Tag: Entropy

Opening Reception of solo exhibitions from Juan Travieso, Wiley Wallace and Alvaro Naddeo

Thank you to all that came out to celebrate the opening reception of our new solo exhibitions from Juan Travieso, Wiley Wallace and Alvaro Naddeo. Congratulations to each artist on their beautiful new bodies of work that will be on view now through July 21st.

Both Travieso and Wallace have new murals down in Long Beach as part of this year’s POW! WOW! Long Beach mural festival which wrapped up this past Sunday.

If you find yourself in Long Beach to enjoy the murals, be sure to also swing by the Long Beach Museum of Art for Vitality and Verve III, which Travieso has also contributed to.

Check out our interviews with  Juan Travieso, Wiley Wallace, and Alvaro Naddeo discussing their inspiration behind their individual body of work.

Photos courtesy of Birdman 

Interview with Juan Travieso for “Entropy”

Thinkspace is proud to present Cuban-born painter Juan Travieso latest body of work Entropy alongside Wiley Wallace in the gallery’s main room. Travieso creates visually complex worlds suspended in a state of fracture, combining a realist painting technique with surreal juxtapositions, spatial splicing, bright palettes, and geometric abstraction. Our interview with Juan Travieso discusses the inspiration behind Entropy, his creative process, and Batman.

The exhibition is on view now til July 21st at Thinkspace Projects in Culver City.

SH: Tell us about this show. What is the inspiration? What were you exploring in the work?

JT: The show is titled Entropy. What inspired me through the course of a year has been my surroundings. I am interested in our potential collapse. I feel like humanity is always playing with this idea. That’s the basis of the show.

SH: Where do you source inspiration?

JT: My inspiration comes from a variety of sources. Media, newspapers, documentaries, everyday life, etc. Practically whatever I encounter that strikes a chord I just run with it because that’s usually a sign that it’s something that matters to me. I have to have an emotional connection to the subjects that I deal with. This way I get totally invested and so I pursue visual solutions to whatever the problems are.

SH: How do you capture those ideas for pieces; do you have a sketchbook on hand or is it just a note to yourself in your phone?

JT: I do have a sketchbook, however, what helps me capture the ideas are notes I make not sketches. The sketches normally happen in my head.

SH: How do you plan out your compositions?

JT: Lately, I have been using photoshop exclusively.

SH: What excites you about your work / creative process?

JT: I love painting. I love using acrylic and oil and exploring their strengths. I still feel like I am a novice in the potentials of the painting practice. In addition

I feel like my work takes me to so many new subjects because I do research as much as I can about what I am interested in talking about.

SH: What frustrates you about your work / creative process?

JT: The most frustrating thing about my work is not being able to do it fast enough. Painting realistically has great gratification but it takes forever. Also, I would love it if I would achieve a higher level of control with paint. More preciseness and fewer color adjustments. I want to master paint. But I have a long ways to go.

SH: If you could be a character in any movie for a day; who would you be in what film and why?

JT: If I could be a character I think I would choose Batman. Not because he’s rich, Handsome and a badass. But because he tries his best to help solve some of his worlds biggest problems.

SH: How do you approach developing work for an exhibition?

JT: I think of the work as if it was an album. Every track has to flow and that’s how I approach a body of work. There has to be a message and a cohesiveness to it.

SH: Do you immediately jump into work on it, or are you more of a procrastinator?

JT: I work really hard all the time. I’m a workaholic. My work requires crazy amounts of attention and detail. I don’t procrastinate at all.

SH: What is your Meyers-Briggs or Zodiac Sign? Does it influence your work / artistic process?

JT: I’m a Taurus. I’m not sure if it influences my artistic process.

SH: Can you explain what it feels likes to anticipate the opening of your exhibition, the opening night, and the day after – using food items as a representation of real emotions?

JT: The opening of the exhibition feels like staring at a storefront full of luscious chocolates. The opening night is asking questions about the chocolate, what flavors etc. The day after your sick of chocolates and its time to move on to pastries.

SH: Has there been an artistic catalyst in your life?

JT: Music and ideas keep me in a solid state of mind. They help me get through shit.

SH: Something, someone, some event that made a significant impact on you that has lead you to where you are now.

JT: My friends and family have made the most significant impact on my life. They play such an important role as to why I am able to do what I do.

View all available work from Entropy here. 

Juan Travieso’s “Entropy” Closes Out June at Thinkspace Projects Culver City

JUAN TRAVIESO
Entropy
June 30, 2018 – July 21, 2018

(Los Angeles, CA) – Thinkspace is pleased to present new works by Cuban-born painter Juan Travieso in Entropy. Currently based out of Miami and New York, Travieso creates visually complex worlds suspended in a state of fracture. Dismantled into seismic shards, these fragments are subject to the disorienting effects of constant spatial interruption. Combining a realist painting technique with surreal juxtapositions, spatial splicing, bright palettes, and geometric abstraction, Travieso conveys the textures of a universe in breach, distorted and split by its endless potential for loss. Fascinated by the extinction of countless endangered species and the often irrevocable influence of human intervention, Travieso presents the reality of a world in transition. His compositions often look like digitized renderings, informed by the awkward, artificial simultaneity of 3-D models, and devolve in moments to pixelated digital facsimiles, reminding us of the unavoidably temporal nature of disappearance.

Travieso was born in Havana, Cuba. He credits his love of color in his work to the scarcity of resources in his home country, a stark contrast to the sheer availability of art supplies and imagery in the US. Inspired by this profusion of access to information and paint colors, the artist has taken on a series dedicated to endangered bird species, capturing them on the cusp of imminent disappearance. In the works, their facets are compartmentalized into geometric patterns and their edges striated to dissolve into quasi-architectural grids. A requiem of sorts for the irremediably compromised state of our biodiversity, Travieso’s paintings capture the cataclysmic energy of its decay and the transience of this biological exhaustion and loss, proposed in stark contrast to the permanent ambitions of the digital age. This re-articulation of environmental damage through the visual and graphic language of digital culture gets at the fundamental contradiction between the organic and the artificial, the finite and the infinite; the natural world is forever at odds with the perpetuity of artificial, manmade technologies.

As an activist and environmentalist, Travieso hopes that his dynamic works will draw attention to the ecological carelessness we’ve abetted and the necessity of our continued vigilance in the preservation of what’s left. This compassion for the vulnerable and voiceless has clear political affinities for Travieso, relating to his personal experiences growing up in Communist Cuba where persecution for perceived dissent was a constant threat and the silencing of censorship unavoidable. Perhaps in keeping with this tendency to combine oppositions like freedom and constraint, Travieso depicts the lawlessness and diversity of nature at odds with the enforced geometry of human constructs.