Image Ivelisse
Jiménez art work
PRART NEWS - The Hole is proud to announce a group show of
emerging art from Puerto Rico, Jesús Bubu Negrón, Ivelisse Jiménez, Radamés
Juni Figueroa, Nathan Budoff, José Luis Vargas, curated by Nathan Budoff. From the curator: “Qué
no se acabe la fiesta!” (February 7 – 22, 2015) is an exhibit of recent work from Puerto Rico that
arrives in New York during the bleakest weeks of winter. A call to join the
party, it is composed of complex, compelling artworks. The Caribbean is
renowned as a celebratory region, springing from the traditions of festival in
their varied manifestations throughout the region, and reinforced by the
marketing and real development of tourism, an industry rooted in leisure and
celebration.
Image Jesús Bubu Negrón art work
Ivelisse Jiménez’s work uses similarly bright, vital colors.
Her pieces integrate a variety of materials, many recycled, within the visual
referent of painting, but extending into the space and responding to the
specific installation site. This conjunction of the formal and the informal,
the considered and the encountered gives the work an informality as well as an
elegant unpredictability. This work interacts with rigorous abstract concerns
while conserving a playful freedom that belies its deep consideration.
Radamés Juni Figueroa consistently works with referents tied
to quotidian life in Puerto Rico, exalting play and capturing spontaneous
cultural invention. Tropical Readymade 3 captures and amplifies the daily
business of life while using it as the source for a sophisticated abstract
investigation. The “Capitan” paintings set unsavory characters to dance and
sing, recapturing and reframing the maritime history of the Caribbean with
humor and rhythm.
Image: Radamés “Juni” Figueroa, Capitán maracas, 2015
Nathan Budoff’s large ceiling painting Island in the Sky
examines the strange vitality of human settlement on islands, conflating New
York and Venice, setting them together both afloat in the sky and the ocean,
and imagining the island city as a creature swimming through the waters. Set in
a tropical ocean, the island navigates between swimmers and fish, above stark
trees that could be coral, just off the shore of a beach where a child plays.
The elements rendered in charcoal are equally if not more concrete than the
full-color painted characters.
José Luis Vargas’ work is similarly syncretic, integrating
stain and realist drawing, text and graphite. His longstanding interest in the
esoteric and the mysterious are invested in this instance with an ambiguity in
the object-subject relationship as to who is the protagonist: the artist
rendered in a self-portrait or the creature above him. Restrained in its formal
means and its use of color, there is an aspect of relic or remnant to the work
as well as an improvisational sensation.
The party is vital and heartfelt. Maybe it is already over,
maybe it is internal and imagined. And yet it is an alternate paradigm, a way
of seeing human socialization, a way of confronting life that posits other
solutions and different interactions. May the work keep on, may life keep
surprising, may the music play, qué no se acabe la fiesta!
The Hole is open for business Tuesday – Saturday, 12 – 7pm.
Located at 312 Bowery between Bleecker and Houston streets. (212) 466-1100, Email krysta@theholenyc.com for more
information
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