“Translations of Being Through Sight and Sound”
Shooka Afshar, Soprano, Anthony Cardella, Piano
Shane Guffogg, International Artist
Opera Performance and Art Exhibition
Saturday, April 23rd, from 3 pm – 6 pm
Performance at 4 pm (one day only)
Exhibition dates: April 23 – 10 June 2022
El Nido art space presented by VC Projects
1028 1/2 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029
www.vcprojects.art
Curatorial Statement
The word opera comes from the Italian phrase, opera musica which means works in music.
For one performance only, during the afternoon of April 23rd, 2022, from 3 to 6 pm, performance starts at 4 pm, Shooka Afshar, Quantum Soprano, and Shane Guffogg, International Artist will make known their creative voices capturing the essential moment of their artistry. The event is curated by VC Projects and will move between two rooms, where guests will not only hear a vocal performance but also view works of art that are related to sound.Shooka Afshar’s artistic language comes to us by performing arias. Selected compositions, Giacomo Puccini, “O Mio Babbino Caro” Gianni Schicchi opera, Vincenzo Bellini, “Ah Non Credea Mirati” La Sonnambula, “I Have Been Wandering” Wuthering Heights, George Gershwin “Summertime” Porgy and Bess are a few from the list that she will perform. Anthony Cardella, who is an esteemed pianist, and has performed in concert halls in the United States and Europe will be accompanying Shooka’s performance. Another aspect of Shooka’s performance is to pay homage to celebrated female sopranos, such as Leontyne Price, the first black female opera singer who made it to the Metropolitan Opera House as a leading voice. Shooka’s selections for the event are personally meaningful and important. Her reputation as The Quantum Soprano is nothing less. Her expressive talents will also include the art songs “Trois Mélodies” by Messiaen, “Bachianas Brasileiras Aria No. 5” by Heitor Villa-Lobos, and pieces by Benjamin Britton, Debussy, Schubert, and “Ave Maria” by Caccini, to name a few.
Shane Guffogg’s artistic language often experienced as ‘visual harmonies’, (the artist hears color and sees sound), comes forth through modes of color, and transparencies of light. On view will be selected works from 3 recent series of paintings – “A Rose is a Rose is a Rose”, series, which calls upon the ‘laws of identity’, “At the Still Point of the Turning World”, influenced by T.S. Eliot’s “Four Quartets”, and “The Counting of Days” partly inspired by the Gregorian Calendar and the days the artist has lived. These visual proclamations reflect not only the artist’s expression of color but his concepts of time and space, capturing what is often referred to as ‘the eternal moment.’ Shane Guffogg’s art looks through the lens of humanity at civilizations both past and present and views time as threads that connect all people. Guffogg, The Post-Post-Modernist artist sees his work as a visual language that is informed by the spiritualism of abstraction and the realism of the old masters. These two ideas are usually seen as separate but Guffogg fuses them into works that transcend and become testaments to thoughts that inform us of who we are in the 21st century.
The afternoon promises to bridge together not only two artists but two art forms; visual poetry and music, skillfully bound. Both of these masters of their craft, see their role as universal, and Shaman-like, communicating a truth and raising the spirit to the next level. The atmosphere is designed to share the fundamental elements between visual and performing arts, and the explosion of beauty in all its multifaceted forms. This program is created to lift one out of this world into the next and should not be missed.
Victoria Chapman
Curator | VC Projects, and El Nido art space
Biographies
Shooka Afshar, Iranian soprano, composer, and City of Boston Certified Artist, is an active recitalist in classical and Iranian repertoire. She received her Master’s Degree in Music in classical vocal performance and her Teaching Artist certificate in May 2014 from Longy School of Music. She made her operatic debut as the “Princess” in Dvorak’s opera The Cunning Peasant in its U.S. premiere produced by the Calliope Ensemble at the First Unitarian Church of Boston in February 2014. Some of her recent appearances include The Coded Birth at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Boston, Turn Me Into A Mannequin at NYU, and her new opera Women / Immigration / Fight or Flight, at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston in 2021. Shooka is going to expand her mixed-media opera at an artist residency near Milan, Villa Emma, in July 2022 and she’s planning to tour her opera nationally and internationally. https://shookaafshar.com
Shane Guffogg was born in Los Angeles, California, and raised on an exotic bird farm in the San Joaquin Valley. His interest in painting began as a child, leading him to travel to Europe and be exposed to the Masters. He received his B.F.A. from Cal Arts, and during his studies, he interned in New York City. He relocated to Los Angeles, where he lived in Venice Beach and worked as a Studio Assistant for Ed Ruscha from 1989 until 1995. In 1989, Guffogg traveled to the Soviet Union on a Peace Walk, Meeting and learning the history of Russia and the role of the artist as juxtaposed to the West. His work began exploring the iconography of art and cultures through the ages, and the connections between various times and people. During this exploration, he found that painting is one of the few art forms that may express what language cannot. The resulting work contains its own language of sign and symbol, and in its patterning, visual depth, and light, simultaneously seems to refer to emotion, the human spirit, and to the unseen worlds of Quantum Physics and Super String Theory. www.shaneguffogg.com
Anthony Cardella is a Wisconsin native who is currently residing in Los Angeles. He received his Bachelor’s of Music from Lawrence University and Conservatory of Music. While at Lawrence, Anthony studied piano performance with Michael Mizrahi, a Yale-educated teacher who studied with Claude Frank, and piano pedagogy with Mary Van De Loo. He worked on campus as a student-teacher and piano tutor and, after graduating with honors, Anthony was offered multiple jobs at Lawrence – a staff collaborative piano position where he collaborated with vocalists and instrumentalists, and also a teaching position at the Lawrence Academy of Music. After working at his Alma Mater for a year, Anthony began studies at the Thornton School of Music at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles to receive his Master of Music degree. Anthony is currently working on his Doctorate at USC. https://www.anthonycardellapiano.com
El Nido means “the nest” in Spanish, located at 1028 1/2 N. Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90029.
El Nido is set inside an art compound recently dubbed Western Avenue Collective by its residents. The art space opened in 2021 and makes its mission to share visual, performing arts, including the written word, and is presented by VC Projects. It is an intimate space set off the beaten path on N. Western Avenue within the boundries of East Hollywood (Route 66/Santa Monica Blvd).This historical enclave consists of twenty-two artist studios dating from 1922.
VC Projects (Victoria Chapman) Founder/Director of VC Projects (2014), is a Los Angeles-based curator. Victoria has spent the past 30 years working domestically and internationally in a variety of means with art directors, curators, art consultants, artists, galleries, museums, and art institutions, assisting with administrative, curatorial, and exhibition planning.
www.vcprojects.art | victoria@vcprojects.art
SHANE GUFFOGG 