JOHAMY NARVAEZ

MA Studio Art

I build paper models that allow me to use space and composition based on the language of theatre. They are then interpreted in painting. The quietness of the picture’s space collapses a viewer’s attention from the wall on which the image hangs and deeply nourishes the spatial mind.

Socially I have always lived as an immigrant and through art I claim the place within me that I lost. The paintings have come to reference photographs from different places I have lived.
In my last work on American houses, I started by making photographs that depict homes in my neighborhood, especially at night. These photos then become places of experimentation —places outside the imaginary and inside the "reality": I paint from the theater box model. Light and space in the theater box and the light rendered in the painting allows me to initially capture this phenomena.

A characteristic that unites every translation of the image both in theatre and in painting is the awareness of conceiving myself as a viewpoint that speaks with the landscape. The viewpoint, like the viewer, braves all sorts of the landscape’s weather: from sunshine to unfamiliar storms.

My work is committed to solve alienation in a society who has lost its primary skill to experience a natural, realistic space. Landscape is a condition to begin this awareness.