LISA THOM IN COLLABORATION WITH JOHN GRANDE
John Grande was born in1969 in Huntington Long Island. He attended the School Of Visual Arts in 1995 earning his BFA. After graduating Grande moved to NYC and worked as a professional C Printer at a photo lab in Tribeca. Printing for High End Fashion, Music and, Fine Art photographers Miles Aldrich – Jack Pearson – Anne Liebovitz – Marc Baptiste – Giles Bensimon – Jerry Schatzberg to name a few. This practice highly influenced his personal work allowing him to asses the work and study their compositions and visual techniques of creating a successful image. After working for several labs in 2002 and the sudden loss of his mother to Asbestos cancer, Grande realized that life is short, and fleeting deciding to leave the printing world to follow his dream and focus all of his energy into his painting practice.
Since that time Grande has exhibited in Solo and Group Shows throughout the world (New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Washington DC, Korea, Italy, India, Canada). He is currently exhibiting with Jim Kempner Fine Arts in New York. Grande is a photo-based artist who works in project form. Using the technique of transferring ” photo realistic” style with paint into a visual dialogue constantly searching for different ways of solving contextual problems and ideas. His current work is about exploring “the Cultural Icon”. Whether derived from pop - contemporary or retro culture - branding symbols - advertising logos - superheroes - phrases and art. Interweaving and, integrating them together transforming there original meanings while at the same time relying on there visual familiarity. With these works I was interested in building paintings that are derived out of today’s overwhelming multi media world.
website: johngrande.com
Lisa Thom will be collaborating with John Grande for Emerald Couture 2011 at The Hole in New York.
