Kohn Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of New York-based, Puerto Rican artist Ricardo Cabret. In his first solo show with the gallery, Cabret debuts Un Nuevo Manglar, an all-new body of work consisting of several paintings and an immersive generative artwork.
As an artist and computer engineer, Cabret allows the two spheres of practice to inform each other. He moves seamlessly between paint and code; transforming grids through layers of gel polymers, acrylic paint, and oil pastels,while depicting encrypted language with bursts of colors. In line with generative art predecessor, John Whitney, and influenced by Charles Gaines’ Gridworks, Cabret describes his seminal Guión Criptográfico 3.0 as an access point to the primary principles of his practice. Conceived almost two years prior, the digital work adorns the gallery wall with a projection ofthree variables–color, pattern,and shape, together revealing an immersive and indefinite moving image.
Cabret’s translucent grids and colored forms divert from a true vantage point and, rather, present a mathematical perspective. The gel-polymer planes indicate an invisible interconnected system, layered over the natural world represented by cool-toned pastels. This aesthetic vocabulary percolates throughout the work with muted compositions of diverse landscapes in Puerto Rico, and small-scale studies of material application. The vivid brushstrokes and organic lines recall Joan Mitchell’s action paintings and Zilia Sánchez’s use of color and form. His application of elegant, softer tones—sometimes derived from oxidized purple hues—render memories of island sun glare creating a subdued effect throughout the terrain. The artist is intrigued by the technological infrastructures embedded in the landscapes of Puerto Rico and, by extension, the world—as well as their environmental, cultural, and fiscal repercussions–revealing the entanglement between human and machine, body and land.
Cabret’s paintings archive and make visible technological structures and networks that have become blueprints for exploitative development. Reflecting the intricate root systems of the mangrove, these works play with new languages of abstraction that hover between the canvas and the digital.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Ricardo Cabret’s practice uses painting and software to unravel the tensions between technology, and human’s relationship to the landscape. His layered paintings reference complex computing systems while obscuring depictions of places and references to memories of Puerto Rico.He received his MS in Computer Science from the New York Institute of Technology in 2013, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez in 2009. His work has been included in exhibitions throughout New York, Puerto Rico, Austria, and Spain. Past group and solo exhibitions include Entre Números y Pigmentos, Galeria Miscelanea, Barcelona, Spain (2016); Lo Invisible, Visible curated by Elena Maria Ketelsen Gonzalez, La Salita, New York (2019); Tropical is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime curated by Marina Reyes Franco, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico(2023); and his Los Angeles debut, Un Nuevo Manglar at Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles (2023).
ABOUT THE GALLERY
Since its establishment in 1985 by Michael Kohn, Kohn Gallery has presented historically significant exhibitions in Los Angeles alongside exciting contemporary artists, creating meaningful contexts to establish links to a greater art historical continuum. Kohn Gallery represents important West Coast artists with long careers and rich histories such as Joe Goode, Lita Albuquerque, and Sharon Ellis, as well as the Estates of Bruce Conner, Wallace Berman, John Altoon and Martha Alf. Kohn Gallery boasts an expanding roster of emerging and mid-career artists including Ilana Savdie, William Brickel, Alicia Adamerovich, Chiffon Thomas, Heidi Hahn, Jinbin Chen, Nir Hod, Siji Krishnan, Li Hei Di, Sophia Narrett, Jarvis Boyland, Kate Barbee, Rosa Loy, and Mark Innerst. Visit kohngallery.com for the latest information on upcoming exhibitions.
