Esperanza Rosales is a curator. In the traditional sense of collecting and explicating artists’ work under one venue auspice, but also in her own medium, wherein she mounts, rearranges, and deconstructs text on a page. In life we almost accept words as metaphors, but in writing they become even clumsier frameworks.
     “Like the languages that we speak, there will always be slips, inaccuracies, inadequacies, misunderstanding, certain lacks—precisely because they’re invested in ciphering and deciphering, coding and decoding, scripting and unscripting—that veer towards the creation of something new and obscure.”
     These thoughts of Esperanza I can almost feel wafting through her recent exhibition, ‘Nobody Can Tell the Why of It,’ an assimilation of film, drawing, even endless steps. Accidentally (or not) pinpointing a link in Esperanza’s own “scrapbook” process, the show’s title itself is a wink at intertextuality. Presenting works by Nicholas Byrne, Timothy Furey, Ken Okiishi, Nick Mauss, and Josef Strau, ‘Nobody Can Tell the Why of It’ incorporates ideas of mysticism and male hysteria. Not for the faint of heart, but I think I’ll keep this one bookmarked.

Jacob Permutter placed fourth in the portrait category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. He is a photographer and filmmaker based in London. His photographic work includes 88 Days, a photo-essay shot in the US, paying homage to Robert Frank’s The Americans, which was exhibited in London. Jacob is currently editing images from a recent two-month trip through India. His latest short film, French Exchange, shot in Dijon, is in post-production. “I love working in different countries. The difference in locations and people waken the senses and provide an exotic and exciting platform to tell human stories.”

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George Simhoni placed fourth in the general category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. He has been recognized as a leader in the photography field throughout his award winning career. “If I can stop someone and give them a momentary thoughtful pause, a smile, or a thought, then I have accomplished my mission.”

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The Japanese comics known as manga can be repurposed in any number of ways. From Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s emotive everyday characters to Naoko Takeuchi’s “magical girl” super-heroines, there is seemingly endless variety in the current offerings of the country’s illustrated tradition. Rarely, though, does the form break so completely from the conventions of plot, structure, and characterization as in the work of Yuichi Yokoyama. Instead, the celebrated artist tends to focus on form itself.
     In the brand new English translation of his latest graphic novel Garden, published by PictureBox, Yokoyama constructs a fantasyland of geometric shapes and mechanized systems that bring to mind what might result if a Conceptual sculptor in the mold of Claes Oldenburg was hired to design a children’s playscape. Yokoyama’s garden abandons shrubs and flowers in favor of materials evoking modern industries. He fills the pages with disassembled airplanes and stacks of boats; conical mountains of paper and buildings made from cloth.
     Odd it may be, but what the artist seems to be drawing on these pages is an equivalence between the products of nature that would occupy a more Edenic garden and the machines that have come to inform contemporary living. It’s a connection both in design and mystique. Specimens from either group can appear to operate independently, managed by interior forces which make them all the more remarkable to those lacking knowledge of their inner workings.

Kevin Greenblat placed third in the portrait category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Kevin is an award winning photographer and graphic designer who has lived in Austin, Texas for the past fifteen years. Though he photographs people and places all over the world, these days finds himself especially drawn to capturing the lives of people in Louisiana and West Texas.

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Rick Lew placed third in the general category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Rick is an editorial and advertising photographer based in New York City. As a contributing Photographer for Condé Nast Traveler, Lew has photographed over thirty feature stories in over twenty five countries, not including the dozens of other countries he has traveled and photographed on his own. Italy (where his wining photograph was taken) is a country he always finds himself returning to, especially for assignments. “I feel most comfortable there, especially Sicily and the Aeolian Islands where the food is simple and delicious, the people extremely welcoming, and the water the most beautiful deep blue I’ve ever seen.”

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Marcela Taboada placed second in the portriat category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. She is an accomplished and independent Mexican photographer. Her work is in the collections of the The Hasselblad Center, Fotografisk Center de Copenhagen, Sonoma Museum of Art, Throckmorton Fine Art Gallery NY, The Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, the Fifty Crows Gallery in San Francisco, CA among others. She has received awards and stipiends like: III Journalism Bienale México, Hasselblad Foundation, National Geographic All Roads Photographers, Women the image Creator, Photo Lucida nomination, among others.

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Last year I spent six unstructured months winding through Latin America from Costa Rica down to the southern tip of Brazil. Amidst my wanderings, there were several constants I found lurking in the many cities, coastlines and thoroughfares I passed through. One of those constants was the all-encompassing presence of public art — vast, unheralded and makeshift swatches of it everywhere I looked. Stencils, murals, wheat pastings, stickers and crude throw-ups… Entire streets, buildings, staircases and dumpsters — from Valparaíso, Chile to Bogota, Colombia — were covered in some form of visual expression.
     Nuevo Mundo: Latin American Street Art by Maximilliano Ruiz has just been released in the United States and is the first book to offer a complete documentation of current street art trends endemic to Latin America. Featuring such heavyweights as Os Gêmeos, Bastardilla, Vitché, Titi Freak and Run Don’t Walk, the book is divided by country and displays the full spectrum of each region’s artistic multiplicity. Each page acts as a vignette or picture postcard from the artists, accompanied by a short, explanatory message that though intended to provide context, generally lets the image speak for itself. Turning the pages, it’s evident that Latin America remains an evocative breeding ground for public art. Thanks to a long history of socio-political adversity, economic instability, lengthy dictatorships and indigenous cultures, there’s something blatantly alive and hungry in each image.

Jimmy Lam placed second in the general category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. Jimmy was born and raised in Singapore. As China’s economy continued to flourish in the past decade, he became interested in the changes brought about by the rapid economic growth. He has since made hundreds of trips to over forty cities in China to document these accelerated economic developments.

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Michal Venera won Grand Prize in the portrait category of our 3rd annual Global Travel Photo Contest. He was born in Prague (formerly communist Czechoslovakia). After defecting to New York City at the age of 19, he made his way across the United States, taking on a variety of odd jobs including fisherman, security guard, janitor and dishwasher. He later studied photography, assisted a number of photographers and eventually started his own photo business.

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