Reymar Gacutan (b. 1972) is an artist and educator based in Quezon City, The Philippines, and currently teaches at the School for Design and Arts, De La Salle – College of St. Benilde. Gacutan started his path as an artist in 1985 after winning a painting contest, and was then invited by the Department of Education to take the entrance exam for a scholarship at the Philippines High School for the Arts. In 1997 he graduated from the University of the Philippines, College of Fine Arts, with a degree in painting. In addition to his studies, Gacutan served as an apprentice to Mariano Madarang, an artist and ex-dean of PWU, and Zotter da Lavant, an Austrian artist, and through this learned art restoration and conservation. After graduating from the College of Fine Arts, Gacutan worked as a CGI/3D animation artist at Imagineers, Toonworks, and Tooncity, but found little fulfillment and decided to focus on his art. Since then he has exhibited in both solo and group shows and has taught at several schools in The Philippines.

Then BAS India correspondant and Fullbright Scholar Tanya Gill checks in with a report of the 2013 India Art Fair, and tells us why it is totally different than last years fair.

Scott Hodes has been in active practice for more than four decades. As a corporate lawyer, he represents clients in sophisticated corporate transactions from structuring of corporate entities to financing at all levels from private placements to public offerings, and frequently, to counseling clients in merger and acquisition activities. He also handles complex financing transactions as counsel for a variety of large Chicago banks.

Mr. Hodes also practices in the field of art law and represents a number of prominent artists, dealers and collectors in all aspects of their business. He has published three books on art and the law, and has written and spoken extensively on this subject.

Mr. Hodes serves as a director of Richardson Electronics, Ltd. and a director emeritus of the Foundation of the Federal Bar Association in Washington, D.C. In 2007, he was elected a director of the Chicago Bar Foundation. He is a founding member and former chairman of the planning committee for the annual Mutual Funds and Investment Management Conference now sponsored by the Investment Company Institute.

Mr. Hodes is a recognized leader in metropolitan Chicago’s business community. Long active in bar, civic and political affairs, he was elected to serve three terms on the Democratic State Central Committee (1970-1982). He has served as co-chairman of the Illinois Attorney General’s Advisory Commission and as chairman of Chicago’s Navy Pier Development Authority from 1988 to 1990. He has served as principal outside counsel to the Arts in Embassies Program of the U.S. State Department from 1991 to 1993. He was co-chairman of the Private Enterprise Review and Advisory Board of the State of Illinois from 1992 to 1994, and was appointed in 1994 by the governor and served as a member of the State of Illinois Savings Board until 2010.

Mr. Hodes was the national chairman of LAWBOOKS, U.S.A., a program sponsored by the United States Information Agency, and served as a member of the U.S. State Department’s Advisory Committee on Investment, Technology and Development. He was counsel to The Harold Washington Foundation. Mr. Hodes is a founder and past president and a director of The Lawyers for the Creative Arts. He serves as a trustee and member of the Executive Committee of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, a director of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, and as a consultant to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Tanya Hastings Gill has mastered the age-old art of paper cutting in a contemporary context. She utilizes reflective color, shadows and open installation to engage the space with her hand cut paper creations. Gill has been a fellow at McDowell Artists Colony, an Artist in Residence at The Ragdale Foundation, an Affiliate at Headlands Center for the Arts and a recipient of the Individual Artist Grant from the Marin Arts Council. In 1997 she received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art and in 1992 her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Tanya Gill is a devoted teacher of visual art. She has taught at the California State University of Sacramento, California; Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia; and at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Contemporary Practices Department.

Tanya Gill has been awarded the Nehru-Fulbright 2011-12 Scholarship to conduct research and evolve her own artwork. Her focus is the intersection of Indian Contemporary Art and Handicraft. She is currently living in New Delhi, India, with her family.

**Please note, Atty. Hodes bio and headshot were perilously lifted from the Bryan Cave LLP website. Yes, we know we should have called and asked and yes, we know you could squash us like bugs. It’s 1:23 a.m. early Monday morning, we decided you’d rather sleep. Besides, we love you fine folks at Bryan Cave LLP. http://www.bryancave.com/scotthodes/

Don’t hurt us. If you need a sacrificial offering we’ll send Duncan over post haste.

Tony Labat was born in Cuba and came to the United States at the age of 15 in 1966. He has exhibited internationally over the last 30 years. Labat has received numerous awards and grants and his work is in many private and public collections. Labat has developed a body of work in Performance, Video, Sculpture and Installation. His work has dealt with and continues his investigations with the body, popular culture, identity, urban relations, politics, and the media.

This week has musical nods to the untimely passings of Kriss Kross’s Chris Kelly and Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman.

This week: Have you ever read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas? Duncan and Richard talk aimlessly while driving to and from St. Louis for their stint at CAM St. Louis!

photo from the excellent work at: http://lightleakphoto.blogspot.com/2010/11/daren-wilson.html

The artist Loren Munk (born 1951) is a maker of contemporary paintings. He is known among New York artists primarily for his cubistic paintings of urban imagery. Munk also has received accolades for his drawings and mosaics. He differs from traditional mosaic artists by the manner

Munk’s work debuted in SoHo in 1981 with a double show at J. Fields Gallery and Gabrielle Bryers. Since then, he has overseen a truly international career. In addition to exhibiting in Brazil, France, Germany and the United States, Munk has received national and overseas, public and private commissions. He is well represented in important collections throughout Europe, South and North America and the Middle East.

Most recently, Munk has been producing a series of paintings which tackle the subject of art itself through a historical and diagrammatic lens. Also, he has expanded upon his role in the artistic community, publishing numerous reviews and essays, curating and promoting several shows, and offering his acknowledged expertise on the Williamsburg arts scene.

Munk documents the New York art world in YouTube videos, using the name James Kalm. The Kalm Report is shot from a first person perspective using a hand held camera. Kalm arrives at an art show by bike—he calls himself “the guy on the bike”—and then walks through the show while providing commentary.

This week: While at CAA Duncan was up to some funny business in his hotel room. No, no, not that, he was (with the assistance of the talented Anthea Black) interviewing the multi-talented author, filmmaker, Chris Kraus.

Kraus spent her childhood in Connecticut and New Zealand. After obtaining a BA at a young age from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, Kraus worked as a journalist for five years, and then moved to New York. Part of the city’s then-burgeoning art scene, Kraus made films and video art and staged performances and plays at many venues. In the late 1970s she was a member of The Artists Project, a City-funded public service venture of painters, poets, writers, filmmakers and dancers.

Her work as a performance and video artist satirized the Downtown scene’s gender politics and favored literary tropes, blending theatrical techniques with Dada, literary criticism, social activism, and performance art.

Kraus continued to make films through the mid 1990s. Since 2007 Chris Kraus is a professor of film at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. She now lives in Los Angeles.

Semiotext(e) Native Agents Series

Kraus founded the Semiotexte Native Agents imprint to publish fiction, mostly by women, as an analogue to French theories of subjectivity. In addition to groundbreaking works of fiction by writers likeMichelle Tea and Ann Rower, Native Agents has published notable volumes of poetry and prose by Eileen Myles, Barbara Barg, and Fanny Howe, as well as memoirs and interviews by Kathy Acker, Bob Flanagan, David Rattray, and William Burroughs.