Juan Uslé
Spanish painter Juan Uslé navigates a world of contradictions. His abstract works toy with color, light and texture, creating disjointed, displaced landscapes, patterned with saturated hues. Inspired by his upbringing in Santander, Spain and subsequent move to New York City, his works evoke a sensation of stumbling from place to place. Deeply entrenched in the ideological contrast between postFranco Spain and the vibrant colloquialisms of New York, Uslé channels his perception of imposed systems of order and seeks to rupture them, bearing similarities to the unbridled abstraction of de Kooning and the depth and melancholy of Rothko. By utilizing poetic titles and a keen awareness of light, Uslé gathers the collective memory of his multiple geographic identities and transmutes them into personal, disciplined applications. In his series, Soñe que Revelabas (I Dreamt that You Revealed), his repetitive strokes, mirroring his heartbeat, are often the mechanism for pacifying and silencing the displacement and noise of an image saturated culture, or as he calls it, “a neural Times Square.”
While playing with repetition as a personal exploration of his transient narrative, Uslé’s works always embed a whimsical or playful surprise. Working primarily in vinyl, dispersion and dry pigment, he listens to …
Spanish painter Juan Uslé navigates a world of contradictions. His abstract works toy with color, light and texture, creating disjointed, displaced landscapes, patterned with saturated hues. Inspired by his upbringing in Santander, Spain and subsequent move to New York City, his works evoke a sensation of stumbling from place to place. Deeply entrenched in the ideological contrast between postFranco Spain and the vibrant colloquialisms of New York, Uslé channels his perception of imposed systems of order and seeks to rupture them, bearing similarities to the unbridled abstraction of de Kooning and the depth and melancholy of Rothko. By utilizing poetic titles and a keen awareness of light, Uslé gathers the collective memory of his multiple geographic identities and transmutes them into personal, disciplined applications. In his series, Soñe que Revelabas (I Dreamt that You Revealed), his repetitive strokes, mirroring his heartbeat, are often the mechanism for pacifying and silencing the displacement and noise of an image saturated culture, or as he calls it, “a neural Times Square.”
While playing with repetition as a personal exploration of his transient narrative, Uslé’s works always embed a whimsical or playful surprise. Working primarily in vinyl, dispersion and dry pigment, he listens to his atmosphere rather than imposing his own sense of order or control. As he describes, “We are not of a specific place, rather we are/belong to them all.”
Uslé has exhibited extensively throughout Europe and internationally, including the Centre Pompidou, Bilbao’s Guggenheim Museum, the Tate Modern, Stockholm’s Moderna Museet, The New York Public Library, Luxembourg’s Musee d’Art Moderne, and the Museo de Bellas Artes de Santander. He was included in Documenta IX in 1992 and the 2005 Venice Biennale. In 2002, he received the Spanish National Plastic Arts Award. His series Soñe Que Revelabas was the focus of a major exhibition at Kunstmuseum Bonn in 2014.
