"BETWEEN THE LINES" | Luis Cruz Azaceta

The Arthur Roger Gallery is pleased to present BETWEEN THE LINES a new exhibition of paintings and
sculptures by Luis Cruz Azaceta. The exhibition will be on view at Arthur Roger Gallery, located at 432
Julia Street, from October 5–26, 2019. The gallery will host an opening, with the artist in attendance, on
Saturday, October 5 from 6–9 PM in conjunction with Art for Arts’ Sake.
BETWEEN THE LINE is Luis Cruz Azaceta’s tenth exhibition
with the gallery. The recent works on canvas, which range
from kaleidoscopic to austere, present an enigmatic state of
affairs, a series of journeys on the edge of order and chaos.
Exile is an overarching theme in this exhibition in addition to
themes of disbalance, dystopia, conflict, and passage that
are boldly rendered in the artist’s distinctive, abstractive
style. The paintings reveal Azaceta’s staunch dedication to
addressing contemporary issues with his work.
For Azaceta, the condition of being in exile is manifested in
being physically in your place of exile whole still feeling
emotionally and spiritually tied to Cuba. The experience has
allowed the artist to address the condition of violence,
racism, isolation, separation, and oppression with is work.
He can speak about global challenges with a first-person
view.
A collection of large, multi-panel canvases bare vivid, narrow
polygons oppressively packed en masse, occasionally
spotted with various graphic interruptions. The artist
incorporates toys, yarn, and found objects in some of the pieces to help visually represent migration and tell
the human story.
Luis Cruz Azaceta left Cuba as a teenager in 1960 after Castro came to power. After immigrating to the United
States, he lived in New York and studied at The School of Visual Arts. He relocated to New Orleans in 1992.
He has over 100 solo exhibitions and more than 400 group exhibitions and has been awarded numerous
grants, including from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts (three-time recipient) and the New York Foundation
for the Arts. His work is in many permanent collections, including the Biblioteca Nacional de España, Madrid,
Spain; Fundación FEMSA, Monterrey, México; The Howard Farber Cuban Art Collection, NY; Luciano
Benetton Collection: Imago Mundi, Italy; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Museo de Bellas
Artes, Caracas, Venezuela; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Washington, D.C.; and the Whitney Museum of Art, New York, NY.