February 3 - March 10, 2007

The Water Paintings of JulioValdez (b. 1969) explore an oceanic landscape, at once dreamlike and hallucinatory. Modern physics tells us that all matter is energy, stability an illusion, and reality, fluid. In Valdez's Water Paintings, sunlight streams through the prism of the sea, creating complex linear patterns eerily reminiscent of neurological phenomena, such as "brain waves". The push/pull between interior states of mind and external observations of nature is characteristic of the series.

Beyond its physical characteristics, water is a metaphor for consciousness and the creative process. The artist paints himself submerged and drifting, or motionless, with a lotus floating upward from his still continence. Forms mutate from recognizable to abstract, from solid to transparent. At times water is viewed as a burial ground, or purgatorial zone, where figures float feet first, hands pressed to sides, evoking darker histories of the Caribbean. Throughout, one feels Valdez's fascination with the aesthetics of the natural world.

Valdez has chosen to paint many of the Water Paintings on silk. Silk's smooth surface, coupled with the artist's subtle use of pigments, reinforces the illusion that these paintings are transparent vistas, windows to a subterranean world. Recently, Valdez has photographed his paintings, enlarging, reconfiguring and ultimately repainting new works from their constituent parts. This process forms the basis for the current series, and culminates in the monumental 2006 canvas, Open Water, 9 1/2 x 14 feet (recently acquired by Museo del Barrio, N.Y.).

Julio Valdez currently lives in New York. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships, Including those of the Robert Blackburn Studio, and the Studio Museum, Harlem. His work can be found in many public collections, including: the O.A.S. Museum, Washington D.C.; Museo del Barrio, New York; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach; Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art