Starsky Brines
29 May 2019 (New Orleans, LA)JONATHAN FERRARA GALLERY is pleased to announce the premier solo exhibition of Venezuelan artist Starsky Brines. Currently working in Miami, the artist has created ten new paintings in his characteristic neo-expressionist portraiture and narratives. His large canvases are vibrant, colorful, gestural and, at times, abstract. The exhibition will be on view from 18 July through 30 August 2019 with an opening reception coinciding with the Arts District of New Orleans’ (ADNO) First Saturday Gallery Openings on Saturday 3 August from 5-10 pm in conjunction with Hancock Whitney White Linen Night, an artful block party which attracts upwards of 50,000 patrons to Julia Street.
The artist discusses this suite of paintings…
I searched for artworks that were available for an exhibition. I selected works at random in my studio. Many of them were made without thinking of a show or project of any kind. They came to life from my very elemental desire of creating – an instinct that allows me to paint like a supreme order. The bunch of works chosen looks formidable to me. After taking a careful glance at the selection, I realized a fresh, heterogeneous compound and found out that it is for me more difficult to make a reading of the selected works when I try to outline an exhibition than just making a spontaneous interpretation of what I have done out of the plain purpose of painting like it was in this case. I came up with a fresher reading on the details of which I was not aware when I just finished the works, which go beyond the exercise of painting and the unexpected interactions amongst themselves.
The complicity amongst the works creates a coherence that I like and appreciate. These are works unique and linked to their own sense and complement each other. They create a dialogue between colors and stories like a storyboard. Each artwork might represent a scene of an absurd story that tells about our human condition tied to our animal condition. For me, these works reflect our mortal awareness and vulnerability, and reproduce us the way a child would represent an adult: grotesque, amorphous, battered, like the result of a heart- driven- honest depiction. These are works celebrate life because they know of their limited material lives.
I realized that my works that will be shown in New Orleans give insights of my understanding of art in a emotional, intuitive and expressive way, thus revealing my point of view about the world where I and my works create the center. They show that they are in brotherhood and belong to each other. They reveal it because they are actually one of the same.
STARSKY BRINE’s paintings and drawings captivate audiences with their distinctive style and recurring theme, the search for the nature of humanity. In his bold works, the artist focuses on characters that are built from a combination of anthropomorphic and zoomorphic features, as well as the appropriation of elements from comics and toys from his childhood.
On the one hand, these characters distort reality to venture into an environment of subcultures and urbanism created by the spontaneous intuition of his strokes and the appropriation of the contemporary iconography. On the other hand, they move within the realm of fantasy. In particular, the animals paired with their human characters evoke associations with fairy tales or comics. They are reminiscent of the world of theatre, in which fantasy and poetry but also comedy often serve as catalysts for the creation of critical meaning. With his works, Brines often questions the interplay of good and evil against the background of the worldwide socio-political climate. Yet Brines does not interpret his themes as ‘black and white.’ They are complex and nonlinear, with charming disruptions, quite serious and yet full of humor.
Brines is personally influenced art historically influenced by Latin American figurative art, the German Neoexpressionism, the Italian Transavantgarde, and the COBRA group. His works oscillate between figuration and abstraction. Brines holds a degree in Fine Art from the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Superiores de Artes Plásticas Armando Reverón in Caracas.
His work has received international attention in exhibitions and has been incorporated into important collections in cities such as Caracas, Basel, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Santander, Miami, Madrid and Seoul.
For more information, press or sales inquiries please contact Gallery Director Matthew Weldon Showman at 504.343.6827 or matthew@jonathanferraragallery.com. Please join the conversation with JFG on Facebook (@JonathanFerraraGallery), Twitter (@JFerraraGallery), and Instagram (@JonathanFerraraGallery) via the hashtags: #StarskyBrines, #JonathanFerraraGallery and #ArtsDistrictNewOrleans.