SANTA MONICA, CA.- Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, presents the fourth Los Angeles solo exhibition for New York based painter, Edward del Rosario. The exhibition is on view from March 26th through April 30th, 2011. Del Rosario started his artistic practice as a performance artist and his sense of theatrical staging still influences the work. The actions and interactions of his cast of children, reptiles and animal human hybrids are carefully choreographed and suspended in space. The work is skillfully executed with a fine sense of balance between comedy, tragedy and the absurd. To quote the artist: “When I was younger, there was a time when we (my family) would say the rosary to a giant doll during the months of May and October.”

Statement
For the past eight years I have been using painting to explore a narrative that deals with power struggles and the aftermath of a post post-colonial world. My paintings, oil on linen and painted on an easel, consist of a cast of characters staged on flat color backgrounds. The cast of characters is numerous but finite and the compositions and backgrounds vary from painting to painting. The compositions are snapshots of characters engaged in some ambiguous comedic or dramatic scene drawn from the narrative. The scenes often redefine the narrative, and over the years, have modified and transformed it into an organic meta-narrative.

Bio
Edward received a BFA in Painting from the University of Kansas in 1993 and a MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design in 1998. He continues to show with Richard Heller Gallery (since 2003), and regularly with Irvine Contemporary in Washington D.C., Massimo Carasi in Milan, Rice/Polak Gallery in Provincetown, and most recently solo show the Nancy Margolis Gallery in New York.

Edward’s work is included in numerous private collections, as well as the Corcoran Museum in Washington D.C. and the Blake Byrne Collection in LA. Edward is a 2007 MacDowell Fellowship recipient and earned a Special Editions Fellowship, Lower East Side Printshop in NY. His work was featured The New York Times, Harper’s and The New Yorker, among others. Among his awards include Silver Medal, The Art Director’s Club 88th Annual Awards 2009, Illustration Gold Medal, The Society of Publication Designers, 2009, AI 28 Selection, American Illustration & American Photography 2008, Award of Excellence, Society for News Design 2008