Aspen Art Fair: Brett Angell, Juan José Barboza-Gubo, Oliver Jeffers, Duke Riley, Jean Shin, Yu-Wen Wu

Brett Angell is a Chelsea, Massachusetts-based artist. He received his MFA in painting at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, studying under the noted landscape painter Tom Uttech. Angell often travels internationally in his job as a museum professional for the MFA Boston, most extensively in Japan, North America and the Netherlands. Influences from Japan and the Netherlands in particular have informed his collages and paintings. He hoards precious materials and decorative papers from his favorite shops and flea markets throughout the world, storing them in his studio until a specific project calls for their use. Angell’s work is in the permanent collections of the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison Wisconsin, The Springfield Art Museum in Missouri, The Sioux City Art Center in Iowa, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where his collages were recently exhibited with Joseph Cornell’s work. His collages were included in the 2022 Praise Shadows group exhibition Little Windows.

Duke Riley (b. 1972, Boston) is fascinated by maritime history and events around urban waterways. His signature style interweaves historical and contemporary events with elements of fiction and myth to create allegorical histories. His re-imagined narratives comment on a range of issues from the cultural impact of over development and environmental destruction of waterfront communities to contradictions within political ideologies and the role of the artist in society. Duke Riley received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and his MFA from Pratt Institute. 

"My work addresses the tension between individual and collective behavior, independent spaces within all-encompassing societies, and the conflict with institutional power. I examine transgression zones and their inhabitants through drawing, printmaking, mosaic, sculpture, performative interventions, infiltrations, and video structured as complex multimedia installations. I combine populist myths and historical obscurities with contemporary social and environmental dilemmas, connecting past and present, drawing attention to unsolved issues. Throughout my projects I profile the space where water meets the land, traditionally marking the periphery of urban society, what lies beyond rigid moral constructs, a sense of danger and possibility."

Known for her large-scale installations and public sculptures, artist Jean Shin transforms accumulations of discarded objects into powerful monuments that interrogate our complex relationship between material consumption, collective identity and community engagement. Often working cooperatively within a community or region, Shin amasses vast collections of an everyday object or material—Mountain Dew soda bottles, mobile phones, 35mm slides—while researching its history of use, circulation and environmental impact. Distinguished by this labor-intensive and participatory process, Shin’s poetic yet epic creations become catalysts for communities to confront social and ecological challenges. As such, her body of work includes several permanent public artworks commissioned by major agencies and municipalities, most recently a landmark commission for the MTA’s Second Ave Subway in NYC.

Born in Seoul, South Korea, and raised in the US, Shin works in Brooklyn and Hudson Valley, New York. She is a tenured Adjunct Professor at Pratt Institute and holds an honorary doctorate from New York Academy of Art. Shin’s work has been widely exhibited and collected in over 150 major museums and cultural institutions, including solo exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC, and Asian Art Museum in San Francisco, where in 2020 she was the first Korean-American woman artist featured in a solo exhibition. Shin has received numerous awards, including the Frederic Church Award for her contributions to American art and culture. Her works have been highlighted in The New York Times and Sculpture Magazine, among others.

Juan Jose Barboza-Gubo (Peru, 1976) received his Bachelor’s Degree at Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru (graduating with honors). He received MFA degrees in Painting and in Sculpture, both from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Solo exhibitions include: Museum of Contemporary Art, Peru; Memory Museum, Peru; The Museum of Sex, New York; Inter Kultur Foto Art; Instituto Francés de Stuttgart; Museo Colonia Bogota Colombia; Galeria German Kruger Espantoso ICPNA-Peru; The Fitchburg Museum; among others. Recent awards of note include the 2019 Fellowship in Photography from the Mass Cultural Council, 2019 Icpna arte contemporaneo second award, 2018 Photolucida Critical Mass: Top 50, 2016 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Sculpture, 2015 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellowship in Painting, and others. In 2014 he was named the Breakout Artist of the Year by Artscope Magazine. His exhibitions have been reviewed in publications such as The Boston Globe, Artscope Magazine, Artsy, PRI’s The World, The Huffington Post, The Advocate, The Houston Press, El Comercio (Peru), and Lenscratch. Barboza-Gubo currently teaches at Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

Yu-Wen Wu (b. 1958, Taipei) is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Boston. Born in Taipei, Taiwan, Wu’s subjectivity as an immigrant is central to her artwork. Relocating to the United States at an early age, her experiences have shaped her work in areas of migration–examining issues of displacement, arrival, assimilation and the shape of identity in a new country. At the crossroads of art, science, politics and social issues, her wide range of projects include large-scale drawings, site-specific video installations, community engaged practices, and public art.

She is the 2021 recipient of the Mass Cultural Council Artist Fellowship, and was recognized by Boston Magazine as the 2021 Best Artist in its annual Best of Boston issue. Jerry Saltz named her work, Walking to Taipei, now in the collection of the Harvard Art Museums, as one of the Best Art Exhibitions in New York of 2022.