VISUAL ARTS + MUSEUMS

Talento Bilingue de Houston presents the exhibition Retratos y Banderas - Paintings by Stanley Bermudez, on view April 14 through June 12.

“This show at Talento Bilingüe de Houston consists of paintings from my Line or Continuity series and my current work with Flags.

Continuity is an open series where I keep adding more and more images as I paint. It is basically a set of contemporary portraits of members of my family, people in American History and Latin American History, and people in popular culture both American and Venezuelan.

I consider this series a type of installation, where the paintings are hung side by side touching each other creating a continuous viewing of the images.

The paintings can be hung on top of each other and also placed on the floor, hung in groupings, or hung in a more conventional manner. It changes from space to space and from show to show.

Banderas is a large format series of paintings that deal with the symbolism found in different world flags (American, Mexican, and Venezuelan). The images also deal with social and political issues as well. I also combine visually some of these flags to create new flags and in turn new symbols and meanings.

I work with acrylics on canvas using a hard edge approach where I do not blend any colors. My process is very similar to the process that Roy Lichtenstein used, however, the end result is very different.

One striking characteristic of my paintings is the use of vibrant colors which I believe comes from growing up in Maracaibo, Venezuela and being exposed to the colors of the city, to Venezuelan folk art, to the work of the Guajiro Indians and their tapestries, as well as the work of Venezuelan contemporary masters like Carlos Cruz Diez and the late Jesus Soto.

Viewers have found my paintings to be dynamic, vibrant, and funny, surrealistic at times, and with a Pop-Art/Op-Art quality to them and others, all of which are readings that I want the work to have.”

Stanley Bermúdez