Julio Valdez 'Water Paintings' at June Kelly Gallery

Written by Dustin Summerall Wednesday, 05 January 2011 23:54

 

New York City - Water Paintings, an exhibition of new work by Julio Valdez in which he displays his continuing mythic fascination with the sea, will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 591 Broadway, NYC, on September 6. The exhibition, the artist’s inaugural show at the gallery, will remain on view through October 2.

Valdez, a native of the Dominican Republic, uses “an almost monochromatic palette of greens and blues,” writes Federica Palomero, chief curator at the Museo Alejandro Otero in Caracas, in a critical essay on the artist’s work. “A spatial ambiguity that oscillates between surface and depth allows the artist to depict with an almost musical fluidity a feeling of transparency and vibrancy and, simultaneously, a sense of darkness and threat.”

Valdez’s paintings abound in mythological signs and symbols - marine, animal, and, in particular, the lizard and the yucca plant indigenous to the Dominican Republic, as well as bodies intertwined in the outline of a map of the island. Palomero says these floating horizontal silhouettes “could represent hedonistic swimmers or victims of drowning in a treacherous journey.” The sea, she adds, “is that which separates and unites, a source of life and pleasure,” and that “cursed circumstance of water all around.”

Writing about Valdez’s paintings, art historian Sandra Kraskin comments that, while Valdez’s work is visually autobiographical, it “transcends the limits of the strictly personal to become instead a collective portrait, the image of an island with a rich and complex history.”

Julio Valdez
Valdez was born in Santo Domingo and studied at Altos de Chavόn School of Design in La Romana, which is associated with Parsons School of Design, New York. He also studied at the National School of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo, and worked with printmakers Robert Blackburn and Kathy Caraccio in New York. He lives in New York City.

Valdez’s works have been shown in many one-person and group exhibitions in the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, and Europe. His work is represented in numerous public, corporate and private collections, including El Museo del Barrio, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA.; Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University, New Jersey; Musée Grimaldi, Cagnes-Sur-Mer, France; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, San Juan, Puerto Rico; Museum of Modern Art, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; Omar Rayo Museum, Roldanillo, Colombia; Library of Congress and The World Bank Art Collection, Washington, DC.

The June Kelly Gallery shows the works of young and emerging artists, as well as mid-career and established artists. The gallery’s major focus is contemporary painting, sculpture and photography, both abstract and figurative. The gallery was established in 1986 and is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). Before opening the gallery, June Kelly, the director, had been a private dealer for many years. In addition, she had managed the career of artist Romare Bearden for 13 years until his death in 1988. Visit June Kelly Gallery at : www.junekellygallery.com/

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