THE NEW GRAND TOUR

June 4 – July 17, 2010

Opening Reception: Thursday June 3, 6-8pm

NEW YORK, NY, APRIL 30, 2010- BRYCE WOLKOWITZ GALLERY announces the opening of The
New Grand Tour. The original concept of the grand tour was born in the late
sixteenth century when it became fashionable for young aristocrats to visit the
great cities of Europe such as Paris, Venice, Florence, and Rome, as the culmination
of their classical education. As rail and steamship travel became more accessible,
the practice flourished and served as an educational rite of passage for Englishmen,
Germans, French and Americans alike. The goal of The New Grand Tour is to revive,
re-invent, redefine, and change the old concept by venturing well beyond a voyage
for the privileged elite. Instead, The New Grand Tour would become a mechanism for a
group of unique and talented artists to interact with foreign cultures in an
appreciative and organic way, rather than simply as voyeurs.

Beginning on October 20, 2007, Young Kim was joined by Deanne Cheuk, José Parlá, Rey
Parlá, Rostarr and Davi Russo for thirteen days of travel in the Far East. They
began in Shanghai heading for the remote Yunnan Province, in search of the mystical
city of Shangri la. With James Hilton’s novel, Lost Horizon as their guide, their
journey took them through the beautiful valleys, rivers and lakes between the border
of Yunnan Province and Tibet, through the Mei Li Snow Mountains and eventually to
Beijing. While on this journey, each artist created new works within their
respective medium, inspired by the places they visited during their travels.

This wide-ranging body of work, now showcased in The New Grand Tour exhibition,
brings together a diverse group of voices united through their individual and
collective experiences on this tour, which reflects both the visual and sensory
inspiration they encountered in the many destinations of this shared travelogue.
From Suitman’s humorous snapshot portraits of Tsitang school children to José
Parlá’s densely layered paintings the works in this exhibition show how materiality
and subject intertwine to make an image of their journey. Deanne Cheuk’s meticulous
drawings and colorful watercolors inspired by the Shangri La landscape take us
there. While the free form calligraphy in Rostarr’s graphic paintings and filmmaker
Rey Parlá’s exploration of narrative storytelling through his unique process of
distressing and treating celluloid negatives reflect the visual and written, much
like the Chinese character as word. Photographer Davi Russo’s snapshots of the
sights and sounds he encountered on the journey give a raw and immediate sense to
the overall experience.

For more information please contact Amanda Wilkes at amanda@brycewolkowitz.com

or (212) 243-8830.

505 W24th Street, New York, NY 10011

t 212 234 8300 f 212 243 8620, info@brycewolkowitz.com,
www.brycewolkowitz.com

THE NEW GRAND TOUR: ABOUT THE ARTISTS
YOUNG KIM, Tibetan kids, 2007, chromogenic color prints on inkjet
paper, 72 x 60 inches
   DEANNE CHEUK, The View Up Here (Part 1), 2010, charcoal, acrylic on  
paper, 18 x 24 inches 
 
JOSÉ PARLÁ, Century: New Pathways, 2010, acrylic and pigment on
paper, 42 x 80 inches
 
505 W24th Street, New York, NY 10011
t 212 234 8300 f 212 243 8620, info@brycewolkowitz.com,
www.brycewolkowitz.com
SUITMAN and YOUNG KIM have been together for over
twenty years. They quickly became creative collaborators
making an onslaught of photographs, videos, installations,
and design objects that followed suit. Together they have
traveled through six continents, hundreds of cities and
created thousands of images. Their work is insightful,
personal, relevant, highly engaging and always surprising.
Their projects have been published in a wide range of
culture, art and lifestyle publications. They have
exhibited widely in both solo and group exhibitions in New
York, Paris, Barcelona, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Osaka, Hong Kong,
Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Shanghai, and Beijing.
DEANNE CHEUK is an artist and designer. Born in Perth,
Australia, where she lived alongside the Swan River until
her move to New York in 2000. Cheuk attributes her love of
fantasy, other worlds and space to her upbringing and youth
spent out-of-doors.
Working predominately on paper with charcoal or watercolor,
she always touches on nature, utopia, space and being;
often distorting realistic representation into fantasy. She
has exhibited her work around the world, most recently in
Mexico, Los Angeles, and Sydney.
In 2004, Cheuk published her first book of drawings of
girls and mushrooms called Mushroom Girls Virus. It sold
out immediately.
JOSÉ PARLÁ was born in South Florida to Cuban parents.
In 1983 Parlá was painting on city walls before he began to
experiment on canvas to adapt and translate the derelict
environment of urban cityscapes to a more permanent medium.
He studied at the Savannah College of Art and Design in
Georgia as well as The New World School of the Arts in
Miami, Florida. In the early days of his career, mostly
known by the name Ease, Parlá painted alongside the
legendary Bronx artist Case 2, while exhibiting works with
the Ink Heads and Barnstormers art collectives. In 2003 he
was featured in the Boomerang exhibition with Lee Quiñones
and ROSTARR and later in 2007 the two-person show Pirate
Utopias in London with Futura. In 2003 Parlá's work was
selected by Agnes B. for the New York Scene exhibition in
Paris. Manon Slome featured his work with Mimmo Rotella in
the 2004 curated exhibit Hollywood to the Street. His work
was also selected for the Hi & Lo exhibition in Tokyo’s Kai
Kai Ki Ki Gallery by Takashi Murakami and Hiroshi Fujiwara
of honeyee.com in 2009. Parlá describes the object of his
method in which each painting bears the name of the
location or experience as “segmented realities” or “memory
documents.” This has led him to form a personal philosophy
of his work he calls “Contemporary Palimpsests.”
  
REY PARLÁ (b. 1971) in Miami, Florida — lives and works
in Brooklyn, New York. He studied Film and Film Theory at
the Alliance Film & Video Co–operative in Miami Beach with
Doris Wishman, Mark Boswell and Cuban filmmaker Sergio
Giral. He continued studies in Art History and Photography
at Miami Dade Community College and received a B.A. in
English Literature and Film Studies with honors from
Florida International University.
Rey is a self-taught artist and filmmaker. His abstract
Visual Music animations have screened alongside works by
Stan Brakhage and other critical atmospheric adjusters in
galleries, museums and films festivals. Inspired by his
brother José, Rey also began to paint what he calls
“Scratch | Graphs,” single photo–negative frames.
Influenced by the tradition of Dziga Vertov and
experimental film, Rey carries on this practice by creating
complex kinetic films; the source, process and origin of
his hand–painted and scratched still images. 
 
REY PARLÁ, Modulator/Operartor: Redacted Frame No. 8, 2010, scanned
4 x 5 inch mixed media photo-negative, 50 x 40 inches

  ROSTARR a.k.a., Romon Kimin Yang is a multi-disciplinary

 
 
 
 
ROSTARR, Praefectus T.A.R. (Tibetan Autonomous Region), 2010,
acrylic on canvas, 36 x 66 inches
artist, painter, calligrapher and filmmaker living and
working in Brooklyn, New York. ROSTARR graduated from The
School of Visual Arts where he studied experimental graphic
design and printmaking. Early in his career he managed to
produce work in both the art and graphic design spheres,
blurring the lines between the two. For the past 15 years
he has become widely known for his colorful abstract
polymorphic paintings, totemic iconographic characters and
mostly black and white calligraphic drawings. Always
creating in a spontaneous manner, he is continually
striving to find freedom within style, medium and form, and
building upon the iconographic visual language he terms
“Graphysics,” a word that exemplifies the geometric
dynamism characteristic in his work. Since 1999 ROSTARR has
also been a influential and core member of the group
Barnstormers, a collective of approximately 40 artists. In
2000, he was named one of i-D Magazine’s “i-D 40 under 30.”
The Association of Independent Commercial Producers
recognized his contribution to a celebrated Nike campaign
as an honoree at the 2004 show held at the Museum of Modern
Art. In February 2010, his 45-minute motion painting film
Kill The Ego was shown at the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
ROSTARR has had exhibitions on both the national and
international stage, most notably as part of the esteemed
Beautiful Losers show, which has toured museums and
contemporary art centers worldwide.

DAVI RUSSO was born in 1978 in Manhattan. He was

raised, and lives and works in NYC. Photography came early
in his life. When he was seven, his father was incarcerated
and his mother gave him a camera to document parts of his
daily life. These pictures were sent to his father along
with letters to keep him involved and updated in the
family’s life. To this day, he is still sending photos to
his father. He remembers that buying film was cheap,
although processing was expensive. So shooting rolls of
film was easy, but then the rolls would accumulate around
his house, sometimes for years before being developed, if
at all. Sometimes just the act of shooting the pictures
seemed more important then ever seeing them. Russo has come
to enjoy the time lapse between shooting and working with
images. The process of “living” (shooting, editing, saving,
 
  forgetting, re-finding, printing, destroying) with an image
in order to get a sense of its worth tells a lot about each
paper, 19 x 28 inches 
DAVI RUSSO,Tibetan Whispers, 2008, pigment print on fiber base
images personal value to him.

The camera is my excuse to meet, look, and collaborate with

people. A threesome so to think. Images are like letters
that I collect, and eventually try to form words, phrases
and sentences.

Contact: For further information on Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery, please visit www.brycewolkowitz.com or
call Amanda Bhalla Wilkes at (212) 243 8830.

505 W24th Street, New York, NY 10011

t 212 234 8300 f 212 243 8620, info@brycewolkowitz.com,
www.brycewolkowitz.com