Curriculum Vitae Brief Personal Chronology Artist’s Statements
Fred Villanueva
98 Greenwich, Third Floor South NY, NY 10006 Telephone: (917) 554-5286
|
Experience
Daily practice of Drawing, Painting, Printmaking, Publishing, and Digital Creation
Formative Independent Studies
Travel, artistic, cultural studies, and temporary residencies in Spain, France, Japan, U.K.
GMI Civil Engineering
Archeological documentation and cartography.
Formative Independent Studies
Travel, artistic and cultural studies, and temporary residences in Spain, France, and Italy.
VIW Industrial Design
Furniture Design, Architectural Designer, Interior Designer, Graphic Designer, Steel Sculptor, Model Making
Dennis Oppenheim, Artist
Artist’s Assistant, January 1995- June 1995
Assistance with Sculpture, Painting, and General Studio Work
Zadik Zadikian, Artist
Artist’s Assistant, January 1995- February 1995
Assistance with Sculpture, casting, and General Studio Work
Hanne Tiernay, Artist
Artist’s Assistant, October 1994
Preparing Studio for Productions
San Francisco Clarion Alley Mural Project
Assistant to Susan Cervantes, Muralist
Formative Independent Studies
Travel, artistic and cultural studies, and temporary residences in Mexico.
Board of Trustees of the San Francisco Art Institute
Undergraduate Student Trustee
List of Exhibitions
Mar. 2013- New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, Louisiana
Dec. 2012- Museum of Biblical Art, Dallas, Texas
Nov. 2012- PopUP - Ash Studios Preview, Dallas, Texas
Oct. 2012- Crane Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Oct. 2012- WhiteSpace, Dallas, Texas
Oct. 2012- The Art Fair of Texas, Exposition Park, Dallas, Texas
Sept 2012- NMCAL Benefit, Washington, D.C.
July. 2012- Roodkapje Gallery, Rotterdam, Netherlands
Mar. 2012- Paula Barr Gallery Studio 9G, Chelsea, New York City, NY
Aug. 2011- Art+Faith, (catalogue) Fundacion Jose Pons, Madrid, Spain
Dec. 2009- John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington, D.C.
Feb. 2009- John Paul II Cultural Center, Washington, D.C.
Dec. 2008- Historical Society of Washington, D.C, Washington, D.C.
Oct. 2008- National Museum of Catholic Art and History, NYC, New York
July. 2008- P.A.S. Project Space, NYC, New York
Feb. 2008- National Museum of Catholic Art and History, NYC, New York
Jan. 2008- Open Studio Show, 100 Greenwich Street Studio, NYC, New York
Dec. 2007- Cheryl Pelavin/ Art in a Box Benefit Show, NYC, New York
Dec. 2007- National Museum of Catholic Art an History, NYC, New York
Nov. 2005- Salon Group Show, Green Street Studios, Soho, NYC, New York
Oct. 2005- Salon Group Show, Green Street Studios, Soho, NYC, New York
Jun. 2005- Spike Gallery, NurtureArt Benefit Group Show, Chelsea, NYC, New York
Apr. 2005- Julia Burgos Cultural Center/Taller Boricua, Faith in Painting Solo Show, NYC, NY
Jun. 2003- The Painting Center, Big Abstract Painting Group Show, NYC, New York
May 2003- Europ’art Gallery, New World - New Wave Solo Show, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Nov. 2002- Artist’s Space Gallery, 1000 Drawings Group Show, NYC, New York
May 2002- Anarte Gallery, Sketches of Spain Solo Show, San Antonio, Texas
Mar. 2002- Spring Xing, Open Studio Solo Show, NYC, New York
Apr. 1996- L.U.E. Group Show, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, California
Jun. 1995- V.I.W., Dallas, Texas
Jun. 1995- Soho’s, Dallas, Texas
Dec. 1994- Exhibitionism Group Show, A.I.C.A.D. New York Studio Program, Tribeca, NYC
Dec. 1994- Art Initiatives Salon, Tribeca 138 Gallery, New York
July 1994- World Trade Center, Dallas, Texas
May 1994- Spring Show, San Francisco Art Institute, California
May 1994- Peep Show, V.E., San Francisco, California
Apr. 1994- ñ Group Show, Spanish Consulate of San Francisco, California
Apr. 1994- Strike for Indolence and Beauty, V.E. Gallery, San Francisco, California
Feb. 1994- L.U.A. Group Show, Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, California
Aug. 1993- Diego Rivera Gallery, San Francisco, California
May 1993- Spring Show, San Francisco Art Institute, California
May 1992- Spring Show, San Francisco Art Institute, California
Mar. 1991- Group Show, BTWHSPVA, Dallas, Texas
Apr. 1991- Group Show, Dallas City Hall, Dallas, Texas
Nov. 1990- Dallas Public Library, Dallas, Texas
Awards
New York Studio Program Participant, Fall 1994
San Francisco Art Institute Merit Scholarship
Calgrant 1992-1994
San Francisco Art Institute Spring Show Award 1993
Education
School of Visual Arts
E. 23rd
New York, New York
A.I.C.A.D. New York Studio Program (Parsons School of Design)
451 Greenwich Street Fourth Floor
New York, New York 10013
Parsons School of Design/ New School for Social Research
New York, New York
Independent Study through San Francisco Art Institute
Travelled to and lived in Mexico City, Oaxaca, Yucatan, Guadalajara, and Chiapas. Studies included photo-documentation, drawings, and written journals, as well as visiting major art and anthropology museums, galleries, and archeological sites.
San Francisco Art Institute
800 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, California 94133
Degree: B.F.A. Painting, 1995
Booker T. Washington School for Performing and Visual Arts (Arts Magnet)
2501 Flora Street
Dallas, Texas
Cistercian Preparatory School
1 Cistercian Rd.
Irving, Texas 75226
Brief Personal Chronology
1973-1990 Grow up in Texas. As a child, observe mold-making process of plaster sculptures and their painting in a plaster studio, the studio later becoming family ironworks. Attend Cistercian boys’ school run by Hungarian Refugees who are monks. First experiences with formal art, art history, art criticism, painting and conceptual drawing, analytical thinking, and computer graphics. Moved by Bonnard, Pollock, Rothko, Basquiat, and poetry of Allen Ginsberg.
1991 Graduate from Booker T. Washington High School for Performing and Visual Arts. Experimentation in painting and drawing. Moved by Miró, Pollock, and Rauschenburg. The beginning of art as a means of self-exploration and expression.
1991-1992 Move to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco Art Institute, and learn the art of painting as taught by the artists who developed the style known as “Bay Area Figurative”. Learn self analysis, methodologies of modernism, pluralistic thinking, constructive criticism, as well as techniques used by artists, poets, and philosophers. First exposure to contemporary art issues in Post-modern thinking and theories. Become interested in ancient cultures, codes, visual language, semiotics, and symbolism. Experimentation in sculpture, installation, performance. Many paintings drawings, and prints.
1992 Travel through Mexico to study contemporary and ancient cultures, anthropology, history, and archeological sites in Mexico City, Tula, Oaxaca, Chiapas, and the Yucatan. Intensive study of Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, David Alfaro-Siquieros, Jose Clemente-Orozco, Rufino Tamayo, poet Octavio Paz, and Hispanic culture in general. Drawings, sketches, journals and photographs. Return to Texas and then San Francisco.
1993 Return to San Francisco Art Institute, focusing on expressionist painting with newly found figuration and symbolism. Increased experimentation in painting and drawing, new genres, and sculpture.
1994 Move to Texas for the Summer to design a line of furniture for family ironworks. Introduction to the trades of craft, product design, graphic design. Production of various pieces of designed furniture.
1994 Move to New York City to attend the New York Studio Program and Parson’s School of Design. Many paintings and drawings, and exploration in new genres. Study and apprentice with Dennis Oppenheim. Learn of the artist’s multiple roles, in a renaissance sense, as the creative thinker in art, architecture, design, technology, and media. Many paintings and drawings, photography and videos.
1995 Graduate from the San Francisco Art Institute, with a degree in Painting. Return to New York, then Texas, to continue painting and drawing, and to design furniture. Design and build a studio building and it’s interior, experimenting in architectural and interior design. Creation of models for large scale steel sculpture. Intensive work in product and graphic design.
1995 In the Fall, return to Brooklyn to market product designs, with disastrous results. Begin using computers as image making tools in addition to traditional painting media. Digital imaging for creation of new paintings. After a hard winter, travel to Indiana, then across the country to return to San Francisco.
1996 Spend Spring in San Francisco sketching and drawing, assembling new images from digital media and gouache on xerox paper. Travel to Yaqui reservation in Southern Arizona.
1996 Return to Texas. Focus becomes entirely on running a small business of furniture and graphic design, as well as documentation of art work.
1996 After the Summer, return to Fort Greene, Brooklyn to seek work as a freelance graphic designer. Become increasingly involved in digital media, and begin pivotal illustrations for Le Comte de Lautréamont’s text, “Maldoror”. At the same time, many drawings and sketches in mixed media. Leave in the Spring for personal health and spiritual reasons to Colorado, then Texas.
1997 Again in Texas working at the family ironworks, focus mainly on running a business, designing furniture and graphics, and collaborating with architects and interior designers. Disagreements over creative direction of the studio end involvement with it.
1998 Work as a graphic designer at a commercial silkscreen press. The doldrums of this work are alleviated within a few months by being laid off in the Spring. Creation of purely digital works.
1998 Spend Summer designing website and documenting artwork, and learning new media, animation, and communication tools. At the end of the Summer, travel to Europe.
1998 In Spain, become heavily influenced by Spanish painters Goya and Velasquez, Picasso, Tapies, Dalí, and medieval paintings and drawings, and architecture. Begin the study of the texts of Rimbaud and the medieval text, “La Vida de Lazarillo de Tormes” for illustration. Travel to Toledo and Barcelona, and Bilbao, and various places in Catalunya. Many preparatory sketches for large scale works and digital prints.
1998 In the winter, travel to Southern France seeking knowledge, language and history. Visit many museums and continue to make art while travelling.
1998 Travel through Italy. Visit Rome and it’s environs. Stay in Florence for an extended period to study the art of the Renaissance. Heavily moved by Florentine conception of space, the sculpture and paintings of Michaelangelo. Move on to Milan, to study the art of Leonardo. Many preparatory sketches for large scale works and digital prints.
1999 Return to France, then Paris. Explore art of the world by drawing at the Louvre and Orsay. Become very influenced by the art of the French Academy and the writings of the Surrealists. More sketches and drawings.
1999 Return to Madrid to continue drawing and sketching. Return to New York and eventually Texas to document all work. In Texas, again, work for a civil engineering and archeology firm as graphic designer and cartographer, eventually new media artist-designer.
1999 Return to New York in the Summer for work as a new media artist-designer, and to continue making art. Many sketches, drawings, digital prints, and collages.
1999-2000 Increased experimentation with sketching. drawing, painting, and printmaking with both digital and traditional media.
2000 Travel to Japan to study art, technology, and culture. Moved by calligraphy, ukeyo-e prints, Zen and poetry. Many drawings, preparatory sketches for large scale works and digital prints, and photographs.
2000 Return to New York, continuing experimentation with sketching, drawing, painting, and printmaking with digital and traditional media.
2001 Travel to Valencia and London to study art and culture. Many sketches for digital prints.
2001 Return to New York, continuing experimentation with sketching. drawing, painting, and printmaking with digital and traditional media.
2001 Finish illustrations and printing of “Les Chants de Maldoror”, by Le Comte de Lautréamont, a project begun in 1996.
2001 Move to art studios at 100 Greenwich Street, Manhattan. The painting studio is located two blocks south of the World Trade Center. Begin to undertake the creation of first large canvas paintings.
2001 Having survived and been displaced after the terror attacks of September 11th, 2001, relocate to 545 Greenwich Street, north of Canal St, out of Ground Zero.
2002 Showing of Large Scale works in self organized Studio Show. Travel to Austria to study Viennese actionism and conceptual art. Continue to paint Large Scale Oil Paintings. The beginning of a cycle of religious works. Continuation of large scale mural works.
2003 Return to Ground Zero to studios at 98 Greenwich Street. The beginning of a cycle of religious works. Continuation of large scale mural works.
2004 Continuation of a cycle of religious works. Continuation of large scale mural works. Begin usage of drawing from light projections. Travel to Frankfurt, Germany and then Helsinki, Finland.
2005 First one person show in New York City, at the Julia Burgos Cultural Center/ Taller Boricua in Spanish Harlem, in a converted Public School. Showing of religious works.
2005-6 Continuation of religious paintings, but also of paintings with the usage of images of consumerism and materialism. Increased usage of projected drawings.
2007 Travel through Spain, Italy, and Austria. Meet Pope Benedict XVI during a Vatican Audience. Finish a cycle of hybrid works, with both spiritual and materialist concerns.
2008 Pope Benedict XVI views a mural scale painting in Washington, D.C., which depicts him and several Saints. Various shows in Washington, D.C. and New York City. Variety of works in many genres. The painting studio at 98 Greenwich Street, Manhattan, closes when the building, located in Tribeca near Wall Street, is sold and to be cleared for a luxury hotel.
2009 Relocate from Manhattan, NY to Dallas, Texas. Purchase and renovate former iron works factory, with the intent of establishing a painting studio and steel sculpture studio, along with a studio gallery and live/work loft. Renovating 3203 Ash Lane (Ash Studios), in the Exposition Park area of Dallas, requires major time and financial resources.
2010-11 Renovating 3203 Ash Lane (Ash Studios), in the Exposition Park area of Dallas, requires major financial resources and time. Work in information technology and design for funding. The mural scale painting of Pope Benedict XVI is published by Weldon Owen Press. Return to smaller scale painting, focusing on color and composition. Dennis Oppenheim, friend, studio master, and mentor passes away.
2012 Mural Scale work published by Tikkun Magazine, Duke University Press. Mural Scale work shown in Washington, D.C. for NMCAL. Upcoming projects with Museum of Biblical Art in Dallas, TX.
2012 Renovating 3203 Ash Lane (Ash Studios) continues. Show in Chelsea, New York City, of small oil paintings is successful - all pieces sell. Begin oil painting again, continuing previously unfinished mural scale work, and work of all scales. Inclusion in group show in Rotterdam, Netherlands, marks first European show. Studio Gallery completed. Included in list of "Best Up and Coming Artists in DFW 2012" by Marilee Vergati-Haynes, published by CBS-DFW.
2012 Organize The Art Fair of Texas exhibit in tandem with The State Fair of Texas, "Private Going Public", an independent Studio Gallery show, in the spirit of Le Salon des Indépendants, and Le Salon des Refusés. The show is a survey of works, mostly paintings and drawings, and sculptural installation, as well as the artist's self designed and built studio and studio gallery for the Dallas Area.
2013 Mural Scale work re-published by Weldon-Owen (Book of Saints). Large works shown in New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans, LA. The Archdiocese of New Orleans comissions mural painting.
2013 The Cistercian Abbey Our Lady of Dallas comissions mural painting. Birth of daughter Rosario Teresia Villanueva. The beginning of Ash Studios, a social practice project in South Dallas, continues.
Artist’s Statements
Critical elements of my work are exploration, experimentation, and expression. I am painting, drawing, and printing with tools and methods that allow me to continually develop and create images, while also giving the images an attribute of recyclable historicity in a visual vocabulary. The work is an object of communication that is the sum of my ideas and actions over time, reflecting shifts of thought and instinct, and method of creation.
My art is an object captured in the present. It is a pastiche of style and elements that convey a history, a sense of the past, the present, and an attachment felt with history and culture around me. There is no overriding formula in my creation process. It is a pluralistic form of rituals, of searching and making, seeing and rethinking.
Art is to me the expression of a narrative process of seeing and making, of envisioning space, light, form, and ideas. It brings a unique view of the world to me, to the viewer, and to a contemporary audience.
My drawings reflect a panorama of sensibilities, of styles, and ideas. They are illuminations of my object making. My work is about what I see, do, and think, and expressive of my feelings, of my reflection of this world and it’s state of transformation and the possibilities of transcendence that art-making has brought to me.
I create images and objects that are original, multiples, and simulated, the latter purposefully derivative, like information.
Making art is my search for what is perfect or imperfect, the failure and triumph of the real, the triumph of abstraction and expression over the real, and making the virtual temporarily real in some instances. The betrayal of high technology by applying it to a low tech idea - the real - is a main concern, as are a paradoxical pluralism of multiple styles, forms, and tools used to create, as well as the poetry of color, form, process, and transcendence. Reflections of space in psychology and historicity. Imagination and instinctual automatism are currently a driving force in the creation of my work.
My work is also a continual reflection of myself and the world around me. As the world changes daily, so do my ideas.
My years of image-making and introspection have strengthened my belief in the power of the artist to enkindle and enlighten, to analyze and respond, to grow, create and destroy. There are powers that images possess to soothe, to disturb, to document, to teach, to provoke, to change, to reflect, to mirror, to become tangible and real.
My influences are artists, thinkers, philosophers, poets, writers, ancient cultures, technology, the Romantics, the Beats, the abstract painters and poets of the middle of the century. The street kids of the end of the twentieth century recession. The scientists and engineers who changed the way I see and think. The anonymous artisans who built culture from the ground up, and then destroyed it. The immigrants of the world who strove to become unbound from their past, only to stay forever unbound in world. The cultures of the world that were at once open, outward, and then became closed at the fear of chaos. The subcultures that rejected all knowledge, only to become enlightened in the tradition they rejected. Freedom, Fear, Death, Life. Form, Color, Line. The debate between Ingres and David in the academy. Gericault. Delacroix.
The drawings I make are archived for future use and digital production. The stored image can be juxtaposed with images from various phases of my past and current artistic development. The process yields a visual language of symbolism and form, and reflects the freedom of creativity, the concentric circle of the creative process, and the vital elements of making, destroying, and re-creating the work.
The majority of my new work exists as preparatory sketches for large scale paintings. In addition, a digital database of smaller, mostly impermanent works on paper. These are then scanned and archived as digital images. I sometimes collage past work with current work, then repeat the process again. Essentially, digital mixed with digital, collaged, printed, repainted on, and drawn again as a collage of images, then scanned again. My works are all related in nature by this method. The timeline evolves and moves toward a future point, but is referencing the past. At other times this redundant method is interjected with new life by the creation of “original” images, but these too will become enmeshed in my "timeline".
The preparatory sketches and drawings and paintings survive as either purely digital, digital prints, or paper drawings, so that they can also be presented from video projections. In some cases the projection will be the end in itself. In other cases it will be the tool I use to continue creating from my years of drawing from my imagination, inventing symbols, documents of my travels, and the expansion of my ideas. At this point I envision the large scale works to be a panorama of styles and color, much like a mural, or pastiche and collage of various colors and forms that are "assembled” from my drawings. The large scale pieces include images that I have been making for the past 10 years. My art has become influenced by industry and trades of contemporary media. I think of billboards, web sites that exist only as code, digital images that exists only as archives, brought forth on demand, digital prints that are of temporary nature, influenced by the commercial presses, the printmaking legacy of Gutenburg's ability to produce endless counterfeits, and originals, that will be made permanent, as documents of thought.
Methods of developing and deriving images include, but are hardly limited to, stream of consciousness, multiple repetitions over time, instinct, and gumption. Multiple impressions of the same image in a different form. Tantric, concentration on the result of an action, or rather the action that brings about a resolution...senseless disordering in order to apply order, drawing something from the past and making it real in the present, such as a memory, reflection, thought, or idea.
My emphasis has been on the object, as the medium to achieve a view into another view. To me, the landscape is constant, sometimes populated by figures, symbols, objects, other data in my visions made real. The figure ground, though present, is not static to me. The primary reference for me is color. When figurative, the figure communicates best when expressionistic...showing movement, feeling, illustrating empathy felt for it. Imperfection is for me a crucial factor in the way that I work. It is a balance of my intention, and the accident is inherent in the media that I use. I do not try to fight the medium, but rather use its material characteristics to my advantage, which is why I feel I do not make "computer generated art". I employ tools to make my art. I am not dependent on any one set of tools, methods, or ideologies. And despite technology’s influence, the act of painting is very much alive in my work.
The virtues of creativity, knowledge, imagination, intuition, free expression and enlightenment are what I seek when making art, and in living life.
