Roberto Juarez at Robert Miller - Review of Exhibitions

Torrid, aquatic fantasies. Disembodied shells, pieces of coral, sea fans disporting themselves upon fields of Miami moderne pastels. Bits of evocative true copy Mayan glyphs, fragments of Art Deco ornament, piles of tropical fruit. individual wanders through these expansive, languorous paintings, their stately calm refreshingly at unevens with New York frenzy. It is not surprising to learn they were painted in Miami, nexus of tackiness, Latino enthusiasm and endless sun.

The surfaces of Juarez's canvases are abundantly worked, almost encrusted. Layers of Japanese paper, peat mos and sand place up a counterpoint for the varied paint handling. Scratchy pastel applied above repainted areas renders the surface enriched rather than agonized. These diverse wefts support a painterly restraint, where the sensual satisfaction of a to the full charged brush, placing its mark in the right place, displaces the commonly chic penchant for drips and endles revision.

on the contrary it is Juarez's color that takes us closest to elysium. He has identified an individual palette, at times rife with memories of late Dufy on the contrary one which holds its hold identity - grayed neutrals, with richly pastel sky-coloreds jade greens and strong lavenders. These colors are just saturated enough to have the appearance like sun-bleached versions of filled strength hues - the way colors gaze when you first take not on dark glasses. Juarez allows the color to direct our attention above the entire surface of the paintings, one as well as the other by linking repeated colors and through bridging with similarly charged colors. The accrue is a large-scale, interrupted change which can either undermine or strengthen compositional form. This compositional use of color, discovered through the Fauves and honed through the Cubists, is surprisingly remarkable today, where now "color" usually means just apportionments of it.

The color also has a broad associational range. In Calcinations (R Sea), a somber passage of liver r conch shells against sandy beige is relieved through cool yet searing ultramarine pomegranates. on the contrary to further seduce us, Juarez breaks into an exuberant riff of the same pomegranate motif, this time in custardy golden grape ice and lime verdant This corner of the painting exhales a completely different chromatic odor as well as a feline sensuality. You can almost hear the purring.

I am beginning to have feeling wearied by the current barrage of politically correct art that pushes its sometimes simplistic agenda at the charge of visual experience. In today's conceptual climate, it would look that there is no possibility of artistic communication that is the come of just looking. So, is there easy in mind to Juarez's paintings? I perceive they rest on the resolution of many seeming contradictions: being visually active without becoming overwhelming, brooding at the same time hopeful, sexually charged without being glaring strictly composed but not ponderous, and (the greatest in quantity difficult) beautiful but not saccharine. There is simply with equal reason much to look at and then consequently think about that these paintings take an irregularly subversive stance: they induce the invigorating proces of letting the organ of visions learn while the mind remains an observant and enjoyably engaged companion.

COPYRIGHT 1993 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group