Have you ever listened to a painting? When I look at Jovan Karlo Villalba’s paintings, I can see and hear something break – crunches, crashes, clicks, sighs, screams, and whispers. And I can see something appear and disappear. When I listen to Jovan Karlo Villalba’s paintings, I can see something fall apart and come together and become whole again. In his paintings, I see nature, man and universe melding, twisting and wrapping around and into each other, like a stream of paint, splashing onto his canvas, all in different pieces; like splashes of sunshine or of the dark, thick, evening sky; like splashes of love and hate, joy and pain, all in one place. To listen to his paintings is to hear his voice – to hear all his agreements and his disagreements with the life, the world, and society itself all coming together in one place and in one canvas.  His work is like a puzzle that was once whole and is not anymore, and its the job of us, the viewers, to put it back together, piece by piece, to make sense of it all,  according to our own concept and our own state of mind. If you listen more quietly, more attentively, to Villalba’s paintings, you can even hear the energy of his brush strokes at work, spreading paint on his canvas, layer by layer, piece by piece – every piece with its own art atom hidden inside it, a universe of its own, creating a window to the power of his hidden messages. To that I say, “Bravo, Jovan.”

– Mahvash Mossaed

Jovan Karlo Villalba

Jovan Karlo Villalba’s interest is in the imagination. With his work, he attempts to initiate a refreshing experience by stimulating contemplation and escapism in a viewer. His painting process combines an array of mark-making and an additive and subtractive layering technique. This process enables him to continuously cover and expose the underlying surface – a reflective stainless steel panel – until the desired balance of paint and steel is achieved. This balance, mostly determined by form and subject, plays a crucial role as it allows his painted image to coalesce with reflected light and motion. The result is work that is in constant flux, navigating between a depicted and a “real” environment.

His hope is that the experience of seeing his work will engage his audience and serve as a means for him to effectively comment on present-day social and environmental issues.

Jovan Karlo Villalba (b. 1977, Quito, Ecuador) was raised in Miami, Florida. He is an alumnus of New World School of the Arts in Miami and the Cooper Union School of Art (BFA) in New York City. Villalba began to exhibit his work in New York City while working from his art studio located in the Chelsea Art District. Over the last decade, Villalba has exhibited his work at galleries and art institutions throughout the United States, including in solo exhibitions in New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami. His work has been published worldwide and was recently featured in biennial exhibitions at the Hollywood Art and Culture Center and at the Queens Museum of Art. Villalba presently lives and works in Miami, Florida.

Exhibition Details

 See the online exhibition at Demossa Gallery
April 21 – July 21, 2013

For inquiries regarding the artist and his work, such as pricing and availability, please send an email to art@demossagallery.com.

Tags: Art, Art Reviews, Artists, Demossa Gallery, Jovan Karlo Villalba

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