STARSKY BRINES. Impossible Landscapes

The work of the Venezuelan artist Starsky Brines (Caracas, 1977) returns to our gallery after our last exhibition back in 2017. In this, his fifth exhibition at the Fernando Pradilla gallery, Brines presents Impossible Landscapes; a project which brings together canvases of recent production, which venture into territories of that savage nature, showcasing hybrid characters with dual identity, all of which has been the trademark of his oeuvre to date.

Starsky Brines’s Impossible Landscapes offers a different perspective on the genre of landscape painting, and it evokes a form of representing and recording nature which is buttressed by the idea of landscape as a cultural construction, a space consciously perceived from the interaction of the community with its environment. Relying on a set of visual codes belonging to his personal imagery, Brines constructs a landscape in his own terms, and introduces a social dimension which transcends the representation of a geography or identifiable territories. His landscapes are impossible not only due to the universe they reflect, inhabited as it is by bestial and humanized beings which endeavor to coexist in increasingly less favorable conditions, but also because of the perceptive imbalance that the artist achieves by blurring the lines of the objectivity which he narrates in his works, suggesting chaotic compositions, implausible realities, though neatly anchored in the unstable contexts of Latin American cities.

Brines wants the spectator to find something different in this communion, which reflects about the way in which human beings connect with and transforms the spaces where they live, unveiling what is coarse, unsociable and irrational about his behavior with regards to an environment and its congeners; thus the recreating of an imagery of crude and strange beings which proceed through an equally paradoxal landscape, by means of freshness, nonchalance, humor and a light sarcasm with which Starsky conceives his “heroes” and achieves his compositions.

We are before dynamic and narrative works, with ingenious and ironic titles, painted with broad and colorful strokes, which make sure to “bring us closer to an essentially human being, fighting with their animal condition, estranged before their own reality. Estrangement as a vehicle for the real through one’s own landscape.” [S.B].

Whereas in Brines’s works from previous years we used to perceive an exploration of social precarity in the realm of everyday life, presided by violent incidents and an atmosphere of constant instability, his new paintings breath vitality and a more salutatory air, less sinister, and we could even say more amused. The caricaturesque grimace of the characters from previous series stands in contrast with smiling and more sociable personages. In the words of Brines, his eyes have “oxygenized,” and so has his pictorial composition. Thus, we find titles such as Let Life Shine A Smile On You, What The River Brought, Dance with Nike, or A Night Full of Colors.

Starsky Brines has a BA in Plastic Arts from the University Institute of the College of Plastic Arts Armando Reverón in Caracas, and in 2009 he obtained a Masters’ Diploma in History of Western Arts at the Metropolitan University and the Center of Latin American Studies Arturo Uslar Pietri in Caracas. From the late 1990s, he has presented his work in various national and international spaces. Ever since he made his first solo exhibition in Madrid, his work has made its way through numerous European, Latin American and international spaces at large, partaking in individual and collective exhibitions in cities including New Orleans, Miami, Frankfurt, Basilea, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Santander, Miami, Madrid, Seoul, among many others. Moreover, in the last few years his work has achieved international acclaim, a variety of awards and prizes, including the “Omar Carreño” Young Artist Award, given by the Architects Association of Venezuela (2013), the AVAP Young Artist Award of the Venezuelan Association of Plastic Artists (2010), the Second Award of the VIII Salón CANTV Jóvenes with FIA: Open Eyes (2005); the Juan Lovera Main Award at the XXXIII Salón Municipal de Artes Visuales (2004); a Honorific Mention at the XXIII Salón de Pintura of the Ateneo of Carúpano (2003), and the Best Painting Award at the VII Salón Regional de Jóvenes Artistas, Puerto La Cruz (2003).

A number of important private and institutional collections have purchased some of Starsky Brines’s work, including: Beth Rudin DeWoody (USA), Koo House Museum (Seoul, South Korea), BURGER Collection (Hong Kong, China), Mondrian Hotel (Seoul, South Korea), Ashley Longshore (USA), Hee Jae Kang (Seoul, South Korea), Sander Sammlung Collection (Darmstad, Germany), National Museum of China (Beijing, China), Colección Mercantil (Caracas, Venezuela) y MAAA-Museo Acarigua-Araure (Venezuela).