DERRICK VELASQUEZ

UNNATURAL ILLUMINANCE

OPENING THURSDAY, 07.07.22 | 6PM – 8PM

ON VIEW UNTIL SATURDAY, 08.13.22

CARVALHO PARK announces the opening of Unnatural Illuminance, marking Derrick Velasquez’s first New York solo show, and his second exhibition with the gallery. Of a distinct period from the artist’s renowned Untitled wall sculpture series, this body of work traces the artist’s preoccupation with the perceptual qualities of light. In striking and immutable terms, atmospheric spectrums are distilled, honoring color as the elemental and physical pleasure that it is. Unnatural Illuminance opens the evening of Thursday, July 7, with the artist in attendance, and is on view through August 13.

Bound by optical theory, yet infused with levity, Velasquez’s draped bands of color make lucid the artist’s interest in phenomena and liminality, of imperceptible moments perched at the end of a just noticeable difference. Each work is an attempt in alchemizing light, at once one of the most universal but intangible experiences. In these sculptures we find the momentary flattening of color at twilight, or atmospheric interference defusing the moon’s silvery cast. Densities of particles settling in the atmosphere can be felt as the works emerge with a kind of contemplative heaviness – gravity and balance in perpetual exchange. Records of experience, the work is furthered by the artist’s recent research in optics, learning that the brain possesses the ability to change our perception of light, a mechanism most engaged at dawn and dusk – sharpening our sight at times of reduced natural illuminance.

These new works exemplify the artist’s engagement with the tropes of Minimalism. As a visual lexicon, Velasquez’s simplification of atmospheric variables to rudimentary, formal elements naturally elicits connections to Frank Stella, Josef Albers, or Ellsworth Kelly, but there are also affinities with the subtleties of Ad Reinhardt and even more so, Agnes Martin. The sculptures’ elegant curvilinear forms are manifested by draping myriad strips of meticulously hand-cut, industrial vinyl – a process and material selection that in turn, wittingly and softly, circumvents the rules dictated by geometric abstraction.

Velasquez’s striped assemblies, while distinctly minimalist in their visual vocabulary are emphatically maximalist in their formalization of the material, inviting both perceptual encounter and tactile experience. The edge of the surface is the work’s formal element – the sculpture’s face composed of exposed fine edges of hundreds of vinyl strips that exist in each work as pure color, denying the primary surface of the material that for which and how it was intended. Precariously balanced, Velasquez’s forms are composed of limitations, as the artist’s selection of color is narrowed by the industrial material engaged, in tandem with chance and the material’s physical tendencies. It is through these singular works that Velasquez introduces a language of structure that eloquently disrupts our notions of how both material and art object should function, offering a glimpse into Velasquez’ ongoing contemplation of ways of seeing.

Derrick Velasquez (b. 1982, California) a recipient of the prestigious Joan Mitchell Award in Painting and Sculpture, holds a B.A. in studio art and art history from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and an MFA from The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH. Among Velasquez’s institutional exhibitions are those held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver (Denver, CO); Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (Boulder, CO); Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum (Denver, CO); Herron School of Art and Design (Indianapolis, IN); The Frame Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA); Drexel University (Philadelphia, PA); Center for Visual Art (Denver, CO); VAC University of Colorado (Boulder, CO); RedLine Contemporary Art Center (Denver, CO); FOCA Biennial, New Mexico Museum of Art (Santa Fe, NM); among others. Awards and residencies include the MacDowell Colony Fellow 2019; MassMoCA Assets for Artist Residency 2018 - 2019; Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant 2017; Black Cube Nomadic Art Museum Artist Fellow 2015; Colorado Creative Industries Career Advancement Award 2015; and more. Velasquez’s work is in the public collections of Temple University (Philadelphia, PA); Metropolitan State University of Denver (Denver, CO); Miami University (Oxford, OH), and in numerous private collections. Velasquez is cofounder of Friend of a Friend gallery, a curatorial project in Denver, CO.