Dreamers and Realists

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present Dreamers and Realists, a group exhibition featuring Jesse Amado, Andrés Ferrandis, Cisco Jímenez, Nicole Franchy, and guest artists Kaela Puente and Alejandro Augustine Padilla, curated by Jesse Amado. The exhibition will open at Ruiz-Healy Art with a reception on Thursday, June 23, 2016 from 6:00-8:00 pm. Amado is well respected for his artistic practice and is situated within the main stable of Ruiz-Healy Art’s roster. Dreamers and Realists situates Amado in a new role at Ruiz-Healy Art as guest curator expanding on his mediums to encompass the dialogue that curating conjures for the audience. Amado, however, does not call it curating, rather he prefers the term "tailoring."

Amado states: “I set out to assemble a group of artists who address reality as a dreamer. The title should read as artists who are both dreamers and realists, and not either / or. The work is tailored to this notion… it is clear, bright and detailed. It was discovered recently that 1200 planets are inhabitable…it’s just art but it is something astonishing to look at.”

Andrés Ferrandis is experiencing a stylistic shift. Ferrandis is known for his meticulously crafted collage-based works that are cut with precision and exude imagery based in reality. Recently, however, the artist seems to be freeing himself from such confines. Although many works are abstract, they are redolent with the traces of perception. Ferrandis opens pictorial pathways that lead to the personal interpretation of moments, memory, and essence.

Cisco Jímenez was born in Cuernavaca, Mexico. He attended the Instituto Regional de Bellas Artes and the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana before moving on to study with Bruce Dorfman and Jose Manuel Springer. He was also one of the first Artpace International Artists-in-Residence in 1995. In this exhibit, collage works collide realities of consumer culture with organic and labyrinth line works.

Nicole Franchy‘s artistic practice is based on –and embedded in- the increasing mobility of people, objects and ideas. Using images related to history, memory and travel, she meticulously composes collages and installations that investigate how socialites are shaped by physical and virtual movements on both a global and a local scale. Moving between archival and fictive representations, her work confronts parallel realities and explores the luminal space of boundaries and frontiers. As such, it projects associative landscape and dream-like panoramas that propose a new geography.

Kaela Puente is one of the guest artists Amado selected for this exhibition. She is from San Antonio, Texas and just received her MFA in ceramics from the University of Texas at San Antonio. She received her BFA from the University of the Incarnate Word in 2013, where she concentrated on both painting and ceramics. Puente utilizes both realism and fantasy in her artworks. The ceramics and paintings both explore bold colors and patterns, while the unique canister-shapes of her ceramics are contemporary takes on ancient Egyptian canopic jars.

Alejandro Augustine Padilla is another guest artist for Ruiz-Healy Art. Although he is influenced by the stylistic techniques and a fascination with the subconscious of the Surrealists, Padilla draws direct inspiration from his own experiences. His assemblages make use of the familiar, yet elusive forms and symbolism. Padilla creates unnatural happenings and expresses a sense of depersonalization and isolation.

VIEW EXHIBITION ON ARTSY