In 2004, she completed an Ed.D doctorate in Art Education at Columbia University. Navab’s art has been featured in over one hundred and seventy exhibitions and is included in a number of permanent collections, including: The Addison Gallery of American Art; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Lowe Art Museum; the Harn Museum of Fine Arts; Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy. She had a solo museum exhibition, Landmines of Memory, at the Addison Gallery of American Art (Jan
April 2021). Navab had a solo multimedia installation, The Anahita Scrolls, at A.I.R. Gallery in New York (April-May 2022). Her art was exhibited at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in the traveling group museum show: Men of Steel, Women of Wonder (Feb-April, 2019).

Through her art and activism, Navab mines her Iranian, Greek, and American heritage, calling forth its competing histories, myths, and politics and tracing its impact on her personal identity. It is in the process of Navab’s art that she dislocates and relocates her place between Iran and the United States. Each art series provides a material reference for her after having left her first relatives, friends, home, language and culture. Each work places a foundation stone into a new home in diaspora that she is building away from home, but always in critical dialogue with the memory of that first home.
Profoundly inspired by the work of Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad (1934-1967), the French American artist Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), and the Cuban American artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985), Navab uses her own body as a map, directing her towards a home deserted and disguised by years and years of absence. From Farrokhzad, she learns the poetry of feminist protest in Iran and from Bourgeois, the use of childhood

trauma as a catalyst for her art. Through Mendieta, Navab practices the ritual of private performance as a talisman against the ravages of exile.

Navab’s latest series, “Woman/Zan/زن—Black and Blue,” are performance art monoprints with marks made by the artist’s own body. Navab takes on her native city Isfahan’s ancient textile tradition of Ghalamkar (Farsi for pen and ink work). Using alphabet blocks spelling woman/زن in Farsi to stamp the foundational pattern of her childhood, Navab immerses it in ink, adding one layer for each year that her family has lived in exile. In addition to woodblocks which can be used by anyone anywhere, Navab inks up her lace intimate apparel, wears it, then stamps herself on paper, in her own passport of exile. This series is in solidarity with Iranian women protesting gender apartheid in her homeland, Iran. Navab’s art series are invitations for collective imagination and action, where art and activism can meet, picturing a landscape without gender apartheid.

Loy Luo

Loy Luo is a New York-based artist. She founded Loy Luo Space, an experimental space for the arts, and is its director. She received a master's degree from the Beijing Institute of Fashion Technology and has also taught art at the Beijing Institute of Science and Technology Management.
As the founder of Loy Luo Space, Luo hosts an innovative series of art exhibitions in this
experimental art space she calls Open Theater - the Color Theater Series. Every 10 days, the gallery rotates to a new color theme, providing visitors with a vibrant and immersive experience. Each exhibition is carefully curated to showcase works from accomplished artists who explore the depth and diversity of the chosen color. This rotating series not only highlights the beauty of each color, but also showcases the unique interpretation and creativity of the participating artists.
Luo's artistic focus spans painting, sculpting, concept and performance art, poetry, vocal performance, and writing. Her work has been exhibited and collected in countries including China, Italy, France, the United States, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Australia.

TaraMarie Perri

TaraMarie Perri is an interdisciplinary artist-performer and teacher of Yoga, dance, pedagogy, meditation, contemplative arts and sciences, somatic and holistic healing methods. Three decades ago, Perri began the lifelong study path of classical Yoga which led to a teaching vocation alongside a career in the arts and education. She lives and works in New York City and the Catskills.
Guided by the principles of improvisation and the dharma of contemplative practices, Perri makes dances, paints, draws, writes and takes pictures. She seeks out projects and experiential learning environments which foster introspection and communing with nature. Her art practice is receptive to the inherent alchemy of a collaborative process in-studio, onstage and outdoors. Her most recent projects include upcoming performances with Cherylyn Lavagnino Dance, leading contemplative arts-inspired drawing events at The Drawing Center in collaboration with Director of Education and Community Programs, Aimee Good, and restaging her solo Night Wind Woman (1996) with an original sound-score by composer/vocal artist Lauren Lane. As a classically trained dancer, Perri has performed with ballet, modern, dance theater and theater/film companies in NY, PA, and MA. Her choreography and costume designs have been critically acclaimed in The New Yorker and The Village Voice. Her writing has been published in Dance Teacher Magazine and The Gardan Journal. An archive is forthcoming: www.taramarieperri.com
In 2006, Perri joined the faculty of New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Past faculty engagements include American Dance Festival, Joffrey Ballet School, and Dance New Amsterdam. Guest artist/lecturer: Harvard Graduate School of Education with Silk Road Project, University of Iowa, DeSales University, College of the Holy Cross, Goldsmiths UK, and Queen Mary University of London. Founder/Director: Perri Institute for Mind and Body, NY (2009 - 2019). M.F.A. Dance Performance and Choreography, New York University Tisch School of the Arts; B.A. Visual Arts History, cum laude, College of the Holy Cross, MA.
Art Practice
Our skin lives as the only boundary between what is inside and what is outside yet the spaces are in constant communication. I am interested in honing fluency.
My paintings and drawings are released during a focused sitting, often en plein air, and following a period of contemplative practices. Sensory observations set the subtle rhythms for moving the flow of water, sourced nearby, and ink into the held ground of pigment and paper.
Each piece demands full embodiment and reveals an impression of place and a moment in time. Each pathway inevitably transforms my personal alchemy and consciousness. I remember again and again that we belong to the natural world.

Cheryl Rubin

Cheryl Rubin is an artist living and working in New York City exploring transformation and motion in her paintings to create a rhythmic and dynamic world of activity across the canvas. Using multiple surface techniques, her bold and expressive style intentionally oscillates between formalist abstraction and abstract expressionism to show an ongoing investigation of the passage of time, memories and visual discovery.
Born in Philadelphia, she studied painting, drawing and sculpture at both Kansas City Art Institute and Philadelphia’s University of the Arts, graduating with a BFA. Moving to New York City she continued to create both 2D and 3D art while raising a daughter with her husband, musician and author Dave Rubin. and leading brand and licensing management for Batman and Superman at Warner Discovery’s DC Entertainment. Cheryl is an emerging artist rebuilding her art practice full-time and has a studio in the NoMad district of New York City. She has exhibited in many group shows and her work is in private collections throughout the US and Europe.www.cherylrubin.com Instagram: @cherylrubin