Dis_Placed Phone

My piece is a ghost of a public payphone, its presence familiar, but out of our reach because of its scale and semitransparency. Remember public payphones? When communicating with someone was simply talking, just a phone call? In the age of cellphones, texting and social media, coin-operated phones are disappearing. Sources differ, but the peak number of payphones in the U.S. was possibly 2.6 million in 1995. As of last year, less than 250,000 remain.

This piece reminds us of the speed of technological changes. Now we can see an old public phone through a new personal and smart phone, an infinite mirror, endless communication systems, …what lies ahead?

About the Artist:

José Carlos Casado is an artist who works in video, photography, sculpture, drawing and performance. A MFA graduate of the School of Visual Arts, Casado was born in Spain and has been based in New York for 16 years.

His work has been shown in multiple solo and group shows internationally and has won numerous prizes and recognitions, including a grant from Picasso Foundation, a scholarship from LaCaixa Foundation, MIT’s Leonardo Excellence Award and two Fellowships from the prestigious New York Foundation for the Arts.

Since the early 1990s, Casado’s art works have been seen all over the world. Solo exhibitions include “Well-Dressed Lies” at Postmasters Gallery in New York, “[meat.v01]/[fears.v01] /[realities.v01]” at Picasso Foundation in Malaga, Spain, “Homo Cellophane Cellophane” at Noname Gallery in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, “Sacrifice.vOFF” at The Swatch Art Peace Hotel Gallery in Shanghai, China. His work has also been exhibited at Katzen Arts Center in Washington D.C., Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh, Penn., Seoul Museum of Art in Korea, MOCA Taipei in Taiwan, Isea in Japan, Borusan Art Gallery in Turkey, Rencontres Internationales in France, Split Festival in Croatia, among others, and he’s participated in more than 20 international New Media Festivals, including Sundance Film Festival and ArsElectronica.

He presented “Aliens With Extraordinary Abilities”, a 16-minute performance with video and dancers at the 1st Spanish Art Fest in New York’s Times Square. He has been an artist in residence at the Vermont Studio Center, School of Visual Arts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, and recently at Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai, where he was invited to design an Art Special Limited Edition Watch presented at the 55th Venice Biennale. Casado founded NY/Anantapur in 2010, a foundation to raise funds to build schools in India. Two schools have been built so far and are used by more than 500 children and adults, as primary schools and civic centers.

http://www.josecarloscasado.com/

Past Works:

Sacrifice.v03 2013, 19 x 11 ft, Glicée print (shadows created by thousands of names of casualties in Iraq’s war)