ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries Presents First U.S. Solo Show of Cuban Artist José Angel Vincench.

Written by Pesonnpa Vleliatizay Monday, 07 November 2011 23:11

Coral Gables, Florida.- ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries are pleased to present “Vincench vs. Vincench: A Dissident Dialogue from Cuba” on view through January 2012. The Havana-based artist, who has held one-person exhibitions in Canada, Ecuador, the Republic of Cameroon, Switzerland, and leading galleries in Cuba, along with participating in five dozen group shows in leading galleries in North and South America and Europe, will exhibit more than 150 new paintings and wall-mounted installations of canvas and paper “shopping bags” shaped into letters from his two new series, Dissident and Exile. Fourteen of the four-foot Dissident paintings, each in a different language, are in “Vincench vs Vincench: A Dissident Dialogue from Cuba.” Vincench superimposes a stencil of the definition of dissent in each language over an abstract painting, obscuring parts of the words with a white overlay that allows a faint suggestion of the original painting to be seen.

His other way of looking at something turns out to be spectacular, according to gallery owner-director Virginia Miller. “Although these are paintings of words, Vincench’s extraordinary technique transforms them into gorgeous semi-abstractions,”she said. Rounding out the “Exile” portion of the show are smaller canvases with partially obliterated definitions of dissent and exile with five paintings of brick “houses” whose exterior walls can be grouped together to spell out the letters E X I L E.  A companion work, planned for the Havana Biennial, is a series of small white houses mounted on trailers. A preview of that project will be displayed on a gallery laptop. Another element in the exhibition is a one-meter tall Christmas tree created by Vincench in conjunction with the annual “Festival of the Trees” being held at the Coral Gables Museum to benefit the interior architecture department of Florida International University.  Vincench’s “Reconciliation” tree is crafted of deeply incised cedar slats, each bearing a par of the definite of reconciliation in Spanish on one side and English on the other, elaborates on his themes of dissidence and exile.


Born in Holguin, Cuba, in 1973, José Angel Vincench attended the school of plastic arts and high school there before being accepted at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. He began exhibiting at the Holguin Center of Art in 1992. Works by Vincench are included in such collections as the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana and have been exhibited in major art fairs and at the Barbican Centre in London. He has won various awards for drawing and painting at the Drawing Salon in Santo Domingo, the Contemporary Cuban Art salon at Havana’s Museum of Fine Art, and the Center of Plastic Arts and Design in Havana. He also has been granted residencies in APT Studios, London; the Fordsburg Artists’ Studios in Johannesburg; and the Cuban Artists’ Fund in New York City.

For more than 35 years, Virginia Miller has introduced artists with unique personal visions and techniques to the South Florida art community. These have included numerous mid-career latin american artists and international artists as well as a number of historically significant modern latin american masters. Some of her exhibitions have been spectacular, such as the one-person show of sculpture and paintings by Karel Appel, the installation of grass growing in the shape of Ana Mendieta’s body, or Eric Staller’s "Lightmobile," a VW Beetle studded with 1,659 tiny light bulbs flashing in computer-programmed patterns. In 1983 Miller scored a national coup with a worldwide exclusive exhibition and sale of “Doonesbury” animation drawings and paintings. “Doonesbury” animation art is rarely seen on the market, as Garry Trudeau only allows it to be sold to benefit select charities–- in this case, for abused children. The following year, ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries mounted one of its largest exhibitions: 130 images from 19th and 20th century master photographers. Including works by the inventor of the photographic negative, William Henry Fox Talbot, and the first woman photographer, Anna Atkins, the show presented a history of photography, including works by the early Europeans, the American pictorialists and the then-courant colorists, such as Elliott Porter, represented by a pair of oversize dye transfers. In 1992 ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries presented Florida’s first major exhibition and sale of Australian aboriginal art, “Walk About In The Dreamtime.” Its guest of honor was Rover Thomas, a founder of the Turkey Creek School of aboriginal art and one of two Aborigine painters who had represented Australia in the Venice Biennale. Altogether, over the past 30 years, ArtSpace/Virginia Miller Galleries has presented close to 300 exhibitions in a dozen locations, including her five galleries: Coconut Grove, downtown Miami’s Miamarina, the Biltmore Hotel, the present ArtSpace, and the 9,000-square-foot ground floor of Douglas Centre. Other venues for the gallery’s exhibitions have included Broward Community College, the Boca Raton Museum, and various financial institutions and corporate offices. Many of the shows introduced artists to the region; some exhibitions introduced emerging artists. Some of the artists, like those mentioned above, were already historically significant; others have gone on to become important figures in the art world. Visit the gallery's website at ... www.virginiamiller.com

---

Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~