Artforo Magazine Will Begin To Circulate this Week in Altos de Chavón Gallery

Santo Domingo, September 16, 2019 – Dominican artist Oscar Abreu recently announced the launching of Artforo Magazine. The launching event will be held at the Altos de Chavón Gallery on September 18, at 7:30 p.m.

The launching event will be held simultaneously with the opening of a collective exhibit, which will include the works of Puerto Rican plastic artists Carlos Santiago, Félix Bonilla Gerena and Carlos Romaguera; French national Georges Thevenet; and Dominicans Ramón Oviedo, Freddy Javier, Ney DiazH., Iris Pérez and Oscar Abreu.

“With this exhibit, we officially launch the projection of the International Artforo Fair, scheduled to be presented at the Palace of Fine Arts in Santo Domingo this coming December. The event will honor Dominican Miguel Cocco, now deceased, a tremendous supporter of artists in general and worked to strengthen art, culture and establish a tradition of art collectors,” explained Abreu, the Fair’s executive director.

Through his works artist Carlos Santiago hopes to “go beyond my deepest memories and origins; and I conceptually explore how to bring together the past and the present to be able to provide a visual and reflexive panorama of our past and our ties, while at the same time reliving memories and rescuing my oral history.”

“We have the impression or the sensation that Bonilla Gerena is still painting his works right in front of us. In this case, his work is not only an artistic product, the limit or the extreme of a material object, but also a physical continuation of the work itself,@ explained art critic William Taylor-Suderman.

Delia Blanco highlights the work of Carlos Romaguera: “Thereby, the points multiplied create a certain texture, a composition where color is the prime factor. We are facing red, ocre and earth color. It is obvious that we stand before an existential piece of art, rather than saying an existentialist creation.”

Georges Thevenet uses a singular piece of marquetry inspired by the European wood artisans of the 15th century. It is a combination of many small and different wooden pieces, to create extraordinary furniture made from unique pieces, all signed and accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity. His pieces are useful and artistic at the same time, in something he calls a particular testimony to the history of Santo Domingo.

On Ramón Oviedo, María Elena Ditrén states that he is “an invaluable artist when it comes to the study of the history of Dominican art. That is Maestro Ramón Oviedo. An important artist in our history, Maestro Ramón Oviedo has not only contributed to contemporary Dominican art, the one that we are currently living, but has also left us a historical testimony of his Works, with all its possibilities of self-affirmation of a piece of art that transcends time and allows both he and the general public to create new realities from his imagination and the appearance of infinite parallel universes that accompany our existence and that of those inner worlds that live in our conscience…”

Raysa White comments on Freddy Javier, whose art went beyond the aesthetic function and entered the suffering of the least favored, the pain of inefficacy, deception and abandonment. With those elements he put together the medulla of his artistic expression.

Also, art critic Fernando Casanova states that the work of Ney DiazH “present us with figures that bring us closer to living in times of anguish and in the wrong places.” They are dynamic works, exhibiting great drama, with clear lines, very in tune with expressionism. Strange colors and certain violence appear. There is a slight color preference for pink, black and Green tones, making its palette a source where one can drink from without any difficulties.”

“One of the greatest qualities of Iris’ art, and the most evident, is perhaps her tremendous technical control of her drawings. They are the absolute protagonists of its figurative and very personal art. Her strokes, completely identifiable, reveal her temperament, artistic gift and her personality, while at the same time have an immense capacity to transmit feelings, emotions, images and narratives,” point out Antonio J. Canela-Ruano.

On the other hand, historian and art critic Cándido Gerón reveals that the work of Abreu “proposes artistic values and is impacted by all forms of expression. His diversity calls for certain silent and tranquil paralelisms. On occasion, it reflects an indulgent illusion as if it emerged from memories and, in other cases, a feeling of nostalgia that is reminiscent of its particular anathemas.”