ALEX SALINAS

http://www.alexsalinas.com/

Alex Salinas was born and raised in Antwerp (1971), Belgium. After studying fine arts he moved on to an evening course in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp and started assisting various photographers. During which he developed his personal technique of extracting subtle fragility out of a raw and direct approach. As diverse as his assignments may be, a person with al his natural spontaneity remains the starting point and inspiration for Alex Salinas. Most important is the so-called “non-directing” and “the letting go” of the subject, to catch the right moment before a situation becomes too artificial. Meanwhile he has worked on various assignments for fashion designers, brands, international editorials, portraits and a selection of record covers. Today Alex is balancing his time between his assignments and personal work.

ALASSANE BABYLAS NDIAYE

Born and raised in Dakar/Senegal, Alassane Insa Babylas Ndiaye is also an Arts-Culture campaigner next ot being an artist. He started his career of graphic artist at Media Monde in 2002. Margins of this from 1998 to 2007 with his partner Dj Makhtar (R.I.P) they founded El Niño Productions – Dj Makhtar Productions an entertainment company (2005BOOBA first show in Dakar, Neg’Marrons show, Singuila & La Fouine Event in Dakar, Saturday Night Fever Party and Friday Night Fever on Airplay, etc…). Afterwards he worked on the 2008 Edition of Afrikakeur Festival as a Production director. During two years he has increased his knowledge in visual arts at the Senegalese Academy of Arts nowadays he is also a councilman on the Goree Island, a member of ADAFEST (Senegalese Association of Festivals and Broadcasters) and the West Africa project manager of Africa Unsigned, He is the ceo of Arts & Culture Consulting a booking agency based in Dakar (for musicians :Vieux Farka Touré, Madou Sidiki Diabaté,Tiwony,etc) and was also Stage Manager during Black WOrld Festival (Fesman) 2010.

Babylas Ndiaye's photography is a contemporary version of the portrait photography; his personages are showing contemporary Africans out the nightlife of Dakar. The question who pops up, with his portraits, is whether they are portraits taken by surprise or was their a ‘mise en scène’ taking place - the gaze is often frontal - looking straight into the camera’s eye or it addresses directly the eyes of the viewer- in opposition to Mama Casset portraits, where the gaze is not as directly confronting. A game is initiated who is looking to whom? Which is for me a reminder of a Wolof word game ‘ xulli bett – xalli bett – potu n’dox’ (why are you looking at me? Because you are looking at me. Literally we throw a bucket of water on it or simply said, whatever).

He is also taking, whenever it's pleasing him - sunsets - waiting for the beautiful moment - it's seems a crazy thing to do - so many sunsets were already taken - Tourists coming to his home country (Senegal) are taking with them pictures of sunsets as a trophee of their trip - he is taking the images back and reappropriates them in his own way and with his own particular eye.

Vanessa Van Obberghen

DAVID GHERON TRETIAKOFF

Born in 1970. Lives and works in Paris, France and Sana’a, Yemen The film editor, director, author, performer and journalist David Gheron Tretiakoff is concerned with developments in politics and social life such as the effects of the Algerian war, the perception and identity of the Islamic states and the political and psychological consequences of international terrorism. Questioning the idea of an objective documentation and intermediation of such complex topics his work ranges between documentary and experimental film. Tretiakoff has been living and travelling in the Middle East for years and, as is apparent in his work, he is familiar with the everyday life and the fate of individuals in Algeria, Egypt or Yemen beyond the headlines of newspapers and television. Tretiakoff’s filmic, stage and photographic work has been presented at several venues, including at the Maison du geste et de l'image, Paris, the Fringe Festival at PS122, New York, and the Centre National de la Danse in 2005, at Le Rex, Paris and galerie MAP, Bruxelles in 2006, and at the Musée du Quai Branly, Mukha and Kunsthalle Bern. Member of the French based organization created by Jean rouch, Les Ateliers Varan. Ateliers Varan.

A God Passing

Projection vidéo (2007 - 20mn)

Le gouvernement égyptien a décidé durant l’été 2006 de déplacer la colossale statue de Ramsès II en vu de l’édification du nouveau musée du Caire, près des pyramides. Un cortège pharaonique qui a duré toute une nuit. Le temps pour la population de se rassembler et de fêter dans les paradoxes les plus fous le déménagement de l’ancien Dieu vivant égyptien. Le moment pour d’autres de débattre dans la rue, de contester (seul) ou de célébrer (en groupe) l’autorité de ses dirigeants. La vidéo, aux deux parties très distinctes, montre une radiographie de la rue égyptienne mais offre également une perspective vertigineuse sur le passage des idéologies et du sacré.

DAVID HOMINAL

http://www.officebaroque.com/artists/5

http://www.karmainternational.org/section.php?list_id=5

Born 1976, Lausanne, Switzerland. Lives and works in Berlin.

In HOMINAL’s practice painting functions as a cynosure of installation, sculpture, video,performance and the painted canvas. His diverse practice is deeply rooted in a coherent questioning of the possibilities open to contemporary painting, as well as an awareness of painting’s synaesthetic potential within the realms of music and dance. Subjacent in his oeuvre is a sense of infinite regress and discomfort, where the artist renders physical and three-dimensional the concepts of pictorial and artistic annihilation and dissipation, without however falling into the modernist trap of negation.

On the one hand this spirit of regress encompasses a desire to disrupt the historical stability of pictorial representation, and so counter the stasis of reification of the canvas. Indeed, the artist refers to the desire to negate the object, to dematerialize painting. On the other hand,HOMINAL strives to force the painterly act to be, as artist Martin Kippenberger once said, “beside itself” through a series of operations including infinite dislocations, fragmentations and degradations.

'centre d'art contemporain de genève'

David is an artist /painter on 'speed' – he goes to every show – he reads every book – he goes and see the old masters –He is like a cookie monster in the arts – he thinks to fast, makes to quickly conclusions – to come back on them later – he asks hundred questions and throws all what he saw and knows back into his own work – he re-appropriating the whole Art history - commenting it - doubting about it at every moment of the day.

'vanessa van obberghen

MOSHEKWA LANGA

Moshekwa Langa was born in 1975 and featured at the latest Sao Paulo Biennial and the 2009 and 2003 Venice Biennials. He held solo-exhibitions at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, the South African National Gallery in Cape Town, the Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Modern Art Oxford, and many others. Recently his work was included in exhibitions at the Museum Of Modern Art Oslo, The Studio Museum Harlem New York, Wiels Contemporary Art Centre Brussels, Mori Art Museum Tokyo, Kunsthalle Bern and the International Centre for Photography New York.

During Langa’s early successful forays into exhibition-making, foreigners often confronted him with rather conventional questions – questions that appeared to be prompted by clichéd or romanticized assumptions about the artist’s background as a black South African without formal artistic training. But then Langa pursued a two-year residency at the famous Rijksakademie For Visual Arts in Amsterdam. By now, he has exhibited his work all over the world and has spawned a considerable following in South Africa, the members of which mainly belong to a generation that came of age after the demise of apartheid. It is self-evident that Langa’s work is infused with issues like national identity, political participation and the construction of identity as such. But at the same time his artistic practice deftly avoids and subverts the stereotypical expectations that confront an artist working in the ‘postcolonial condition’.

Not confined to one particular medium, Langa’s work consists of gouaches, collages, photographs, expansive installations, and videos. They all reference the larger worlds of art, politics, and popular culture: just like Langa layers diverse materials, he piles up meanings and references that are often cryptic and ambivalent, yet resonant. With his drawings and gouaches, he demonstrates his definition of creativity as the freedom to make links, the freedom to connect heterogeneous elements. Using methods of abstract expression, free association and stream of consciousness, the artist allows work to be created, as it were. The viewing experience of Moshekwa Langa’s untranslatable visualisations is sensuous and seductive.

text by Philippe Pirotte

a work of Kris fierens - should be in the big box

The images of Alassane Babylas Ndiaye turned out to be beautiful - and this is only one of the serie

first works are getting home

Kris Fierens brought a little box full of works - ready to go