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Quick Facts
Biography
Justin Brice Guariglia is a multidisciplinary artist working at the nexus of painting, printmaking, photography and sculpture. His work explores our Möbius relationship to ecology through the lens of politics, culture, science, journalism, mythology and art history. His experimentation with materials, processes, and techniques inform and shape the work, forging new ways of seeing and experiencing the world around us.
In September 2016, NASA announced a collaboration between Guariglia and the agency, making him the first artist to be embedded in a NASA science mission. Guariglia will be embedded in the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission at NASA/JPL through 2020.
He lives and works in New York City.
Education
Guariglia grew up next to the home of Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand, one of America's foremost landscape painters of the 19th century. He went on to study Italian art history under the late art historian Terisio Pignatti in Venice, Italy, before moving to Beijing, China in 1996 to study Chinese language, culture, and history at Capital Normal University. In 1997, he returned to the USA to finish his degree at the liberal arts college Wake Forest, before returning to Asia.
Guariglia lived in Asia for nearly 20 years, residing in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei and Shanghai, first as a student, then as a foreign correspondent and documentary photographer. From 2000 - 2008, Guariglia was a member of the photojournalism agency Contact Press Images, an agency known for representing photographers devoted to life long projects. He regularly traveled across Asia on reporting assignments for publications like the New York Times, Smithsonian Magazine, National Geographic, Far Eastern Economic Review, Time Magazine, and Maclean's documenting a rapidly changing Asia.
Work
Contemporary archaeological in nature, Guariglia's work serves as a contemplative look at human kind's path towards accelerated modernization, also called by scientists "The Great Acceleration"; from the genesis of a raw and natural world to a civilization reaching the point of a questionable decline.
The images play with scale and perspective, often employing a "gaze from nowhere" aesthetic, and printed in grand scales of 4m to 5m in size. Following a long history of painters, he uses unconventional materials and printing techniques to make his work, pushing the images into the realm of painting, print making and sculpture. Many of the printing processes are complex, unique and developed in his studio, and undergo rigorous archival stability tests.
In 2015 Guariglia began collaborating with NASA as an artist, flying a series of missions with them to make images of rapidly changing glacial land and sea ice on and around Greenland to use as source material in his work, along with working with the scientists to develop a greater understanding of human impact on the ice.
Guariglia coined and trademarked the term "Plasticene™ printing" in 2016, whereby a plastic-like hyperarchival acrylic polymer ink is laid down in multiple layers, which enters itself into the fossil record upon production, due to the long half-life of the material. Occasionally Guariglia will layer the ink so thick that it forms a 3-D image. The name Plasticene is a nickname for the Anthropocene due to the large amounts of plastic in the fossil record of the Anthropocene.
On August 29, 2016 in commemoration of the International Geological Congress voting 30 to 3 in favor of formally designating the Anthropocene, the artist had NASA’s GISTEMP (global temperature anomalies 5-year mean) index tattooed onto his arm, on the day of the announcement.
In September 2016, NASA announced a collaboration between Guariglia and the agency, making him the first artist to be embedded in a NASA science mission. Guariglia will be embedded in the Oceans Melting Greenland (OMG) mission at NASA/JPL through 2020 working closely with NASA/JPL OMG Principle Investigator, Josh Willis Ph.D. The collaboration is privately funded by grants and donations, and does not receive any financial support from NASA, JPL or OMG.
Awards and nominations
Guariglia has been nominated for the International Center of Photography's "Young Photographer of the Year Award", named by the Fotofest Biennale a "Discovery of Fotofest,", chosen by Photo District News as one of the top "30 Young Photographers Under 30", and was a recipient of the Eddie Adams Workshop Newsweek award.
Guariglia's documentary work won several Pictures of the Year awards, including two awards in POYi60 in the General Division/Science/Natural History Picture Story & Single Image categories, and an additional award in POYi65 in the General News Reporting category.
TV
In 2007, Guariglia appeared in a TV series with music legends Lou Reed and Tony Visconti discussing the Shaolin Temple project and book on the Voom Network Gallery HD series entitled "Aperture." The series was nominated for a New York Emmy Award in 2009
Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
- Earth Works: Mapping The Anthropocene. The work of Justin Guariglia, The Fischer Museum of Art at USC, Los Angeles, CA, 2018
- Earth Works: Mapping The Anthropocene. The work of Justin Guariglia, The Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL, Sept 5 - Jan 14, 2018
- The Nature of Nature, The Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride, CO, May 26 - Jun 5, 2017
- Field Notes: OMEGA BLOCK I, Dartmouth College, Russo Gallery | THE JOHN SLOAN DICKEY CENTER, Hanover, NH Feb 6 - Mar 6, 2017
- Shaolin: Temple of Zen, an Aperture Foundation exhibition, Utah Valley University Woodbury Museum, Utah, Summer - Fall 2009
- Shaolin: Temple of Zen, an Aperture Foundation exhibition, National Geographic Museum, Washington, D.C., Summer 2008 - Spring 2009
- Qi, Amelia Johnson Contemporary Gallery, Hong Kong, November 1– December 2, 2007
- Shaolin: Temple of Zen, an Aperture Foundation traveling exhibition, Otis College of Art and Design, Winter 2008
- Qi, Gallery 339, Philadelphia, PA, USA, March 16 May 5, 2007
- Qi, The Aperture Foundation Gallery & The Rubin Museum, Chelsea, NY, January, 2007 (special event)
Selected Group Exhibitions
- For Freedoms, Jack Shainman Gallery, 513 W 20th St, New York, NY, June 30 - Aug 26, 2016
- We Live Here, 1 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, NY, June 6 - Aug 28, 2016
- Terra Cognita, Noorderlicht Photography Festival, The Netherlands, Sept 2 - October 7, 2012
- Planet Shanghai, Chobi Mela V: Freedom, Photography Festival, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 2009 - 2010
- Degrees of Separation, Peer Gallery, July 12 September 8, 2007
- Recent Additions to the Permanent Collection – Photo Forum, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Texas, USA, Sept 19, 2006 – Jan 28, 2007 (Curated by Anne Wilkes Tucker)
- Planet Shanghai, PingYao Photography Festival, PingYao, China, Fall 2006
- Choreographic, Images of Movement, Minnesota Center for Photography, June 2006 (Curated by George Slade)
- Fotofest Discoveries group show, Houston, Texas, USA 2006 (Debut exhibition, selected by Alan Rapp)
Collections
Guariglia's work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Norton Museum of Art, The Spurlock Museum, Urbana, Illinois, and numerous other private collections.
Publication Notes
- Shaolin Temple of Zen. Aperture. 2007. ISBN 978-1-59711-080-8.
- Planet Shanghai. Chronicle Books. 2008. ISBN 978-0-8118-6345-2.
- Johor: Asia Latitude One. De.Mo. 2011. ISBN 978-0-9825908-4-3.
- Johor: Tropic Of Colors. National Geographic Society & De.Mo. 2014.
- Earth Works: Mapping The Anthropocene. The Photography of Justin Guariglia. TBD. 2017.