Omar Chacón and Jose Sarinana will be showing new work at Greene Contemporary in Sarasota, Florida during the month of January. The exhibition will open with a reception on Friday, January 5th from 6 to 9 pm. The exhibition will continue from Saturday January 6th through Saturday January 27th. Greene Contemporary is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 to 6 PM.
Chacón and Sarinana met as graduate students at the San Francisco Art Institute. Last year they exhibited together in San Francisco at Lincart. Colin Berry writing about their show in Artweek said they "achieved something novel with acrylic paint, melding the spirits of abstract expressionism and sculpture with the rich history of Hispanic art making into an exhibition of simple and disarming originality." The exhibition at Greene Contemporary will feature large and small paintings by Chacon and wall paintings and sculpture by Sarinana.
Omar Chacon left his native Colombia in 1989 when he was ten. He has dual citizenship and is the only member of his family to be living in the United States. He loves South America and has integrated ideas and issues about the culture inspired by such aspects as flags, food or textiles in his work since he attended Ringling School of Art & Design. It was at Ringling that he decided he would work in acrylic because he liked the immediacy of it. He "likes the movement" in the new work. He says his "work is all about culture - it is an investigation of where I come from." Chacon minored in art history and he studies the way other artists such as Goya or Jacques Louis David approach issues of composition or color. He also appreciates the work of Philip Taaffe and Vik Muniz. Chacon was awarded his MFA in painting from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has a BFA 2003 from Ringling. He lives and works in Astoria, New York and has exhibited his work throughout the United States and Mexico. He is represented by Lincart in San Francisco and Greene Contemporary in Sarasota.
Jose Sarinana was born in Durango, Mexico in 1976. He received his BFA in 1999 from the University of Southern California and his MFA in 2004 from the San Francisco Art Institute. In the summer of 2006 he was a recipient of a Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture fellowship. He is currently living in Los Angeles where he says he "is always improving on his mustard recipe." He says his work is concerned with "finding and expanding the infinite, absurd, marvelous and overlooked in the everyday…" He likes to allow "the work to present itself in an entertaining, seductive or deceptively plain fashion." Sarinana doesn't "hold any material and its use in any sacred or traditional way." The result is that his work sparks the imagination and engenders conversation.