BOULDER, COLO.- Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art announces the Summer 2018 Exhibition: Processing: Paintings & Prints 2008 - 2018 by artist Roberto Juarez in the West, East, and Union Works Galleries. The exhibition is on display June 7September 16, 2018.
Roberto Juarez has been a significant presence in the art worlds of New York, Miami, Colorado, and beyond since the early 1980s. Exhibiting at Manhattans famed Robert Miller Gallery for many years, his work is noted for its intriguing combinations of elements drawn from nature, popular culture, the history of modern art, and his own fertile imagination. This exhibition celebrates the last ten years of his artistic achievements. Juarez (of both Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage) is a native of Chicago. He was trained at the San Francisco Art Institute and the University of California, Los Angeles, yet came of age professionally in 1980s New York - the heyday of the citys experimental downtown art scene. Neo-Expressionism, Neo-Geo, and pattern and design were then-popular trends that he was aware of but participated in only indirectly. Juarez has long forged his own path in his small and large-scale paintings, prints, and monumental public projects. This exhibition opens with a display of his epic Pater (Father in Latin) paintings (so named for having been done around the time of his fathers death). This is followed by prints and drawings, many of which were done during his residencies at Sharks Ink Studios in Lyons and Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado. Juarez (who is currently based in Manhattan and Canaan, New York, in upstate Columbia County) has created notable large-scale series in public spaces such as the Miami International Airport, the Miami Childrens Courthouse, the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, and elsewhere. The visitor is offered a vivid sense of these works through the preparatory studies and videos of the projects on display in the galleries. The title Processing refers to the emphasis in the exhibition on both the methods Juarez uses to achieve his goals (collages, preliminary drawings, etc.), as well as to the idea that his art reflects his deeply personal lifes journey. The artist has fashioned a body of art that reflects his own reactions to his surroundings and his ruminations on the state of nature and the human condition.
Roberto Juarez is a visual artist who has been active in the areas of painting, printmaking, drawing, and large-scale public commissions throughout his career. Born in Chicago, he received artistic training at the San Francisco Art Institute and UCLA. He has lived and worked in Chicago, San Francisco, Miami, New York City, and Canaan, New York. From 1981 to 2000 Juarez regularly showed at New Yorks Robert Miller Gallery. Since then he has had numerous solo and group shows at museums and galleries in the U.S., Latin America, and Europe. His many awards and fellowships have included a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting and the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. In 2017 he was appointed to the Board of Governors of the National Academy of Design, New York. Juarez has a long relationship with Colorado and has been nurtured by his many years of working and teaching at Anderson Ranch and Sharks Ink.
Edward J. Sullivan is the Helen Gould Sheppard Professor of the History of Art at New York University where he is also Deputy Director of the Institute of Fine Arts. His fields of expertise extend to the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He has also written extensively on Latinx artists working in the United States. He the author of over thirty books, exhibition catalogues, and articles on these subjects. Throughout his career Sullivan has served as guest curator for museum exhibitions on three continents. He has known Roberto Juarez and admired his work for many years.