“URBAN EXPOSURES”
Opens at the Bronx River Art Center

Two Views of the Urban Environment:
Paintings and Collages by
Rodriguez Calero in Gallery 1
Paintings by Valeri Larko in Gallery 2

Exhibition Runs March 17 - April 22, 2006
Opening Reception: Friday, March 17, 2006, 6 - 9 P.M.

Special Performance for Women's History Month

Adela Dalto
Friday, March 24, 8pm
by reservation

Gallery Hours
Monday-Friday 2:30-6:30
Saturday 11-5

Bronx, NY……. Bronx River Art Center is pleased to present two artists who look at the urban environment and paint what they see. This exhibition, which opens with a reception on Friday evening, March 17th, shows two distinct views of urban life, in, and around, New York City. Valeri Larko looks out at the fringes of the metropolis where the city’s refuse and expanding infrastructures impose on the natural landscape. Rodriguez Calero looks behind the outer shell of hip-hop culture, into the soulful and emotional human pulse of our society. The artists will be present at the reception to discuss their work.

Valeri Larko’s representational paintings of decayed industrial sites depict a collision of urban culture and its surrounding natural landscape. Working on-site, Larko’s ironically serene paintings, which are bathed in atmospheric light, present a juxtaposition of beauty and pathos
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that emerges from contemporary society’s assault on the environment. Larko’s paintings are intimate and enticing, as they reveal the beauty and potential in forgotten urban wastelands. Her subjects are areas around the New York City Metropolitan area, including the New Jersey flatlands, New Rochelle (where she now lives) and sites along the Bronx River in the South Bronx. Her intention is to alter our perception of mundane places and objects by alerting us to the spaces in our peripheral vision.

Through a unique painting technique called “Acrollage Painting”, Rodriguez Calero reconfigures the character and personality of our popular culture, by literally and figuratively snipping away at the human pulse of the city. The transcendent effect she achieves, through a mixed-media combination of transparent acrylic paint and cut paper, allows her to elevate the ordinary into iconic stature. Rodriguez Calero’s signature style of glazing and stenciling luminous and metallic colors, interspersed with cut paper of magazine images, offers an inspired and symbolic depiction of urban people in their everyday lives on the streets of New York. Juxtaposing these two artists’ works in adjoining galleries presents a play on the “looking in/looking out” dialectic that together offers a pyridine shift on how we see ourselves in our contemporary lives.

Valeri Larko grew up in Northern New Jersey and received art training at the Du Cret School of the Arts in Plainfield, NJ and the Arts Student League in New Your City. She currently resides in a newly developed artist loft building in New Rochelle. Larko has exhibited throughout the New York Metropolitan region including the New Jersey State Museum, The Safe-T-Gallery in Brooklyn, the Art Guild of Rahway, NJ and the corporate headquarters of Johnson and Johnson, also in New Jersey. Additionally, she was included in group exhibitions at the National Academy of Science in Washington DC and at MB Modern Gallery in New York City. Larko has received numerous public art commissions, including a mural for the Secaucus Transfer Station of the New Jersey Transit, which was supported by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Her work is in the collections of the Jersey City Museum, the Montclair Museum, the New Jersey State Museum, Johnson and Johnson, Rutgers University and numerous private collections.
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Rodriguez Calero was born in Puerto Rico and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has been an active artistic presence in the “El Barrios” of East Harlem and the Lower East Side of
Manhattan. Rodriguez began her art studies at the Institute of Culture, School of Fine Art in Puerto Rico, studying with Master Printmaker, Lorenzo Homar. She continued her studies in painting and collage at the Arts Student League in New York City under the tutelage of Leo Manso. Among her many honors are fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2005 Rodriguez Calero was one of six international artists chosen to represent the “Liquitex” company (the developers of acrylic paint) for their 50th anniversary. Rodriguez Calero also received artist residencies through the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the arts and the Provincetown Art Association. She has lived and worked in Spain, France and the Caribbean in addition to New York and New Jersey. Rodriguez Calero has had solo shows at museums, colleges and professional galleries through the NY Metro area including: the Jersey City Museum, Kenkeleba Gallery, Centro Gallery at Hunter College, Atlantic Gallery in Soho and the Taller Boricua Gallery in the Julia de Brugos Latino Cultural Center in East Harlem, NY. She has also exhibited nationally in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Long Island, New Mexico, Georgia and Florida.

  Digital Photographs are available upon request to               eschneiderman@bronxriverart.org

Travel Directions:
Train: IRT # 2 or 5 to East Tremont Ave. Walk one block east.
Bus: #s 9, 21, 36, 40, 42, or Q44 to East Tremont and Boston Road.
Car: Bruckner Expressway to the Sheridan Expressway and exit at Tremont Ave., or Cross Bronx Expressway to Rosedale Ave. Exit.

Credits:
This program is made possible with public funds from The New York State Council on the Arts a state agency. Additional support is provided by The New York City Department of Youth and Community Development and the Department of Cultural Affairs and it’s Material for the Arts program; Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion Jr. and The Bronx Delegation of the City Council. Corporate and foundation support includes: Time Warner; Youth Media and Arts Fund; The Carnegie Corporation; The New York Community Trust and The Helena Rubinstein Foundation. Additional support is provided by JP Morgan Chase through the New York State Multi Arts Consortium (NYMAC); the Ford Foundation through the Bronx Council on the Arts and the generosity of our patrons.

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