PRESS RELEASE May 30, 2007

WHAT: Galleri Urbane’s 3^rd Annual Photography and Film Exhibit

GROUP SHOW IN GALLERY 1

TITLE - “URBAN RENEWAL “

FEATURING PHOTOGRAPHY BY MICHAEL ITKOFF, LUIS MALLO, TONY STAMOLIS, SHORT FILM BY JIM ROCHE

A SOLO SHOW IN GALLERY 2

TITLE - “MARS ON EARTH “

ARTISTS - TRUJILLO-PAUMIER

AN INSTALLATION IN GALLERY 3

TITLE – YELLOW COWBOYS

ARTIST – ADAM BORK

WHEN: July 7 – AUGUST 7, 2007

OPENING RECEPTION: July 7, 2007 6:00-8:30pm

WHERE: GALLERI URBANE / MARFA

212 San Antonio ST

POB 1506

Marfa TX 79843

CONTACT:

Ree Willaford

432.729.4200

willafordrj@sbcglobal.net

www.galleriurbane.com

*Additional images and Press images available upon request.

Galleri Urbane / Marfa… announces its 3^rd annual photography exhibit,

URBAN RENEWAL, featuring photography by Michael Itkoff, Luis Mallo, Tony Stamolis, Installation and Film by artists Adam Bork and Jim Roche.

A solo exhibit by the collaborative team of Trujillo- Paumier.

The term “Urban Renewal” evokes muscular images of inner city eyesores being remodeled or demolished and replaced based, ideally, on a process of re-imagining and transforming space for the benefit of those who live and work there. Each of the artists in this show embarks on a similar undertaking, using their cameras to revitalize an array of urban and rural landscapes. They make it clear that, when it comes to our surroundings, what we see depends not only on where we look, but also on how we choose to focus our gaze.

The urban landscapes depicted in Cuban native Luis Mallo’s large-scale color photographs are interrupted or obstructed by a foreground object or layer. “The barrier – for example, a fence, in one image – acts like a veil that drapes, surrounds, separates, distorts and conceals,” says Mallo. “But it’s never meant to be completely opaque or impenetrable.” The resulting photographs are intricate and perplexing, painterly, personal and graphic. The viewer is simultaneously invited and compelled to peek through vague openings in the foreground in order to decipher what lies on the other side. “The veil, therefore, acquires an ambiguous nature: as it simultaneously hides and reveals, it asks us to consider the very notion of seeing as fragmentary and contingent, and also invites us to imagine and fill in the entire landscape as we attempt to perceive our surroundings.”

While Mallo pulls viewers through his landscapes via a foreground object, Michael Itkoff employs a stark white backdrop in each of his images—also in color--to ensure that the viewer’s eye, at least initially, doesn’t wander too far. For Itkoff’s series of portraits, “The White Board Project”, the artists traveled to London, Sydney, Hanoi, Bangkok, and New York, and captured ordinary people on the street, while an anonymous set of hands held a white board directly behind the subject’s head. The board appears to be a simple prop, yet the effects are startling. Their heads appear preternaturally large, the city behind them abnormally small.

“The project originated from a desire to subvert the artificial hierarchy created by celebrity photography and advertising,” says Itkoff, an editorial and fine art photographer, as well as the founding editor of Daylight Magazine. “I wanted to take a piece of the studio or gallery wall and place it behind ordinary people in the street. The white board became an equalizer, a negative space that united the subjects while separating them from their specific contexts.” His subjects are integral to a notion of landscape as both disparate and collective. It is also “a meditation on humanity’s essential unity, and the fact that we are all members of the same extended family.”

New York based photographer Tony Stamolis admits that the subjects in his series of urban portraits likely come from the exhibitionist side of his extended family. All of his subjects are bikini-clad female friends of the artist, who captured the wily, beach-bathing beauties outdoors in Manhattan’s East Village, East Harlem and Central Park – everywhere but the beach. The series began as a lighthearted version of an urban swimsuit shoot. “The summer in New York is my favorite season,” says Stamolis, who’s originally from Fresno. “It’s hot and dirty, and people do absurd things to stay cool. It’s survival in an urban jungle. The rooftop and the hydrant are pretty common, but sunbathing on the Gowanus Canal, a filthy industrial waterway, is not.”

As with Itkoff’s photos, Stamolis’ subjects are integral to appreciating the revitalized landscape. The context – on a rooftop, in front of a graffiti-ridden van, alongside the Gowanus Canal – may be disrupting when paired with the minimalist attire, but the women, like all of the City’s ever-changing 8 million inhabitants, are never quite out of place.

There’s also an explicit, otherworldly element to “Mars on Earth,” the collaborative series, in Gallery 2, by Joaquin Trujillo and Brian Paumier. The series features bold, large-scale photos of mountainous desertscapes. The skies are cloud-filled, vast and a heavenly blue. The rocky terrain alternates between gentle pinks, deep, sandy reds, and lush browns. They are images of idylls void of any signs of human life save for two figures wearing astronaut suits, carrying obscure equipment, including what appears to be a pickaxe, and exploring the area as if it were foreign soil, a Mars on Earth.

According to the duo, “Joaquin is from a little town on the outskirts of Zacatecas, Mexico and bears the influence of his heritage with a penchant for pageantry and ostentation. Brian grew up a California suburbanite informed by television and rock and roll, and attuned to hipster ethics. The duo synchronizes old-world formality with contemporary ethos to make for the perfect integration of theatricality and witticism.”

Trujillo - Paumier began their collaboration during their studies at Art Center College of Design. They travel extensively for their personal and commercial work, and their images appear frequently in numerous publications and periodicals including New York Times Magazine, Newsweek, GQ, Los Angeles Magazine and Travel & Leisure. Joaquin and Brian work together and individually on various photographic pursuits Joaquin is the photo editor at GOOD magazine. Brian is a specialist in the US Army and has photographed several of tours of duty.

Adam Bork’s yellow cowboy, the desert roaming subject of the artist’s video installation, “Yellow Cowboys,” which will also be on display in Gallery 1. The installation includes four separate videos playing simultaneously on 14” 1984 Commodore brand computer monitors, and an otherworldly quadraphonic soundtrack written and performed by the artist.

Galleri Urbane are representatives of emerging and established contemporary artists, Painting, Photography and Sculpture, With works also available by: Bret Aaker, Michael Berman, Gail Peter Borden, Julie Speed, Peter Voshefski, Andrea Zuill and Jason Willaford. To see more of any of artists work please call the gallery or go to the website at www.galleriurbane.com.