NYAB Event - Sebastian Vallejo "Salvoconducto"

Sebastian Vallejo "Salvoconducto"

The Active Space

This event has ended.

In this exhibition, the artist deals with notions of identity and re-presentational conflicts. The works mingle between figuration and abstraction, religious codes and natural phenomenology; sculpture and objective functionalities. Salvoconducto, as it terminology in Spanish dictates, is a safe pass between opposites or contrasted territories. A safe conduit between doctrine and theory, artist and the “Sublime,” hope and pessimism. Sebastian Vallejo’s works are inspired by the expansive and improvisational quality that exist in nature; and by the light and colors of the Caribbean, where organic and inorganic forms collide and transpose each other creating a visually engaging display of light and form. “The works make allusions to the classical Apollonian-Dionysian split, where presentation and negation, organization and disorder, become ever-present,” the artist affirms.

Within the tradition of Duchamp and the readymades concept, elements such as plastic bags, glitter, found fabrics, t-shirts or even packing tape are treated as painterly mediums in most of Sebastian Vallejo’s work. Recently, in works like Still Life or A Change in the Weather the creative process takes new form; oil based pigments are transferred with an acrylic medium from a nonabsorbent surface into the canvas by means of monotype technique. The resulting image, full of intricate and organic imprints is a true battlefield between oil paint and acrylic mediums, pushing the boundaries inherent in the genre of painting while simultaneously celebrating its history.

Sebastian Vallejo (b. 1982, San Juan, Puerto Rico) lives and works in Brooklyn, NYC. He received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2009, and his BFA from the University of Puerto Rico, 2004. Selected group exhibitions include: Friends with Benefits, Lehmann Maupin gallery, NYC, 2012. A Person of Color/ A Mostly Orange Exhibition, curated by José Lerma, The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, 2011. Panamerica, Sullivan Galleries, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, 2009, and Terruño y Paraíso Perdido, Museo de Las Americas, San Juan, P.R., 2007.