international painting annual 1 exhibition-in-print
online resource






Jovan Karlo Villalba
Miami, FL

 

jovan@jovanvillalba.com

www.jovankarlo.com

page 168



statement

My interest is in the possibilities of the imagination.

Through my art, I aim to create a gratifying and refreshing experience by stimulating contemplation and escapism in a viewer. I like to think of my paintings as puzzle segments that provide a glimpse of pictorial worlds that are inviting and free to inhabit. Through the juxtaposition of curious references, and the fusion of abstract marks, I assign unconventional roles to familiar imagery. The whimsical reconstructions of dislocated elements describe settings that emanate meaning over time, resulting in work that is simultaneously deliberate and vague.

A viewer may eventually find that my art, while commenting on current social and environmental issues, reveals how I see the world around me, an interconnected place, constantly shifting between the familiar and unfamiliar.

My recent work comments on mankind's struggle to coexist in harmony with Mother Earth. I present visions of a foreseen place that are a direct result of our actions today. These paintings depict spectacular scenes of distress, isolation, disaster and renewal. With the use of expressive strokes, washes and blends over multiple layers of paint, I attempt to create environments that shade realism into abstraction thus stimulating contemplation and escapism in a viewer. Like Turner's Fisherman at Sea (1796), I aim to create landscapes that transform paint and canvas into studies of the sublime power of the natural world.



bio

born: 1977, Quito, Ecuador


education:

Cooper Union School of Art, BFA, 1999


selected awards/honors

Best of Show Award, New*Art, The Armory Art Center, 2010
Finalist, New York, New York, MyArtSpace.com International Competition, 2007


selected publications

Bluecanvas Magazine. Bluecanvas, issue 05, 2010
22 Zine. Twenty2wo Press, issue 07, 2010
Queens International 4; exhibition catalogue. Queens Museum of Art, 2009
Magnitude 7; exhibition catalogue. Manifest Creative Research Gallery, volume 28, 2008


selected solo or two-person exhibits

New Beginnings, Demossa Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA, 2010
The Passing, Calix Gustav Gallery, Miami, FL, 2010
Premonitions, Tria Gallery, New York, NY, 2008


selected group shows

New*Art, The Armory Art Center, West Palm Beach, FL, 2010
Storm, Submergedart Gallery, Newark, NJ, 2010
The Rite of Spring, Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2010
Queens International 4, Queens Art Museum, Queens, NY, 2009



Copyright © 2006-2012 Manifest Press