The Artist Space Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the first Blue online Art Exhibition. Along with the selected artists, the jury selected award winners in the following art categories: painting, photography, and sculpture. The show displayed a variety of artistic styles and mediums: oil on canvas, acrylic, watercolor, gouache, ink, photography, digital, bronze. Out of all submissions received 165 artworks were selected to be included in the exhibition.
Best of Show
Steve Stratis
Short Biography and Statement
Many of the world’s marvels go unseen, whether due to the flow of time or being beyond our perception. Steve Stratis’ work centers around bypassing these limitations - giving the viewer a glimpse of how matter frozen in time and invisible phenomena may appear. Stratis fuses digital techniques such as 3D sculpting and VFX (visual effects) to apply a stylistic spin, resulting in a unique abstract-centric aesthetic. Steve aims to inspire a greater interest in physics and further appreciation for the many powers that shape our world.
Painting Prize
Ines de Poligny
Short Biography and Statement
 Ines de Poligny is an artist of mixed Argentinean and French extraction. She was born in 1973 and started painting at an early age, first impressionist, then surrealistic and abstract and realistic nowadays. Her current place of residence is Ascot, United Kingdom. She exhibited for the first ten years in EEUU and America. She then started exhibiting in Europe in places like the Carrousel du Louvre, Paris, the European Museum of Modern Art MEAM, Spain, and several worldwide Biennales and Art Fairs. As an artist, Ines de Poligny is most concerned to communicate mainly Three themes: Environment, Evolution and Human Consciousness. There are a variety of sub-themes from the main themes though, which the artist focus on. Evolution, for example, will derive in subjects matters such as cloning, isolation, origins, germination and others. The artist works with Consciousness, evidencing how we transform, our reality, to an artificial social construction and a fantasy world. Contemporary and ancestry, dynamic and still, exuberant and simplistic, her work will play in the edges of contrasts. Working with bodies of forms where lines of perimeters tend to ripple and repeat centrifugal like an echo, sometimes like in a zigzag movement, Ines leaves a distinctive mark. Colourful abstractions are worked by the artist thoroughly, creating a big contrast between rich detailed forms to differ from a quiet background. The artist can exaggerate and focus in a certain graphism and bring it closer, like a dilatation that will provide a certain response. Some skeleton line is left open as a witness of its impulsive origin and fragility. Ines’ artistic mission is an attempt to ask ourselves the questions about what we are doing to our Environment and to our Evolution. To criticise that world splitting apart from nature and to recognise the health and beauty of creation.
Sculpture Prize
T Barny
Short Biography and Statement
A native of California with a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design, T Barny has been creating sculpture professionally for over four decades. During his career, he has produced more than 1000 sculptures that range in size from one-foot-tall tabletop pieces to twelve-foot-tall corporate and public installations that can weigh upwards of 9 Tons in steel, bronze, wood, and water. His curvilinear, Mobius-inspired stone sculptures are his most celebrated. His works have been shown in over 100 galleries in 18 countries worldwide and he has participated in more than 600 group and individual exhibitions. It is his great love of stone as a medium that allows him to create serene and evocative works that continue to grow in their market presence and are becoming increasingly sought after in both private and public arenas. T Barny imports personally selected stone from quarries around the world, carving his pieces from massive blocks of granite, alabaster, calcite, and his favorite, marble. His sculptures generate the kinetic illusion of movement and fluidity through his Mobius-like works, with a single, traceable, looping edge. T Barny’s works are produced through a method of direct carving, which entails having no preconceived notions or models from which to derive the final shape of the pieces. Finding artistic promise in all materials, abstraction is his fascination and power tools are his forte. His flowing, curvilinear sculptures have been lauded by patrons and critics internationally. T Barny doesn’t simply sculpt; he releases inherent forms from the oldest materials available to man. The serenity of his work must be seen and felt in order to be truly appreciated and understood. He aspires to create sculpture that reflects a world filled with magic and wonder, which celebrates the interrelated continuousness of all things.
Photography Prize
Jean-Claude Bise
Short Biography and Statement
Self-taught photographer, I learned in the labs of my friends, painters, decorators and photographers during the artistic movements of the 60s and 70s. Powered by these surrounding energies, I chose photography to express my ideas. In my photographic approach I try to bring subjects of reflection, by asking myself questions about us and the evolution of our society. In my work, two distinct axes are expressed - the perception of everyday life and more down to earth compositions such as perspective, line, color and framing are the elements necessary for the construction of the image. series - sphere Abstract photography focuses on shape, color, pattern and texture. There is no intention of presenting a recognizable (so-called figurative) scene. Sphere, 3D representation tests in which various heterogeneous materials or objects are brought together. Radiating in space. series – cosmos As in a dream I project myself into the cosmos in search of intergalactic spaces. Inhabited by stars, natural celestial bodies such as (sun, moon, planet, comet, star, galaxy, etc.) crossed by various objects from all sources drifting in the cosmos (identified or unknown) as well as in their interstellar spaces, spatio -temporal. For this presentation I have chosen the round, the circle, the sphere, the eclipse, the ellipse, to illustrate my point.
Winners