Max Estrella

Stephen Dean

17 Sep - 31 Oct 2009

© Stephen Dean
Rainbow Horn
Photography
105 x 122 cm.
STEPHEN DEAN

September 17th - October 31th, 2009

Monday-Friday: 10-14 h. y de 16,30-20,30 h. Saturday: 11-14 h. y de 17-20,30 h.
Opening: september 17th at 8 p.m.

Max Estrella gallery is pleased to present the recent works of French artist Stephen Dean, who currently lives in Villa Medici, the French Academy in Rome. Dean's great versatility defines himself as a painter who uses video, photography and sculpture as tools to create his works. He also makes use of any daily object, in a sort of recycling of diverse materials, looking for color and its relation to the real world.

Permanently exploring new procedures, he turns the chromatic change in the constant leit motiv of his works and main character of Fever, a series of videos made on 2008 at the Wonder Site Institute of Contemporary Art in Tokyo. By means of thermal cameras, (visual technology initially conceived for military and medical purposes) he captures an image invisible for human eyes, focusing on the movement of human masses and in the nature of their gestures

At Max Estrella we present the last project made expressly in Pamplona during the past San Fermines. There, the artist found a suitable framework for his work development, the crowd temperature variation creates a vibrant color palette of abstract design. Turned into mobile ectoplasms, runners and bulls can be hardly recognize by the rhythm of their movements, any individual information is removed, making only evident the chromatic fluidity generated by each organism.

It's precisely the mixture of this atmosphere, ludic and festive what links this work to previous Dean videos (made without thermal camera) as Pulse, 2001 (Holi Festival in India), Bloco, 2004 - Volta, 2002 (San Salvador de Bahía Carnival or Maracaná Football Stadium) or Grand Prix, 2006 (Americans car Derby).

His work is present at institutions such as the Guggenheim and the Whitney Museum in New York, at the Fond National d ́Art Contemporain, in Paris, the SFMOMA, the Fondazione Pitti in Florencia, at Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, and in the Contemporary Art Museums of Miami, Santa Monica, and Shanghai. He has participated at the Site Santa Fe Biennial in 2006, Venice Biennial in 2005, Sevilla Biennial at 2004 and Estambul Biennial at 2003. In Spain he has been part of the big group exhibition "Auto. Sueño y materia", curated by Alberto Martín and coproduced by Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial of Gijón and Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo of Madrid.
 

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