MINDAUGAS GABRENAS

MINDAUGAS GABRENAS

Mindaugas Gabrenas, born in 1977, Kaunas, is an amateur photographer currently based in Vilnius (Lithuania).

His initial encounter with photography was in late 1990, when his parents gave him a first film camera Zenit. But those days this soviet masterpiece was not so appealing and more resembled a vacuum cleaner rather than a photo camera.
Photography was really discovered in 2008, when Mindaugas Gabrenas lived in Spain. It was then when his first digital camera was acquired and great interest in digital photography was raised.

After the first personal photo exhibition ‚Fantasma‘ in 2010, Mindaugas Gabrenas has became increasingly interested in film photography. Currently he focuses on 6×6 black&white photography and works with Kiev 88, Pentacon Six, Kodak Duaflex II, Holga and homemade cameras. Landscapes, waterscapes, cityscapes, even melancholic dreamscapes – are the main fields of interest.

"My photographs are my way to show and express some of my feelings and my personal perception of what surrounds us. Having my mind, eyes and camera I am going downward the maze of visions and do not care if entering the room, where someone has just been or from which I just gone. But there’s no denying – someday I’d love to get into the room where no one has gone before.”

☁ MINDAUGAS GABRENAS

GARY SCHNEIDER

GARY SCHNEIDER
”These photographs, made without a camera, are sweat and heat imprints into film emulsion.”


☁ GARY SCHNEIDER
☁ GARY SCHNEIDER

RUSS NOTO

RUSS NOTO

Russ Noto was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania and remained in the greater area until receiving a B.A. from Keystone College in 2009. He completed two large format paintings for the Scranton Parking Authority’s Permanent Collection from 2006 – 2007, along with various other community service and art related projects during his undergraduate experience. In 2009, Noto entered the Savannah College of Art and Design’s M.F.A. Painting Program. During this time he expanded on his visual and theoretical vocabulary while making contact with collectors and gallery owners through his continuing exploration in large works. His work has been acquired by the Savannah College of Art Design’s Permanent Collection from 2010 – 2012. Noto was given the opportunity in 2011 to have his first solo show at The Richard Demato Gallery in Sag Harbor, NY entitled Natural Artifice. His work is now collected in Beijing, Bratislava, Florida, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania. In 2012 Russ Noto received an M.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design and remains as a working artist today.


☁ RUSS NOTO

AMY FRIEND

AMY FRIEND /// DARE ALLA LUCE

"Through small deliberate interventions, I altered these vintage images, allowing light to pass through them. (After all, photographs are made possible with light.) In a literal and somewhat playful manner, I aimed to give the photographs back to the light, hence the title of the series, Dare alla Luce, an Italian phrase used to describe the moment of birth."

☁ AMY FRIEND

ALMA HASER

ALMA HASER /// COSMIC SURGERY

Since leaving University in 2010, Alma has been working on self-portraits, being her own willing and available model. More recently she has started taking portraits of other people and is interested in making work that has a disquieting or disconcerting resonance.

Alma has always made things with her hands and now tries to find ways to combine her fine art background with photography. She has used origami in the past as props in her photographs, but in this series ‘Cosmic Surgery’ the origami has become an integral part of the final image.

The series has three distinct stages. Firstly Alma photographs her sitter, then prints multiple images of the subjects face and folds them into a complicated origami modular construction, which then gets placed back onto the original face of the portrait. Finally the whole thing is re-photographed.

Origami is very meditative, you can get lost in the world of folding for hours. It is also extremely delicate and fragile, so by giving each geometric paper shape somewhere to sit within the final image, the origami has been given a backbone.

There is something quite alien about the manipulated faces, as if they belong to some futuristic next generation. In these portraits the children become uncanny, while their parents are seen in a more familiar moment.

With the simple act of folding an image Alma can transform each face and make a sort of flattened sculpture. By de-facing her models she has made their portraits into her own creations.


☁ ALMA HASER