About — Juan Alberto Negroni

Juan Alberto Negroni, Bayamón PR 1979. Based in Dallas TX.

Possess an MFA in Studio Arts from Southern Methodist University in Dallas TX, an MA Ed in Art History and Museum Studies from Caribbean University PR and a BFA with a Major in Printmaking from Puerto Rico School of Fine Arts and Design. Counts with seven solo shows, The Defect Effect, If it weren’t for my horse, Not About Beauty (Religion, Politics and other failures) all in San Juan, PR, Tiny Floral Show, in Dallas TX and A Midsummers Night’s Dream at 18.2208° N, 66.5901° W, Texas Woman’s University, Denton TX, Sereno at Carneal Simmons, Pacificaribbean at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo CA and Maneras de Llegar at Sagrado Corazón Univ. Art Gallery in San Juan PR.

Has participated in multiple group shows such as Detroit: A Brooklyn Case Study, SUPERFRONT LA, Los Angeles CA 2010, Dialectic City, curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates (w/Francis Alÿs, David Lamelas, among others), Muestra Nacional de Arts, Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, San Juan PR 2015 and 2018, Art in America, (Curated by Julie Torres) at The Satellite Show in Miami FL 2015 & Elizabeth Stone Harper Gallery, SC in 2016, Kinds of Monuments, (w/Christian Boltanski, Luis Camnitzer, Cai-Guo-Qiang, Robert Morrison, Alberto Burri, amongst others), Zattere Cultural Flow Zone, Dorsoduro, Venice IT, 2da Gran Bienal Tropical in Loiza, PR, Home & Visitor at Le Consortium, Dijon FR, Topologies of Excess: A Survey of Contemporary Practices from Puerto Rico (curated by Emma Saperstein and Mariola Rosario), Harold J. Miossi Art Gallery, San Luis Obispo CA, Hail Mary at Liliana Bloch Gallery, Equity in the Arts Fellowship Exhibition, Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas TX, Galée Royale at Gallerie Rompone, Cologne DE, Garden Party, curated by Danielle Avram and many others.

Recipient of the Meadows Artistic Scholarship Award 2015 and the 2017 Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'art Dijon Residency Fellowship.

His practice has been documented in printed press and magazines like, ArtPulse, El Nuevo Día and PATRON Magazine.

Memory Garden

In childhood one views the world as a thing of wonder and beauty. We cherish significant visual experiences from that period and return to them with melancholy and fascination. Observation leads to understanding. The childhood gaze is a straightforward reading of the visual field, almost unadulterated. Eyes fall on those things that require detailed scrutiny because we do not yet understand them. Juan Negroni’s current paintings reach back to his childhood memories of the times he spent in his parents’ garden; a time of intense visual inquiry. As young children develop a sense of their world, they begin to connect sight and emotion, comprehending how the visual can lead to pleasure. Negroni’s attempt to relive those moments in painting offers us this common, shared experience of early visual discovery. It shifts us in time to that moment of early recognition.

Negroni’s small canvases are magnetic for the emotions they trigger. He does not paint scenes of himself at work in that garden. He has instead chosen to evoke his sensory response to that moment in that environment. His abstractions are recognizably plants but also specific memories made universal experiences.

The small size of Negroni’s canvases suggests intimacy. But their emotional scale is considerably larger, stretching feelings into an open public sphere. Emotion becomes an open and somewhat borderless space, suggestive of the outdoors. But these are not landscapes in any conventional sense. Painted in portrait mode, there is no division of pictorial space into earth and sky. No horizon. Still the feeling is terrestrial, the space full of earthy light. Colors mark the time of year. Spring’s succulent greens are absent, so too are Autumn’s softer ambers and browns. Present are the fuller, more fleshy tones of red and blue that point to times of ripe sustenance. Yellow tones radiate the temperature of a lazy afternoon.

Everything seems within reach. Patterns of vertical and horizontal lines in foreground or background suggest an enclosure, and Negroni’s tight layers of brush marks, stains, and washes, compact the space and draws the viewer in. One feels contentment in this environment. There is no angst, no hunger, only a spiritual peace.

Juan Negroni’s ultimate concern is viewers’ emotional engagement through beauty. Negroni’s pleasure in memory transmutes to the viewer herself. Like some poets, he combines abstract signs or ciphers that conjure ideas, trigger emotions, and suspend time. To dramatise a childhood discovery that is as particular as it is individual, is a great painterly achievement.