Dual Reality, Anya Rubin, Mixed Media
2013 International Art Festival Honors Winners The 2013 edition of the International Art Festival (newartfestival.com) forcefully demonstrated the diversity and creativity of some great contemporary visual artists, some of them veterans of the local art scene, and many of whom participated in a New York art exhibition for the very first time. Artists from 22 countries entered this competition; the organizers were gratified that several international artists traveled to join the celebration from places as far away as India, France, Italy and Poland. International Art Festival, Inc. was established in 2012 to provide a showcase and promotional vehicle to allow outstanding visual artists from around the world to break through the barriers between them and their audience. This year, prizes were awarded in five categories: painting, graphics, photography, mixed media and sculpture. This year’s competition was powered by software systems created by competition co-organizer Emil Lansky, founder of artworldbeat.com. A panel of expert judges, led for the second year by Professor Margaret Ditkovskaya, chose just over 100 works from nearly 1,200 digital submissions for exhibition at the 25CPW Gallery in Manhattan. Beginning at 6pm on June 27 in New York, the jury (together with hundreds of gallery aficionados, art collectors and friends of the artists) had a chance to observe the actual works, from which they selected winners in five categories. The Category Winners exhibition reception, held at the Museum of Russian Art in Jersey City, NJ on the evening of August 14, represented a triumphant moment for all concerned. Neda Raffiezadeh Kermani, who signs her works as “Myra Darious,” gained the favor of the jury in the highly-competitive Paintings category. Neda has built her reputation on intimate scenes — personalized allegories — that employ vivid colors and sharp out14 • Fine Art Magazine • December 2013
Origin, Gerard Frances, Graphics
lines to depict the inner struggles of human beings to stave off the forces of the everyday, superficial and fake, that distract us from the pursuit of our inner ideals. Twelve-o-Five, her winning entry, depicts a woman and her black cat on a crumpled sofa in front of a table with a teapot and cups. The sofa is upholstered in brilliant primary colors, heightening the sense of isolation we get from this tired, bored-looking woman, who covers her mouth with her hands as if to yawn. She seems pensive, perhaps waiting for the telephone next to her to ring. The painting draws us into her story, without making it possible to establish definitively what that story really means. Is this an ordinary woman waking up late, or a prostitute waiting for her next client? Neda revels in ambiguity and sexual innuendo, jolting the viewer into an uncomfortable awareness of the presence of dark forces in vignettes drawn from everyday life. French artist Gerard Frances won in the Graphics category. The extraordinary work he submitted this year included paintings and photographs, as well as painting/photograph mixed media work. Frances’ preferred tool is the Chinese brush, which he dips in mixture of ink, oil and water to create figures and landscapes inspired by nature, reducing the descriptive aspects of his subjects to create greater expressive power. Anya Rubin, the 2013 Mixed Media laureate, is well-known to New York-area contemporary art aficionados. Her stunning installations, illuminated from within by electric light, make creative use of computer graphics technology that combine painting, photography and mixed media collage techniques to depict a juxtaposition of images taken from history and daily life. In works such as Dual Reality, two faceless women draped in clothing created from metaphorical symbolism run over the rooftops as an angel patiently waits atop the crumbling buildings. These female
Tiger Sleeps, Neda Rafiezadeh Kermani, Painting
figures, who are guided by a hand holding a computer mouse, represent how the rapid growth of Internet technology in recent years has supplanted old forms of social interaction, to the point where our Facebook-only friends become as important to our lives as people we meet in the physical world. In Feeding the World, Rubin surrounds a Raphael Madonna and Child with close-up photos of babies feeding at anonymous breasts. A third surrounding layer shows abstract faces, seemingly looking in at the inner levels. Origin of the World Part Two centers on Courbet’s famous image of a woman’s mid-section, prominently displaying her vagina, which in Rubin’s version now sprouts vegetation, and has diminutive images of babies and children splayed above and below. The four sections at the upper part of the design feature images referring to the world’s four major religions. What appears to be a pool of water at the bottom of the work is filled with cut-out photographs of babies and great cultural figures, including Picasso, Einstein and Marie Curie. Each of Rubin’s provocative multi-layered explorations of technological and social evolution sparks a heated debate. “My paintings are my philosophy on life,” she says. The Photography winners, Ralph M. Ferraro and Peter van Stralen, share a passion for capturing amazing moments, but the subjects they chose and the images they presented this year could not be more different. Ferraro, who is a practicing clinical social worker as well as a visual artist, uses his knowledge of psychology and emotional energy to capture the emotional energy in people, nature, and abstract environmental colors, patterns and textures. Ferarro’s recent book, Flashes of Light, includes striking images of sky, nature and fireworks as well as his poems. His highly expressive photograph Water Crystals, was taken in perfect light conditions just after a