J U A N G O M E Z
J U A N G O M E Z
F E B R U A R Y 2 – M A R C H 1 12 0 0 6
C U R AT E D B Y V I N C E N T K AT Z
C U E A R T F O U N D AT I O N
We are honored to host this exhibition which has been generously
curated by Vincent Katz. Mr. Katz, a poet, translator, critic and editor, has chosen Juan Gomez, a
Colombian born artist who has lived and worked in New York City for fifteen years. Mr. Katz’s
appreciation of Mr. Gomez’s work demonstrates how the Foundation’s discretionary selection process
allows a natural cross-pollination to occur between different forms of expression.
We appreciate that artists often work tirelessly without thought or concern for exhibition.
CUE is pleased to recognize such commitment by affording this opportunity, thus celebrating the efforts
of artists such as Juan Gomez.
I am interested in the human figure as a structure. I want the people
in the paintings to convey an essence in visual form. I thought of them as symbols, as when you go to see a
dance performance. The expression is in their poses. More than relying on color or atmosphere, I am trying
to put it all on the figures. They communicate a state of mind or a mood through their bodies.
The abstract works come from landscapes. I took note of the colors and worked with simple
lines, keeping most of my attention on how those elements interact with one another on the surface.
Juan Gomez
C U R A T O R ’ SS T A T E M E N T
juan gomez : a painter of differences
Juan Gomez does not sit still. As a man, he left his country and found
a new home, where he can practice his devotion to the art of painting. As a painter, his work has embodied
multiplicities many artists never achieve. The most obvious one, the one a reader of supposed meanings of
artworks, as opposed to an appreciator of art languages, would notice, is the alternation between abstrac-
tion and figuration, but this is only part of the story. More importantly, he has moved from a language that
was spontaneous and squalling to one that involves extreme calculation and equilibrium.
Born in Bogota, Colombia, Gomez grew up in a family that valued the arts. His parents
took him to the Museo del Oro, which holds whatever pre-Columbian gold work was not pillaged by the
Spanish, and his grandfather was an architect who had an active social life. “We had a summer place where
his friends would go, musicians and artists,” Gomez remembers. “I saw painters there. I remember
someone painting in the house, and one of my aunts painted a mural there. My grandfather’s sister makes
pottery. She had a workshop in the city, where we would go, and she would let us play with the materials.”
After a disappointing stint trying to study commercial art at university, Gomez decided to
A R T I S T ’ SS TAT E M E N T
move to the States. “I wanted to get away, leave everything,” he remembers. “I was fed up with the
situation in my country.” Eventually settling in New York, he studied first at the Art Students League and
later at the School of Visual Arts. Among his instructors were Jan Avigkos, Caroll Dunham, Lucio Pozzi and
Barry Schwabsky, but the one who had the greatest impact on Gomez was Haim Stainbach. Stainbach told
Gomez that he was in a medium with tradition and history. ‘“Your options are mapped out for you,’” Gomez
remembers Stainbach saying. “I was painting abstract, and he sent me to look at Soulages, which I didn’t
like at all. He told me to find my peers. For him, painting was a hard road to choose for an artist —
he was very critical of painting and of my doing painting. He never told me he liked my work, but he
challenged me.”
In the late 1990s, Gomez was making erotic drawings, but his paintings of the same time
were abstract. “The drawings were like journals. I was not trying to produce finished work. When I
approached the painting, I remember thinking, ‘These are abstract, because my purpose is very abstract.’ I
remember feeling as though someone had dropped me in the middle of China, a place where no one
understood me, I didn’t understand anyone, so that’s what I could express, without words, without figures.
Those were the only parameters I gave the paintings. I didn’t play with concepts or the history of painting.”
The nudes are a major breakthrough for Gomez. Having worked in increasingly astute
abstract techniques — first in jagged flurries of cross-fire strokes, then in dense fields animated by winding
paths scraped into the paint — Gomez achieved the ultimate synthesis when he brought the nude female
figure into these wavering, linear fields that have a vaguely pre-Colombian air. The figures seem oddly
contemporary. They all depict the same woman, whose only hair is on her head and who is composed of
scrubbed, elongated, parts that fit together, or fall apart, like an erotic construction set.
The imagery seems to speak of breakdowns, which could be the dislocation felt during or
after sex, the dislocation of being in a strange place (she seems in fact to be in no particular place), or it
could be simply the dislocation of existence itself, of trying to be a human being in a world that is
frequently inhumane. These questions of humanism bring to mind a precursor to these abruptly mutated
females, namely the nudes of Picasso. As with the Catalonian master, the female form in Gomez’ paintings
is broken into parts, yet one does not necessarily take this as objectification. The figures in Gomez’
paintings are not made to seem available, as are even the most tortured of Picasso’s figures.
Juan Gomez’ work, whether in oils or in watercolor, clearly signals his desire to place
himself within the tradition of western art. The coloration of the watercolors brings to mind old master
drawings, as does Gomez’ facility with form. Other artists come to mind — Guston for the bluntness of his
figures and Dunham for the playful perversity of his images. One is taken, over all, with the materiality of
Gomez’ work and comes away from it wondering if, despite the titillation of the imagery, the main attraction
is of someone who is really involved with the medium of paint, who is not only willing to work through that,
but who can provide rich textures and shocking contours, for which lovers of technique will be grateful.
Vincent Katz, 2005
blind hymn
The mongers move together in a circle, circulating wares, comparing, noting
But nothing is very different, it is rotten, there is a dull light pushing integers
Across a vast area, in which several indistinct children play tentatively with a
Ball, no dinner bell is rung, no keyboard clatters, just the sound of boat horns
Insistent in the fog that brings every day to a raw finish, a bleating or purpose
Vincent Katz
December 15, 2005
São Paulo
040452, 2004
Oil on linen
14" x 14"
040465, 2004
Oil on linen
36" x 48"
040472, 2004
Oil on canvas
54"x 44"
100376, 2004
Oil on canvas
74" x 66"
070371, 2004
Oil on canvas
60" x 66"
010399, 2004
Oil on canvas
66" x 80"
100381, 2004
Oil on canvas
56" x 68"
100382, 2004
Oil on canvas
58" x 72"
110340, 2004
Oil on canvas
62" x 60"
110341, 2004
Oil on canvas
70" x 68"
110342, 2004
Oil on canvas
70" x 72"
040342, 2004
Watercolor on paper
9" x 12"
040357, 2004
Watercolor on paper
9" x 12"
juan gomez
Juan Gomez was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia in 1970.
He moved to the United States in 1990. Gomez received a BFA in Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts in
New York City in 1998. He has exhibited his work at Audiello Fine Arts, Art in General, Lombard-Freid
Projects and Momenta Art in New York, NY, The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, CT,
and Turner & Runyon Gallery in Dallas, TX. His exhibitions have been reviewed in Art in America,
The New York Times, ArtNexus and zingmagazine. Gomez currently lives and works in New York City.
vincent katz
Vincent Katz is a poet, translator, art critic, curator, and editor.
Katz writes frequently on contemporary art and has published essays on the work of Francesco Clemente,
Jim Dine, Kiki Smith, Philip Taaffe, and Cy Twombly. He curated the first museum retrospective of the
work of Rudy Burckhardt, in 1998, at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain. Katz edited Black
Mountain College: Experiment In Art, published by MIT Press in 2002. His most recent book of poems,
Rapid Departures, was published in São Paulo, Brazil, in 2005. He was awarded a Rome Prize Fellowship
in Literature at the American Academy in Rome for 2001-2002 and the 2005 National Translation Award
from the American Literary Translators Association for his book, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius
(2004, Princeton University Press). He is the editor of the poetry and arts journal VANITAS and of
Libellum books.
B I O S
CUE Art Foundation, a non-profit organization, provides educa-
tional programs for young artists and aspiring art professionals in New York and from around the country.
These programs draw on the unique community of artists, critics, and educators brought together by the
Foundation’s season of exhibitions, public lectures, and its in-gallery studio program. Gallery internships
and stipends afford the next generation of art professionals intimate, working knowledge of the art-making
and exhibition processes. CUE’s 2000 sq. ft. gallery and offices, located in New York’s Chelsea gallery
district, serves as the base for the various educational programs conducted by CUE.
The Foundation’s exhibition season gives unknown or under-recognized artists profes-
sional exposure comparable to that offered by neighboring commercial galleries, without the usual
financial restraints. CUE does not promote a particular school of artistic practice or regional bias; we only
require that exhibiting artists must either not have had a solo exhibition in a commercial venue, or have
received minimal recent public exposure.
CUE’s Advisory Council, an honorary group of artists and leading figures from the arts
education, applied arts, art history, and literary communities, has the responsibility of selecting exhibition
curators. The curators, in turn, nominate artists to exhibit at CUE, and continue to play a role throughout
the exhibition process, helping the artists catalogue their work for exhibition. Both the Advisory Council
and the exhibition curators actively participate in the public lectures and educational programs.
C U E A R TF O U N D AT I O NM I S S I O N
All artwork © Juan Gomez
Catalog designed by Elizabeth Ellis
BOARD OF D IRECTORS
Gregory Amenoff
Theodore S. Berger
Thomas G. Devine
Thomas K.Y. Hsu
Brian D. Starer
ADVISORY COUNCIL
Gregory Amenoff
William Corbett
Meg Cranston
Roy De Carava
Vernon Fisher
Malik Gaines
Deborah Kass
Irving Sandler
GALLERY D IRECTOR
Jeremy Adams
DIRECTOR OF
DEVELOPMENT
Elaine Bowen
GALLERY COORDINATOR
Sandhini Poddar
GALLERY ASS ISTANT
Beatrice Wolert-Weese
511 west 25th street, new york, ny 10001
www.cueartfoundation.org
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