OMAR CHACÓN | Variaciones Chuecas

In his second Robischon Gallery solo exhibition, Colombian-born, New York artist Omar Chacón offers his latest series entitled "Variaciones Chuecas" featuring a range of process-oriented, nuanced, amalgamated paintings. Utilizing individual pigmented elements to create vibrant textural abstract artworks, Chacón amplifies both the plasticity and dimensional nature of his medium. The artist’s pre-made drips and tiny components of bright, glossy acrylic paint are hardened individually in service of his overall color arena as each element inhabits the role of a single brushstroke adding to the aggregate whole. The multi layered process with Chacón’s complex thematic origins is best explained through the artist’s own words. He states, “Painting started for me as a quixotic notion, whose act of making and history has always been of great intrigue to me. My research and interest in the structure of painting throughout time enables me to break down the components of the act, allowing for a physical separation of the material from the canvas in my process. I pour paint, letting it dry into units that become the building blocks or brushstrokes that then migrate onto the canvas. Following my thinking about the physicality of painting, color and its placement are also guiding factors in my work, from intuitive to orchestrated harmonies. Even in the isolation of these elements, I make a conscious effort to return to the confines of the canvas as a way to continue my dialogue with art history, Greenbergian theory and the artists who have built upon its meaning. While the conceptual matters of my work developed in art school, the aesthetic quality of it is principally derived from seven small paintings my untrained grandfather made in his life. These personal works are what essentially made abstraction relevant in my practice. The intersection of my schooling and familial intimacy that occurred early in my career as an artist is what I yearn to communicate in greater terms, the synthesis of cultures, the old and the new.”

The deeply felt influence of Chacón’s Latin American heritage, familial ties, art history and poetry, surfaces throughout the exhibition. Chacón references his country of origin with titles of his artworks that name familiar locations to the artist like Ráquira, a district in a city of brightly painted structures and known for its’ clay artisans, and cultural connections such as Parnaso, a Spanish word referencing a group of poets whose work is representative of an epoch or place like Bogotá, Colombia, widely known as the “Athens of Latin America.” History offers inspiration too, with the title Messalina Final, Chacón’s culminating painted reflection on the notorious, illicit Roman figure, rendered with intense, monochromatic purple paint with an unexpected underpainting of vivid green. For the smallest exhibited paintings in the exhibition, the artist uses fique, a paper material derived from an agave-like plant native to Colombia. As an informed and sensitive artist, reverent to his upbringing, traditions in craft, art history and contemporary cultural and politicals, Chacón finds the promise of hope within the act of art making. He writes, “Born in Bogotá, Colombia I intertwine my Latin heritage with the discourses found from classical antiquity to modernism. I liken my works to a social gathering, a global nation comprised of a diverse blend of culturally different peoples, living amongst each other with a sense of unity, yet maintaining individuality, each unit, each drip is unique. Though greatly absorbed with art historical reference, at its core my work deals with subjects that shine from my heart, baroque in thought, fruitful in being and orgiastic in beauty.”

With a passionate nature, the artist’s latest series of paintings featured in "Variaciones Chuecas" (“Crooked Variations”) reveal and embrace abstraction as a means to address myriad conditions found in the world around him.  With each made mark, he reflects the moment as his finds it; restrictive or fluid, disordered or ordered, bound or unbound; his paintings stand as an investigation. Chacón shares, “I also like to think of weaving cultures together through my mosaic-like process...it’s all a journey for me of where I come from and my attraction to other cultures.” Both in metaphor and artistic practice, Omar Chacón exalts in the promise of a diverse universal community as each brush stroke unites the whole.

Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Omar Chacón received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, CA, and his BFA from the Ringling School of Art and Design, FL. In 2009, Chacón was selected as part of the Queens International Four at the 2009 Biennial at the Queens Museum of Art, New York. Chacón received a public commission from the NYU Langone Art Program and Collection in 2017. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the 2007 William and Dorothy Yeck Award through the Miami University National Young Painters Competition and the 2008 New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in cities such as Los Angeles, Milan, San Francisco, New York City, and Mexico City. Chacón has participated in exhibitions at the Children’s Museum of the Arts in New York, NY, and the Mobile Museum of Art in Mobile, AL. His paintings have been reviewed in Art & Antiques, Artnet, Art in America, and Artweek Magazine, among other publications.