JOE RAMIRO GARCIA

T r a n s f e r e n c e

cover: Kong, 2014, oil & alkyd on canvas over panel, 60” x 60” opposite: After Hours, 2013, oil & alkyd on canvas over panel, 60” x 60”

JOE RAMIRO GARCIAT r a n s f e r e n c e

May 30 - JUNE 29. 2014

Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | tel 505.988.3250 Santa Fe, New Mexio 87501 | www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com77036@lewallengalleries.com

Transference PAINTINGS BY JOE RAMIRO GARCIA

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LewAllen Galleries is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition, Joe Ramiro Garcia: Transference. With his remarkable ability to draw grown-up meanings from childhood objects, Joe Ramiro Garcia has created a body of new paintings that arouse deeply personal memories from simple though cul-turally significant references. Opening May 30 with an Artist Reception from 5 – 7 pm, and on view from through June 29, 2014, Transference, Garcia’s latest solo exhibition at LewAllen Galleries, recalls two meanings – one of the unconscious redirection of feel-ings, often developed in childhood, and the other of the actual physical transference of paint to canvas.

Garcia’s childlike imagery recalls strong nostalgic memories in an attempt to shake them loose and analyze why they stuck. His technical approach relies on print-making skills, palette knives, brushes, and scrapers to transfer these graphic images while main-taining the physicality of the paint, which he believes makes a bigger statement. Garcia’s work attempts to mine the fringe elements of emotion through the uncon-scious, drawing up repressed feelings and reactions. Citing the Dada “cut-up” tech-nique, popularized by William S. Burroughs, as an important source with which to bring chance into the work, Garcia develops odd juxtapositions of familiar imagery to spark an evolution in our relationship with these ob-jects. He attempts to break the imagery of its loaded meanings, thereby allowing it to become something else entirely. “I hope to

displace the familiar just enough to encour-age re-familiarization.”

The interactive nature of Garcia’s paintings make them uniquely engaging. The more time spent with each work, the more asso-ciations develop or fall away, and the more our interpretations of meaning and narrative change.

We’re Closed, 2013, oil & alkyd on linen, 8” x 8”

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Better Day, 2013, oil & alkyd on birch, 12” x 12”

Falling Rocks, 2014, oil & alkyd on canvas, 16” x 13”

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Falling Rocks, 2014, oil & alkyd on canvas, 16” x 13”

Music Stand,

2013, oil & alkyd on birch, 16” x 12”

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Vanitas, 2013, oil & alkyd on linen, 10” x 10”

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Snow Cone,

2014, oil & alkyd on birch panel, 8” x 8”

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Seven,

2014, oil & alkyd on canvas, 36” x 42”

Shack, 2013, oil & alkyd on canvas over panel, 42” x 42”

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Outing, 2014, oil & alkyd on birch panel, 30” x 30”

Minor Concession,

2014, oil & alkyd on canvas over panel, 12” x 12”

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Voz, 2014, oil & alkyd on linen over panel, 72” x 72”

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Opus,

2013, oil & alkyd on canvas over panel, 42” x 42”

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Gamble, 2014, oil & alkyd on birch panel, 30” x 30”

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This and the Other,

2014, oil & alkyd on canvas, 16” x 13”

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Karma, 2014, oil & oil and mixed media on board, 8.25” x 5”

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Staying Open,

2014, oil & mixed media on board, 7.75” x 5.75”

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Devine, 2014, oil & mixed media on board, 7” x 5”

Goodness,

2014, oil & alkyd on birch panel, 17” x 17”

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Besides Myself,

2014, oil & alkyd on cavas over panel, 36” x 42”

Extensively exhibited, published and collected, Joe Ramiro Garcia’s idiosyncratic imagery and highly energetic palette embody a lighthearted chaos in his oil-and-alkyd paintings. Colliding polarized trends within contemporary art, Garcia merges Pop Art’s distanced reproductions of cultural icons with an expressionistic, painterly aesthetic. Random figures and quotidian objects combine with an obvious attention to praxes of two-dimensional composition and careful application of media in his provocative paintings. These elements animate a space that seems at once recognizable and eerily mysterious—a tableau of discordant players depicting an enigmatic order.

While they lack a specific narrative, Garcia’s pieces engender a different type of validity; his reflections on sensation and paradox, mortality, joviality and nostalgia all add to the weight of his work. The artist asserts, “I hope to displace the familiar just enough to encourage re-familiarization with the constant flux of urban experience.” By referencing both popular culture and private experiences, his psychologically resonant paintings navigate between the satisfaction of instant recognition and the riddle of a fantasy or elusive memory.

Born in Houston, Texas, Garcia attended Houston’s High School for the Performing and Visual Arts before studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was honored in 2005 with a Painters and Sculptors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Exhibited in museums and private institutions internationally, his works are featured in several books on Southwestern art.

B I O G R A P H Y

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It Came Through the Radio, 2014, oil & mixed media on board, 11.25” x 8.25”

Portrait of the Artist

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Railyard Arts District | 1613 Paseo de Peralta | tel 505.988.3250 Santa Fe, New Mexio 87501 | www.lewallengalleries.com | info@lewallengalleries.com

above: Falling Rocks, 2014, oil & alkyd on canvas, 16” x 13”