Old Shoes - Black & White Digital Photography on Hahnemuhle Cotton Paper 20'' x 28'' Italian artist Alberto Quoco’s expressive photographs speak of an aesthetic fervor for the sensations of motion, stillness and time. In his early work as a dance photographer, he experimented with photography’s expressive possibilities in creating meaning as well as suggesting silent narratives. Since then, his work has explored the beauty created when light and shadow meet by capturing stunning architectural images, sensitive and penetrating portraiture, dramatic nature scenes and figurative works which range in mood from contemplative to erotic, from pensive to serene.
Alberto’s style varies according to his subject matter. Some of his work follows a realist tradition, focusing in vivid detail on everyday objects and elevating them to meaningful aesthetic themes. His work is also dreamlike, with time and motion appearing to stand still while the tactile qualities of the material world gain a transcendent luminosity.

Jane Sandes in her studio Brazilian artist Jane Sandes’ dazzling, bright and enigmatic resin sculptures evoke forms at once natural and artificial, familiar and mysterious. Her training and accomplishments as a painter, sculptor and architect are apparent in every folding, crinkled, curving shape. She uses color both to serve her expressive ends and as a pop art device, deploying strong tones like yellows and reds to evoke spry passion and humor. Each sculpture features only one color, one continuous component and material plane, with various levels, plateaus, ridges and rivets leading the eye through a series of movements and pauses over the entire piece. These integrated objects are, in fact, radically fragmented. Sandes acknowledges similarities between her work and that of Constantin Brancusi, but points to Donald Judd’s colorful minimalism as the more apt parallel. Like his abstract forms, her sculptures are simultaneously stripped and intricate, offering a smoothed and complete object whose multitudinous corners and contortions remain evasive.

In discussing the inspiration for these iconic objects, Sandes notes the influence of the architecture in the region of Brazil where she lives, the shapes and translucent qualities of waves and precious stones, and the visual motifs of shells and urban systems. Certain of her brighter, opaque pieces also resemble the peeled skin of some odd, octagonal fruit, its outer shell meticulously removed in one continuous strip of gleaming yellow. Regardless of the figurative objects they evoke, Sandes’ sculptures invite complete and total exploration from all sides and angles, calling to mind something akin to the three-dimensional equivalent of M.C. Escher’s famous staircases.