45+ top contemporary artists. Four days. Extraordinary impact. Opening October 22, 2014 at Pace Gallery, FIERCE CREATIVITY is a selling exhibition benefitting Artists for Peace and Justice. We are blown away by the enormous talent and artistic vision of our curators and 49 participating artists and their commitment to education as a fundamental human right. APJ Advisory Board Members and curators of FIERCE CREATIVITY, meet Chuck Close and Jessica Craig-Martin.
“When every kid on the block wanted to become a policeman or fireman, I wanted to be an artist. It was the first thing that I was good at, the first thing that really made me special. I had skills the other kids didn’t have,” says Chuck Close in his biography Up Close (1998). “Art saved my life.”
Chuck Close is a visual artist noted for his highly inventive techniques used to paint the human face, and is best known for his large-scale, photo-based portrait paintings. He is also an accomplished printmaker and photographer whose work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in more than 20 countries, including major retrospective exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid and most recently at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. An award winning artist, Mr. Close was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 2000. Close is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was appointed by President Obama to serve on The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.
“For us Artists for Peace and Justice is different,” say Craig-Martin and Close in the FIERCE CREATIVITY Catalog’s opening letter. “We’ve both been directly involved in APJ and know the work first hand. APJ is focused on results. There’s no big bureaucracy and no exorbitant administrative costs. At APJ we see vital schools that grow each year with more buildings, improved programs and increased scholarships.”
Jessica Craig-Martin has been a professor of photography at the School of Visual Arts for 10 years. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Guggenheim Museum, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The New Museum, New York, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid. Her editorial photography has been featured in publications including Vogue, Vanity Fair, W Magazine, The New Yorker, Self Service, The New York Times Magazine, Purple, NOWNESS, Italian Vogue, and Bald Ego. She is currently writing a book about her experiences growing up in the art worlds of New York and London.
“Our actions today, in this bold new world, require us more than ever to act together, to use our voices and our talents to help usher progress and solutions forward. We must do so quite fiercely, if we are to make a real difference.”
Please join Chuck Close, Jessica Craig-Martin, and Artists for Peace and Justice on October 22, 2014 for the opening reception of FIERCE CREATIVITY at New York City’s Pace Gallery.
