M.Y. Art Prospects is pleased to announce the solo exhibition
of Jose Luis Farinas - "The Beasts of Chaos."
Miyako Yoshinaga
The nightmares of Bosch and Brueghel return in contemporary
form in the grotesque, metamorphosing creatures of Jose Luis Farinas,
a Havana-based Cuban painter, draftsman and illustrator. This, his first
solo exhibition in New York, features his most recent oil paintings and
watercolors.
Myriad faces, hands, feet, wings, and other parts of half-human
half-crustacean creatures are connected to and entangled with each other
in a mysterious chain of transformation. The resulting fantasies beautify
chaos in meticulous detail. The abundant hidden references in his paintings
are often taken from the Old Testament or the Kabbalah.
In the 2004 oil paintings "The Inner Life" and
"The Beast of Chaos," Farinas evolves from his previous style
with bold compositional power and new surface structures. Instead of dispersing
his subjects, he emphasizes them with a compressed format and thicker
paints. In these paintings, the formerly introverted world of Farinas
has gained dynamic force. In his watercolors, Farinas' extraordinary expertise
in ultra-fine paintbrush technique can instantly be recognized. More fragmented
than his oil paintings, these extremely delicate watercolors each create
a miniature universe conveying a palpable sense of infinity.
Jose Luis Farinas was born 1972 to Spanish-Cuban-Jewish
parents. His mother, Juana Garcia Abas, received an academic and atelier
art education with some of the great Cuban Masters including Antonia Eiriz
and Martinez Pedro. She began teaching Farinas painting when he was quite
young. In 1990, Farinas received his diploma from the Union de Arquitectos
de Cuba for oil and mural paintings. In 1991 he graduated with Gold Title
from Havana's San Alejandro Academia de Artes Plasticas. Between 1991
and 1995 Farinas majored in painting at the Instituto Superior de Arte,
ISA in Havana. He has recently been offered a Cornell Artist Residence
by Cornell University for 2005. Farinas has held more than twenty solo
exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions both in and out of Cuba.
In the United States, he has been exhibited at the Las Americas Denver
Museum, the Mizel Museum of Judaica, both in Colorado and the Jewish Community
Center of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2003, M.Y. Art Prospects featured
Farinas' paintings in a group show of Cuban artists organized by the Society
For Advancement of Latin American Arts, Delray Beach, Florida.
Farinas' work can be found in important museum collections
in New York, Denver, Delray Beach and Pittsburgh as well as in many private
collections. His work has been published in a number of art and literary
magazines and newspapers, including OPUS HABANA, UNION, Art Nexus, Pittsburgh
Post and Denver Post. His illustrations appear in many books published
by leading Cuban publishing houses.
Jose Luis Farinas is represented by M.Y.
Art Prospects, New York.
For further information and/or photographic materials, please
contact: tel. 212 268 7132 / e-mail MYartpro@aol.com.
An exhibition catalog ($10) is available upon request.
Contact: 212 268 7132,
Hours: Tue.-Sat. 11-6
Location: 547 West 27th Street, 2nd Floor New York, NY 10001
Bet. 10th and 11th Avenue (close to 11th)
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