Richard Sylvarnes – visual artist, music maker and professional photographer.

He has exhibited and performed at a multitude of spaces, venues, clubs and galleries: Anthology Film Archives,  The Film-makers’ Coop, Microscope Gallery, Synesthesia, Spectacle, St. Marks Church, Sunview Luncheonette, Chaos Computer, Secret Project Robot, Lincoln Center, Le Petit Versailles, Mono No Aware, Tank Space, St. Ann’s Warehouse, Nancy Driscoll Gallery, Eyebeam, Secret Project Robot, Scott Alan Gallery, Theatre 80 St. Marks, Phyllis Harriman Gallery, Neikrug Gallery, the Kitchen among others in New York City; Emerson Gallery (Berlin), Galerie Du Jour (Paris), The Ragged School (London), the Horse Hospital (London), Galerie Tristesse (Berlin), Subliminal Projects (Los Angeles),  Gallery Blütenweiss (Berlin), OK LA (Montreal). In 2009 he received a Creative Capital Grant to work with the four-time Bessie Award winning choreographer David Neumann on a work titled “Big Eater” which premiered at the Kitchen in 2010. Also, in 2008, he was nominated for a Rockefeller Renew Media Fellowship.

He has made several feature films; his first, The Cloud Of Unknowing, premiered in the International Dramatic Feature Competition at the inaugural Tribeca Film Festival in 2002 continuing on in festivals throughout Asia and Europe and was released by Possible Films in 2004. Here Comes Everybody, his second feature, comprised entirely of still photographs, also premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in the NYNY Narrative Competition in 2006. That same year he was commissioned by fashion designer Miho Miho to make a work for her winter collection that resulted in the video Siberia. His third feature, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz, is a found-footage film that featured live music accompaniment premiering at The Microscope Gallery in New York City and then at the Anthology Film Archives. His two short works Vox Populi of 2004 and Dancing Man of 2005 both premiered at the Thessalonica Film Festival in Greece with Vox Populi continuing on to a powerful outdoor evening projection at Dances Camera West in Los Angeles. Continuing in this vein he made “The Imperial Animal”, a groundbreaking work that premiered at The Chelsea Art Museum in New York in 2007. Sylvarnes was commissioned by Matador Records to make a work for the band Interpol and has also made numerous music videos, particularly Chaos Girls that premiered at the Museek International Music Video Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Richard has released music through the Skrymir Label and 3D Media under various monikers and bands including Zero Times Everything, the Underworld Oscillator Corporation, Sylvarluxe, The Heavenly Escape Beauty Corporation, and the Berlin based ensembles KaiSaR and Palace Chop House. He is currently working with Bradley Eros as the Vampÿrates as a multi-media and DJ duo.

He holds a Bachelors Degree in Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology and has studied film making at New York University, music at Berklee College of Music, guitar with Robert Fripp, and art at the School of Visual Arts. He has been a guest Lecturer at Harvard University and he presently serves as Vice President on the Board of Directors for the Film-Makers’ Cooperative.