Opening Party: Saturday, May 2nd, 4-6pm
Artist talk: Saturday, June 6th, 11am
Artist Statement:
I am Cuban by birth, Spanish by blood, and American by choice. Since I began my career in the summer of 1990, these three cultures have inevitably influenced my vocabulary as an artist, and have guided me through thirty five years of creating art. These artistic influences have also led me to the century’s old tradition of recycling images and objects. From Victorian Daguerreotypes, to master paintings and found objects, nothing in my work is outright unique and in fact, I deny the concept of Artistic Originality. There is nothing that populates my work which has not existed before.
Believing that without a past there is no present and no future, I take discarded images, forgotten photographs and my own drawings to create a dialogue between past and present. Sepia-toned family photographs live in the same world as Seventeen century pastel colored Courtesans; Hudson Valley landscapes share the same space with Comic Book characters, all of this taking place in the nebulous space between yesterday and today, giving us hints of forgotten stories and never written Histories.
Much of my technical skills were tough to me by Cuban Master Juan Gonzalez (1942-1993), who was my teacher and Mentor for several years. The freedom of the brush stroke was something I learned from my brief friendship with Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), who attacked his canvases without technique or inhibitions. These two artists, though not obviously seen in my work, have also influenced the way I approach my painting.
My own personal aesthetic embraces exuberant irregularities, uneven compositions, and obsessive details. I consider myself a true Baroque artist by nature, capturing images from every century and blurring the distinctions of time that lies between them, to convey a single message.
