A selection of Broel’s life-sized to monumentally-sized totemic bronze sculptures creates space for reflection and contemplation about what it means to be human, be engaged as an individual within community and interact intentionally with the natural world. In his series of vertically oriented structures, Broel references tangible and intangible notions that resonate universally: botanical and architectural structures, environmental rhythms, physical and emotional solitude. Intentional abstraction creates a generous context for engaging with the sculptures. Allusions to historical references create a sense of timelessness and familiarity, yet the pieces exist outside the rapidly shifting visual language of stylized contemporary aesthetics. This unique sculptural installation exposes viewers to aspects of the American rural West’s untamed spirit, vast rugged landscapes, and traditions of mysticism. Broel’s intentional decision to live and work in a small agrarian community in the Pacific Northwest provides viewers with a raw vision of inward examinations that relate more to the health of the psyche than to the pop-culture echo chamber. The work is a complex fusion of expressions: longing, melancholy, hope and contentment.
Eduardo Carrillo’s artwork has been described as mystical, realistic, surreal, and visionary. His imagery, whether grounded in the everyday world or infused with magical realism, reflects his relationship to his native California and to his Mexican heritage, as well as to his early religious upbringing and respect for European traditions in art. An inspirational leader who actively challenged racism and injustice, Carrillo created programs and platforms that promoted greater awareness of Latin American culture, aesthetics, and social concerns, significantly advancing the recognition and appreciation of Chicano art and culture in California. Testament of the Spirit: Paintings by Eduardo Carrillo highlights the creative efforts and social importance of Carrillo as artist, teacher, scholar, and social activist. It showcases work created for three distinct realms: the public, the private, and the museum. The artist’s murals are featured in the full-color, bilingual exhibition catalogue. Intimate watercolors and paintings describe the artist’s everyday life in self-portraits, still lifes, and images of people and places he held dear. Large-scale visionary paintings—Carrillo’s masterpieces—reveal his complex and creative mind. The exhibition also includes the bilingual video Eduardo Carrillo: A Life of Engagement, by Pedro Pablo Celedón. Testament of the Spirit: Paintings by Eduardo Carrillo was organized by the Crocker Art Museum, […]
Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Kenneth Victor Young (1933-2017) moved to Washington, DC in 1964 where he began to paint abstract forms with washed acrylics on unprimed canvas. Young’s artistic philosophy was to bring order out of chaos. His studies in physics and the natural sciences at Indiana University informed a different imagery—a fusion of brilliant colors. Young’s knowledge of form and matter gave his paintings a spatial intensity, and he infused this space with multiple orbs of color held together in molecular suspension. Kenneth Victor Young had an illustrious 35-year career as an exhibition designer for the Smithsonian Institution, and his extensive travels during this time helped inform his cosmic abstract style of painting. His love for jazz influenced the movement and vitality of his work. He is known for his floating colored orbs—imagery that attempts to bring order to chaos and that comments on the pandemonium of life.The selection is representative of the main aspects of his oeuvre as it evolved over several decades. It includes a wide variety of collages in diverse techniques: both early works and those of his mature period; on very small scale and large ones; two-dimensional and sculptural.