DaWire

Nothing like a Summer Storm, 2010, oil paint, acrylic paint, spray paint, plastic bags, fabric, glitter and color pencil on canvas, 48″x60″

Wavering between figuration and abstraction, Sebastian Vallejo’s paintings are precise but expressive exercises in light, form and color. In them, bright colors collide with defined forms and structures that, combined with a mixed media approach provide an engaging visual experience that rests in conflicting polarities.[...]

This past May the Fundación Juan March in Madrid closed the survey exhibition Cold America: Geometric Abstraction in Latin America (1934-1973). The exhibition gathered over 300 works by more than 60 artists, taking as a point of departure two very specific return trips from Europe that offered a chronological structure to the show; Joaquín Torres-García’s return to Uruguay in 1934, and Jesús Rafael Soto’s return to Venezuela in 1973. The exhibition’s strength lies in showcasing in an European institution a comprehensive visual tracing of the complex histories of geometric abstraction in Latin America; a legacy grounded on the aesthetic language of the European constructivist project which, renewed and transformed, thrived throughout Latin America well into the 1960s and 1970s. The title of the show, Cold America, alludes to the tradition’s rational and objective forms which revealed chromatic structures and experiments in a diverse array of mediums such as painting, sculpture, photography and architecture.[...]

Featuring both individual and collaborative works, Josué Pellot and Héctor Arce-Espasas play upon their shared heritage with a critique of tourism’s myth of Paradise. The artists reach beyond simple autobiography by embodying histories of art, family, commerce, heritage, and nationalism in a rich visual experience in Galleries 2.5 and 3. Illuminated pineapples become the embodiment of culture, transubstantiating the subject’s body into that of a delectable fruit. Both artists struggle with the alchemy responsible for transforming culture into consumable tourist objects. Their photographs, paintings, and installations express a desire to unravel the meaning of cultural objects and the dissemination of those meanings throughout the global marketplace.[...]

Quintín Rivera Toro’s most recent exhibition titled Allafuera, currently on view at METRO:plataformaorganizada in San Juan, is comprised of a general survey of new works and a presentation of several ongoing series that the artist has been working on for several years. Although the works are presented devoid of curatorial strategies, through them, the viewer can sense a personal approach consequent to the artist’s immediate environment, that combined with political proclamations seems to evoke a sense of agitation and unrest. Ideas related to hopelessness, desire and futility prevail as relevant themes to explore within the context of Rivera Toro’s recent artistic production.[...]

  Ingenious Displacements: Hope and Failure in the Works of Manolo Rodríguez Flight has been the dream of mankind for centuries. A lofty desire inspired by nature, present in most mythologies, ancient cultures and religions, from Greek mythology to Persian literature and Christianism. In these, flying suggests divinity, winged flight a province of the gods [...]