Ombretta Agrò Andruff
Ombretta Agrò Andruff has lived in New York City since 1998 where she works as an independent curator and art critic. Born in Turin, Italy, in 1971 she graduated from the University of Art and Literature in Siena, Italy, in 1995 and started her career as a curator of a not-for-profit space, VELAN, dedicated to showcase the work of emerging Italian and international artists.
Since then she has curated solo and group shows in Europe and the US collaborating with commercial galleries, museums, art festivals and art fairs such as Artists Space, GAle GAtes et al., Queens Museum of Art, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, The Armory Show, The Miami Basel Art Fair, The Downtown Arts Festival, The d.u.m.b.o. art under the Bridge Festival and the Esso Gallery. In Europe she worked with the Maze Gallery in Turin, the Maria Cilena Gallery in Milan, Italy, and PLAY Gallery in Berlin. She is a New York contributor for Italian art magazines Arte Critica, Tema Celeste, and Label as well as collaborating with the New York-based The Art Tribune and New York Arts Magazine. She has written essays for several books and catalogues.
In July 2001 she was invited by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York to hold a conference about her curatorial activity. Since then she has lectured at Engine 27, School of Visual Arts, the Pratt Institute, the New York University, the United Nations, and the Kingston University in London.
Dana Frankfort
Dana Frankfort has had solo exhibitions in New York (Bellwether), Brussels (Sorry We're Closed/Galerie Rodolphe Jannsen), Houston (Inman Gallery) and Los Angeles (Kantor/Feuer). She has an upcoming solo show at Greener Pastures in Toronto. She has been included in many group exhibitions in galleries such as Zach Feuer Gallery and John Connelly Presents. Her work will be featured in The Saatchi Gallery's Abstract America in 2008. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, New Yorker Magazine, and various other newspapers and periodicals. Frankfort graduated with an MFA from Yale University and was a Core Fellow at The Glassell School of Art in Houston, TX. She received a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship for Painting in 2006.
Joao Ribas
Joao Ribas (b. 1979, Braga, Portugal) is a critic and Curator at The Drawing Center in New York. His writing on art, film, design, and literature has appeared in The New York Sun, Art Review, Time Out NY, Flash Art, PAPER, Tema Celeste, The Guardian, Artnet, ARTnews, and other publications, and he is a former editor at Art Review and LTB Media. He has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and monographs, and has been a visiting critic and lecturer for organizations such as ISCP and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and at institutions including Columbia University, the School of Visual Arts, The National Academy Museum, Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Boston University, the Bronx Museum, and a member of the M.F.A thesis committee at New York University and adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts.
He is the curator of several group shows, projects, and surveys in the US and abroad, including: New Economy, Artists Space, 2007; Alan Saret: Gang Drawings, The Drawing Center, 2007; Dice Thrown (Will Never Annul Chance), Bellwether, 2006; the Expanded Cinema online platform; HangART 7: New York Contemporary, Hangar-7, Salzburg, 2006, w/ co-curators Jeffrey Deitch, Dan Cameron, Alana Heiss, David Reed, and Simone Subal; and Means Without End, Guild and Greyshkul, 2005.
His curatorial work has been reviewed and featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Time Out, Artforum, Art Review, The New York Sun, Contemporary and other publications.
Peter Rostovsky
Peter Rostovsky is a Russian-born artist who lives and works in New York. Ranging from sculpture, to painting, to installation, his work frequently explores transcendental themes through the use of banal imagery while also elevating the ordinary and everyday to sublime and heroic proportions. His work has been shown widely both in the United States and abroad and has been exhibited at such venues as PS1/MOMA, Artpace, The Santa Monica Museum of Art, the ICA in Philadelphia, the Tacoma Museum of Art, SMAK Museum in Ghent and a host of private galleries including Elizabeth Dee, Danese, Salon94, and Gio Marconi. He is represented by the Project NY, and also teaches painting at New York University.
William Villalongo
William Villalongo is an artist who primarily works with painting and drawing, but also has employed performance, video and wall installation to investigate concepts within his paintings. Villalongo repurposes the languages of Western mythological and romantic painting, kitsch and science fiction in order to reveal visions of a mutating personal and African American identity.
He has exhibited work at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, and El Museo del Barrio. Villalongo has attended the prestigious Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Marie Walshe Sharpe and Studio Museum in Harlem artist residencies. Permanent collections holding his work include the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Norton Family Foundation. His work has been reviewed in Time Out, The New York Times, The New York Sun and International Review of African American Art.
Villalongo received his BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and his MFA from Tyler School of Art. He has been a Visiting Artist at Vermont College and San Diego State University and has taught at the University of Connecticut, Tyler School of Art and Middlebury College. He currently teaches Drawing I at The Cooper Union.