Beauty for Ashes is a project by Pablo Helguera about the contemporary practitioners of realist/academic painting and their complex relationship with the contemporary art world. In 1863, the creation of the Salon des Refusés in Paris, which broke with the French Academy, led to the birth of the modern art movement, resulting in the eventual establishment of the avant-garde in galleries and museums worldwide. Almost 150 years after, many artists continue to work with the same shared aesthetic concerns of the classic Western canon, grounded mainly on traditional figurative representation and taking craftsmanship as the central value of their works. The use of irony versus sincerity emerges as a key philosophical divide between contemporary art and those in search for the restoration of traditional aesthetic values of beauty.

This project, which includes a small publication, a video documentary and an exhibition of works by the interviewed artists, examines their perspective and posits questions about the way in which contemporary art defines its historical present.

Beauty for Ashes is being presented in May 2010 as part of the exhibition "Undercurrents: Experimental Ecosystems in Recent Art", curated by Anik Fournier, Michelle Lim, Amanda Parmer and Robert Wuilfe of the Whitney Independent Program.

I was invited to participate in this project and will have 2 paintings at The Kitchen. Below you will see a link to a video interview of the participating artists
Beauty for Ashes Interview

you can now see some of my
student's work on flickr.

One of my paintings will be featured on the cover of the New Delta Review of Summer 2009

A solo show of Katie Claiborne's recent work
August 4-October 8 2009

Theatre Art Galleries