Artist reception at New Haven Public Library Thursday evening

New Haven Free Public Library Art Gallery
133 Elm St., New Haven
Tearing Silk: Recent Silkscreens by Miguel Trelles
Through Jul. 12, 2011.
Artist's reception: Thurs., June 16, 5:30—7:30 p.m.

Press release

Tearing Silk is an exhibition of recent silk-screens that showcase contemporary Pop interpretations of Meso-American icons. The show will also include "gestural" silk-screens depicting Afro Caribbean rhapsody, and a colorful rendition of "Bayamanaco," the Taino deity for fire. Miguel Trelles' work approaches contemporary Latino portraits as well as Pre-Columbian icons through the lingua franca of American visual pop.

Miguel Trelles is a painter with a studio presence in Manhattan's Lower East Side. His ongoing Chino-Latino painting series addresses Caribbean and Latino subjects through Chinese references. He is also an adjunct professor of Visual Arts, Modern Languages, and Comparative Literature at CUNY, where he teaches at Hunter College and Baruch College.

"Rather than merely pursuing radical innovations, I favor revolutionary archaism in painting," writes Trelles, "Personally meaningful references and amenable formats from the history of art help me to depict and to frame those intuitions about nature and humanity which I have been rendering with crayon, ink and brush since infancy. Those references are then 'telescoped' into new conceptual contexts and combinations, but always within the purview of traditional painting/printmaking methods."

Tearing Silk consciously straddles “the tremendous potential energy of difference” Europe unknowingly and willfully instilled between the four Americas. These silkscreens reflect a respectful and well-informed appropriation of Meso-American icons, Afro-Caribbean literary sources, and American Pop. They constitute yet another rough draft towards a Pan-American suma, a model that will not deny Europe but which will encompass more.

His exhibitions have been reviewed in various art publications such as Arte al Dia, Art in America, Art Nexus, and YISHU: Journal of Contemporary Art.

Trelles' work has been exhibited extensively in New York, New Haven, and San Juan. His paintings have traveled to Miami, Havana, Santo Domingo, Tegucigalpa, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Beunos Aires, and Paris.