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Last Thursday, June 25th, Gerard Ellis, Dominican artist residing in Brooklyn, presented his 8th solo show, “Perros Mudos” (“Mute Dogs”), at Lyle O. Reitzel Contemporary Art Gallery, in Santo Domingo, as part of a series of exhibitions taking place at the gallery as part of its 20th anniversary celebration.
And while this exhibit is not in Casa de Campo, as we know many of our Casa de Campo community are also art aficionados, many of whom also happen to live in Santo Domingo, we thought we’d bring you an overview of “Perros Mudos”.
In Perros Mudos, the artist states the collective indifference concerning the institutional failure, the corruption and the impunity in a society where power controls all sources of information generating a kind of “dictatorship of the media”. The ambiguity as well takes us back to the island origins where Perros Mudos were found by the Spanish conquistadors after arriving at The Hispaniola for the first time.
Perros Mudos marks an evolution for the artist, both conceptually and aesthetically where an impeccable craftsmanship transcends in a staging characterized by geometrical structures and empty spaces, occupied only by dogs and other beings that represent the sole search for an existential truth.
The exhibition, consists of 17 paintings, elaborated mostly in acrylic on canvas and mixed media on wood panel, represent the artist’s latest body of work, who in his own words states; “I think my work carries a strong social component as a reflection of the technologically overwhelmed and paradoxical world we live in today. As a contemporary artist, it is also my duty to question the world around me, and its systems and its morality, trying to raise these questions through my work so that the audience can decode these messages and provoke a questioning within themselves as well”. Ironically, after more than a decade of working together with the gallery, this will be the first time the artist shows individually in the Lyle O. Reitzel’s space in the Dominican Republic.
The show will be on exhibition through to August 15th, 2015.
About Gerard Ellis
Gerard Ellis was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in 1976. Graduated with honors from the National School of Fine Arts and the Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo (UASD). Selected to be part of the “S-Files”, the 6th edition of the El Museo del Barrio Biennial in New York in 2011. Has been recognized with three awards of Excellence by The Society of News Design. In 2007, was invited to be part of the IX edition of the Cuenca International Biennial, Ecuador. His work has been shown in the National Biennial of Visual Arts and the XX edition of the E. León Jimenes Art Contest (Biennial), where he received the Prize for painting, both in the Dominican Republic. Also, has participated with the Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery in various international contemporary art fairs such as Scope NY, Scope Miami, Pinta, ArteBA and CIRCA. He’s included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, CA, La Fundación Para La Pintura, Canarias, Spain, The Scott Latham Foundation, RI, the Museum of Contemporary Drawing and the Museum of Modern Art in Santo Domingo, The Dominican Congress and also in private collections Santo Domingo, New York, London, Miami, Spain, Panamá, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.