“Your (Roland Levin’s) portfolio creates a diverse and amusing cultural catalogue…” Daniel Buckley, APERTURE
Roland Levin was born and raised in Latvia. Upon his arrival in the US at the age of eighteen, he became a permanent resident of New York. The world thus became the platform to his art, and travelling its main objective.
This is clearly reflected by the diversity of the sites, epochs, and mediums of his artistic oeuvre. His initial means of expression is poetry, which has manifested in publication (“Roland’s Rare Brains”, Young Verter Publication, New York, 1982), performance (Performance Church, East Village, New York, 1984; Tomkins Square Arts Festival, New York, 1985; Librarie Shakespeare, Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 1986), and formed the lyrics to one of the pioneering music videos featuring Jesse Ray (Warner Label, distributed by Sony, 1981).
Levin has also worked in media production (CNN Showbiz, 1985; MTV House of Style, 1996), and remained the cultural correspondent of the Italian television channel RAI-3 for much of the 1980s. In 1986 he participated in ABC’s roundtable discussion, 20/20 about the politics of Perestroika, and between 1989 and 1992, played a pivotal role in defining the fashion world of the new Russia. His fashion photographs have graced the pages of fashion and newsmagazines since the mid-1980s (British Elle, Woman, Australian Elle, Scene, Irish Tatler, Domino, Newsweek, Actuel).
His fine art photographs have appeared in the book Nude York (published by Seibundo Shinokosha, 1995), and in various group-exhibitions throughout New York (Nude York, Mary Anthony Gallery, 1996; Perspective Photography, Rx-Arts Gallery, 2001). Mr. Levin’s art photographs are in private and corporate collections.