Personal Information

Name: Ivan Toth Depeña
Lives: Miami, Florida
Contact:

ivan@ivandepena.com

Education

Master in Architecture. Harvard University - Graduate School of Design - Cambridge, Massachusetts (1998)
Bachelor in Architecture. University of Miami - Miami, Florida (1995)
B. Arch. Candidate. Pratt Institute (1990 - 1994)
H.S. Diploma. New World School of the Arts - Miami, Florida

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Art and Culture Center of Hollywood. Project Room, Florida - “The Fallen Sky Chronicles” - Nov 2008
Heinemann + Myers Contemporary. Bethesda, MD - “Synthesis” - Jan 2008
Aqua Art Fair/Ingalls & Associates. Art Basel Miami Beach - “Orbit/Habit/Pattern” - Dec 2007
Ingalls & Associates. Miami - “Noise” - Dec 06/Jan 07
Ingalls & Associates. Miami - “Incidental Antinomies: The Portraits” - Nov 2004
Cultural Center. Miami - “Ivan Toth Depeña” - Sep 2003
Locust Projects. Miami - “Project Room: Like Never Seems” - Oct 2002

Selected Group Exhibitions

Frost Museum of Art. Miami - “Cintas Fellowship Exhibition” - May 2009
Melissa Morgan Fine Art. Palm Springs, CA - “Miami: The Edge of a Nation” - Jan 2009
Museum of Art Ft. Lauderdale. Florida - “Thirteen Artists” - Jun 2008
Miami Art Museum. Florida - “Big Juicy Paintings and Other Work” - Jun 2006
Miami Design District. Florida - “Cintas Finalist Exhitbition” - May 2006
Miami Art Museum. Florida - “Miami in Transition” - Apr 2006
Art Taipei. Florida - “Independent Project: Ingalls & Associates” - Mar 2006
NADA. Art Basel Miami Beach - “Project: Ingalls & Associates” - Dec 2005
DiVA. New York - “Independent Project: Ingalls & Associates” - Mar 2005
Here Gallery. New York - “EA50 Emerging Artists” - Jul 2004
Miami Art Museum. Florida - “Light and Atmosphere” - Apr-Dec 2004
Rocket Projects. Art Basel Miami - “Speed” - Dec 2003
Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art. Florida - “New Art” - Jul 2003
Fredrick Snitzer Gallery. Miami - “Made in Miami” - Jul 2003
Museum of Contemporary Art. North Miami - “Optic Nerve” - Sep 2002
ArtPoint. Miami - “ArtPoint: Curated By Janet Phelps” - Dec 2002
Rhizome.org. Web - “Rumblestrip in Artbase” - Jul 2001

Awards + Recognition

Emilio Sanchez Award in Visual Arts Finalist. Cintas Foundation - Spring 2009
Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant. Atlantic Center for the Arts Residency - Summer 2009
SFCC Visual + Media Artist Fellowship Grant Award. S.Fla Division of Cultural Affairs - Jan 2008
Artist Enhancement Grant. State of Florida - Aug 2007
Emilio Sanchez Award in Visual Arts Finalist. Cintas Foundation - Spring 2007
Artist Access Grant. S.Fla Cultural Affairs/Tigertail - 2006
Creative Capital Workshop. S.Fla Division of Cultural Affairs - 2005
Artist Access Grant. S.Fla Cultural Affairs/Tigertail - 2005
SFCC Visual + Media Artist Fellowship Grant Award. S.Fla Division of Cultural Affairs - Jan 2003
National Talent Search Scholarship. Pratt Institute - 1990 - 1994

Press + Publications

Palm Springs Life. "Hot, Hot, Hot" by Steven Biller - Jan 2009
Lauderdale New Times. "The World Illumiated" by Jamie Laughlin - Nov 2008
The Miami Herald. "Gang of 13" by Fabiola Santiago - Aug 2008
Art Circuits. "Basel and Beyond (Rising Stars)" by Elisa Turner- Dec 2008
Bethesda Art. Blog - "Ivan Toth Depeña" by Suheil Chemaly - Jan 2008
Art Taipei. Catalog - Mar 2006
NADA 03. Catalog - Dec 2005
WPS1. New York - Radio Interview by Jill Spaulding - Mar 2005
DiVA. Catalog - Mar 2005
The Miami Herald. "Exposing the Urban Landscape" by Anne Tschida - Nov 2004
Miami New Times. "Unnatural Nature" by Michelle Weinberg - Oct 2004
The Miami Herald. "Light is Fantastic, Imagination Too" by Elisa Turner - Aug 2004
Art in America. "Expanding Horizons" by Roni Feinstein - Dec 2003 Times: S. Florida Magazine of the Arts. "S.Florida Fellowship Recipients" by Candace Russell - Oct 2003
The Miami Herald. "Consortium Show Surprises as Usual" by Elisa Turner - Aug 2003
Closer Magazine. "Art of Memory" - Aug 2003
Contemporary Magazine. "Active Ingredients" - Nov 2002
The Miami Herald. "Exhibits explore radically different shades of voyeurism" by Elisa Turner - Oct 2002
The Street Miami. "Art from the hard" by Damarys Ocana - Sep 2002

Bibliography


Miami Contemporary Artists. Book. Authors: Paul Clemence and Julie Davidow, intro by Elisa Turner, Schiffer Publications - Nov 2007

View at Amazon.com

Wet 2. Book. Authors: Edge Zones - Aug 2006
Carlos Zapata: The Restlessness of Architecture. Book inclusion. Design Credit Victor Hotel. Authors: Beth Dunlop and Joseph Giovannini, L’Arcaedizione - 1995

Ivan Toth Depeña is currently working as an artist and designer in Miami, Florida. Ivan has studied art, architecture and graphic design at Pratt Institute, the University of Miami and received his Masters in Architecture at Harvard's Graduate School of Design. Recent exhibitions include, Melissa Morgan Fine Art in Palm Springs, The Museum of Fine Art Lauderdale, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, a solo exhibition at Ingalls & Associates, “Light and Atmosphere” and “Miami in Transition” at the Miami Art Museum where he showed a variety of work consisting of drawing, painting, video, photography and sculptural installation.

Ivan was a recipient of the 2008 and 2005 South Florida Cultural Consortium grant, Artist Access Grants as well as a 2009 and 2006 finalist in the Cintas Foundation Fellowship. His work is included in several, critically lauded, public and private collections. Ivan has also been reviewed and mentioned in various newspapers/publications including Contemporary Art Magazine, Art in America, Blueprint, Closer, Washington Post, The Miami Herald and the Sun Sentinel.

In essence, I combine the disciplines of art, architecture and design in my work. I am exploring both the formal and conceptual relationships in these various disciplines. My intenton is to work with them as a hybrid discipline and not view/use them autonomously. I am interested in paradoxical relationships such as the natural and the man made, the real and the surreal. I use the combination of technology and traditional media to explore new ways of seeing and making. I enjoy the output of the coupling of machine and man.

My work is inspired by alchemy, glitches, anomalies, disruptions, cosmology, physics, coincidences, interrupted satellite feeds, mis-programmed jumbotron screens and all sorts of information and technology that work fluidly, break and reassemble themselves to form perfectly organized patterns and environments. I look for clues under these seemingly random stones that come together to form the most mysterious accident that is, humankind. Questions, patterns, mappings, and other informative discoveries lay the groundwork for some of the multilayered compositions in my work. Observing the layering of mistakes and intentions that compose the world around us, I seek to systematically uncover the choreography of chaos, as well as, the beauty of darkness.

Using the inspirations mentioned above, I seek to create artificial worlds through installation that exist specifically through an edited construction of disparate things. In contrast to my previous photographic projects, instead of pure documentation, the current direction is actually creating and manipulating these environments. Through the combination of synthetic and organic materials, software, artificial light and architectural detailing the work re-creates, re-appropriates and redefines the immediate environment and culture in to encapsulated and manipulated moments. The outcome is a physical and visual reinterpretation of the urban environment, natural phenomena and programmed prose.