The following article sheds hope for emerging artists looking for ways in which to earn an income from their art on loan so they can spend more time working in their studios and less as servers in restaurants, guards in museums and gallery assistants!!! While there are substantial benefits for the renter, the financial benefit for the artist is equally compelling which is why I have signed with Art Rent and Lease and have urged other artists to submit work. Art Rent and Lease is a new corporate art rental firm and the brainchild of president, Lisa Powell who is working not only in the New York area but nationally.

Art brightens leasing picture
Building owners use original works as tools to draw tenants, get higher rents
by Catherine Curan

Excerpted from NewYorkBusiness.com

When equity office Properties Trust closed on its purchase of 717 Fifth Ave. in 2004, it faced the daunting task of finding tenants for roughly 35% of the 425,000- square-foot boutique Plaza district tower. Director of Leasing Robert Fink and Vice President Michael Berman realized that to attract high-end financial institutions, the building needed to jazz up the blank-looking 66-foot-long corridor in the lobby. "It appeared empty, and begging for art," says Mr. Fink. Both men believed a few photographs just wouldn't do. The space needed a significant piece of art, rounding out the high-class amenities tenants would expect. So an original $40,000 mixed-media piece was commissioned for the space. "It adds to the cachet of a

building," says Mr. Berman. Adding $1 to the rent Art has always had a place in New York City's office buildings. But landlords say they now consider original art a critical tool to set their buildings apart and attract higher-paying tenants. Frances Schor, president of building owner and manager The Treeline Cos., estimates that the right art can allow a landlord to charge as much as $1 more in rent per square foot if the tenant is taking a large block of space. While some well-known Manhattan landlords, such as Aby Rosen of RFR Holding, spend millions a year on works by world-renowned artists, others, including Equity Office, Taconic Investment Partners and Treeline, are obtaining noteworthy art for under $100,000 a year. They are turning to corporate art consultants to lease or commission high-quality work, or are contacting local arts groups about partnerships. For 177 Livingston St., one of six commercial properties Treeline owns in Brooklyn, Ms. Schor is working on designing a lobby that allows nearly 35 feet of wall space, as well as an area for sculpture. Ms. Schor says she has reached out to the Brooklyn Arts Council to provide artwork. Likewise, Taconic has found that art helps its buildings stand out. A spokesman for Taconic, which owns 111 Eighth Ave. and 450 Park Ave., says the company spends about $20,000 to $40,000 per building annually to lease art. The spokesman has a large personal art collection but prefers to work with a a corporate consulting firm to provide works that reflect more than just his taste, which can be easily updated twice a year. "You get a reaction," he says. "Our tenants know we are very current with the world of design."
EXTRA TOUCH PAYS OFF
For 717 Fifth Ave., Equity Office Properties Trust wanted abstract contemporary art, since the glass tower was built in the late 1950s for Corning Glass Co. Several designs created on a computer, and then Equity officials approved a final design. Equity Office's Robert Fink says they were seeking something that would complement both the architecture and an etching in gold leaf by influential 20th century artist Josef Albers. The piece, two panels that were installed last month, cost just $40,000. Equity Office was able to save money because of the collaborative nature of the work, which is not signed by a single artist. Mr. Berman says the extra touch helped Equity lease the entire property to its target tenants at rents in the mid-$80s to $90 per square foot--prices at the top of the market.

School: The Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity,

and the Search for Knowledgeby Damien Hirst

Lever House E. 54th St. & Park Avenue New York

By Carol Vogel Published: November 12, 2007

Never mind that the world financial markets are in turmoil, or that Sotheby's had a very rocky auction night last Wednesday. A rich artist and his developer patron proved this weekend that excess endures. Saturday night, when the shrouding was removed from Lever House's lobby in midtown Manhattan, viewers confronted a veritable Noah's Ark of roadkill - 30 dead sheep, one dead shark, two sides of beef, 300 sausages, a pair of doves - that the British artist Damien Hirst describes as his most mature piece. The installation, on view through Feb. 16, was commissioned by the real estate developer Aby Rosen, who owns Lever House, the Seagram Building and the Gramercy Park Hotel, and by Alberto Mugrabi, a Manhattan dealer. Rosen also happens to be one of the leading U.S. collectors of contemporary art. The two have jointly purchased Hirst's installation, titled "School: The Archaeology of Lost Desires, Comprehending Infinity, and the Search for Knowledge," for $10 million for the Lever House Art Collection. In 2005, the developer asked the artist if he might be willing to create a work of art for Lever House's all-glass lobby, which has been a frequent site of temporary art installations. For Rosen, such commissions are a way of calling attention to the landmark building at Park Avenue and 54th Street, which his company, RFR Holding, bought in 1998."It's a great way to make the building more visible by showing great art," he said, adding that he enjoys seeing how different artists relate to the space. One afternoon last week, as he supervised crew members unwrapping the frozen sides of beef, Hirst said, "The sketch took 10 minutes, but it has taken two years to make this."Purposely provocative and often disturbing, the artist is perhaps best known for "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," a shark submerged in a tank of formaldehyde that is on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Last summer, Hirst exhibited a $100 million human skull cast in platinum and covered with 8,601 diamonds that attracted thousands to the London gallery White Cube, where it was installed in an all-black room. Both works seem modest by comparison with his latest stunt. Lining the entire lobby will be some 15 medicine cabinets (a past theme for Hirst) filled with thousands of empty boxes and bottles with labels for antidepressants, cough medicine and other drugs. The 30 sheep are lined up in row after row of formaldehyde-filled tanks, evoking docile schoolchildren in a classroom. Submerged in a giant tank 12 feet, or 3.7 meters, tall are two sides of beef, a chair, a chain of sausages, an umbrella and a birdcage with a dead dove. Hirst describes it as an homage to Francis Bacon's 1946 "Painting" at the Museum of Modern Art, which depicts cow carcasses suspended in a crucifix shape. Hirst said the installation - which cost $1 million to assemble - is in fact a nod to a host of modern artists. "We've got everybody in here," he said. There is Dan Flavin (the strips of fluorescent lighting); Warhol (the notion of repetition, as in the rows of dead sheep); Joseph Cornell (the boxes encasing the dead animals); Jannis Kounellis, who uses live birds in his work; and René Magritte, who painted an egg in a birdcage. All the components, including the 500-plus gallons of formaldehyde, were flown in from England. Hirst said he bought the sheep from a butcher and the shark from a supplier, both of them in Cornwall. "We didn't kill anything - everything was destined for food," Hirst said. Despite the over-the-top decadence of Hirst's work, he revels in details. He designed a red stencil that he used randomly to stamp the sheep as though they were branded. The chair submerged in the formaldehyde tank is fashioned from resin but resembles well-worn leather; he designed 20 clocks that will run backward and adorn all the lobby windows."It's my flock," said Hirst, surveying his handiwork in the lobby. "An installation without any walls, only glass."

The large scale works of Marquez nearly always reflect his sinical observation of modern society. Using appropriated paintings (in this case Picasso’s Guernica), hidden imagery in shadows and reflections, “Slash, Bangbang, Boom” is a contemporary commentary on today’s society. He depicts a puppeteer as a joker (reflected in the mirror) standing behind a table or stage manipulating the marionette Pope. Cast in the shadow, is a scene of violence and despair. The artist implies the powerlesness of organized Religion to keep peace (in particular the Catholic church) or perhaps he alludes organized religion is actually the cause for the unrest.

Carnival Vertigo in Work of Truman Marquez

by D.F.Coleman appearing in: New York, New York 12 September 2007

Carnival Vertigo in the Work of Truman Marquez By D. F. Coleman ©2006It is hard to get a Truman Marquez image out of your mind. A Truman Marquez painting essentially speaking is meant to resist comprehension. Yet it comes out at you frenzied. It pummels you, it cajoles you, and it tumbles along, happily assuming its roly-poly poses. Notwithstanding the veneer of Marquez’s aggressively surrealistic, vertiginous, fun-house atmosphere that confronts the viewer in the preliminary stages of beholding the work at hand over time something haunting, even unsettling, permeates the work. This is the result of the artist’s highly sophisticated pictorial intelligence, which recognizes the value of indicating spatio-temporal involutions reminiscent on some level of the teasing work of Escher’s in order to draw the eye and the mind to the space of possibility that can only be aroused by enigma and paradox. The artist’s overall ideological ambition is to frame philosophical issues, which obviously compel him. These are set within an order of the mind intent on circulating questions around the designations of sameness and difference, separateness and integratedness, volition and the involuntary, destiny and fate. The artist is compelled by the presence of emerging (or emergent) energy; his intention is to bring into visual play visual analogies that refer to the affects of causality, as well as to the condition of dependence/interdependence/independence and to human agency itself. In Moral Divide for example the artist manages to incorporate the sensation of game-like space being co-habituated by floating globe-like structures. Their sieve-like openings allow us to peer within each sphere, into a private domain. Depictions of books, gravityless, hint at the insinuation of culture gone mad, of rationality now viewed as irrelevant and incidental as tumbleweeds whirling through ghost towns of yore, while natural laws are held in abeyance. This is a tough work, as it seems to be intent in depicting interior frames mind, caught adrift. It is work, which welcomes uncertainty and approves of unpredictability. It is a topsy-turvy, gravity-less world, which is depicted. The sensations of floating, separating, being broken up in pieces held aloft by womb-like yet permeable membranes, evoke the anxiety-ridden condition of being adrift in an ocean of time-space. This is depicted as exhilarating on one level yet one is clearly open in terms of being seen, open to the judgments of others. In some way Hold the Emperor Accountable deals a bit with this theme: the notion of exiting our everyday world and entering a continuum of non-separation from the things around us, being those things and those things being us In this image Truman Marquez allows us entry into a vision that signals the emergence of a new world. This world has internal worlds within it obvious for all to see, yet these internal folds in time and space are co-existent and self-contradictory, simultaneously. Marquez implies not only that the spatial body is dynamic and that this dynamic is the very condition which allows the world to become manifest in and through consciousness. In a broad sense Marquez depicts a determinate world where objects can begin to co-exist simultaneously. The artist teases out another riddle from this presupposition. He seems to be questioning the very condition of dynamic spatiality and effect on the body. Here I use the body in both its narrowest and its widest sense; body of being, human body, body of mind, space, thought, time etc. Is the body in control of its own physical destiny (or determination)? And if so how are we to picture the indeterminate horizons (both internal and external in the sense of physiological and in terms of outside stimuli) which signal to becoming manifest to us that the world is emerging. On another level Marquez’s Hold the Emperor Accountable work seems to suggest that there is a supra-mundane world that not only co-exists with the world of empiricism and intellectualisms but also is bound within the groundedness of reality. The slippage from ties of social conditioning is further implicated through Marquez’s depiction of unopened manacles hovering in space unencumbered by the condition of usefulness, the signifier of restriction itself set free. Hold the Emperor Accountable explores through various depictions the spatiality of the body itself and mobility. Its vision asserts that there is a continuum of thought-perceptions which validates and nullifies the condition of what might be called “the sensory givens’ of physiological and somatic existence. There seems to be on the part of the artist a desire to suggest the condition of subjectivity and objectivity held in balance: “I” and “Me” conflated. In some way the narrative that is suggested in this remarkable work is that the phenomenal body does not so much respond with its habitual gestures, with the body as “author” of its movements. Instead we receive the distinct impression from examining the painter’s imagery that the body (as object) seems to be “triggered off” by a situation, a situation over which the subject-object body has no control. Such concerns relating to the synthetic unity of the senses and sensory powers (and others) can be seen in Marquez’s painting The Painter Contemplates the Fifth Wall.” It depicts a painter holding his brush and palette, his body and gestures existing (or trapped?) in a tri-partite continuum consisting of floating spheres. In the painting the viewer can observe that this abridged and condensed body image has been placed in a four sided space. Its walls are covered by four paintings which highlight strong moments within avant-garde painting: pivotal landmark paintings by Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol. The floor line, not surprisingly, represented by a quadrille which is painted to resist one-point perspective, abnegating the Brunelleschi-space that refers to harmonious control and self-determination through rigorous and consistent spatial mapping of the ground, let us say, of existence. Instead, treatment of the floor, the ground of experience, consist in making it appear to tip over onto itself, indicating a journey into doubt and slippage and brings into focus temporality itself within our lived-world experience. The artist alludes to the questioning of ontological premises and brings into play a set of considerations referring to the task of the artist which is to integrate himself (or herself) within the stream of teleological history and historical conventions. This task also includes the recognition that at some point a resistance of this quadrant of “knowingness” must be put into play. This refusal allows the artist to innovate (thus renovating the past) through present actions. Optimally, Marquez seems to be implying, the artist should end up, culturally speaking, as being seen in a space which is in advance to knowledge (and history) itself.Truman Marquez’s paintings are remarkable images, which contain spaces that refer to primary temporality seen as a dynamic unity whose dimensions overlap one another while never co-inciding. His work suggest that he has given great care to recognize that questions leading to subjectivity and non-coincidence immediately introduces our awareness that time guarantees its openness to the Other, the very condition which allows for shared participation in the common creating of meaning. What we can all share in the viewing of this work is an artist engaged in the process of creation whose very subject is creation itself. This tautological, self-referencing engagement on the part of the artist leads the viewer to a space of wonderment, carnival vertigo.

D. F. Coleman is an arts writer based in Manhattan.

Kalashnikov Orb: Nail Rain Series

Utilizing geometric abstraction the artist cast a cynical eye on the current wave of fundamentalism we are witness to in the twenty-first century. Playfully, he strategically places iconic imagery in unexpected places, in shadows or pixilated on the tips of cylinders. Specifically, in "Kalashnikov Orb" the viewer will find the iconic figure of Christ lying in repose with his feet projected toward the viewer on the cylinder heads. Here the artist incorporates the same foreshortening of Christ’s figure depicted in Mantegna’s famous masterwork (The Lamentation over the Dead Christ). Upon closer examination one finds a Kalashnikov rifle symbolic of Middle Eastern violence. It lay covertly on the lower half of the orb in the shadows of the poles. In the lower left corner one finds in the shadow of the orb a subtle image of a monk praying. Placed before the monk is the shadow in the shape of a cross on a hill which is formed by the geometric forms floating above. As in other paintings, the foreground holds symbolic nails which in this piece represent dual meanings. Here they serve as a reminder of life’s dangers and hardships and to the suffering of Christ. Their suspension adds to the surealism of the work.

The Burghers of Calais From Above

This painting is based upon a famous sculpture by Rodin. This bronze is on display at the Metropolitan and is one of Rodin’s landmark pieces. It was commissioned to memorialize the tragic tale of the city of Calais which was overtaken by King Edward III. The city elders of Calais offered themselves up as sacrifice to the king’s troops to preclude the slaughter of the town’s women and children. The statue seems a fitting condemnation of imperialism in all its manifestations. The artist has painted the sculpture from above providing a unique perspective and is retelling the story as if it were an ominous warning.

Severed Voting Fingers Cast a Shadow over Doubt

Utilizing symbol and shadow the artist alludes to one potential outcome of the Iraq war. The purple tipped fingers are a clear reference to Iraqi voting practices yet, in this piece the woman dressed in a black burka is using a pair of scissors to auto-amputate her own finger, implying that the Iraqi people are responsible for their own chances for implementing a democracy. Again, the artist employs the technique of placing floating objects (severed fingers) in a gravity-less world. He is also hiding loaded iconic imagery within shadows. The floating fingers cast a shadow on the blood red floor. In these shadows the viewer will find the dead body of a U.S. service man along with his rifle and helmet.

Call Me Horse For Now

Throughout the artist career he has substituted a horse for himself in many of his works. This ploy is reminiscent of many paintings whereby Picasso substituted a bull as his alter-ego. Centrally located, standing tall upon his hind legs the horse towers over the human figures below. Notably, the artist again uses the perspective of painting figures from above as if the viewer were looking from the vantage point of the seeing eye of God. This approach, used over and over again is one of the hallmarks of many of Marquez’s works. The horse stands erect as a feverish mob acts out the narrative below. The artist utilizes four milestones from twentieth century painting, portraying a scene of chaos where the figures appear to be cutting and tearing up the paintings.

Jerry Saltz's recent essay in the Village Voice “Seeing Dollar Signs,-is the art market making us stupid?” is cogent to the narrative of this particular painting. Saltz writes, “To some, the art market is a self-help movement, a private consumer vortex of dreams, a cash-addled image-addicted drug that makes consumers prowl art capitals for the next paradigm shift. This set seeks out art that looks like things they already know: anything resembling Warhol, Richter, Koons, Tuymans, Prince, and Wool could be good; any male painter in his thirties could be great.”

Enlisting this premise the artist parodies the contemporary art world illuminati and in so doing suggests a paradox. Explicitly this self referential narrative conveys a sense of fatigue and frustration which is palpable on the part of this artist as is surely representative of most living artists working today, yet the central figure’s posture and placement would suggest the subtle nuance of hope. The artist recalls a quote by Tom Wolfe, “The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art …is merely Romantic fiction….The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.”

TRUMAN MARQUEZ RESUME

EDUCATION: 1981 BS., Georgetown College, Georgetown,KY1983 MS.,Louisville, KY

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

New Art Center, ConTemplate: New York, NY Nov. 1-25, 2006

El Taller Gallery, Austin, TX Oct. 1-26, 2006

Infusion Gallery, Los Angeles, CA May-June 2005

Fairmount Gallery, Dallas, TX 2004

Houston College, Central Campus, Houston TX / “A BUMPY RIDE” 2003

Ann Wright Wilson Center for the Arts, Georgetown College, Georgetown, KY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

MIWAA ,New York, NY, Oct. 3-27 (Currated by Dominique Nahas, Former Director Neuberger Museum), Sunny Purchase, NY 2005

Span Art Gallery Invitational, Tokyo, Japan, 2001

Japanese International Exhibition, Museum of Modern art, Saitama, Japan 1999

SAI Gallery, Budapest, Hungary 1997

Museo de la Ciudad, International Group Exhibition, Madrid, Spain 1988

Salon des Artistes, New York, NY 1987

Salon des Artistes, New York, NY 1986

Salon des Artistes, New York, NY

MUSEUMS

FLINT INSTITUTE OF ART, Flint, MI, http://www.flintarts.org/ “Immpardronirsi Immortaliata”
oil on canvas 120 in. x 96 in. Acquired for permanent collection of the museum 10/2006

PUBLICATION

http://www.interviews.com/ Intro: Marisa Damel, Mauricio Saravia Interviews Truman Marquez

© Artist Interviews 7/2002 International Ecomomy, Helmut Schroder,German Finance Minister - Cover Story. “Immpadronirsi Immortaliata” 120 in. x 96 in. pg.26, 9/1/1999

CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

Chelsea Hotel, west 23rd. St. New York, NY “Yellow Violin” oil canvas 72” x 72”

Capitol Surgeons Group, Central Headquarters Austin, Texas