[Antiracism] PRESS RELEASE -Book presentation "Secrets of Flora & Fauna" by Alvarado-Juarez

Sun Oct 1 16:15:00 EDT 2006

Press Release 
  October 1, 2006

  FRANCISCO ALVARADO-JUAREZ PRESENTS THE BOOK “SECRETS OF FLORA AND FAUNA” AT THE ART MUSEUM OF QUERETARO. 

  Book Presentation: Museo de Arte de Queretaro, (Art Museum of Queretaro), Mex.
  Admission: Free
  Date: Friday, October 6, 2006 at 8:00 PM
  Address: Allende 14 Sur, downtown Queretaro, Phone (442) 212- 3523 

  . 
  “Secrets of Flora & Fauna”, considered one of the most important painting series of recent work in the broad career of the artist Francisco Alvarado-Juarez, has been gathered in a 44 page book with 30 color reproductions by the Fondo Editorial Borda Cultura. A book presentation will take place on Friday, October 6 at 8:00 PM at the Art Museum of Queretaro in the Historic District.

         The panel discussion will include: Araceli Ardon Martinez, Director of the museum; Martin Martinez Hernandez, Social Psychologist; Jose Luis de la Vega Estrada, Writer; Dora Elizabeth Gonzalez, Coordinator of Art and Culture, Autonomous University of Querétaro; and the artist Francisco Alvarado-Juarez. 

       The book includes essays by the art critic Elaine A. King and the New York poet and translator Jonathan Cohen. Both writes coincide that the recent paintings of Alvarado-Juarez are a festive allegory to love and to the flora and fauna. Enclosed you will find the essays by the two writes.

       Alvarado-Juarez, a Fulbright Research Scholar presently working in Mexico, marks a turn in his production with a more personal series about love, eroticism, and his two decade long concern about nature. "This is an homage to love and life" -writes the artist. 

        “These paintings -writes Jonathan Cohen- go far beyond the human form. They have an epic sweep about them. Each canvas in the series is a distinct canto in itself, independent but part of the larger work...The truth is, the paintings of the ambitious series here are not difficult at all to appreciate. They are at once both simple and complex, like good poems. They offer multiple levels of meaning and enjoyment. Surely, on looking at these paintings for the first time, it is enough to let the vibrant music of their colors invite you to explore them, to spend time with them, and to discover their wonderful hidden expressions of love and life, what is shared with you in the most intimate way, their untold secrets." 

        A resident of New York City, Alvarado-Juarez has received many fellowships throughout his career. These include awards from the National Endowment for the Arts (1985, 1989), the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation (1993, 1998), the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1990, 2000), the New York Foundation for the Arts (2000), Fundación Valparaíso (2004) and the Gottlieb Foundation (2004). Since September 2005, he has been a Fulbright Research Fellow in Oaxaca, Mexico, celebrating in a collaborative project the artistry of the wood carvers and other artisans there. He has exhibited his artwork in museums and galleries in the USA, Europe and the Americas.

  For more information about the artist, please visit the links or his web site at
  www.franciscoalvarado.com 
  http://newtimes.rway.com/2001/031401/art.shtml
  www.nyfa.org/nyfa_artists_detail.asp?pid=485

  _________________________________________________________________

  Passion Puzzles of Francisco Alvarado-Juarez

  The art of Francisco Alvarado-Juarez reveals a strong cultural hybridism that is rooted in experiences from his native land of Honduras and life in the United States, as well as Mexico and Spain. His work is distinct from much art of today that is cynical and reveals simplified polemical materialization about a troubled world that appears to be out of balance with its natural systems. Despite the prevailing angst in contemporary society Alvarado-Juarez remains a type of romantic optimist whose art does not reside inherently in the realm of language and critical theory. In his work he provides viewers with no sweeping answers - instead his art resembles a type kaleidoscopic blend of fact and fantasy, dreams and wishes, as well as a fusion of logic and chaos made visible through an array of lines, color, and peculiar icons. As an artist he is unafraid to produce work that manifests beauty. References to landscape and nature are apparent throughout this art; however, the
 artist's use of landscape and organic life is neither about specificity nor is it about a particular place. It always alludes to something other. The art presents a world of fractured spaces and hybrid creatures that appear to be on the edge of constant transition. 

  In contrast to portraying a single cohesive space, Alvarado-Juarez creates disjunctive representations that capture the bewildering multiplicity of the natural world and its diverse systems, including those of the scientific, pictorial, and psychological. In his deliciously, ambiguous visual puzzles Alvarado-Suarez's focus is on ecosystems, endangered animals, cycles of life, and finding a sense of balance among humans and nature. It is the power of the familiar becoming the unusual that is intriguing in Francisco Alvarado-Suarez's eloquent hybrid paintings that evince an inventive playfulness. His richly textured compositions compel observers to look closely so to examine the many details,  as well as the sensory and intellectual awareness that permeates each composition. His images are interesting to me largely by virtue of what they omit and what those omissions reveal. Throughout this work one can observe all types of contradictions and hidden delights.

  Francisco Alvarado-Suarez's most recent series titled "Secrets of Flora and Fauna," that began during his artist residence at Foundation Valparaiso, in Majorca, Spain in the fall of 2004 depicts change. This arrangement represents a departure from his previous work because in this work he addresses specific themes of love and the erotic. In the past he never dealt with such explicit themes or alluded to individual experience in his art. The new paintings and drawings are highly personal and autobiographical. Curiously in some of the new pieces, he is the model. Alvarado-Juarez has expressed that this new series is "an homage to love and life, a celebration of the pleasure of love making." Throughout this work the subject is intangible and each composition affords the viewer to have an open interpretation of what is presented. 

  In these images his use of vibrant color is always deliberate, intending to accent a particular emotion, state of being, or particular spatial zone. As does a good composer, Alvarado-Juarez comprehends the importance of cadence and uses color as his rhythmic tool. His use of color transmutes the ordinary into enchantingly textured arenas, causing spatial surroundings to come alive and yield wonderment for viewers who are willing to take the time to probe the intricacy of the presented mysterious Miltie-layered surfaces. Notwithstanding the vibrancy of the diverse elements interlaced throughout his idiosyncratic compositions, all the parts are ceaselessly well integrated for the purpose of creating a seductive surface. Each area within the work of art is essential to the whole and each contributes to the total visual impact of the ingenious depiction.

  Alvarado-Juarez constructs distinct phantasmagorical pieces that are intended to allure visitors, and to entice them to linger and experience the wonderful veils of color, palpable forms and two- and three-dimensional zones. He continuously fuses the perceptible and intangible in order to spark inventive reverie. When asked about his work, he replied: "Nature is not only something material, but also a subject of philosophical conception. The subject of nature functions as a type of metaphor, hinting at the complexities of contemporary existence, as well as the spirit of life during an era of rapid change." 

  Elaine A. King
  Biographical data about the author 
  Elaine A. King Is a professor who teaches at Carnegie Mellon University and is an independent critic and curator. She received her PH.D. from Northwestern University in Theory and the History of Art. An anthology she co-edited with Gail Levin, titled Ethics and the Visual Arts, will be published in the summer of 2006. King is currently guest-curating the Mari Mater O'Neill survey at the Museum of Art Pert Rico, San Juan, opening in January 2007.

  About Francisco Alvarado-Juarez and His Secrets

  Remember, girlfriend,
  all my sincere love. 
  Like Marti 
  I come from that Caribbean 
  where the palm tree grows
  ~ Francisco Alvarado-Juarez~

  Francisco Alvarado-Juarez sees the world with the eyes of a poet. He experiences it as a poet, too. This is why his new series of paintings, Secrets of Flora and Fauna, is so lyrical in its use of color, and why it embodies such deep layers of meaning, both sensuous and sensual in their graphic interplay on canvas. This is why his artwork speaks with such a broad, vibrant range of tonalities. And why his lyric instincts lead him to endow these paintings with true human feeling and great honesty.

  I first met Francisco in the early 1970s, at a time when we both lived for poetry, as much as we lived for the love of women. These were our college days. Our paths took us in different directions. I became a writer, and he an artist. But I still see in his artwork -his paintings, his photography, his installations- the young writer whom I originally knew, with all the creative energy of those days. 

  Yes, his new Secrets is an homage to love and life, a celebration of the pleasure of lovemaking. It is a very personal series. Indeed, in many of the drawings he has used himself as the model. Yet these paintings go far beyond the human form. They have an epic sweep about them. Each canvas in the series is a distinct canto in itself, independent but part of the larger work.

  I love "Northern Cling fish" with its outstretched human hands amid the swirling surf of the sea, which of course is the great metaphor of life. The desires of these hands to grab what they need to survive are like the fins of this coastal fish that enable it to cling tightly to the rocks of tidal pools or blades of kelp, even in crashing waves.

  I love "Winter Berries" because I live in New York, where the Grey gun-metal days of winter may be relieved when lucky eyes catch a glimpse of this marvel of flora with its rare burst of red color. The lyric interplay in this painting of the floral image with the almost hidden images of the sexual act generates the heat needed to survive the coldest season of the north.

  I love "Flower Fly" and its tribute to the green world of land, of Terra fir ma, and this creature's enduring quest for sweet nectar to survive, like love itself. And the candid but subtle outlines of genitalia that all of a sudden remind me of Walt Whitman saying "I believe in the flesh and the appetites; / Seeing, hearing, feeling, are miracles, and each part and tag of me is a miracle.”

  I could go on and on with my excitement about Francisco's Secrets of Flora and Fauna, but now, dear reader, it is your turn. My viewing these paintings as poems is just one way to penetrate them and enjoy them. "Some of the drawings are repeated in different ways, one on top of another," he once told me, "to make the work more difficult or interesting to read.”

  The truth is, the paintings of the ambitious series here are not difficult at all to appreciate. They are at once both simple and complex, like good poems. They offer multiple levels of meaning and enjoyment. Surely, on looking at these paintings for the first time, it is enough to let the vibrant music of their colors invite you to explore them, to spend time with them, and to discover their wonderful hidden expressions of love and life, what is shared with you in the most intimate way, their untold secrets. 

  Jonathan Cohen
  Biographical data about the author
  Jonathan Cohen is a poet, translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, essayist, and independent scholar. His books include Poems from the Island, a collection of poems based on the history of Long Island, in New York; Counter song to Walt Whitman, his translation of Pedro Mir's famous poem, Contra canto a Walt Whitman; and, most recently, A Pan-American Life, the first biography/anthology of poet-translator Mina Lee (first wife of Luis Munoz Marin). Other translations include poetry by Ernesto Cardinal, Enrique Lin, and Rogue Dalton. He lives in New York, not far from the U.S. residence of Francisco Alvarado-Juarez.

---------------------------------
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