Artemisa Gallery is pleased to announce Hidden Figures, a solo show of portrait paintings and wall sculptures by Argentine artist Julio Alan Lepez.
Working in oil paint, drawing, and collage, Lepez transforms unconventional materials to create images of fantasy surrounding the human figure. Vivid hues and heavy brush strokes define and outline each subject’s face and body in the artist’s intimate and color-saturated scenes. While traditional portraiture lies at the foundation of his practice, Lepez leaves his own traces of the brush to embody the uncertainty and spontaneity of capturing his subjects.
In Lepez’s wall sculptures, the blurring and smudging of the artist’s soft painterly brush strokes effectively juxtaposes the meticulous drawn lines of cutout board. Eye-catching and unusual in outline and form, the shapes and shadows on the wall play directly with the figures they portray to create a dynamic and soaring dialogue with the sitter and the surrounding space itself. Within each three-dimensional painting, Lepez explores the limitations of the wall itself as a background for art as the cut outs evade the limits of conventional foundation, making it nearly impossible to define and encompass each character’s entirety.
Julio Alan Lepez graduated from the National School of Arts Prilidiano Pueyrredón in 1997. He has been the subject of solo and group exhibitions internationally, including at Museo Municipal de Arte in La Plata, Argentina, Centro Cultural de España in Mexico City, Centro Cultural Recoleta in Buenos Aires, Artemisa Gallery in New York, and Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London.