A Forum Introduction: Guillermo Muñoz Vera

   New York, NY --  Forum Gallery  presents an exhibition by the internally renowned representational painter Guillermo Muñoz Vera includes 18 oil paintings varying greatly in subject matter, scale and color. Painting his own interpretations of the human condition, the artist confronts reality both with conviction and subtlety. Muñoz Vera employs great technical skill to outline, conceptually and actually, his scenes and their accompanying concepts. Whether contemplative still lifes, expansive city vistas, or interactive human presences, his subjects are uncontrived, direct and honest.

   Inspired by the large-scale paintings he created for his 2002 commission for Santiago’s La Moneda metro station in his native Chile, Muñoz Vera began a series of oils focusing on the natural wonders of his country: Los Andes en Septiembre II (The Andes in September II) depicts rugged and grandiose mountains, highlighted by patches of snow and ice, as far as the eye can see – a time – less, even melancholy statement about nature’s fleetingly pristine quality.

   Time is also frozen in Muñoz Vera’s Atardecer en Miami II (Dusk in Miami II), a crepuscular scene in which the rosy fingers of the sun make their final imprint on cloud formations over the Miami skyline. The day’s last moment is felt through a dexterous and sensuous use of color. City lights below offer only the hint of a human presence, as if all the bustle of man’s modernity ultimately cannot exact change on celestial issues. Nature’s silence and majesty rule over the modern steel skyscrapers in Atardecer en Miami II and over mankind’s ubiquitous indigence, captured in his view of an unpaved, muddy road passing beside a ramshackle home in the outskirts of the Chilean city of Lota.

   Agelessness is the subject of the artist’s complex still life painting Libros antiguos y escayola II (Ancient Books and Plaster II), in which his passion for subtle shading and delicate use of shadows is showcased in a shelf-like presentation of old books, scrolls, a Hellenistic bust and even a pair of antique spectacles; whereas the enigmatic complexity of human interaction is suggested by Muñoz Vera’s exquisitely refined Partida de billar II (Game of Pool II), a painting in which mere glimpses of the contestants are seen over the broad expanse of the game the play.

   Inspired by the long tradition of Spanish realist painting dating back to Diego Velazquez in the 17th century, Guillermo Muñoz Vera’s work is as permanent in its representational quality as it is protean in the experiences reflected. Born in Concepción, Chile in 1956, he studied at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago, at witch he also taught in the Facultad de Bellas Artes prior the moving to Madrid in 1979 where he lives and works today. The subject of numerous international exhibitions over the years, Madrid’s Centro Cultural de la Villa presented a retrospective on his on is work in 2ooo. Recently he was honoured with a commission to paint the portrait of Juan Carls I, King so Spain.

A Forum Gallery Introduction: Guillermo Muñoz Vera opens with a reception on April 28 from 5:30 - 7:30 pm, and will be on view through June 10, 2005.