Victor Macarol - About the Artist
New Jersey Multimedia Artist, Educator, Lecturer; postgrad studies, research at The Peabody Institute, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.
Some of his one-man exhibitions have been featured at The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, The Hunterdon Museum of Art in Clinton, The Paterson Museum in Paterson, Edison Hall Gallery of The Middlesex County College in Edison, Morgan Gallery in New Brunswick, Imageworks Gallery in North Plainfield, Kreves Gallery in Frenchtown, Optique Gallery in Lambertville, Goldsmiths Gallery in Lambertville, New Jersey; Wiesner Gallery in Brooklyn, New York;
His works have also been on display in exhibitions, such as "Images of the Flatiron Building" at
Under the aegis of Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, a selection of Victor Macarol's images has been published in Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. It contains limited editions of museum posters and art post-cards that have been on display at various institutions, such as MJM Art Gallery, and French Kisses in New York City; Devon Editions in Seattle, Washington; Espace Aleph in Paris, and Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou in Paris, France; Antiquariat, Bücher, Curiositäten in Vienna, Austria; Plakatif Galerie, Galerie Chat Noir, Papeterie & Curiositäten Scatola, Jäggi Buch-Handlung in Basel, Buch-Handlung Payot in Zurich, and Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland; Art Print Japan Co Ltd in Tokyo. These works have been available in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Israel, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.
NJN TV channels #23, #50 #52 and #58 (Trenton, NJ) on the program "State of the Arts," WNEW TV Channel #13 (NJ/NYC) on the program "Art Scene in New Jersey," GATEWAY CABLE TV Channel #3 (Newark, NJ) on the program "Exposure," and CTN (Cable TV Network of New Jersey) on the program "Monthly Show on the Arts in Middlesex County and Central New Jersey" have frequently aired interviews with Victor Macarol and presentations of his works.
Victor Macarol's works are in private and public art collections that include The Noyes Museum of Art in Oceanville, The New Jersey State Museum in Trenton, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in New Brunswick, The Middlesex County College in Edison, The Special Collections Division of The Newark Public Library, New Jersey;
"...Victor Macarol received the largest state Fellowship Award for photography since the program was begun. He has been recognized by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts as Distinguished Artist, the first time that designation has been made." (The New York Times).
"...We recognize his exceptional artistic merit and are especially proud of Victor Macarol as a New Jersey artist. We acknowledge the fine contribution he has made to improve the quality of the cultural life of the State of New Jersey." (The New Jersey State Council on the Arts).
Appointed by The New Jersey State Council on the Arts, Victor Macarol has been serving as an ad hoc member of the Selection Committee for the New Jersey State Fellowship Awards and Grants for individual artists.
Nominated by The Paterson Literary Review in New Jersey, Victor Macarol's award winning work was included in the Book/Anthology: "Editor's Choice III: Fiction, Poetry & Art from the U.S. Small Press." (ISSN 1060-2658). [Of 3,464 works nominated by 363 publishers, 46 poems,
Victor Macarol is listed in Who's Who in American Art (Marquis Publ., 30th Anniversary Edition, 2010), and in Who's Who in America (Marquis Publ., 64th Edition, 2010).
* Information about Victor Macarol and his work is also available in "Art & Artists Files in the Smithsonian Libraries' Collections" of The Smithsonian American Art Museum & National Portrait Gallery (AA/PG) Library in Washington, DC; Thomas J. Watson Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City; New Jersey State Library in Trenton; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Library in New Brunswick; The Special Collection Division of The Newark Public Library in Newark, New Jersey; Temple University Library in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; University of Arizona Library in Phoenix, Arizona; "Collection & Artists Files" of Galerie Zur Stockeregg in Zurich, Switzerland.
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For additional information: 'Another Dimension,' please click here ---> Victor Macarol
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"...This well-known New Jersey photographer [Victor Macarol] is at his best with 'found' humans and animals. And there is no lack of memorable images here. One is that of a disembodied hand on a desk, the only sign of life in an office...No mean landscapist either, Mr. Macarol can invest with Ansel Adams like grandeur a pile of pumpkins in a harrowed field under a stormy sky. The best of his romantic shots is of mountain peaks glistening like marble under another stormy sky."
Vivien Raynor
The New York Times
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"...[The] judge, in an unusual gesture, invited contribution from 19 professionals, among them Victor Macarol, and other members of the state's photographic establishment. The [Hunterdon Museum of Art] show's title, 'Seasons of Life,' is elastic enough to accommodate everything from spring blossoms to the weathered boots, but the emphasis is on youth...Mr. Macarol's young girl with long hair has a nun-like propriety about her, but appears capable of holding her own with [other] minxes portrayed."
Vivien Raynor
The New York Times
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"...The exhibition '102 Prints' [contains] plenty to satisfy connoisseurs, including Ambroise Vollard's 1914 volume on Cezanne that has an etching by the artist for a frontispiece...Original works include anonymous Chinese watercolors of flowers and insects that date from the 19th century...'The Steerage,' by Alfred Stieglitz, is of the company; so is Victor Macarol's study of the Flatiron Building, towering black against a white sky and looking more like an aircraft carrier seen from below than an iron."
Vivien Raynor
The New York Times
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"...Inside [The Morris Museum] is an exhibition of photographs titled 'Photography: A Personal View.' Some of the work it includes is quite wonderful...Victor Macarol's 'Young Man With Rat' is just that, a young black man with a two-toned rat around his neck. The seriousness of his gaze makes it clear that this is no joke, but one does wonder why he would keep such an odd pet, and again we are left surprised, even puzzled."
John Caldwell
The New York Times
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"...Photographs of landscapes and buildings have their own beauties, but they rarely have the compassionate warmth that photographs of people have. It is sometimes more gratifying, and certainly easier for an observer, to respond to the conditions of other human beings, no matter how different or similar, than to the physical configurations of a tree or a wall...People play an important role in the photography of Victor Macarol. In fact, it's the people who endow these photographs not only with warmth, but also with a pressing vitality that is transferred to their surroundings, thus making the inanimate seem all the more animate and lively."
David L. Shirey
The New York Times
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"...Victor Macarol received the largest state 'Fellowship Award' for photography since the program was begun. He has been recognized by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts as 'Distinguished Artist,' the first time that designation has been made."
Patricia Malarcher
The New York Times
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"...Victor Macarol has typical people as his subjects, not the tramps or others used for a social message. His subject is in the mainstream of life of a pulsating metropolis, as seen through a lens possessed often of a malevolent humor, carrying forward his message of a zest for life. Some photos are phenomenal, as the elongated broken mirror effect of a curbside puddle of water in 'Jump,' or 'Pumpkins,' where the vegetables have a visual impact by their placement in the foreground. Juxtaposition of images creates the humor of a black man preaching before a huge brick wall mural of Jesus Christ, a bulldog standing at attention in a dilapidated alleyway, or the backside of a woman wearing a suit, bending over next to a mannikin in a black dress and necklace."
Will Grant
ARTSPEAK, (A Twice a Month Gallery Review, Bruno Palmer-Poroner, Editor), New York, NY
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"...[Victor Macarol] understands the links and the balance between things. Thus he pays more attention to echoes, overtones, gradations, reverberations and glimmers than he does to objects themselves. His pictures are a balancing act, with Macarol liking to give contradictions in daily life a chance to develop. The result is often a contrast between two moments in time, which can be nostalgic, even poignant."
Victoria Donohoe
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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"...It is Victor Macarol's unique talent that, as one contemplates his works, the balance is always tipping in one direction or another as the viewer is first struck by the subject matter, then by the play of light or arrangement of figures, then by the possible (or even impossible!) storylines that could have led to the moment captured on film. But at the end, when the work has been fully explored, these excursions have brought one back to the center, to the work itself, and to the ultimately uplifting vision of this artist."
Michael McCarter
Art Matters, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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"...Honing textures and observing or otherwise exposing surfaces usually hidden, Victor Macarol bends light to his purposes. He turns everyday events into fables, myths and epics, setting them in an aura of mystery that he leaves to the viewer to solve...In a print, for example, Macarol has captured two young women as they frolic on earth-bound stilts somewhere in a loading zone of industrial Manhattan. They seem to have been born of the same inspiration John Keats found for his famous ode on Lord Holland's urn. As they perform to silent music, they suggest the permanence of art, of beauty."
Peggy Lewis
Art Matters, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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"...Victor Macarol's credits include many international shows, currently at one of the most prestigious gallery [Galerie zur Stockeregg in Zurich] in Switzerland where he was chosen to represent 'American photographers of The 20th Century.' He received fellowship awards from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and serves now on a panel selecting artists for such awards..."
Bernice Paglia
The Plainfield Today, New Jersey
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"...Victor Macarol is unquestionably one-of-a-kind. The artist mixes ingredients in his photographic studies the way a chemist mixes elements, taking them to the stage where they cannot be separated out. Remarkably, the viewers are left to draw their own conclusions about what the artist has captured for them."
Sally Friedman
The Princeton Packet, Princeton, New Jersey
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"...Mr. Macarol is an artistic Renaissance man. He trained as a concert pianist but since childhood, also pursued the visual arts, including drawing, graphic arts and photography. [His] favorite author is humorist James Thurber, and merriment plays an important role in his work. In a photo of two boys with a basketball, the ball becomes a third head, a sort of visual pun. In another work, a stone statue in the park appears to be throwing crumbs to a lone pigeon passing by."
Wendy Heisler
The Princeton Packet, Princeton, New Jersey
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"...It is a rare finding when a contemporary artist is interested in capturing his other fellow creatures instead of engaging in stylistic virtuosity in an attempt to refract rather than reflect life. This artist is Victor Macarol. He can make you laugh, but there is a deeper resonance in his work. The combination of humanity and geometry creates an opus which has an enduring strength and compassion."
Louis Cooke
The Trentonian, New Jersey
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"...Macarol's images are very modern, both in subject matter and outlook. The range of emotional reaction offered in this group of his photographs is perhaps its greatest attribute. From the whimsical - two women conversing on stilts - to the pained - a troubled man lying on a bench - the works offer truthful glimpses into life on the streets."
Jonas Livingston
The Sunday Star-Ledger, New Jersey
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"...A social satirist who creates humor from a dissonant note in a scene or the juxtaposition of conflicting elements, Victor Macarol extends the meaning of the ordinary signs and cultural forms of society by adding an ironic twist and a sense of mischief."
Robert Goldman
The Sunday Star-Ledger, New Jersey
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"...Viewers can get a look at the black and white photography that has given Victor Macarol - recipient of the Distinguished Artist Award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts - worldwide recognition. Today Macarol's work is seen by more people than ever. His lithographs are published and distributed worldwide by a publishing company in Switzerland and the Musée de l'Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland."
Nicholas Toma
The North Jersey Herald & News, New Jersey
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"...[Victor Macarol's] prints display a very rich tonal range which takes full advantage of the palette of both the film and the printing paper. Visually his images are a holistic interaction of all the elements in the frame. The main subject may be placed so as to counterpoint the background, or, it may be used to enhance the incongruity of the scene...[Macarol] believes that the expression "decisive moment" is an affectation: any photographer worthy of his art will select a moment that he feels best captures the result he is searching for."
Lief Ericksenn
Shutterbug, Florida
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"...Die "silver prints" des amerikanischen Fotografen Victor Macarol sind veritable Entdeckungen. Mit einer ästhetischen Strenge, die nie ins bloss Pittoreske abkippt, setzt Macarol seine virtuose
Martina Wohlthat
Basler Zeitung, Basel, Switzerland
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"...Mit der Vernissage begint heute abend die 30 Art [Die Internationale Kunstmesse Art 30 Basel, Schweiz]. Parallel zur Messe zeigen die Basler Galerien verschiedenste Ausstellungen...Auch die Galerie Mesmer zeigt Schwarzweiss fotorgrafien. Der amerikanische Multimediakünstler Victor Macarol sucht in seinen Fotografien einen neuen Blick auf das Alltägliche."
Jacqueline Falk
Basler Zeitung, Basel, Switzerland
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"...Ab heute zeigt die Pep + No Name Galerie in Basel eine Einzelausstellung. Präsentiert werden ausgewählte Fotografien des amerikanischen Multimedia-Künstlers Victor Macarol. Sein künstlerisches Streben liegt nicht nur auf der gestalterischen Ebene im Bild, sondern gleichzeitig auf einer stark ausgeprägten Gefühlsebene, die sich im Spannungsfeld zwischen Ironie, Sarkasmus und schwarzem Humor bewegt."
Redaktion
Baslerstab, Basel, Switzerland
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"...Victor Macarol [in der Galerie Arté, Basel, Schweiz] komponiert zwar eigentümliche, fast unwirkliche Symphonien, jedoch ist der Betrachter bestimmt jedem einzelnen Motiv, jeder einzelnen absurd erscheinenden Situation selbst schon einmal begegnet."
Christina-Maria Sharif
Regio Aktuel, Liestal, Switzerland
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"...Unsere Ausstellung in der Galerie 147 der Ciba-Geigy AG in Basel, Schweiz zeigt, wie der Titel sagt, vor allem Szenen aus New York, der Stadt der Kontraste, welche für uns hauptsächlich atemberaubende Vitalität, extreme Armut, Zentrum neuer Ideen für kulturelle Ereignisse bedeuten. Victor Macarols Aufnahmen zeichnen hauptsächlich Szenen aus dem Alltag, fröhliche, glüchkliche, trauernde oder resignierte Menschen."
A. Friedlin
Ciba-Geigy Zeitung, Basel, Switzerland
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"...C'est au coeur du plus ordinaire des quotidiens populaires que Victor Macarol décèle et attise les étincelles merveilleuses provoquées par la discréte mitoyenneté de complices innocents...Comme une peinture de René Magritte ou un poème de Jacques Prévert, une photographie de Victor Macarol s'en prend aux émotions universelles. Pas d'anecdotes, des archétypes. De ces symboles qu'on peut exposer aux quatre coins du monde sans avoir besoin de se perdre en explications."
Francoise MONNIN
M u s é a r t, Paris, France
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"...S'il est prodigieux et inventeur, s'il est aussi bien l'héritier censé, mesuré des Surréalistes, pour une infime partie de l'héritage, très justement transposable, Victor Macarol n'en est pas moins réaliste et naturaliste comme un Demilly ou un Blanc ou même un Doisneau. Mais il invente rapidement et ne fait pas poser ses sujets. Il n'y a chez lui aucun compromis, aucune mise en scène, aucune faute de ce genre, ni aucun montage...Grand photographe parmi les grand photographes, et chaque fois sa technique est différente, le support papier, sa pellicule est inconsciemment choisie, « comme ça » - pour telle sortie - , il façonne alors notre rêve: il est fait pour durer."
Jean-Luc ROSSELIN
Paris, France
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"...Catch the classic Silver Prints by Victor Macarol, acclaimed American photographer whose work has bowled over audiences because of its loaded and eloquent simplicity. This exhibit also 'opens' the new Front Room Gallery that aims to promote well known and recognized international artists in Visual and New Media Arts in Singapore. This is the first Asian presentation of works by the distinguished Macarol. There's an unmistakable 'Americana feel' about this set of prints, which carries a pronounced wit about it. The poetic compositions make one guess at the drama and narration behind them. Macarol's work is clearly one-of-a-kind."
Cheah Ui-Hoon
The Business Times, The Straits Times, Singapore
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Victor Macarol - exhibition of riveting works: "Macarol turns 'world unadorned' into photo treasures" by Sally Friedman, "The Princeton Packet," New Jersey
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Victor Macarol - profound vision: "An Exercise in Aesthetics" by Dr. Michael A. Rockland, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
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Victor Macarol - transcending the reality: "Discovering Victor Macarol" by Peggy Lewis, "Art Matters," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
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Victor Macarol's aesthetic order: "Unveiling Illusions" by Zoltan Buki, Curator of Fine Arts, The New Jersey State Museum, Trenton
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