By Deogracio Secretario
Jessica Macias and Alex Carlbon are two gifted millennial artists navigating and transcending the turmoil of a politicized and polarized America and brilliantly expressing their visions through their art practice, the ways in which they fit into that worldview.
In keeping with its mission, Simeon Den Gallery has selected these two artists to give voice, opportunity, and a platform to local desert artists as well as seeking out new art makers scouted via social media and a network of like-minded art dealers. Macias was invited from her participation in the recent “New Feminists Gaze” exhibit and Carlbon was recommended by an ardent New York collector.
“Two Break Out Artists,” is a two-person show of two millennial artists opening this Saturday, April 14, 5-8PM at Simeon Den Gallery in the Perez Road, Cathedral City Art+Design District.
Jessica Macias is a home-grown Coachella Valley artist. She studied visual arts at the College of the Desert, has shown in a group show at the Create Center for the Arts, and in January was included in “The New Feminists Gaze,” at the Simeon Den Gallery. It was at the Feminist Gaze show where she was singled-out and offered an opportunity to have her artworks featured.
“My work is surreal, mixing my everyday daydreams with how I perceive my own warped version of the way I see the world, laid out with paint and pen,” said Macias.
Macias’ graphic and witty piece in the feminist show was a drawing of a nude woman’s torso with upraised arms, whose eyes were represented by her areolas and scrawled across her abdomen, “My Eyes Are Up Here!” Her Artist’s Statement for the show read:
“Being a Feminist to me is being unapologetic, wild and free from having people put you in a box of what a woman should be. It is asserting that there ought to be no limiting gender roles. It is critical for me to insist on Feminist values in my own life to shed a consistent light, to educate other young women and traditionalist men, and to keep the movement going for generations to come.”
Alex Carlbon is also twenty-five and a passionate abstract painter from New Jersey. His canvases are fresh with ideas referencing and revisiting the 50’s abstract expressionist iconoclasts, from Pollock to De Kooning, who not unlike those revolutionary American painters, is searching for new ways and means to express with paint. Carlbon uses color to create abstract “societies and never-ending stories by manipulating rivers of color to create free associative, almost topographical map like paintings.” More recently, he has been painting on non-traditional and found objects in his California studio transforming functional antique doors and shutters into wild bursts of liquid color. Using his unique technique, Carlbon creates “rivers of mind’s eye psychedelia that weave closely through vibrantly atmospheric pieces.” Not unlike a Pollack painting, the composition is not anchored in a focal point but rather, the composition is the painting ‘in toto’. Also, not unlike the icons before him, Carlbon passionately strives to make art beyond his own expectations wildly experimenting beyond the rules and decidedly off-the-page.
Gallerist and practicing interdisciplinary artist himself, Den contends that, “It is so easy to dismiss youth and their optimism. Particularly in the art world, cynics abound. However, there is no mistaking that enthusiasm coupled with talent is a salve for these times.”
“Two Break Out Artists” is an effort to showcase young talent, to recognize promised talent and track the beginnings of promises to come.
Simeon Den Gallery is located at Perez Plaza, 68895 Perez Road #I-27. For further info: simeonden@gmail.com and www.simeondengallery.com
PALLADINO/DEN Photography
www.PalladinoDenPhotography.com
Contact: 310.801.6538
