LewAllen Galleries Present New Paintings by Michael Roque Collins

Written by Leigh Levinson Wednesday, 19 October 2011 22:54

Santa Fe, New Mexico.- LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, "Michael Roque Collins: Tides of Memory", on view from November 4th through December 11th. This exhibition marks the first public presentation of the artist’s recently inaugurated sculptural practice and features important new paintings exemplifying the sustained relevance of the mythic in contemporary art. Through a dynamic engagement with these media, Collins cultivates complex  relationships between cultural memory and personal history, mythology and the quotidian, abstraction and representation, as well as the spiritual and concrete. Most recently, Collins was awarded a Bioethics and Human Rights Global Art Competition prize from the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization; and, his work was selected for an exhibition sponsored by that organization that will tour between venues in Paris and Houston. The artist lives and works in Houston, Texas, where he has held numerous esteemed teaching positions and is current Director of the School of Art of Houston Baptist University.

Heralded as a key figure within post-symbolist Expressionism, Collins’ art is equally lauded for its visual and allegorical intensities. Dually portentous and promising, his works navigate between literal and symbolic landscapes that propose a dynamic plurality of possible meanings informed by both ancient and modern modes of transcendentalism. Analogizing the material and metaphysical to suggest archetypal forces of decay and renewal, his works are individuated by their assertive use of pentimenti and surface scarification, demonstrating the maximal aesthetic effects of subtractive visual strategies. Achieving formal additions through richly modulated areas of aggressive erasure, his pictorial techniques allude to the universal cycling between order and disorder, memory and history, enlightenment and darkness––root  aspects of the human condition, the collective unconscious, and the natural order. Michael Roque Collins (b. 1955, Houston, TX) earned his BFA from the University of Houston in 1978 and an MFA in painting from Southern Methodist University in 1998. Featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally, his paintings have been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; the El Paso Museum of Art; the San Antonio Museum of Art; and both the Lowe Museum of Art and the Bass Museum of Art in Miami. Collins has been honored with significant awards from such institutions as the  Mid-America Arts Alliance/National Endowment of the Arts;  the Cultural Arts Council of Houston;  the Watercolor Arts Society, and the Atelier House in Hilmsen, Germany.

LewAllen Galleries is one of the oldest and largest galleries of national stature in Santa Fe. It represents internationally acclaimed contemporary artists working in a diverse range of media including painting, sculpture, photography, prints, ceramics, jewelry, tapestry, and glass. In addition to showcasing the finest art of our era, the gallery is also committed to the exhibition of Modernist masterworks in accord with the highest standards of scholarship and connoisseurship. LewAllen Galleries exhibits at each of two museum-like in-town locations, on historic West Palace Avenue and in its newly constructed Railyard district building, as well as at its satellite branch at Encantado, an Auberge Resort. LewAllen Galleries is one of the oldest and largest galleries of leading contemporary and modern art outside of New York City. Exhibiting in three locations, LewAllen is widely respected as one of the leading fine art venues in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the nation's second largest art market. Operating for more than 35 years on Palace Avenue near the New Mexico Museum of Art, the gallery maintains a robust show schedule each year in its 11,000 square feet of museum-like exhibition space. It has recently completed a stunning 14,000 square foot, architecturally forward new gallery building in the Santa Fe Railyard Arts District. LewAllen also operates a satellite gallery at the luxurious Encantado Resort by Auberge in Tesuque, north of the City of Santa Fe. The Contemporary Division features work in a variety of media and its artists represent many schools of contemporary art, including Realist, Pop, Abstract, Color Field, Minimalist, Op, Geometric Abstraction and Expressionist. Its internationally diverse roster includes such noted artists as Audrey Flack, Woody Gwyn, Judy Chicago, John Fincher, Emily Mason, Bernard Chaet, Robert Natkin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Forrest Moses, Hiroshi Yamano, Janet Fish, Ed Mieczkowski and Bill Barrett, among others. During its history, the gallery has also presented the work of such historically notable artists as Fritz Scholder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Robert Colescott, Luis Jimenez, Ida Kohlmeyer, Thornton Dial, Donald Roller Wilson and Larry Rivers, among many others. Visit the gallery's website at ... http://www.lewallengalleries.com

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