Juan Uslé

Juan Uslé was born in Santander, Spain in 1954. Lives and works between Saro (Cantabria) and New York City. He studied fine art at Escuela Superior de Belles Artes in San Carlos, Valencia from 1973-77.

Usle first exhibited in New York in 1989 at the Farideh Cadot Gallery. His paintings have been shown in galleries and museums since 1981. He is represented by [http://www.cheimread.com/ Cheim & Read] in New York City and [http://www.galeriethomasschulte.de/index_site.html/ Gallery Thomas Schulte] in Berlin.

Style

Juan Uslé is an American / Spanish painter known for his original use of intense color. Juan Usle explores paint and painting in all its different and possible forms. Always full of contrasts and oppositions, sometimes brutish, sometimes delicate, Uslé’s paintings are infinitely open-ended and continually fascinating.

About Juan Uslé’s work, the critic, Dominique Nahas said, "The most evident quality of Uslé’s work is its freshness and spontaneity. Intermixed within each painting’s highly sophisticated format is an utter lack of contrivance. The painter’s work has a dual sense of urgency as well play and forthright elegance that is hard to miss. The light and fluidity that are two of the hallmarks of his work continually bear upon a discursive gridwork, whose pictorially woven components are always shot through with layers of often-ambiguous connections to line and color. The quality of play in Uslé’s paintings is felt through its animated proliferation, its indirection, its fluidity and slippage. It will not be difficult to think of the overlaid/interlaid network lines in each work as referring to social sites of some kind. The relation of sites to other sites seems to inform Uslé’s paintings, if we follow Michel Foucalt’s argument that, in the social matrix, site has been substituted by extension, which had itself replaced the concept of implacement. Our epoch, he claims, is one in which space for us takes the form of relations between sites, between nodal points of connections.

Throughout his career Juan Uslé has never stuck adamantly to any one style or subject. He prefers instead to explore paint and painting in all its different and possible forms. The most evident quality of Uslé’s work is its freshness and spontaneity. Intermixed within each paintings highly sophisticated format is an utter lack of contrivance, his work possesses a dual sense of and urgency as well as play and simple elegance. He is influenced by a diverse range of forces: luminosity, movement, the urban world, the cinema, digital images and personal experiences. Always full of contrasts and oppositions, sometimes brutish, sometimes delicate, Uslé’s paintings are infinitely open-ended and continually fascinating.

See example from 2006 entitled "Deshilando Redcuerdos"

Exhibitions

olo exhibitions

2008 Valencia Bancaja Headquarters, Valencia (4/1–6/30/08)Cheim & Read, New York (2/7–3/15/08)2007 Juan Uslé. Switch on / Switch off, Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga, Málaga, Spain (9/14-11/25/07)Galerie Thomas Schulte, BerlinLuz Aislada, Zoom, Santander, Spain2006 Frith Street Gallery, London, England (3/3/06-4/21/06)En Otros Ojos, Galería Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid (6/22/06-7/15/06)Pieles y Miradas (with Victoria Civera), Galería Siboney, Santander, Spain2005 Alegre (with Victoria Civera), Tim van Laere Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium, Belgium2004 Coágulo y Trama, Galería Soledad Lorenzo, Madrid (6/24/06-7/24/06)Open Rooms, Fundación Marcelino Botín, Santander; SMAK, Stedlïjk Museum voor Actuale Kunst, Gante; IMMA, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin2003 Open Rooms, Palacio de Velaquez, Parque del Retiro, Madrid Spain (10/16/03 - 1/12/04) traveled to: S.M.A.K., Gent, April/May/June 2004, Fundacion Botin Santander Summer 2004; Imma DublinSeptember/October 2004New Painting, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany2002 Cheim & Read, New YorkSaro on paper. Juan Uslé, Van Laere Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium, Belgium (12/5/02-1/18/03)Galerie Guislaine Houssenot, ParisFirst Time, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, Germany2001 Llebrana and Gramaland, Galeria Joan Prats, BarcelonaQuartos Escuro e Amarello, Museu Serralves/Museu de Arte Contemporanea, Porto, Portugal (5/18-7/8/01)Beauty & Sorrow, Galería Soledad Lorenzo, MadridLlebrana and Gramaland, Photographs, Galerie Thomas Schulte, Berlin, Germany (2/9–4/7/01)2000 Carmen del Negro, Palacio de los Condes de Gabia, Diputacion Provincial de Granada Cultura: Area de Bienestar Social, Granada, Spain (5/5–6/25/00), traveled to Museo de Bellas Artes Ayuntamiento de Santander, Santander, Spain (7/7–9/2000)Noche Abierta, L.A. Louver Gallery, Venice, CA (5/23–7/1/00)

Museums and public collections

Artium-Museo de Bellas Artes de Álava, VitoriaAutoridad Portuaria, SantanderBirmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AlabamaCentro Atlántico de Arte Moderno, Las Palmas de Gran CanariaCentro Andaluz de Arte Contemporáneo de MálagaCentre Pompidou, ParisCol-lecció Testimoni, "la Caixa", BarcelonaArte Contemporáneo Fundación "la Caixa", BarcelonaConsejería de Cultura, Turismo y Deportes, Gobierno de CantabriaGeorge Eastman House, RochesterCollection Norte, Gobierno de CantabriaFonds National d'Art Contemporain, Ministère de Culture, ParisFoundation AENA. Colección de Arte ContemporàneoIrish Museum of Modern Art, DublinMIGROS, Museum für Gegenwatskunst, ZurichMuseo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, MadridModerna Museet, StockholmMusèe d'Art Moderne, LuxemburgMuseo de Arte Contemporàneo Español, PatioHerreriano, ValladolidMuseo de Bellas Artes de SantanderMueso de Torrelaguna, MadridMuseo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Español Contemporàneo, BadajozGuggenheim Museum, BilbaoMuseum Marugame Hirai, JapanMuseu Serralves, PortoMuseum Boijmans van Beuningen, RotterdamMuseum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, ViennaParlamento de Cantabria, SantanderStedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, GanteNew York Public Library, New YorkStaatsgalerie Moderner Kunst, MunichStaatsgalerie, StuttgartStädtisches Museum Schloß Morsbroich, LeverkusenTate Modern, LondonUniversity Art Museum, Long Beach, CaliforniaZimmerli Art Museum, New Jersey