Triumph of the Surface

We are cosmicmegabrain, an independent curatorial group interested in investigating the contaminations between art, society and popular culture by promoting multi-disciplinary artwork from the international spectrum of emerging and established talent, via exhibitions and forums for debate.

Our forthcoming project, Triumph Of The Surface, is a stylish but provocative look at the domination and deviations of the fashion spectrum through the eyes of artists from around the world; a timely commentary on consumerism and globalization and our fascination with celebrity and the self, but, also in places a humorous and arch look at the thing we all love - fashion!

Our Venue - Transit Space

Cosmic Mega Brain is integrated with Transit Space.
Our venue, a 5 floor 20.000 square vacant warehouse in the heart of east London, will be a venue for London Fashion Week in September 2008, as it was in previous editions.

The space is being put to profitable use as a venue for various events in the interim period between it’s recent purchase by property developers until structural surveys finish and development begins; this leaves a window of at least several months.

This building was utilised by BANK, an artists’ group active in London during the 1990s. Their most significant contribution to UK contemporary art was a series of curated group shows, often with comical, and sometimes offensive, titles. As a group they adopted an aggressive stance towards the mainstream contemporary art scene of the time.
This collective was a major force in the emergence of the YBA movement, and included Turner Prize nominees and winners.

Our Artists!

Our goal is to capture the excitement and crystallize the obsession many of us have for surface and in doing so allow the viewer to explore it's deeper meanings and the subjective responses of the various artists on show.

Serpica Naro, Italy

*Fictional fashion brand, launched at Milan Fashion Week on the final day of shows on February 26, 2005.
Serpica Naro is an anagram of San Precario - a political movement that fights against exploitative working conditions. By creating a fake identity the collective managed to shock the media making a fashion show incorporating the ethics of San Precario.
According to the organizers, which are part of the team Chainworkers, the brand will remain to represent "a meeting place of creativity and self-knowledge sharing”.

www.chainworkers.org

Tobias Collier, Cornwall, 1972

*Tobias Collier's work involves various media: painting, video, drawing, wall paintings. His main subject is man's striving towards an understanding of the universe.
He lives and works in London.

Recent Exhibitions:
‘Astrophrenia’, GEC Gallery, London, 2005 'Hopes and dragonflies', Monitor Gallery, Rome, Italy, 2006 ‘Painting ruins’, Afghan Foundation for Culture & Civil Society, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2006 ‘Absolute zero’, Lounge Gallery, London, 2007 ‘Video invitational’, Viafarini Milan and Fondazione Belilacqua la Masa Venice, Italy, 2006


www.pianissimo.it

Suzy Goméz, Mallorca, 1964

*Suzy’s work is a blend of drawing, painting, sculpture, video installation and photography. She plays with the glamour of the fashion universe and searches for her own personal soul within the feminine body. An auto-biographic work in which the artist merges the fragility of the subject with rough sturdy materials creating poetic and beautiful pieces of art.

Recent shows:
2007
Susy Gómez - LETTRES D´AMOUR
recommended Galeria Filomena Soares, Lisbon
Susy Gómez
Galería Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid

Alessandro Bulgini, Italy, 1962

*Alessandro Bulgini's apparently monocromatic paintings reveal mysterious fibures beneth the black, reflecting surface. He refers often to the iconography of tarot and the image of the heratic.

He has exhibited several times in Rome, Naples and Turin where he works with the Photo and Contemporary Gallery.

Susan Cianciolo , New York

*Susan Cianciolo is widely known as a very determined fashion designer, but what makes her really special is her versatility as an artist, musician and film maker.

Her fashion designs are definitely anti-economical and completely manual. Her works communicate a distinct determination never to work within the confines of the fashion world and its production requirements. Past collections have involved Susan's handmade books, music, photography, movies, and clothing.

Susan's unconventional approach to fashion is a mix of delicate detail, hand sewing, embroidery and projects with various photographers, musicians and film makers.

Elisabetta Catalano, Italy

*Elisabetta Catalano began as a fashion photographer for Vogue during the sixties. Then came the participation at Fellini’s Film "eight and a half" that opened the doors of the world Cinema.

Since then she has been “the official” celebrity photogapher in Italy: from F. Fellini to Stefania Sandrelli, from Pasolini to Gino De Dominicis; also photographing artists such as Gilbert and George and Joseph Beuys.

In the'70s and '90s her studio became a reference for all those who wanted to break in the world of cinema and Television; including many show girls “attircette” women who for a moment have touched fame and then have fallen into oblivion. To show these picture invites a rethink about the ephemeral nature of fame and celebrity.

Ana Bezelga, Lisbon, 1979

*Ana Bezelga is an artist working mainly with video and music. Her work focuses on the questions of identity and gender in modern life and has been exhibited in Portugal and abroad.

Studied cinema in National Cinema School - ESTC and Audiovisual Post Production in RESTART – School of Creativity and High Technologies. Fine Arts Advanced Course in MAUMAUS – School of Fine Arts, in Lisbon.

She is currently doing a masters degree at Malmo Art Academie, Denmark.

H.H. Lim, Malaysia

*H.H.Lim is a Malaysian artist living for years in Rome. He has exhibited in collective and solo exhibitions in Italy (Fondazione Pastificio Cerere), Turky (Emergency Biennal, Istanbul), USA (San Francisco Art Institute) and also in China and Malysia.
The work of H.H.Lim explores the paradoxes of visual and textual language, with the intention to show the logic of appearence that dominates his world.

James Hague, Nottingham, 1970

*Formerly established as a portrait painter, his current work is informed by historical pictorial devises that have been used particularly in painting to describe the dialectic between subject and object, representation and perception.

In his work he challenges, with some humor, the viewers expectations about what they recognize and what is seen to be represented.

Awards:
1996 Winner BP Portrait Award National Portrait Gallery
2004 Stanley Smith Scholarship
2005 Amlin Painting Prize

He now lives and works in Denmark.

http://www.jameshague.co.uk/

Sara de Castro, Coimbra, 1982

* Sara de Castro is a portuguese artist that uses fashion as a mean to create her own fantasy world. Her illustrations are often charged with deep social and political ideologies.

She has studied fashion design is Lisbon. Worked as a fashion designer and illustrator in New York and Berlin where she now lives and works.

Our exhibition Triumph of the Surface

We aim to provide a provoking confrontation with London Fashion Week by questioning perceptions of image/identity, exhibiting works by artists who deal with issues that are outside the “skin-deep” realm of the fashion world in a venue that will concurrently be hosting L.F.W. catwalk shows.