Eugenio Espinoza:good Blue Day

The Piero Atchugarry Gallery presented Good Blue Day, a solo exhibition of new work by Venezuelan conceptual artist Eugenio Espinoza, including sculpture, painting, installation and performance. Espinoza began his career by subverting our understanding of the Modernist grid, and is celebrated for his radical works that reacted to the dominant movements of geometric abstraction and Kinetic art in Venezuela in the 1960’s and 1970’s. For the past 50 years, Espinoza has continued his courageous and in-depth investigations of the grid. Good Blue Day presented a dynamic trajectory of his new works using metal, color and an increased sense of play for the first time. In 2014 the Peréz Art Museum Miami (PAMM) hosted Espinoza’s solo exhibition Unruly Supports. Curated by Claire Breukel, Good Blue Day offered a selection of new work by Espinoza never-before exhibited publicly. As the title paradoxically implies, Good Blue Day presented the layered tension within Espinoza’s oeuvre. Collectively, these works juxtapose the duality of his practice –controlled/uncontrolled, formal/informal, grid/chance, offering a playful, contemporaneous entry point to re-read Espinoza’s work. Newer and previous work was exhibited together thematically rather than chronologically. This exhibition aimed to present Espinoza’s work without the laden history of institutional politics, and rather with a new blue breadth that shows an unconstrained and “support-less” approach. In addition, Espinoza’s work was presented non-geographically to show the eclectic contexts from which the artist has drawn inspiration, including the cities of New York, Caracas, Miami and Gainesville where he currently resides, among others. Claire Breukel shares: “Although his vital contribution to Venezualan critical practice must be acknowledged, Eugenio Espinoza is an artist of the Americas, and his new metal works reflect the tensions and struggles, desires and play of existing ubiquitously, outside of the box…the grid.”