Studio Portraits: Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015)

Gabriel Zea, Class of 2015

Studio: 4th Floor

www.gabrielzeaart.com

One of the Best Paintings I Have Ever Seen

By Amanda Pulham (MFA 2014)

I know that I speak for everyone on the Moscow residency when I say that our time here has been, and continues to be, spectacular. Apart from the every day luxuries of our imperial style Stalin-era skyscraper apartment and access to a beautiful and historically significant painting studio, one of my favorite things about Russia has been visiting the museums. We have visited nine museums: The Tretyakov Museum, The Tretyakov’s Modern Art Museum, the Master and Margarita Museum, The Moscow Museum of Modern art (MMOMA), The Baron Steiglitz Academy and Museum, The Academy of Art’s Museum, The Hermitage, the Russian Museum, and the Pushkin Museum.

The Tretyakov Museum has become a very familiar place to us during our Monday copying days. The museum is closed to the public on that day and we are allowed six hours to paint, draw, and wander around the museum. They have a great collection of Repins, and also some remarkable Vasily Vereschagins, one of which James is copying.

Fortunately, our translator Sonia arranged for us to have a private (English) tour of the Tretyakov’s Modern Art Museum, where we learned about artists like Goncharova, Pavel Filonov, Alexander Yakovlev, and of course, Kandinsky.

The Master and Margarita Museum was a special treat for me, because last semester (coincidentally before I knew I was going to Moscow,) I read Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece, The Master and Margarita; a book that caused a lot of controversy at the time of it’s release in 1940, but is now completely embraced and championed by the people of Moscow. The museum is located in the actual apartment where the main characters in the book lived. Outside of the museum, our translator lets me know when we pass other locations referred to in the book, and I am very excited to see them. 

We visited the Moscow Museum of Modern art as part of the biennale tour. The biennale lead us to several galleries and finally the MMOMA to see works of contemporary art by young artists. Most of the work was either instillations (video and other) or photography. Unfortunately very few paintings were included in the shows (if I remember correctly there were two small, non-representational paintings).

In St. Petersburg, we met a student who attends The Baron Steiglitz Academy. He brought us into the school and showed us around. The Baron Steiglitz Academy and Museum is one of the most extraordinary places I have ever had the privilege of touring. The site of this famous academy is one of the former homes of Baron Steiglitz, a nineteenth century philanthropist. Any description I can give will fail to do the building justice (think NYAA meets Versailles.) Students are surrounded by so much visual language provided by the building itself that in some rooms, large movable walls cover up the ornate wooden carvings, or other decorative features adorning the walls. We all agreed that The New York Academy of Art should begin a relationship with The Baron Steiglitz Academy. 



The Academy of Arts Museum had a few rooms of thesis paintings by their more noteworthy alumni, as well as several rooms displaying architectural prototypes used to plan the design and construction of famous buildings in St. Petersburg. Nikita, the same student who showed us around the Baron Steiglitz Academy, convinced the Academy of Arts Museum to allow us access to their school building, which was “closed for the summer, but also the fire.” The building was massive and abandoned. We were never given the details explaining the circumstance of the fire, but it was very obvious that this school had somewhat recently suffered a devastating fire, and was now scarred from it.



Then, of course, there was the Hermitage. The Hermitage is home to one of the greatest collections of art in the world. We spent two full days in the Hermitage and saw works by Rembrandt, Degas, Cezanne, Bonnard, Brueghel, Rubens, Titian, Pontormo, El Greco, Velazquez, Gentileschi, Goya, Ribera, Gerome, Bouguereau, Michelangelo, and many others. I am eternally grateful to the New York Academy of Art for giving me the opportunity to visit this museum.


We visited the Russian Museum on our last day in St. Petersburg and saw a remarkable collection including works by Filonov, Kramskoy, and, of course, Repin. The Russian Museum has an unrivaled collection of Repin paintings, including Zaporozhye Cossack's Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan, one of the best paintings I have ever seen.

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Amanda Pulham (MFA 2014) is joined by Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015), Sarah Issakharian (MFA 2015), and James Raczkowski (MFA 2015) in Moscow.  These four students are spending their summer taking in the sights and creating work on an Academy-sponsored Artist in Residence Program.  Throughout the summer, their adventures will be documented on the Academy's blog. Stay tuned for more.

The Occasional Dance Party

By James Raczkowski (MFA 2015)

Having just arrived back from Moscow from a short but incredibly memorable trip to Saint Petersburg I am full of spirit and inspiration.  Both Moscow and St. Petersburg are vibrant and alive. The streets are full and never empty. The sun shines for 20 hours a day and the locals savor every moment of that warmth. This innate energy coupled with an immense amount of artistic culture imbedded into Russian society breads creativity and verve.

The people we met here were generous and kind. We had tea and cognac with friends' grandparents, taken out to dinner by strangers and have been guided  through Saint Petersburg to visit secret landmarks well off the beaten path by a stranger and now new friend Nikita.

Altogether this residency has been magical  and memorable. Each day was filled with history, art, and friends. This  very foreign land with different culture, customs, language, and even alphabet is at the same time oddly familiar .  This familiarity is created by a common human spirit, love for one's country and an eager willingness to share.

  

AN AVERAGE DAY IN MOSCOW

At four in the morning just as sun was creeping over the horizon many locals were just closing their eyes. We too have adopted this interesting and sometimes confusing sleep pattern. Our afternoons were filled with sight seeing, going to cafés, museums and our sun drenched evenings were spent at the studio working late through one breathtaking sunset and equally beautiful sunrise after another.

I spent most of my mornings running through Moscow taking a new route each time to discover something unique and inspiring along the way.

In the afternoon our friends and guides Sonia and Nikolay lead us with authority through the city. Sometimes we took the subway or taxi, however we always end up waking and walking from one monument to another.

The subway was always such a treat as each station is unique and grand and often equipped with wifi.  All the stations are designed by a different artists or architect which created an elaborate underground museum.

The taxis were also different, mostly because there are no taxis. Your ride through out the city is determined by anyone who decides to pull over on a whim. We have ridden in everything's from BMW's to green fur covered soviet sedans reeking of gasoline. This always unique experience was the norm and it costs $8 dollars or 300 rubles to go anywhere in the city, even down the street.

After a day of walking and visual overload we found ourselves inside our beautiful light filled studio equipped with same cast sculptures you could find at the Academy with an incredible view of downtown Moscow.

The studio was always buzzing with music conversation, painting, and the occasional dance party. Creating work inside such a beautiful space and working next to other talented artists has been nothing but a pleasure and growing experience. 

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James Raczkowski (MFA 2015) was joined by Sarah Issakharian (MFA 2015), Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015) and Amanda Pulham (MFA 2014) in Moscow.  These four students spent the summer taking in the sights and creating work on an Academy-sponsored Artist in Residence Program.  Throughout the summer, their adventures will be documented on the Academy's blog. Stay tuned for more.

Moscow Residency Part 1: A City of Irrepressible Spirit

By Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015)

"Russian people are altogether spacious people, just like their land, and extremely inclined to the fantastic and disorderly" – from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment.

It’s a bit difficult to grasp how so much has been given to us for this residency.  I’m in awe of the opportunity organized by the incredibly generous and well-connected Nikolay Koshelev (MFA 2014).  To be completely honest I’m a little apprehensive about the responsibility that this opportunity implies.

The day that Nikolay first introduced us to our studio space it was our second surprise of the day.  The first surprise was the castle of an apartment building we are going to live in during our stay in Moscow.  Our apartment is in one of Moscow’s ‘Seven Sisters’, a Stalin-era skyscraper built in gothic and baroque style and more reminiscent of a castle than any apartment building I’ve encountered. Next he showed us our studio which was the old studio of Aleksandr Deyneka, a Russian social realist painter whose name is well known to every Muscovite we’ve had the pleasure of meeting, and who’s works decorate Moscow metro stations.  It's in an inconspicuous building on a street Nikolay dubbed the "5^th avenue of Moscow." Once we arrived, we rode an elevator to the 9^th floor and were soon greeted by the cheerful wild-haired artist lending us the studio for the month, and behind him, an astounding panoramic view of Moscow.

While soaking in the sights and sounds in our new cozy and lived-in studio, we received a welcome interruption to our reverie from Nikolay who introduced us to artist friends he had invited.  Not long after that, we were all sharing food and conversation at a French café, followed by a nighttime stroll through the monumental Red Square – an open rectangular stretch of cobblestone surrounded by the Kremlin, the State Historical Museum, an absurdly large department store, and the iconic St. Basil’s Cathedral. The grandiosity of the scenery, coupled with the sudden familiarity and comfort brought by our new friends, gave these moments what I felt to be a distinctly Russian sense of frivolity, bound by a mutual understanding of comradery. How naturally we fell into a comfortable group dynamic, bridging a cultural gap thousands of miles long. The moment we finally arrived back to our castle apartment around 4 in the morning, the sky was turning blue, and our conversation focused intently on how lucky we are to be here. 

Last Monday, we had our first visit to the Tretyakov Gallery, a museum stocked with the most beautiful and emotive landscape paintings I’ve ever seen, and we can copy any painting we choose on a weekday when the museum is officially closed, but seemingly entrusted to us. Soon we will make a trip to St. Petersburg to visit the Hermitage Museum, one of the largest museums in the world, with the largest collection of paintings.

After settling into our new surroundings we’ve begun to make a habit of working in the studio every day, slowly but surely building momentum that I hope will culminate in a series of paintings that accurately reflect the air of grandeur and whimsy that permeates this city, and the generosity and open soul of its people.

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Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015) is joined by Sarah Issakharian (MFA 2015), James Raczkowski (MFA 2015) and Amanda Pulham (MFA 2014) in Moscow.  These four students are spending their summer taking in the sights and creating work on an Academy-sponsored Artist in Residence Program.  Throughout the summer, their adventures will be documented on the Academy's blog. Stay tuned for more.

Class of 2015 Interviews Part 2: What are your inspirations?

Looking at the Inside - Class of 2015 Interviews (part two)

How is it already March?! It’s amazing to think how quickly this first year is going at the Academy.  We’ve got lots of exciting things happening in the next few months as we wrap up our first year.  But before it’s over, I wanted to introduce you to a few more of my classmates – to share their oeuvre and the interesting background that each of them come from.

I asked them a few simple questions: 

What inspires your work? 
And who are you inspired by?

Arcmanoro Niles (MFA 2015) 

Washington, DC

Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Painting has been away for me to rescue my experience from the flow of time. To hold it out, so it can be revisited. Not necessarily to be revisited by me, but for someone else to have an opportunity to see or feel something the way I do. I think painting, particularly in the west, was almost intuitively invented to delay the fleeting reality of sensual experience. Lately, my paintings have been fueled by my fascination with mystery and wonder. I am amazed to be located on this planet, a ball of rock rotating around a spherical fire. It is a very odd, but common situation, and the more I look at things I can’t shake the feeling that my existence is quite weird. When I paint, I don’t think of subject matter or content, I try to let the meaning of the painting reveal itself to me through the process. I don’t know what question to ask when I set out to paint. But it’s not exactly a question that I’m wondering about, it’s a feeling that I have. I cannot formulate the question that is my wonder. When I open my mouth to talk about it, I suddenly find I’m babbling non-sense. But that should not prevent wonder from being the foundation of painting.

An artist that has constantly been on my mind since first seeing his paintings is Caravaggio. Before seeing his work I had my mind set out to become an abstract painter. Caravaggio’s compositions pulled me in, the way the shapes fit together and activate each other.  I have always been fascinated with the slight ambiguity that is in his paintings, which is hardly noticeable at first. When looking at his paintings one is never quite sure what is happening, it is always on the edge. As art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon noted, Caravaggio’s paintings “border between the sacred and profane.” 

Shaina Craft (MFA 2015)
Philadelphia, PA

Maryland Institute College of Art

I talk about existence by painting the figure.  Before I came to the Academy I was layering the figure over itself as a way to discuss the various levels on which we experience our lives and ourselves.  Now that I'm here, I've decided to pursue that same topic by other means.

Work by Shaina Craft (MFA 2015)

Veneers of painted flesh mingle on my canvases, blending the borders between figurative and landscape, portrait and abstract.  My deepest desire is to create provocative artwork that challenges the foundations of figure painting by continuing to blur the boundaries between digital and traditional work, pushing color, and recontextualizing traditional subject matter.  I wield my palette as another means of pushing limits, experimenting with extreme and unfamiliar hues for the human form, creating something recognizable and yet entirely alien, like landscapes comprised of bodies or fluorescent faces fading in and out of existence.

I don’t like the word ‘inspiration.’  To me that word conjures images of artists sitting around waiting to be struck by lightning so they can have a great idea and make work.  The body of work I made before starting at the Academy came by looking hard at the work of other painters, figuring out what I wanted, and experimenting with my medium and process until I came up with something that worked for me.  Starting in 2011, it was a year of research and trials before I made a decent painting.  I suppose that’s why these pieces are titled as ‘Experiments.’

Work by Shaina Craft (MFA 2015)

I use myself as a model frequently.  People mention it less with that past body of work, maybe because it’s difficult to recognize any one face or person in them.  But, I wouldn’t say I use myself as a subject.  I’m not painting me.  I’m painting the human experience; the faces and bodies are just stand-ins.  I work from photo-references most of the time.  I took a bunch of photography classes in high school and college so now I can very carefully stage and light my shots.  I've even shown some of that work in exhibitions.  For me, there isn't much of a boundary between what I consider reference material and what I consider the finished piece.  If an image seems to need a painted surface, I give it one; if it needs pastel, I use that.  I grew up with a metal sculptor as a mother so some of my earliest memories are of her explaining to me that form follows function.

Shaina Craft (MFA 2015)

I read constantly.  All kinds of things – poetry, philosophy, memoir, fiction.  I'm pretty obsessed with Sci-fi and urban fantasy.  My favorite contemporary fiction writer is Charles De Lint.  He combines myths and folk tales from cultures all over the world into these beautiful stories that take place in present-day cities.  The thing about science fiction is when it’s done well it’s always a reflection of modern culture, like looking in a distorted mirror.

An artist I’m currently looking at a lot is Justin Bower.  Bower is painting about all of the things I'm interested in; The state of human beings in this age of technological evolution and pop culture overload and what a slippery subject that can be.  It’s a new phenomenology, not what is being, but what have we become? I love his loaded brush strokes and crazy bright colors. My favorite painting by Justin Bower (it was really hard to pick just one) – “Architecture of Infection,” 2010.

Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015)

Istanbul, Turkey

Ringling College of Art and Design

Work by Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015)

I was born in London and raised in Istanbul. I am the only child of an Opera director and a pharmacist. 

When I paint, either in the studio or during classes, I always try to design a general atmosphere for that painting. Now, that plan rarely succeeds - very often the result I get is something different than the initial feel I design before the painting. But usually those kinds of paintings of mine were turned out to be the most successful ones. And whenever I don't have that initial plan-they usually fail. So for me, having an idea in the beginning is the key, whether that idea later will be shown in the painting or not, does not matter. I like how after watching a horror movie, usually a creepy scene gets stuck in your head. I think that is sometimes the feeling I want to get.

Work by Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015)

I'm inspired by pretty much everything, and they constantly change. But mainly, I draw inspiration from the negativity. They don't have to be personal negative matters. I draw inspiration from the music I listen to, the neighborhood I live in, the other art I look at, what is going on in the world, being far from the country where I am from, all these kinds of things. I try not to listen to music much when I paint. I always put on a political talk program from a tube channel or a discussion about existence of UFO's or something like that. 

Work by Gokhan Gokseven (MFA 2015)

If I have to think of one name in the history of painting that had the biggest inspiration to me, without thinking twice I would say Hammershoi. I was introduced to his work by a teacher of mine when I was in my junior year in college. I was very influenced by how one can paint such simple subjects and invoke unsettling feelings on the viewer, and repeat this and never be repetitive. That is a very hard thing to achieve. His paintings are anything but epic. They don't beg for your attention, they just say “this is me. Like it or not, I don't care.” I think this is a statement that only the bravest artists can have. Maybe his influence on my work doesn't show directly, but it certainly made me much more mature in terms of how I approach to picture making.

 

 

Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015)

Houston, Texas

Maryland Institute College of Art

Work by Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015)

I’ve always been drawn to the elegance of the human form and its ability to reflect our personal history. Bodies and faces typically reflect our lifestyle and I like the idea of being able to understand aspects of a person’s personality based on a sensitive observation of their physical features and gestures. The face especially reveals more and more of our temperament as we age, and it’s in the process of trying to duplicate the nuanced features of a face through elements of line and value that I find my most consistent inspiration. In devoting myself to recreating someone else’s attributes I feel that I’m able to meditate on their personality as a reflection of mine. Hopefully, through both consistent observation and introspection, I can make both our vulnerabilities evident on the surface of their figure.  In this world of unceasing flux I want to convey the steadfast brilliance and uniqueness of a person’s personality, and how against time and tribulation their individuality is their protective armor.  

Work by Gabriel Zea (MFA 2015)

As of late, I’ve been trying to integrate moments that are rendered monochromatically into my paintings, as a means of magnifying the symbolic power of a single color (in the context of a figure), and also in an attempt to simplify my images and give them an iconic quality. 

An artist I’ve been interested in for a while is James Jean.  Originally an illustrator, he transitioned into fine art several years ago and his work has since walked a line between an illustrative and fine art aesthetic. While his style can vary a lot, I admire his way of combining wonderful draftsmanship with very expressively and boldly applied chromatic colors. His use of color effectively imbues a sense of madness over the controlled elegance of his line work. One of my favorite paintings of his is entitled Lovers, 2011.  It aptly combines an overwhelming superficial beauty with clear themes of anxiety, chaos, and violence. The four round panels and overall circular composition evoke the idea of beauty and suffering being components of a circular process.

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Camila Rocha (MFA 2015) will be blogging here throughout the year about her first year at the Academy and moving to New York City.  Check the label "First Year Experience" or "Camila Rocha" for more posts about her first year at the Academy. 

If you have any questions for Camila or her classmates, please leave them in the comments section of the blog.

All images are courtesy of the artists.