Juan Uslé

JUAN USLÉ (Santander, 1954).
"Caribbean Blue", 1992.
Mixed media on board.
Signed and dated on the back.
With several exhibition labels on the back.
Measurements: 61 x 45,7 cm; 86,5 x 70 cm (frame).
Specifically in his American period, to which this work belongs, his colors become clearer and his pictorial technique becomes more varied. He paints lines, floating forms, intense colors, wavy backgrounds and multicolored stripes. He builds complex baroque designs and grids painted with different colors under swirling lines. Uslé's refusal to define himself, in short, to pigeonhole himself, is particularly important at this time. Nevertheless, it is inevitable to place him in a context, both Spanish and international, where his work takes shape.
According to the artist himself, disorder in space is essential in his work. Also important are the visual calm he learned from the film "8 ½" by Fellini, and the fantastic imaginary of the Jules Verne novels he read in his youth. In fact, Uslé conceives his painting as a journey without a destination, whose goal is at the disposal of the painting itself, endowing the work with a complete autonomy indissolubly linked to abstraction.
An artist based between New York and Saro (Cantabria), collaborator of the Soledad Lorenzo gallery in Madrid since 1993, Juan Uslé studied Fine Arts at the Escuela Superior de San Carlos (Valencia, 1973-77), later extending his studies with the Scholarship for Young Artists (1980) and the one dedicated to the Investigation of New Expressive Forms (1982), both from the Ministry of Culture. In 1984 he participated for the first time in the Arco fair, and two years later he moved to New York with his partner, the artist Victoria Civera. In 1992 he took part in the Documenta in Kassel, and in 1996 the IVAM dedicated his first retrospective exhibition to him, a recognition that was followed in 2002 by the National Prize for Plastic Arts. Throughout his career, Uslé has held exhibitions in prominent museums and galleries such as the MACBA, the Saatchi in London, the Serralves Museum, the Es Baluard in Palma, the Ludwig in Vienna or the New MoMA in New York, although it is worth mentioning for its importance his anthology "Open Rooms", presented in 2003 at the Palacio de Velázquez in Madrid, the Marcelino Botín Foundation in Santander, the S.M.A.K. Museum in Ghent and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Juan Uslé is currently represented in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, the Guggenheim in Bilbao, the Es Baluard in Palma, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Saatchi Collection, the Fonds National d'Art Contemporain in Paris, the Marugame Hirai Museum in Japan and the Tate Modern in London, among other collections.