Julio Valdez: Dreams & Reflections

Julio Valdez

D R E A M S

&

R E F L E C T I O N S

NOVEMBER 12 - DECEMBER 17 / 2016

Though water pervaded each painting in the show, all of the works examined different aspects of the aquatic realm. Celestún (2014) focuses on the frenzied surface, with ridges of water catching glimpses of green leaves on a blue sky from a landscape just out of the frame.

While the water in each work energetically danced in dazzling light, there was a subtle sense of isolation and uncertainty throughout --the sensation one has when experiencing the vastness of the ocean and the mystery of what lies in the deep. To the people of the Caribbean islands, water is a source of life, but it can also confine them to their shores.

Stefanie Waldek Art News Magazine, February 2015

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Celestún II, 2016 Oil on Linen, 58” x 78”

Dreams & Reflections The title of this new exhibition, Dreams & Reflections is, in part, an allusion to Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Carl Jung’s exploration of the psyche.

In the Caribbean region, the surrounding waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea create a sense of light and space that are at once a blessing and a curse. My paintings explore this oceanic landscape that is both illusory and dreamlike. I have been examining images of water beyond its physical characteristics, as a metaphor for consciousness and the creative process. My recent work reflects my interest in creating a spatial uncertainty, a sense of time not yet defined.

This new series has been inspired by diverse places such as the Reserva de la Biosfera Ria Celestún, a large coastal wetland reserve and wildlife refuge in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. I continue to explore ways of including my personal experiences and memories in my paintings, such as in Celestún II. This composition incorporates a part of my son’s body swimming in the mangrove where the fresh and salty waters meet. The ripples of the water create a visually rich field of colors that reflects the skies onto the deep greens and terracotta colors of the mangrove’s fresh waters.

Other places that have inspired my visual explorations in these paintings are Las Terrenas and Cayo Arenas, both in the Dominican Republic, as well as Skaneateles lake, the smallest of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York. These places allow me to experience a communion with nature and its cycles, which I have found are an inviting entry point to my own inner explorations.

Julio Valdez ›

Skaneateles Gray Abstraction, 2015-16 Oil on Linen, 58” x 90”

Julio Valdez’s printed oeuvre attests to the significant role that printmaking can play in artist’s career. Although two dimensional, Valdez’s prints are anything but flat. The ink, paper, and complex matrices compressed under the weight of the press create intricate lines and textured surfaces that are tactile. Throughout his career, Valdez has consistently engaged print processes that appeal to the touch as much as to sight.

Judith B. Hecker, Assistant Curator Dept. of Prints & Illustrated Books Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), New York

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Reverie IV, 2015-16 Oil on Linen, 40” x 42”

Valdez demonstrates that his relationship with water has become far more intimate. His figures appear not on boats, but immersed in transformative waters. Now he addresses not only the classical motif of bathers, but also the long-standing plein air tradition of working from nature and then reworking in the studio. Valdez says he is less concerned with brushwork and the “bravura of painting,” however, than with art as a “meditation on memory, island culture, pleasure, life itself - all done in a cinematic way.”

In Dreaming Boy III, for example, Valdez’s son floats in a calm green-blue sea, eyes half-closed as if in a reverie induced by the undulations. His half-smile suggests rapture as he floats, Ophelia-like, conveying a serenity and a connection with water’s liberating buoyancy.

Cristina La Porta, Ph.D. Fine Art Connoisseur Magazine – November/December 2014 Page 102

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Cayo Arenas Abstraction, 2016 Oil on Linen, 41” x 42.5”

Sea Whispers, 2014. Oil & Ink on Rice paper on Linen, 36 x 52

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Joshua’s Dream in White, 2016 Oil on Paper on Sintra, 26” x 56

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Las Terrenas Abstraction V, 2015 Oil on Linen, 52” x 74”

Cayo Arenas V, 2015-16 Oil on Linen on Wood 30” x 24”

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Reverie II, 2014 Oil on Rice Paper on Linen, 30” x 48”

Las Terrenas Abstraction IV, 2015 Oil on Linen, 30” x 40

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Reverie III, 2016 Oil on Linen, 68” x 32”

Photo by Irene Carlos

Julio Valdez Born in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic Lives and works in New York City and Washington, DC Julio Valdez is a painter, printmaker, teacher and mixed installation artist whose work has been exhibited internationally since 1984. He received a fellowship from the Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in 1994 and founded Julio Valdez Studio, specializing in Non-toxic Contemporary Printmaking processes.

He received his first museum exhibition at the Omar Rayo Museum in Colombia in 1988. His work received prizes at the 1990, 1992, 1994, 1996 and 1998 national biennials at the Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo, as well as numerous prestigious international awards, including an Artist-in-Residence Fellowship at The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City in 199798, the Silver Palette for Painting at the XXX International Painting Festival, Cagnes-sur-Mer, France in 1998, the Grand Prize at the XVII E. Leon Jimenez Biennal in the Dominican Republic in 2000, among others.

In 2003, he received a New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) Fellowship and held a solo exhibition at the Organization of American States in Washington, DC. In 2005, he was nominated to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and presented a solo exhibition at the Stella Jones Gallery in New Orleans.

He has presented Twenty-five (25) solo exhibitions, most recently in February-March, 2014 at Latin American Masters Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and also exhibited in May-June at the June Kelly Gallery in Soho, New York City. His work is part of many public, private and museum collections worldwide. The hard-cover book Julio Valdez, by Federica Palomero, was published in the Fall of 2009.

He is represented by June Kelly Gallery, in New York, Latin American Masters in Los Angeles and other galleries internationally.

Cayo Arenas Abstraction III, 2016. Oil on Linen, 22” x 30”

CREDITS

Photography by Becket Logan, Marta Gutierrez & Ezequiel Taveras Catalogue Design by Ezequiel Taveras