When the light appears - 2022
For his new personal exhibition at the gallery, the Cuban-American artist Jorge Enrique is presenting a series of original works freely inspired by plants: around ten works painted on Japanese Yupo paper are presented as well as their NFT version.
Title When the light appears is borrowed from the poem of the same name by Allen Ginsberg, writer of the Beat Generation and major literary inspiration for the artist.
For many months, Jorge Enrique lived in self-sufficiency in his studio surrounded by lush vegetation, especially flowers, typical of Florida's tropical climate. He also wondered about their deep nature beyond their beauty alone.
Over time, the garden metaphorically became the gateway to its own inner garden, a place of the mind where form takes place, unfolds and manifests from a place of pure thought.
The artist likes to quote Barnett Newman, who had a strong resonance in his practice with in particular this quote taken from The sublime is now published in 1948: “We emancipate ourselves from the infirmities of memory, filiation, nostalgia, legend, myth, or whatever you want that could have constituted a process specific to Western European painting. Instead of building cathedrals from Christ, from man or from “life”, we build from ourselves, from our own feelings. The image we produce is the self-evident image of revelation, real and concrete, intelligible to anyone who considers it without the nostalgic eyeglasses of history. »
ARTIST STATEMENT
Redacted - 2019
“Writing is a form of editing in which several texts are combined and modified to form a single document. Often this is a method of collecting a series of writings on a similar theme and creating a definitive and cohesive piece of work. "
-Wikipédia-
"Every something is an echo of nothing"
-John Cage-
“With this new series, I explore my understanding of what a painting should be and do. What should this represent and why? These questions are central to my work.
Here, I reduce any form of knowledge that has governed my work in the last thirty years to its most primary form.
Direct in form, imbued with past experiences while admiring the colors of my current reality.
No excuses in this abstraction.
Simple and crude, mysterious and yet easily accessible thanks to its beauty.
In these paintings, there is no intention to dissect nature or even to represent it. Rather, it is a serious approach to the manifestation of nature in the hands of the artist as a factor in the creative process. »
Jorge Enrique
Miami, October 2019
Urban D-Construction - 2009-2011
In this series, the images result in a new order obtained by juxtaposing flashes of my daily visual reality – the brands and urban landscapes that surround me.
I walked the streets of the Wynwood neighborhood and took prints right there. Once back in my studio, I tore them up and reassembled them, in search of a new meaning, a new understanding.
I went to the streets of Wynwood neighborhood and pulled images directly from there, and later returned to the studio to tear and reassemble them in search of a new essence, and perhaps a new understanding.
Deconstructing these images has led me to a new visual order, a place to explore, and a new home to dwell.
Colorwise I continue to explore a sort of rev-up, yet very controlled pallet, minimal in colour and very rich in tonalities. Here the narrative reveals itself as a series of strips of data, a film made up of all of the thousands of bits of information and images and objects that surround us and we are forced to process and discard daily, a statement about our times and the places we live in, as well as an invitation to look at our surroundings in a entirely new way.
Jore Enrique
Miami, July 2009
POINT OF VIEW
“The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature
but plunges it deeper into them.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in Land of men, 1939
To account for the various activities of the urban world, especially all the banal or repetitive contemporary culture (from the position of his body to the detail of his hairstyle or the location of his name on the pay sheet), is a theme recurrent in the plastic arts. In this field, radical changes have emerged over the last century from Marcel Duchamp's "ready-made" to the official recognition of photography as a convincing aesthetic medium. Artists have injected everyday elements into their work beyond even criticism or mere observation. Jorge Enrique, in three recent series, "Numbers", "Urban D Construction" and "Low Ride", experiments the confrontation of archaic forms of culture (totems, petrified substances) with all the symbols of our urban jungle (fiberglass , steel and other manufactured materials).
Enrique was born in Havana in 1960 and began his studies at the Alfred Glassel School of Art in Houston, Texas, in 1991. His first exhibitions, in Houston and Miami where he lives, were devoted to compositions in which raw color was expressed through paintings highly influenced by geometric abstraction. In three decades of research and experimentation with different creative formats (sculpture, installation or simple frames hung on the walls), Enrique has shaken the boundaries of traditional representation. According to him, it is about "tearing the veil of urban culture" to literally get to the street level.
A subculture of ‘lowriders’ formed specifically within the Chicano and, less prominently, the Asian-American community; each customized car was a reflection of a certain social network, associated with particular styles of music, fashion and visual art. Jorge Enrique locates the aesthetic markers of these subcultures through a subtle reinvention of the same paint materials used to adorn the ‘lowriders’ commonly seen throughout the urban landscape in Miami, in this instance. The organic, smoothly shaped bulges from flat squares of glittering fiberglass paint appear to evoke natural organs versus a mechanistic byproduct. While indications of the scope of the ‘lowrider’ culture may be alien to most viewers (wet t-shirt and bikini contests, barbecues and ‘dancing’ contests are not even remotely hinted), the industrial elements and structural format of the works cross over into international automotive and applied design arenas. As in his ‘Numbers’ and ‘Urban D-construction’ series, ‘Low Ride’ maintains a continuous dialogue between the natural world and the technological world, in such a way as to uphold the ambiguity of its critical genesis. It is clear that the bulbous projections are produced with factory-grade precision, obscuring immediate possibilities of comparison with a natural element. Yet, the issue of ‘subjectivity’ within the machine is another hallmark of Enrique’s work.
Academically celebrated artists of the Modern art historical canon (Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney and Rebecca Horn are exemplars) have experimented with the ‘sentient machine’ theory with an overwhelming number of methodologies and critical approaches within the last century, especially following the World Wars. Focusing on technology and urban subcultural modes to inform the finished aesthetic product, Jorge Enrique offers a specific perspective on the dizzying shifts between man and machine. Petrifying that mathematically-driven, breakneck pace in totem poles in ‘Numbers’, elevating those systems with the city’s grit in ‘Urban D-construction’, and projecting its progress as illuminated by a distinctive American subculture in ‘Low Ride’, Enrique’s artistic development displays noted signs of an artistic practice informed by accepted contemporary artistic movements, and simultaneously rewarded with a degree of poignant storytelling relaying his own background and social influences. Numbers, the street and machines: in color.
Transformed into silkscreens and imprisoned by the resin, they combine the traces of the urban environment and the distant echo of the streets and their occupants. These works, cast in the conservative lacquer, vibrate with this mixture of colors: those of painting and those of the street.
After "Urban D-Construction", the series "Low Ride" is intended as a tangible bridge between the Conceptual, the Pop and the Installation Art.
This cultural "quirk" from the automotive world, commonly called "Low Riding" has its origins in custom cars of the late 60, when the industrial production system of brands like Ford, GM and Buick has grown. The end of the 70 years has seen the appearance of incredible cars, with senseless hydraulic suspensions and manipulated by a simple technical flick!
In this "Low Riders" culture, which has developed mainly in the Chicano and, to a lesser extent, Asian American communities, each car bears the social stigma with its particular style of music, fashion and of visual art. Jorge Enrique places the aesthetic sliders of these subcultures in Miami's urban landscape, in a subtle reappropriation of the same painting processes.
The almost organic aspect of the “spheres” that he places on painted and metallized fiberglass plates seems to evoke organs facing highly manufactured by-products. If the “Low Rider” culture may be foreign to most people (with the exception of wet T-shirt or bikini contests, barbecues and other dance contests…) the industrial elements and the form of the works go far beyond its limits to contribute to the reflection on international automotive design. As in its previous series, the “Low Ride” series maintains an ongoing dialogue between the natural world and the technological world, in a way that permanently retains the ambiguity of its own critical genesis. It is clear that these works are produced with machine precision without any connection to natural elements. However, this question of the "subjectivity" of the mechanical aspect of things remains
an essential point of Enrique's work.
In the last century, the artists celebrated on the altar of modern art (Marcel Duchamp, Jasper Johns, Yves Klein, Joseph Beuys, Matthew Barney and Rebecca Horn ...) have experimented the "sensible" with an incalculable number of methods and critical approaches, especially after the world wars. Focusing on the relationship between technology and urban subcultures, Jorge Enrique gives us another perspective on the vertigo engendered by this relationship Man / Machine. Thus, from the frenzied rhythm mathematically set in motion in the totems of the series "Numbers", to the confrontation with the world of the street and its "stigmata" with "Urban D-construction", he crossed a new stage with "Low Ride By radiating his work from a typically American subculture.
The artistic evolution of Jorge Enrique is at the same time a practice nourished by contemporary artistic movements and by a narrative that is anchored in his own experience and his social influences.
Numbers, machines, the street: all, in color.
Shana Beth Mason
University of Glasgow (Christie's Education, London)
March 2011