Arriving in New York City, Rusnak was approached by a model scout and his fascination with fashion as well as art was brought to the fore. Working in the top fashion hubs of New York, Paris and Milan, as well as traveling to exotic locations, his modeling career exposed him to some of the most renowned and influential photographers of all times – Helmut Newton, Guy Bourdin and Chris Von Waganheim. Having an ever enlarging scale of influence while traveling the world Rusnak began to incorporate the photographic styles to his paintings, as well as having his art style influence the photos he had begun to take. Up until then painting had been a hobby for Rusnak. Experimenting with techniques, subject matter and sometimes combining both his photos and paintings, Rusnak met an agent who considered him an artist, not just a photographer and encouraged him to continue with his vision. Rusnak returned to Paris in the early months of the year 2000. A year later he was given an exhibition of his paintings at a gallery in the Marais. The collection was called “Arlequins de Nuit”, paintings of very scary clowns, the kind that give children nightmares. The show was very successful and propelled him forward in techniques, both artistic and photographic.
Back in New York Rusnak met Arne Glimcher, owner of the PACE Galleries, became his mentor when John moved back to New York. Through Glimcher, Rusnak had the opportunity to photographically re-interpret the sculptures of John Chamberlain for FLAUNT, creating vast abstract, sculptural, photographic landscapes. He was then chosen, with the explicit approval of Miuccia Prada, to photograph ‘Waist Down: SKIRTS BY MIUCCIA PRADA” for FLAUNT using the sculptures of NYC – artist Fred Wilson, then on exhibit at PACE as backgrounds. In 2006 Rusnak began the process of integrating his own art with his photography. He created hand-painted murals and other “hard-art” pieces specifically to use as backgrounds for his commercial and editorial work. He next added the elements of photomontage to this artistic process in a series of powerful portraits which led to his first U.S. photographic-exhibition, CLIMATE25 in 2008 at Mark Seliger’s 401 Projects Gallery. He spent much of the next year intensely pursuing new ways of integrating his art and photography seamlessly into one medium. Then in March 2011 John Michael Rusnak was given a one-man-show in New York’s Chelsea district presented at the CATM Gallery. This fourteen piece collection, titled “Duplicitous Icons”, was a stunning series of hand-painted, pigment printed, photo-abstractions of his mixed-medium “hard-art” pieces.
-Abel Rapp 2013, Abel Rapp Public Relations