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Sebastian Spreng: Musical Painting
Sebastian Spreng. Delicate Balance (songs), 2008-2009. Installation, Oil/canvas. 10"x10" each. Courtesy of the artist and Kelley Roy Gallery
By Janet Batet
“Sebastian Spreng: Handmade Horizons and Songs” is the title of the exhibition now on display at the Kelley Roy Gallery, located in heart of the Miami’s Wynwood District. In this exuberant solo show, this Argentine-born, Miami-based artist offers the public his latest series in which the horizon is the common thread.
Spreng’s artworks are always charged with a high-level synesthetic sense. Visiting his oeuvre is always both a visual and acoustic experience. Therefore, both eyes and ears play tricks on us. We are seduced by the illusion displayed before our very eyes, where the most distant places, bring us back - paradoxically - to the soul. This “pun effect” seems to be the common element behind the whole exhibition, where contrast and amusement with bipolar feelings and sensations become a constant.
It is in the midst of this bipolar symphony that the horizon appears to us as an equidistant line: both nexus and boundary. A clear barrier between reality and unreality, darkness and light, the horizon guides the viewer through the entire show. The effective horizon structures our trip from start to finish, as a versatile melodic line. At times, while still a guiding element, the horizon becomes a serious inquisitor: a sort of tightrope on which we play out our past and our future, our fears and desires, our hopes and our fantasies.
The exhibition is charged with a strong romantic spirit, where music emerges through light and color, pauses and sfumato. It is comprised of eighty-eight pieces, many of them small in scale (10 in x 10 in), which the artist groups together forming larger compositions. The puzzle sensation is imminent and suggests ideas of polysemic work, changing mood, and the artist as demiurge, concepts always behind Sebastian Spreng’s artworks.
“Sebastian Spreng: Handmade Songs Horizons.” On view through September 2009. Kelley Roy Gallery. 50 NE 29th Street. Wynwood Art District. Miami, FL, 33137. Phone 305 447 3888
Janet Batet: Independent art critic and curator. BA in Art History (University of Havana); MA in Multimedia (UQAM University, Montreal)
