Art at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival

John Alexander

John Alexander will contribute The Screamer, a 2008 oil-on-canvas depicting a crow and its mirror image as it cries out into the darkness. The piece, 18 by 14 inches, reflects the somber palette for which many of Alexander's pieces are noted. Well known internationally for his commanding landscapes and careful studies of birds and nature, his work has been exhibited in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Smithsonian, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, as well as throughout Texas, his birthplace. Mick Jagger, Robin Williams, Sylvester Stallone, and Steve Martin are just a few of the notables who own Alexander works.

Ross Bleckner

Ross Bleckner is the youngest artist ever to have a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum and has been one of America's most influential contemporary artists. Well-known for his large-scale paintings that frequently explore themes of remembrance and loss, he will contribute Bonfire, a 29-by-28 inch color aquatint etching from a series of 35.

Francesco Clemente

Francesco Clemente, one of the world's most illustrious contemporary artists, is known for oeuvres hallmarked by imagery that has been called "arresting if not haunting." Throughout the past 30 years, he has sought to unseat conventional understanding of reality through his own unique interpretations of surrealism and expressionism. Clemente's paintings, drawings, prints, and illustrated books have been the subject of numerous important exhibitions at such places as New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art, London's Whitechapel Art Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts, Berlin's Nationale Galerie of Berlin, Paris' Centre Georges Pompidou, Tokyo's Sezon Museum, and many more. To the Tribeca Film Festival Artists Awards Program, he has chosen to contribute Air, a 27-color hand printed woodcut in the Ukiyo-e tradition with 21 woodblocks. An edition of 51, the print is 24 by 18 inches in size.

Renee Cox

Renee Cox is one of the most controversial African-American artists working today. She has used her own body, both nude and clothed, to celebrate black womanhood and to criticize a culture she often views as sexist and racist. Her photographs provoke thought and sometimes outrage as they challenge the stereotypes of our daily lives. Missy at Home, her contribution to the Tribeca Film Festival Artists Awards, is a striking interpretation of the perception of race and status in our society. The vividly colored photograph depicts the artist as a wealthy, powerful woman of color being attended to by her white maid. The work is an archival digital C-print.

Brandon d'Leo

Brandon d'Leo's Verge is a work of steel, rubber and concrete that focuses on a moment between two actions—an instant where progression is challenged by resistance. The angled sculpture leans precipitously, seemingly teetering on the brink of its foundation, only to be supported at its throat by tethering anchored firmly to its base.
 
 
 

Donna Ferrato

Donna Ferrato is an award winning photojournalist, filmmaker, and author who has captured some of the most haunting and also some of the most beautiful images of love, sex, and relationships. Widely known for her photography of domestic abuse, she became acutely aware of the issue when, during a shoot, she witnessed a man strike his wife. Subsequently, she has worked "to make the first and most comprehensive record of battered women in the United States," and published the best seller Living with the Enemy. Her donation, Odeon Table, from 10013, her Tribeca series, is a 24-by-30 inch handmade silver gelatin print that explores the harmonies of symmetry, shape, and light.

Ralph Gibson

Ralph Gibson will donate Nude on a Guitar, seen in Light Strings: Impressions of the Guitar, a book collaboration with Andy Summers, former guitarist for the Police. 30 by 40 inches, the digital C-print is mounted on archival board and is from an edition of just five numbered prints. The image pays homage to the form of the guitar and its relationship to the body, whose "curves echo the human figure, not only requiring it to be cradled to play it, but inviting a study of its own sumptuous anatomy."

Don Gummer

Don Gummer will contribute his Maquette for Primary Compass, a site-specific outdoor permanent sculpture completed in 2000 that is part of the collection of the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. The maquette is 14.5-by-14-by-12 inches in size. Gummer's work has been showcased in more than 30 solo exhibitions worldwide, and is held in more than a dozen collections, from the Chase Manhattan Bank of New York to the Kitakyushu International Center in Japan.
 

Stephen Hannock

Stephen Hannock is a luminist painter whose evocative landscapes are often inspired by the countryside of the Berkshires and Western Massachusetts. His work involves a process of building up layers of paint and polishing them down with sandpaper to achieve a glowing effect. In 1998, Hannock became the first museum-collected artist to win an Oscar, for Painted World, seen in What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams. Hannock has contributed works to the Tribeca Film Festival Artist Awards Program since its inaugural year. This year, he donates Maternal Nocturne: Clearing Storm, which is a celebration of Mother Nature in the midst of her ongoing trials and tribulations. The works is 8 by 13 inches in size of polished mixed media on an envelope over a Chuck Close daguerreotype.

Ryan McGinness

Ryan McGinness' reviews have declared him to be everything and everyone from God to Warhol of the 21st century. The former skater-punk colorfully marries "jazzy pop visions that spring as much from graffiti and corporate logos as they do from art history." His Peripheral Drift Illusion is a seven-color silkscreen and an optical kaleidoscope of movement, images, and symbols. 48 by 48 inches in size, this feel-good mindscape is from an edition of 50.

Clifford Ross

Clifford Ross has innovated the way we see landscapes. Frustrated by the lack of detail provided by existing cameras, the painter-turned-photographer invented and patented a new breed of megapixel camera that offers the highest resolution ever made possible. He is currently designing and building a 100-megapixel digital display system, which will be the largest digital display in the world for use in artistic, scientific, and entertainment purposes. He donates Harmonium I, a 41-by-33 inch study of leaves, printed in archival pigment ink on Japanese paper.

Timothy White

Timothy White will donate a 30-by-38 inch giclée of Liza Minnelli to the Tribeca Film Festival Artist Awards Program. For more than 20 years, White has been one of the most sought-after celebrity photographers in the world. He has contributed to the covers of virtually every high-profile magazine, movie posters for top Hollywood studios, and album covers for music industry royalty, including Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, and Jon Bon Jovi. Named one of American Photo's most important people in photography, White has won numerous other photography and film awards, including the 2004 International Photographer of the Year.

O Zhang

O Zhang is donating Daddy & I No.1, 2005. The image is from Zhang's collection of photographs of adopted Chinese girls and their fathers in America. In this series, she seeks to capture the love between a female child and an adult male, peering into the complexities of the both the gender and cultural disparities. The work is a 19-by-24 inch digital C-type print, Edition 2 of 5.