Arnold Wechsler	Resume   Images
Arnold Wechsler has been a part of the New York art scene for over thirty years and gained international recognition with his avant garde works in the early 1970's. Begining in 1995, he has sought to integrate his traveling interest and painting experience with current computer technology. Included in this exhibit are works using the technique known as Giclee, a form of digital imaging. Educated at The School of Visual Arts and Columbia University in New york City, he was an early creater and director of Visual Arts Productions (VAP), which produced programs for Manhattan Cable TV and co-founder of the Organization of Independent Artists (OIA). These activities provided a forum for artists in mass media as well as bringing art into public spaces. His abstract paintings have been inspired by popular cultures, often reflected in works that balance the organic and geometric form with native pictographs. His patterned subject matter draws on decorative aspects ranging from Moroccan tiles to New England icons and Oriental calligraphy to the visual characteristics of the female form. Wechsler has also been profoundly influenced by indigenous cultures of the Americans, having visited the Lacandon Mayas of Southern Mexico, the Incas of Bolivia and Peru and the Native American communites of South Dakota and Alaska. His work is cosmopolitan in the truest sense of the word. Through the processes of assimilation and engagment, whether by wandering the hills of Japan or Guatemala or working in the former Soviet Union completing detailed proposals for the modification of public monuments, Wechsler has brought added significance to the role of artists as global explorer and documentor. Wechsler's recent work deals with the intersection between the outside world and the visual world of the computer. Wechsler takes Polaroids of the view from his windows and manipulates them digitally. He then paints the view of the Polaroid as a scanned image in the photo-software program. While the original image is manipulated on the computer; the machine itself becomes a prop in a still life. Wechsler, who has been painting since the 1970's has shown his work extensively throughtout the world including New York, Washington D.C., Denver, Mexico City, Madrid, Paris, Bologna, Moscow and St. Petersburg. His work was recently reviewed in the February 2000 issue of Art in America.
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