Seduzioni Geometriche
Seventeen medium and monumental works, fruit of the genius of Gustavo Vélez, compose, at the Oblong gallery in Forte dei Marmi, the personal exhibition “Seduzioni Geometriche”.
The show has the flavor of a concise, but very comprehensive, overview of the research developed by the artist over the last decade. These are sculptures in one piece or in an edition of 3, made between 2011 and 2020, which testify to the results of a style that has come to full maturity. The combination of shapes with a complex pattern - geometric but with frequent softly organic grafts - and of materials differing in physicality and colors - white Carrara marble, bronze, polished steel, corten steel, iron - effectively reveals his articulated creative world.
Vélez states: “In Brancusi I discovered sculpture conceived as the rhythm and harmony of lines that cross space”. Not surprisingly, abstractionism and conceptualism represent the artistic matrices of the Colombian sculptor, but in them, he introduces the breath of an intense and assertive vitality, thanks to which the plastic masses blossom from each other in a fluid and sinuous way ("Ritmica V" , 2020), or they engage in hand-to-hand combat to conquer the light and impose themselves on each other in a sort of physical and spiritual integration (“Nascimiento”, 2018; “Trazo II”, 2019).
In fact, in the works of Gustavo Vélez there is an intense aspiration to ideality which - condensing in his forms to the point of making them fulcrums of expressive force or, on the contrary, dissolving in space thanks to a centrifugal dynamism that emanates from the material - often opens to the natural landscape with cosmic inspiration. This is thanks both to the mirrored surfaces of the steel, which reflect the surrounding environment, and to the evocative shades of the opaque materials, which tell of a universe dominated by overwhelming and uncontested forces, very emblematic of the anxieties of our time.
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La Nazione
Award- winning Columbianartist Gustavo Velez to showcase sculptures at Oblong Contemporary Art Gallery in Forte dei Marmi
THE EXHIBITION
Seventeen medium and monumental works, fruit of the genius of Gustavo Vélez, compose, at the Oblong gallery in Forte dei Marmi, the personal “Seduzioni Geometriche” (4 - 18 July). The review has the flavor of a concise, but very comprehensive, overview of the research developed by the artist over the last decade. These are sculptures in one piece or in an edition of 3 specimens, made between 2011 and 2020, which testify to the results of a style that has come to full maturity. The combination of shapes with a complex pattern - geometric but with frequent softly organic grafts - and of materials differing in physicality and colors - white Carrara marble, bronze, polished steel, corten steel, iron - effectively reveals his articulated creative world.
Vélez states: “In Brancusi I discovered sculpture understood as the rhythm and harmony of lines that cross space”. Not surprisingly, abstractionism and conceptualism represent the artistic matrices of the Colombian sculptor, but in them he introduces the breath of an intense and assertive vitality, thanks to which the plastic masses blossom from each other in a fluid and sinuous way ("Ritmica V", 2020), or they engage in hand-to-hand combat to conquer the light and impose themselves on each other in a sort of physical and spiritual integration (“Nascimiento”, 2018; “Trazo II”, 2019).
In fact, in the works of Gustavo Vélez there is an intense aspiration to ideality which - condensing in the forms to the point of making them fulcrums of expressive force or, on the contrary, dissolving in space thanks to a centrifugal dynamism that emanates from the material - often opens to the natural landscape with cosmic inspiration. This is thanks both to the mirrored surfaces of the steel, which reflect the surrounding environment, and to the evocative shades of the opaque materials, which tell of a universe dominated by overwhelming and uncontested forces, very emblematic of the anxieties of our time.
THE ARTIST
Gustavo Vélez was born in 1975 in Medellín, Colombia, the city located in the Andes, at the foot of the Northern Cordillera, which was also the birthplace of master Fernando Botero.
Here, on the rocky plateau dotted with mines of clayey materials and precious metals such as gold and copper, he develops his artistic sensibility. But it is in Italy - particularly in Tuscany - that his cultural formation takes place. In fact, in Florence he attended the Lorenzo de 'Medici Institute, in Pietrasanta, a place favored by the excellences of art, he opened his sculpture studio.
Having gained international fame, Gustavo Vélez participates in important solo and group exhibitions in Asia (Japan, China, Korea, Singapore), in the Middle East (United Arab Emirates, Dubai), in America (North and South), in Europe (Great Britain, Spain, Italy), while his works appear in New York in the auctions dedicated by Sotheby's and Phillips to the protagonists of Latin American Art. Today the artist is divided between Pietrasanta, New York and Medellín.
- Alessandra Quattordio, Art Journalist
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