What: “Optical Allusions�, 2007 Miami Season of the Arts Opening!

A group show featuring artists: Sabine Bretschneider, John Frazee, John Gargano, Aleksandar Kirilov, KX2, Ray Paul, Alette Simmons-Jimenez, Ermin Tabakovich

Where: Artformz Alternative, Miami Design District, 130 NE 40th Street, Miami, FL 33137

When: Saturday, September 8, 2007 - Art & Design Night - 7:00pm – 10:00pm
Encore: Saturday, October 13, 2007 - Art & Design Night - 7:00pm – 10:00pm
2-Month Show Duration: September 8, 2007 - November 3, 2007

Artformz is proud to present the group show “Optical Allusions�.

Artists are commonly known to create magic. In this exhibit Artformz brings together an accomplished group of artists creating pieces that do just that. Instead of resorting to techniques of Trompe L’Oeil or Op Art that one traditionally associates with visual “illusions�, each of these artists are driven by their inner muse in a different way. They create works that allude poetically to their life experiences. On exhibit with each artist’s work will be a personal statement and brief biographical notes. Once the viewer becomes familiar with the personal background of each artist, the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing, becomes a richer experience.

About Artformz: Artformz Alternative was founded in 2004 and is an artist run open collective producing bimonthly shows.

There has been a significant trend over the last decade in which artists have taken control of the production and presentation of their own work. It is increasingly more normal for artists to be proactive in placing their work where it can gain optimum exposure. These artists’ projects have become a rich resource for both the private and publicly funded art sectors and contribute to arts policies and the overall vitality of the arts in our communities.

Artformz strives to maintain a strong sense of artistic vision, ambitious approaches to the creation and presentation of work and the willingness to be experimental, combined with a passion for self-development and creative success. Artformz provides artists excellent exposure with the intention of opening doors for cultural exchange within the community and across borders.

The artists:

Sabine Bretschneider is a young artist working in new media, video and installation. She currently lives and works in Aschheim, Germany. After gaining work experience in advertising and film she spent a year studying stagecraft at Fairfield University in CT. Continuing her education in Munich and Berlin, she received diplomas in economics, graphic design, and later, sculpture. Since 1999 she has exhibited extensively in Munich, Berlin, Belgium, and The Czech Republic.

The short video in this exhibit addresses issues of gender and relationships. It ingeniously puts the viewer in a voyeuristic position, seemingly witness to offbeat, behavioral gestures between a young woman and her partner. Alluding to the characterizations that society imposes between genders and people in general, we slowly become aware that the artist is making a personal statement. As in the all the artists work, while straightforward and simple at first glance, the underlying suggestion is thought provoking.

John Frazee was born in New York City. The painter currently lives in works near Boca Raton in Boynton Beach, Florida. He has been following a path in the arts since high school attending the High School of Art & Design in new York and later receiving a BFA degree on full scholarship from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. He has held numerous solo exhibits in New York and California, many group shows in museums and galleries throughout the US, and has been honored with several prestigious awards.

Frazee’s abstract works that follow two parallel but decidedly different courses reference the natural world. Both pathways allow for the freedom for accident that inevitably results in exciting visual discourse for both the creator and the viewer. However, Frazee applies diverse constraint to each separate path and achieves two accomplished yet separate views of nature. One presents a fluid panoramic seascape motif constricted to rectilinear space on the canvas that often mimics a horizon line, while the other zeros in, with equally fluid spaces that maintain their form in more circular shapes, most assuredly alluding to petals or blossoms.

John Gargano was born in Springfield, New Jersey and currently lives and works in Boca Raton, Florida. He has an architecture degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and has successfully practiced architecture since 1976. His work has been exhibited at the Cordell Taylor Contemporary Art Gallery, the Colorado Art Expo, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Rocky Mtn. Biennial of 2004, in Ft. Collins, CO.

The pieces express a purity of execution and an originality that stems from deep within the artist’s intuitive purpose. Gargano expresses in his own words: “I engage in the making of art as a means of self-realization, and expression. I take that which exists within me and give it shape or form… My elemental vocabulary consists of the very basic constructs of our physical world, the straight line, circle, square, etc. My tools are those of industrial technology. While I am compelled to engage in this endeavor, I do not wish to represent that I fully understand the complete psychological nature of my own creative process.“

“I have always been attracted to the powerful images of purely functional objects, especially machined objects… With the most basic of machining skills in hand, I now employ those machines and other industrial techniques to create compositions with elements that have little external origin. The elements of my compositions are thus not only free from homage to a specific mechanical function or purpose, they are also free from any associations with previous social context or meaning and they are free from associations with most art making vernaculars to date.�

Aleksandar Kirilov is an artist definitely in touch with his surroundings. Born in Bulgaria and now living and working on Miami Beach, one can clearly see the changes brought about by the relocation. His past work, subtle and dark, has given way to a landscape of bold fierce color richly inhabited by lizard dragons, ocean waves and that Miami Beach classic, the femme fatale. Kirilov ‘s work is completely unplanned. He works much as a free form jazz musician, allowing the subconscious to take reign over structure and ideology. He allows one mark to determine the next and as a habit challenges any accepted rules of composition or color theory. Each work is like a page in a personal journal of his life. His past, present and even his future spill onto the canvas - all at the same time. There, they struggle for harmony or sometimes they exist quite happily in discord.

Kirilov has executed a list of commissioned murals in this same free flowing style. The artist has exhibited in several venues in Europe and now has begun adding shows in the South Florida area.

KX2 is a collaborative effort comprised of sisters, Ruth Avra Kleinman and Dana Lynn Kleinman. The pair grew up with similar life experiences, although each took different paths at the beginning of their artistic careers. Ruth went to University of Wisconsin and focused on metal art and jewelry, while Dana went to Carnegie Mellon University then University of New Mexico focusing on painting. Ruth Avra’s jewelry work can be seen in galleries, magazines, and even movies, while Dana Lynn Kleinman’s work has been shown in numerous gallery and museum shows across the country.
Whether arranged in group installations or solo pieces, each work involves a sense of rhythm and mathematics. Not only does this reflect nature in its patterns, but it also ties us together as sisters, undeniably influenced by a mathematician father and a scientist mother. We work through ideas of connection, be it family or personal connection, the connection of two seemingly separate disciplines, and representative of the connection of all living things. And, of course, the beauty of this connection.”

Ray Paul lives and works in Tampa, Florida. The artist holds an M.F.A from the University of Cincinnati and a B.S. in Biology, from Florida State University. He has been exhibiting nationally since receiving his degree and his work has placed in prestigious public collections.

“I believe the creative process must be preceded by some primordial urge, some instinctive need. This is followed by the desire to reach a state of child-like innocence, and thus the condition of the primal shaman. In this uninhibited emotional realm, the seed of a work of art is created. This seed is fertilized by the subconscious and brought to the embryonic level. Here, the conscious, which consists of intellect, reason, experience and the decision making process, attains control, nurturing and developing the embryo into maturation. The result of this process is a work of art.�

“The artist must be in tune with his/her true self, the subconscious, contemporary society, the vast history of art and civilization, and the wonderful complexities of the paint itself. Thus, a work of art can be viewed as a visual distillation of life experience, knowledge, and instinct. However, a work of art is not complete until it reaches an audience, until it finds that secret realm of shared humanity.�

Alette Simmons-Jimenez was born in Madison, Wisconsin and soon after her family relocated to Italy. As part of a military family, that was the first of a series of endless relocations, lasting until adulthood. “For me, drawing is where it begins and ends. My pieces are composed of floating lines etching an endless path, with figures and structures appearing as footnotes to a collection of visual memory. My interest is in the architecture of existence. I find the extremes of simplicity and complexity in the natural world irresistible.�

“I am always photographing or collecting shapes and forms from nature – a shell, a bird, a cloud, or a bug. In the studio I’ll sketch contours and combine bits and pieces. These new forms work their way into my world of whimsical allegory, imagery that mixes the abstract and the real. I have a penchant for things that are suspended from above and, even when painting, I seem to want to circumvent the sense of gravity. Thematically my work is about the futility in humankind’s struggle to out maneuver nature, to control time, ….to defy gravity.�

The artist has shown extensively nationally and internationally and has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships.

Ermin Tabakovich is an emerging contemporary artist. He was born in 1980 in Bosnia. In 1993 he and his family escaped the viscous civil war that gripped his native country. The family settled in Berlin, Germany where they lived as war refugees for five years. Throughout his turbulent young life and especially childhood Ermin developed an unusual sensitivity to human existence and a heightened awareness of mortality. This sensitivity and awareness lie at the core of his work and form a platform for all his creations. Today Ermin creates emotionally charged paintings that are embedded in deep humanism, mysticism and existentialism. Painting to him is a ‘spiritual experience into being and time’ as he likes to put it. His current work is characterized by open and ambiguous spaces, mellow minimalism, paradoxes, complex symbolism and melancholy.

“My paintings are fundamentally conceptual in nature. I merely imply and suggest, give hints or clues, and leave the rest to the viewer. I’m endlessly fascinated by the human mind especially in regard to our perception of self, death, language, time and space and how those perceptions interact and collide creating this bizarre existential clash and tension between one’s inner and outer world.�

The artist attended the University of Central Florida and St. Petersburg College. In a short time he has already participated in many group exhibitions and successfully presented several solo exhibits, the latest at the Maitland Art Center in Orlando.

Website: www.artformz.net