Johannes Van Der Beek

Fred Hoffman and Paul Young

Lauri Firstenberg

Juan Delgado Calzadilla, Elvia Rosa Castro, and Nelson Herrera Ysla

Garth Weiser

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee with Johnston Marklee Associates.

Stefan Simchowitz

Martin Lilja

PORTUGALARTE’10 comes from the collaborative vision of a diverse curatorial body: an architect, a journalist, a publisher, an artist, a professional curator, the head of a culture-related non-profit, and a collector. This interdisciplinary group embodies the spirit of inclusion and integration that PortugalArte10 will offer to both the cities of Lisbon and Grândola and the contemporary art community at large.

Stefan Simchowitz

Stefan Simchowitz has been involved in the field of creative industries and arts his entire life. He has produced 15 feature films, including the award winning independent movies The House Of Yes and Requiem For a Dream. As a co-founder of MediaVast Inc. (wireimage.com and contourphotos.com), the world’s leader in celebrity, fashion and other photographic content, he managed and brought together hundreds of artists such as David La Chapelle and Terry Richardson, to a first-class delivery platform for premium photographic imagery.

Simchowitz currently specializes as an independent consultant and curator to foundations interested in pursuing the exhibition and expansion of public/private contemporary art and architecture initiatives. His role as a strategic advisor involves the management and oversight of artistic partnerships with curators, artists that enable the exhibition, support and production of art, architecture and large-scale events that engage public audiences. His work with artists, foundations, events and art production has resulted in supporting shows at the Palais De Tokyo, Moca, Kunsthalle Zurich, Public Art Fund NYC, Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome, The Italian Cultural Institute and countless other institutions and galleries. He received a B.A. from Stanford University in California, and attended the American Film Institute in Los Angeles. He currently lives between Los Angeles, New York and Lisbon.

Inspired by the ever-proliferating networks of intangible media and communication, PortugalArte is a decentralized effort for a decentralized global community. It reflects a truly international, shared, and contemporary direction. It is with this intention that the organizers have chosen curators whose love and knowledge of and for contemporary art spills over into other disciplines closely aligned with the arts, design and architecture.

Fred Hoffman and Paul Young

FRED HOFFMAN has been actively involved in the field of Contemporary Art for the last 30 years. Having first worked in Academia as an associate professor in Contemporary Art History, he moved into the fields of exhibitions and distribution, first as a publisher of  prints  and multiples, and then opened one of the distinguished galleries focused on both established and emerging contemporary artists in the mid 1980s.  He  has worked with such notable artists as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Richard Serra, Frank Gehry, Robert Rauschenberg, Dan Flavin, Jenny Holzer, Sophie Calle, Tony Cragg, Mike Kelley, John McCracken and Chris Burden. He has also been instrumental in initiating the recent  careers of many young artists, including Elliott Hundley, Nick Lowe, Simmons and Burke. In recent years Fred Hoffman has published the major monograph on Chris Burden; curated the acclaimed retrospective of the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat (Brooklyn Museum and MOCA, LA); resumed his academic career as an instructor in the Dept of Fine Art at UCLA. In addition to his full time position as director of Fred Hoffman Fine Art, he is currently curatorial consultant for the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angles (Dennis Hopper Retrospective,) and curatorial consultant to the Jewish Museum, New York (Frank Gehry Fish Lamp Exhibition).

Paul Young is a journalist and curator based in Los Angeles. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Variety, Artnews and Art & Auction. He has also been an art columnist for both, the Los Angeles Times and AngelenoMagazine, and worked as an editor for Daily Variety. More recently, he authored Art Cinema (Taschen), a comprehensive overview of how art practices have converged with moving imagery throughout the 20^th Century, and he curates video programs and exhibitions worldwide. His recent curatorial efforts include “VideoRoam” at the Honor Fraser Gallery (Jan 10-May 20, 2010). Which consisted of 6 solo video shows by an array of contemporary artists; “CinemaLoop” at the 2010 edition of Arco in Madrid, and “Remote Viewing,” a large scale exhibition of international video art that debuted in Los Angeles (November 2009 – March 2010) and travels to the Arts Santa Monica Museum in Barcelona in May 2010.

Lauri Firstenberg

Founder and Director/Curator, LAXART, Los Angeles, CA

Lauri Firstenberg received her Ph.D. in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Harvard University in 2005. She founded LAXART in 2005 – the leading independent nonprofit exhibition space in Los Angeles. She is currently curating the 2008 California Biennial, Orange County Museum of Art. Exhibitions Firsenberg has curated at LAXART include Daniel Martinez: How I Fell In Love With My Dirty Bomb, Ruben Ochoa: Extracted, TOROLAB: SOS Emergency Architecture, Lisa Tan: One Night Stand, Michael Queenland: Museum of Romantic Life, Adria Julia: A Means of Passing the Time, amongst others. She co-curated with Anton Vidokle Image Bank for Everyday Revolutionary Life at the Gallery at REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/Calarts Theatre), 2006 and Isaac Julien: True North, and Amir Zaki: Spring Through Winter, Mak Center, 2005. Firstenberg was formerly the Assistant Director/Curator of the MAK Center for Art and Architecture and the Schindler House, Los Angeles and Curator of Artists Space, New York. She has contributed to a host of publications on contemporary art including Art Papers, Frieze, Contemporary, Flash Art, Nka, Art Journal, Parkett, Lab 71 amongst others. She is the founder of L’art a new online publication for contemporary art. She is Adjunct Faculty in the Public Art Program at USC Roski School of Art and at Sciarc, Los Angeles.

Cesar Garcia

Cesar Garcia received his BA in Political Science and Chicana/o Studies from UCLA in 2007 and his MA in Public Art Studies from USC in 2009.  He is currently a Eugene V. Cota-Robles Doctoral Fellow in Culture and Performance at UCLA’s Department of World Arts and Cultures and a 2009-2010 recipient of UCLA’s Chancellor’s Prize.

His current research draws from Post-Structuralism and Spatial/Architectural Theory to investigate artist-run spaces, new museology, and contemporary curatorial practices in Latin America.  Garcia is currently the Assistant Director and Curator of Public Art and Programs at LA><ART—Los Angeles’ leading independent non-profit contemporary art space supporting and presenting experimental exhibitions, public art initiatives, and publications with emerging and mid-career local, national, and international artists. He is the former Curator of Faculty/Student Exhibitions at the USC Gayle Garner Roski School of Fine Arts and a former Adjunct Curator at Estacion Tijuana, an artist-run space founded by Marcos Ramirez ERRE in Tijuana, Mexico. He was contributor to the 2008 California Biennial catalogue (Orange County Museum of Art, 2008) and to the exhibition catalogue for Death’s Boutique (Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2010).

Two of his new articles focusing on Mexico City’s alternative art schools and contemporary public practices in Tijuana, Mexico have been submitted for publication and are currently under peer-review. His current curatorial projects include Los Angeles-based artist Joel Kyack’s first public project, Supperclogger, slated for May-June 2010, and solo exhibitions with Tijuana-based artist Marcos Ramirez ERRE and Los Angeles-based artist Camilo Ontiveros, both slated for 2011-2012 at LA><ART. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.

Juan Delgado Calzadilla, Elvia Rosa Castro, Nelson Herrera Ysla

Juan Delgado Calzadilla, del Consejo Nacional de Artes Plásticas del Ministerio de Cultura de la isla, Elvia Rosa Castro, Nelson Herrera Ysla, Arquiteto, diretor do Centro Wilfredo Lam e curador da Bienal de Havana

Garth Weiser

Garth Weiser received a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University School of the Arts in 2005 and has had previous solo exhibitions at Guild & Greyshkul, New York and Kavi Gupta gallery, Chicago. In 2007. he participated in “Blackberrying,” at Christina Wilson, Copenhagen and “Destroy Athens,” The Athens Biennial, Greece. Other group exhibitions include, “Greater New York,” at PS1 MOMA, New York and “Hunch and Flail,” curated by Amy Silman at Artists Space, New York.

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee with Johnston Marklee Associates.

Featured extensively in national and international media, the repertoire of Johnston Marklee include the exhibition designs of nano at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Kaikai Kiki Merchandise Room of ©Murakami at the Museum of Contemporary Art; the structurally innovative Hill House in Pacific Palisades, CA; the color-specific Sale House in Venice, CA; the conjoined boutiques of Mameg and Maison Martin Margiela in Beverly Hills, CA; and the Writers-in-Residence Studies for the Lannan Foundation in Marfa, TX. Current projects include the Grand Traiano Art Complex in Grottaferrata, Italy; the View House in Rosario, Argentina, the Verdant Hills Hotel Villas in Jixian, China; and a Villa for the international ORDOS 100 project in Ordos, Inner Mongolia.

The firm has garnered several awards including the 2002 Progressive Architecture Design Award, the 2004 and 2006 AIA Los Angeles Honor Awards, the 2007 Merit Award from the AIA California Council, the 2007 American Architecture Award from the Chicago Athenaeum, the Honor Award from the Westside Urban Forum, the Design Award Citation from the AIA Los Angeles and P/A Awards from Architecture Magazine

Martin Lilja

Martin Lilja is a gallerist, curator, editor and writer based in Malmö, Sweden. He owns and directs LOYAL, an internationally recognized contemporary art gallery with a program representing many of the best developments in emerging American art of the last decade. The gallery and exhibition space was the natural progression from Loyal Magazine, founded as a curated art book in 2000.