Artstar
| Artstar | |
|---|---|
| Created by | Christopher Sperandio & James Fuentes |
| Starring | Jeffrey Deitch |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Production | |
| Running time | 46 minutes |
| Release | |
| Original network | Gallery HD |
| Original release | June 1 – July 19, 2006 |
Artstar is an unscripted reality television series set in the New York City art world, considered to be the first in the visual arts. Selected from an open call of over 400 applicants, eight artists participate in a group exhibition at Deitch Projects with the opportunity for a solo exhibition as well. The program documents the selected artists as they interact with leading critics, curators, collectors, and artists in New York, while making new works as part of the collaborative exhibition.
Critics/curators featured on the program include Barbara Pollack, Debra Singer, David Rimanelli, Carlo McCormick, RoseLee Goldberg, Cary Leitzes, Alan Vega, Yvonne Force, James Fuentes and Mark Fletcher. Established artists interacting with the selected emerging artists include Jeff Koons, Kehinde Wiley, Jon Kessler, Lee Quinones and Steve Powers.
In the second episode of the series, the Artstars were asked to participate in The Art Parade, a Deitch Projects event where artists, performers and designers were invited to create floats, placards, spectacles and street performances. The Artstars were less than enthusiastic about the prospect (Abigail Deville is quoted in The New York Times on May 28, 2006 as saying, "I mean, come on, a parade?"). Christian Dietkus, one of the other artists, confronted Jeffrey Deitch about whether or not an actual Artstar exhibition would also be part of the television program, as originally promised. Deitch was vague about specifics at the time but promised that there would be a gallery show at some point.
On February 9, 2006, Deitch Projects opened the Artstar exhibition to the public, showcasing the culminating product of the Artstars' individual efforts during the program. Anney Fresh created a giant polar bear with its head stuck in a crate. Visitors could comb the bear's hair and look into the crate to see the bear's dreams. Virgil Wong exhibited a twenty foot tall mural depicting a walking figure composed of both paint and digital 3-D video projections. Visitors to the gallery could inject medical nanotechnology into the body using a video game controller, and a pool of moving MRI brain images reflected in a Zen-like garden.
Virgil Wong is an NEA grant recipient and a multimedia artist who creates installations, films, and paintings that visualize future medical technologies. Virgil received his fine arts degree from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where he studied figure drawing, Renaissance painting techniques, film making/animation, bronze-casting and print-making. Virgil also studied medicine/technology at Harvard Medical School (Continuing Medical Education) and human anatomy at the University of Rome Medical School. Over the past ten years, his work has been screened in venues like the Sundance Film Festival and exhibited in museums around the world, including the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei and the Museum of Image and Sound in São Paulo. He is a graduate faculty member at The New School, and he is also head of web development at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and Cornell University's Weill Medical College - where he is developing new media applications for patient care, medical education, and research.
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