Exhibition Dates: March 4 – April 22, 2017
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 4 from 6–8 pm
Gallery Location: 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm
Contact Info: 504.522.1999; arthurrogergallery.com
The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present ON THE BRINK, an exhibition of paintings by Luis Cruz Azaceta. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432 Julia Street, from March 4 – April 22, 2017. The gallery will host an opening, with the artist in attendance, on Saturday, March 4 from 6-8pm.
THE BIG EASY, 2016 | Acrylic on canvas | 96 x 120 inches
ON THE BRINK is Luis Cruz Azaceta’s ninth exhibition with the gallery. The recent works on canvas, which range from kaleidoscopic to austere, present an enigmatic state of affairs, a series of journeys on the edge of order and chaos. Themes of disbalance, dystopia, conflict and passage are boldly rendered in the artist’s distinctive, abstractive style. The paintings reveal Azaceta’s staunch dedication to addressing contemporary issues with his work.
A collection of large, multi-panel canvases bare vivid, narrow polygons oppressively packed en masse, occasionally spotted with various graphic interruptions. ORLANDO, features a smattering of 49 black dots, reflecting the number of people killed last year in a violent hate crime at a nightclub in Florida. HANDS UP, DON’T SHOOT – TULSA is strikingly subdued in comparison. The stark and quite literal composition features a single figure standing with arms raised at the end of a long road, transparently alluding to numerous recent altercations between police and unarmed citizens. ALEPPO’S ASHES is more abstruse in comparison, with a large expanse of black and a somber meld of red paint streaks, ashes and burnt matches.
Luis Cruz Azaceta left Cuba as a teenager in 1960. After immigrating to the United States, he lived in New York and studied at The School of Visual Arts. He relocated to New Orleans in 1992. He has exhibited nationally and internationally for over forty years, and has been awarded numerous grants, including from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment of the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. His work is in many permanent collections, including the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid, Spain; Fundación FEMSA, Monterrey, México; The Howard Farber Cuban Art Collection, NY; Luciano Benetton Collection: Imago Mundi, Italy; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela;; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY. Most recently, Azaceta was featured as the inaugural exhibition at the American Museum of the Cuban Diaspora, Miami, FL, curated by Dr. Alejandro Anreus. A substantial monograph, Luis Cruz Azaceta: No Exit (Turner Libros) is set to be published this year.