William Wray (20×26) by Bradford J. Salamon
Bradford J. Salamon is an American portrait painter whose subjects are often fellow artists. He imbues ordinary objects of the past with an iconic art status beyond their cultural history. Bradford’s passion about the California art scene includes curating art shows and documenting fellow artists on film.
William Wray has lived in California most of his life and studied painting at the Art Students League in New York. Making his living as a cartoonist who specialized in painted subjects, he spent many years coalescing a eclectic array of art styles, ultimately finding his voice in a contemporized reflection of traditional California regional painting that focus on humble subject matter rarely considered as fine art. Wray blends traditional skill sets of realism and the sheer energy of abstract expressionism in an ongoing evolution to find the balance between two seemingly unrelated styles. Wray has challenged himself to create a brand of realistic expressionism he hopes to use a bridge into the customarily circumspect contemporary art world. He carries memberships with Oil Painters of America, LAPAPA, and California Art Club.
Since Carlos Iglesias became a partner at Castelli Art Space, he has forged ahead in the world of art to make connections to help artists that he believes in, so they may gain a larger voice that resonates in contrast to the darkness that shrouds our society today. Currently Iglesias serves as ambassador to the Enter Art Foundation, based in Berlin to introduce artists to American Eyes and American artist to European cities.
The Pink show is an outrageously simple concept: we are stripping the meat off the usual complex curatorial group-show carcass and playing with a cute little chew-toy combo instead. This grouping of wildly diverse artists has been gathered at great effort and expense just to reflect upon one happy color (in this case, Pink), each in his or her own way. It may be just a drop of the color Pink in the nose of a troubled bunny rabbit or a whole complex Lego world gone leather gay disco. We are asking the controversial question: can very contemporary art live in the same room with cartoon surrealism and some variation on narrative traditional art without the room bursting into flame?
All “Pink Show” logo designs by William Wray