Portraiture at Galleri Urbane

Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce a new photo exhibit, me, myself and everyone else. The gallery will feature work by Adam Bork, Denise Prince Martin, Charles Ruger and Mike Slack. This year photo exhibit edges itself into, iconic, self and anonymous portraiture. Four artists from Texas, New York and California will be featured this year. There will be a reception for the artists August 18, 6:30:00-8:30 p.m.

Adam Bork, a photographer, musician and filmmaker from Austin, Texas, (now living in Marfa), studied studio art at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas and photography at School of Visual Arts in New York City. The gallery will exhibit Bork’s C-Chrome prints and light boxes from a series he completed in N.Y in 2001. The contemplative character standing in front of vibrant blue, green, purple and orange back drops. The character (himself) stands in an empty lot, next to crunched or broken down cars creating laughable yet eerie scenarios, one is not sure whether or not they have witnessed a crime or just a innocent man lost. Mr. Bork is currently working on multimedia projects – short films and installations that blend his original imagery, found stills, musical compositions.

Gallery artist Mike Slack, residing in Los Angeles, will exhibit a new series of original Polaroids and launch his recent book Scorpio, which currently opened in L.A., N.Y., and S.F. The body of work chosen for this show includes details of films or TV programs, zeroing in on a particular facial expression or emotional state that is completely unrelated to what was actually happening in the scene, or that suggests something less conscious than what was originally filmed, and then playing these images off each other in various ways, steering clear of recognizable actors.

*W magazine has stated ”If the greatest society portraitists are insiders, its no wonder that New York social fixture Charles Ruger has lured Serena Boardman, Allison Sarofim and Ivanka Trump into his lens.” The photographic work of N.Y artist Charles Ruger serves as a window into a rarified world that is at once enviable and dark, glorious and tragic, grand and doomed. This atmosphere of duality is expressed through his studies in portraiture and environment. Concerned not just with those who are shaping culture today, but also of the descendents of those who influenced the 20th century. As the grandson of a legendary American industrialist, Ruger is drawn to those that impact contemporary society as well as those who’ve grown under the influence of such human forces of an earlier time.

Austin artist Denise Prince Martin’s anonymous portrait series Women will be on display. Ms. Martin began this series in 2002 and has shown nationally and internationally. She was selected in New American Talent 2004-2005 and named one of the top seven individual Artists in the Austin chronicle 2005. Martin has an exquisite sense of color, texture and placement, setting the women in obscure, queer environments of Americana that are both tragic and rich, leaving you yearning to hear each of one these anonymous women’s stories.

The show will be on display through August 14, 2006.