Justin Brice Guariglia

Justin Guariglia
Born 1974 (1974)
Maplewood, New Jersey
Nationality American
Education Liberal Arts at Wake Forest
Known for Visual Arts and Photography
Movement Contemporary Art
Website www.guariglia.com

Justin Guariglia is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring the emergent landscape of the Anthropocene. His work lies at the nexus of photography, painting, printmaking and sculpture, and often incorporates natural history, industrial materials, and commodities. The work takes inspiration from the Northern Song Dynasty landscape painters, The Hudson River School, New Topographics, and the Great Acceleration. Guariglia is credited with coining the term "Plasticene™ printing", which he trademarked in 2016. He lives and works in New York City.

In September 2016, NASA announced a collaboration between Guariglia and the agency, making him the first artist to be embedded in a NASA science mission.[1] Guariglia will be embedded in the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission at NASA/JPL through 2020.

Education

Guariglia grew up next to the home of Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand, one of America's foremost landscape painters of the 19th century. He went on to study Italian art history under the late art historian Terisio Pignatti in Venice, Italy, before moving to Beijing, China in 1996 to study Chinese language, culture, and history at Capital Normal University. In 1997, he returned to the USA to finish his degree at the liberal arts college Wake Forest, before returning to Asia.

Guariglia lived in Asia for nearly 20 years, residing in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei and Shanghai, first as a student, then as a foreign correspondent and documentary photographer. From 2000 - 2008, Guariglia was a member of the prestigious Contact Press Images, and regularly traveled across Asia on reporting assignments for publications like the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Far Eastern Economic Review, Time Magazine, and Maclean's documenting a rapidly changing Asia.


Work

Contemporary archaeological in nature, Guariglia's work serves as a contemplative look at human kind's path towards accelerated modernization, also called by scientists "The Great Acceleration"; from the genesis of a raw and natural world to a civilization reaching the point of a questionable decline.

The images play with scale and perspective, often employing a "gaze from nowhere" aesthetic, and printed in grand scales of 4m to 5m in size. Following a long history of painters, he uses unconventional materials and printing techniques to make his work, pushing the images into the realm of painting, print making and sculpture. Many of the printing processes are complex, unique and developed in his studio, and undergo rigorous archival stability tests.

In 2015 Guariglia began collaborating with NASA as an artist, flying a series of missions with them to make images of rapidly changing glacial land and sea ice on and around Greenland to use as source material in his work, along with working with the scientists to develop a greater understanding of human impact on the ice.

Guariglia coined and trademarked[2] the term "Plasticene™ printing" in 2016, whereby a plastic-like hyperarchival acrylic polymer ink is laid down in multiple layers, which enters itself into the fossil record upon production, due to the long half-life of the material. Occasionally Guariglia will layer the ink so thick that it forms a 3-D image. The name Plasticene is a nickname for the Anthropocene due to the large amounts of plastic in the fossil record of the Anthropocene.

On August 29, 2016 in commemoration of the International Geological Congress voting 30 to 3 in favor of formally designating the Anthropocene, the artist had NASA’s GISTEMP (global temperature anomalies 5-year mean) index tattooed onto his arm, on the day of the announcement.

In September 2016, NASA announced a collaboration between Guariglia and the agency, making him the first artist to be embedded in a NASA science mission.[3] Guariglia will be embedded in the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission at NASA/JPL through 2020 working closely with NASA/JPL OMG Principle Investigator, Josh Willis Ph.D. The collaboration is privately funded by grants and donations, and does not receive any financial support from NASA, JPL or OMG.


Awards and nominations

Guariglia has been nominated for the International Center of Photography's "Young Photographer of the Year Award", named by the Fotofest Biennale a "Discovery of Fotofest,",[4] chosen by Photo District News as one of the top "30 Young Photographers Under 30",[5] and was a recipient of the Eddie Adams Workshop Newsweek award.

Guariglia's documentary work won several Pictures of the Year awards, including two awards in POYi60[6] in the General Division/Science/Natural History Picture Story & Single Image categories, and an additional award in POYi65[7] in the General News Reporting category.

Bibliography

In 2007 Guariglia produced a 99 piece traveling exhibition and book with the Aperture Foundation, entitled Shaolin: Temple of Zen (Aperture). He is considered the first photographer to have been allowed access inside the Shaolin Temple to photographically document classical Shaolin Kung Fu and the monks that practice it, in the temple's 1500-year history.[8]

Guariglia's book Planet Shanghai (Chronicle Books) documented a rapidly changing Shanghai, was published in 2008, and reviewed in the New Yorker[9] and the New York Times Magazine.[10]

In 2011, Guariglia collaborated with Time Magazine and Wall Street Journal writer John Krich to produce "JOHOR: Asia Latitude One" (de.MO Publishing) a book about the southern most state in Malaysia - Johor. The book celebrated the ethnic and religious diversity, the working class people, and the landscape of the little known state. The book, a commission from the Royal Family of Johor, was named one of the best photo books of the year by American Photo Magazine,[11] and Photo District News[12] in New York, and featured in Communication Arts photo annual,[13] and received an Independent Publishers silver medal in 2014,[14] and a bronze Cube from the Art Director's Club of America in also in 2014 [15]

TV

In 2007, Guariglia appeared in a TV series with music legends Lou Reed and Tony Visconti discussing the Shaolin Temple project and book on the Voom Network Gallery HD series entitled "Aperture." The series was nominated for a New York Emmy Award in 2009[16]

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Selected Group Exhibitions

Collections

Guariglia's work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,[20] The Spurlock Museum, Urbana, Illinois, and numerous other private collections.

Publication Notes

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/6/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.