‘Visiones Personales’ Opens Oct. 5th
At ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries

Hard on the heels of a Wall Street Journal tip that South American art will be the next big thing with art collectors, ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries is presenting “Visiones Personales,” a roundup of works by leading master and mid-career Latin American artists.

“Specialists predict Latin America will be the next region to attract buyer interest,” wrote Margaret Studer in the Journal’s Sept. 14, 2007 edition.  “This has already been the case at the Venice Biennale.”

Opening from 7 to 10 p.m. Friday, Oct. 5th, the exhibition includes works by three acknowledged master artists: the Puerto Rican master Arnaldo Roche-Rabell, represented by a powerful six-and-a-half foot oil depicting a rooster amid swirling strokes of gold and rusty brown; Alejandro Obregón, considered one of the greatest living Colombian masters; and the late Benjamin Cañas, the legendary painter from El Salvador.

Dominating the show is the large oil by Roche-Rabell, “recognized by the critics and the public as one of the most important international contemporary painters,” according to the catalog essay for his one-person

exhibition at the Museum of Art in Ponce, Puerto Rico, which further notes that “with a post-expressionist style, Roche-Rabell integrates Caribbean elements, psychological preoccupations, and eroticism that becomes evident in the development of the images.”           

The oil by Obregón is of a condor, one of his typical subjects, with stylized volcanoes in the background, also a common reference in works by the Colombian master.

Titled “La Vigilia,” the oil on panel by Cañas is nearly four feet square and includes three figures: his daughter lying in a bed, with the artist and his wife seated on its opposite sides. Their exquisitely drawn faces contrast with their stylized bodies and the painting’s distorted perspective, a typical characteristic of Cañas. Nestled in a corner of the work is a minuscule nude figure, presumably the artist’s alter ego.

Other artists in the show also personify “Visiones Personales” with their unique styles, such as a painting by the well-known Cuban painter Gina Pellón. Her canvas spans nearly five feet, its colorful swirls trailing a bemused female face like wispy scarves flowing in  the breeze.

Other highlights of the show include two 26-inch photo-anodized aluminum “Water Movement” panels from Soledad Salamé, best known in her native Chile for museum installations shown in that country’s leading museums, and a 40-inch

drawing by Hugo Crosthwaite, a young artist from Tijuana, Mexico, that was exhibited in the VII Monterrey Biennial in Monterrey and Mexico City.

The show includes works by two winners of major awards: Venezuelan artist Irene Pressner’s unique tattoo-needle paintings on encaustic, similar to the one awarded the $50,000 first prize in last year’s international juried competition at the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California, and an oil by the Mexican artist Sergio Garval, winner of sixteen top awards in painting, sculpture and etching. A charcoal-on-canvas by Garval similar to one in this exhibition won him a $50,000 first-place honor at the Rafael Cauduro First Biennial of Drawings Competition of the Americas held in Tijuana, Mexico last year.

Paintings by the Cuban-American artist Heriberto Mora include a large oil from a new series showing a multitude of many-hued paint swashes surrounding a painter’s palette bathed in the light from a single window, suggesting a deity mixing the pigments of the world’s people.

Included in the exhibition are new works by an outstanding realist, Marco Tulio of Colombia, whose meticulously painted, introspective subjects—often, characters from opera—are subordinate to his concern with form and color; a minimal, painted wooden construction representing a home with a

single occupant by Alejandra Tolosa, a mid-career artist from Argentina; and three large oils by Guillermo Londoño, whose oversized horizontal abstractions with blended edges suggest dreamy landscapes.

Alexis Fernandez of Panama is represented by a surreal four-foot oil of two youngsters in a fantasy playroom, the artist’s favorite subject.
           
Rounding out “Visiones Personales” —literally—are three life-sized sculptures of whimsically painted dogs by Mateo Arguelles Pitt, an enigmatic artist from Argentina.

Located in the Coral Gables business district at 169 Madeira Ave., ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday – Friday and by appointment.

For more information, call 305-444-4493

top