ABOUT OUR VISION

“Point Counter Point” is a multidisciplinary, interactive, and dynamic relationship between visual art and music.  It juxtaposes these two creative elements without putting them into a hierarchy. There is no judgment of value, no declaration of importance. It is our statement that Miami is not only a destination for visual arts, but also for other disciplines as well, music being one of them. We are ready, as local entities, to provide first class quality. We strongly believe in communication, dialogue, and art without frontiers.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

“Point Counter Point” is jointly presented by the Dranoff International 2 Piano Foundation and Alejandra von Hartz Gallery as a preview event for Art Basel Miami. Piano Duo van Veen, featuring Maarten and Jeroen van Veen, former winners of the Dranoff International 2 Piano Competition, will perform a concert of two-piano music by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky as well as contemporary classical music, based on thematic relationships to the art work on view in the gallery. Along with the salon-style concert, guests of this invitation only event will be able to preview the Art Basel exhibit organized by Alejandra von Hartz, featuring works by Brazilian artist Artur Lescher, American artists Matthew Deleget and Russell Maltz, and Venezuelan artist Odalis Valdivieso.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

PIANO DUO VAN VEEN (b. Herwen en Aerdt, Netherlands). Jeroen and Maarten van Veen are brothers. Jeroen began piano studies at the age of seven. In 1993, he passed the performing Artists’ Exam At the Utrecht Conservatory and since then he has performed with orchestras in the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary and in the United States. He has been heard in Recital in Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Russia, and the United States. Maarten studied at the conservatories of Utrecht, Prague and Amsterdam and has specialized in the performance of contemporary music. He has become known and sought after his conducting as well as his piano Artistry and is the head of the Hortus Festival. Piano Duo van Veen won the 1995 Dranoff International 2 Piano Competition. They have toured Europe, the United States and Canada, and have recorded dozens of CDs, many of them chart toppers

MATTHEW DELEGET (b. Hammond, IN) is an abstract painter, curator, and writer. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions in the United States, Europe, and Australasia.  Matthew has received awards from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, Brooklyn Arts Council, and The Golden Rule Foundation, and his work has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, Flash Art, Artnet Magazine, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and Basler Zeitung, among others.  Matthew is a member of American Abstract Artists and his work is included in private, public, and corporate collections worldwide. In 2003, Matthew co-founded MINUS SPACE, a platform for reductive art on the international level based in Brooklyn, NY. Since 2006, Matthew has curated more than 40 solo and group exhibitions at both MINUS SPACE’s gallery in Brooklyn, as well as other collaborating venues on the national and international levels.  In March, he co-curated the exhibition MINUS SPACE en Oaxaca, which highlighted the work of 31 artists from 10 countries presented across 5 museums in Oaxaca, Mexico.Matthew holds an MFA in Painting and an MS in Theory, Criticism and History of Art, Design and Architecture from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He holds a BA in Art and German from Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN.

ARTUR LESCHER (b. São Paulo, Brazil) obtained nationwide recognition as a result of his participation in the 19th Biennial of São Paulo, 1987. There he presented Aerólitos, which consisted of two balloons of eleven feet long, one inside the Pavilion of the exhibition and the other outside, each one in dialogue with the other. In 2002, for the 25th Biennial of São Paulo, he created Indoor Landscape, two modules of regular forms installed on the floor, one wooden and the other consisting of canvas and water; creating a space of frictioninside the building designed by Oscar Niemeyer. By juxtaposing solid geometric structures and materials that have characteristics of impermanence or inconsistency, like water, oil, and salt, Lescher emphasizes the imponderable or disquiet, as noted by critic and curator, Agnaldo Farias. He also participated in the Mercosul Visual Arts biennial exhibition, Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2005. Participations in collective exhibitions include: Incomplete, Centro Cultural Landscape of Usiminas, Ipatinga, Brazil (2010); Memorial Revisited – 20 years, Latin America Memorial (2009); Almost Liquid, Itaú Cultural (2008); 80 | 90 Modern Post-modern etc., at Tomie Ohtake Institute (2007), all in São Paulo, Brazil. Amongst his most recent solo exhibitions are: Inabsência, Pinacoteca do Estado de  São Paulo, Brazil, Meta-metric,  Galeria OMR, Colonia Roma, México (2011); Rio Maquina, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil. His works are en in important private and public collections such as Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo and MAM-SP, both in São Paulo, Brazil; MALBA Museum, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Houston Museum of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, both in the United States. He has also exhibited his work in Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, USA and France.

RUSSELL MALTZ (b. Brooklyn, NY) has exhibited work in solo and group exhibitions internationally, including in Australia, Germany, Austria, Italy, Israel, Mexico and New Zealand.  His recent solo exhibitions include Galerie Michael Sturm (Stuttgart Germany), Galleri Weinberger (Copenhagen, Denmark), The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (Atlanta, GA), Galerie Schlegl (Zurich, Switzerland), and the Ringling School of Art and Design (Sarasota, FL). His work is included in many public and private collections worldwide, including The Brooklyn Museum (New York), Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT), Fogg Art Museum/Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA), Museum Moderner Kunst (Ottendorf, Germany), and the Gallery of Western Australia (Perth, Australia).  His work has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times, Artforum, Art in America, and Village Voice, among many others. Russell Maltz lives and works in New York City.

ODALIS VALDIVIESO (b. Caracas, Venezuela) is a visual artist, professor, and collaborator of various artist-run projects. She lives and works in Miami since 2000 and has been featured in exhibitions such as Practices Remain, Regina Rex, Queens, Recent Works, Le Cloître et L’église des Billettes, Paris, SET, Bridge Red Studios – Project Space, North Miami, Noise Field, Dorsch Gallery, Miami, New Work Miami 2010, Miami Art Museum, Miami, After Process, Miami Beach Regional Library, Ocupa, Far Side Gallery, Miami, Urban Interventions, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, El Rosario, Talking Heads, Girls Club, Fort Lauderlade, Fragile Global Performance Chain Journey, Florence, and Intrude 366, Zendai MOMA, Shanghai, to name a few.

ABOUT DRANOFF INTERNATIONAL 2 PIANO FOUNDATION

For 25 years, the Dranoff International 2 Piano Foundation has been the world’s leading organization to champion exclusively two-piano repertoire and artistry. It is the only international foundation recognized by the World Federation of International Music Competition that discovers, promotes, and awards honors to top Professional duo piano artists through its competition, commissions, and presentations of duo piano concerts. The Dranoff also promotes awareness to a new Generation of students of the transformational power of music and the arts through its multi-disciplinary, educational, and inspirational concert program, Piano Slam. The Dranoff is one of the key world-class performing arts organizations headquartered in Miami-Dade County. The Dranoff’s activities span the globe, thus creating abroad a positive image of the city and the high artist standards that exist there. It also exposes its home audience to major international artists,  thereby creating a cultural bridge to foster universal understanding and respect through music.

ABOUT ALEJANDRA von HARTZ GALLERY

Alejandra von Hartz Gallery opened in 2002, coinciding with the first edition of Art Basel Miami Beach. Its mission is to promote and explore contemporary, non-objective, constructive and conceptual art by emerging and established artists of growing national and international reputation, with a focus in Latin American art, and geometric abstraction. To this end, we: promote emerging artists, in both traditional and experimental exhibitions; promote established artists in their creative endeavor to produce new bodies of work; participate in art fairs worldwide, strike strategic alliances with other like minded galleries, and serve as trusted consultants and advisers, to numerous collectors, museums, and other institutions. The gallery has always explored the ever expanding interconnectedness and creative dialogue of the globalized contemporary art scene.