Continuing through July 8, 2017
Madrid-based painter José Manuel Ciria is a key figure in contemporary Spanish painting. Ciria is not afraid to experiment with different styles and ways of painting, and has changed direction many times during his thirty-year career. The paintings here are from his "Procedures Series," large-scale gestural abstractions that are unabashedly wild and emotive.
Titles such as "Crazy Unicorns," "Invisible Cow” and "Crows and Flamingos” might lend the impression that the images are representational, but they are not. With bombastic applications of paint that saturate surfaces with wide splotches of vibrant color, Ciria's palette is purposely limited. Orange, black, white, blue and yellow dominate the compositions, and he makes the most of layering these colors by changing their saturation and opacity as well as the density of the gestures.
