Gorden Burn: If you got to make a fool of somebody, who would it be? Damien Hirst: God de la Haba: Damien Hirst

NY Studio Gallery is pleased to host Dawn of a New Era, new work by de la Haba.

This exhibit by a New York born-and-raised bad boy paradoxically riffs on the richest artist in the world and opens on tax day. In response to Damien Hirst’s recent exhibit “The End of An Era”, where the conceptualist master was panned by the press for his technical abilities, multi-media artist and painter’s painter de la Haba has created new and never-before-seen oils depicting spring and renewal, rebirth, procreation, and apocalyptic imagery. The work fills a gap that New York Times critic Roberta Smith recently identified in her article “Post-Minimal to the Max.” “What’s missing,” she states, “is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand. A lot but not all of this kind of work is painting, which seems to be becoming the art medium that dare not speak its name where museums are concerned.”

The source imagery for de la Haba’s large scale oils is both the figure, de la Haba himself and his two young sons, and the epic Equus Maximus, made of three life-size taxidermy show-horses in full Vegas dance-hall regalia. Two are gray mares lying upon a broken casino table kicking under a rearing black stallion, all three displaying exaggerated sex organs. This emotionally provoking installation as well as the incarnations that follow are a well concerted bridge between Conceptualism, Eroticism, representation and most importantly perhaps, painting.

Apart from being an exceptionally skilled painter with a pedagogical lineage that stretches back to the great Neoclassicist Jacques-Louis David, de la Haba is a gambler in more ways than one. Hosting casino nights in his loft where a 14’ craps table takes center stage the artist spent more than 10 years at Belmont and Saratoga racetracks handicapping the ponies-and winning, to the point where he became horse owner, stepping into the winner’s circle on more than one occasion (hence the horse iconography in his work). Selected solo and group exhibitions by de la Haba include: “Equus Maximus” Jack the Pelican Presents “Queens International 4” Queens Museum, Pool art fair 2010, Gershwin Hotel. Trash Art Museum, Munich. Salzburg arts festival, Austria. Bridge art fair, Miami “Surfboards and Skateboards” World Erotic Art Museum of Art.”

Raúl Zamudio Taylor is a New–York based independent curator and critic. He was Art Director, Other Gallery, Shanghai; and Director of Exhibitions, White Box, NY. He has curated over 60 exhibitions in the Americas, Asia and Europe. Recent exhibitions include co-curator, 2009 Beijing 798 Biennale, co-curator, 2008 Seoul Media Art Biennale, and artistic director, 2008 Yeosu International Contemporary Art Festival. As a critic, he has authored over 200 texts published in books, encyclopedias, museum and gallery exhibition catalogs, magazines and journals.