Contrapunto Artists
Jorge Arcos
(404) 903-7385
EMAIL: arcosart@gmail.com
WEBSITE: www.jorgearcosarte.com
INSTAGRAM : instagram.com/jorgearcosart
My art is an expression overflowing, of how I perceive the world. The pallet is usually colorful and with uncontrollable ways, that are merged into an uncontrollable world of organic forms. Thank to my Pre-Hispanic heritage, coming from a fully cultural rooted country, my work shows lively and energetic, strong and obsessive. Looking at a world, that it is full of nuances and changes, my focus comes from inner feeling about life. Through a journey of learning path, my work conveys self-discovery and evolution, communicating to the viewer, my personal viewing and perception of the world around me; quieting mind, and carrying my ideals trough colors and shapes, eluding conformity and traditionalism. I am an artist because I was born to be one. I couldn’t live if I wasn’t one. I am alive because I paint. It feeds my soul. My motive to paint is to live and to express every moment of my life and the simple fact of being alive.
Arcos was born in 1969 in Mexico City. He intruded in the art in a lyrical and incidental way when he was a little boy, in the year of 1974, working with drawings. As a young boy he received direct artistic influence from his father who was a landscape painter at that time. Jorge regarded art as a part of himself during his childhood and adolescence. Later on he perfected his technique by taking drawing classes, painting, history of the art, human body drawing, art object, engraving, mixed media and abstraction. He decided to pursue a career in “Drawing and Illustration and Fine Arts” at Escuela Superior de Arte y Dibujo Publicitario, in Mexico City. Some years later, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia where he focuses on Abstract Art, figurative forms, and murals. In each new work, Jorge looks out from within as he explores issues of outer and inner development. Jorge had the opportunity in 2005 to begin work with kids from elementary, high school and College, in a project organized by Oxford College, in Covington, Georgia, named “Fiesta del color”, where Mr. Arcos had an art exhibition in the Candler Student Center, and some conference talks with teachers and students. Mr. Arcos shared knowledge with the youth, where they learned techniques of how to apply color and make a composition for a painting. Later, High School kids made a mural in their school applying that they learned. In 2006, Mr. Arcos worked in a project with other artists like Ernesto Cuevas, Waldo Vinces and Roberta Griffin, in the City Hall East, Atlanta. It was a mural painting on paper, where they showed their Hispanic roots. Recently, in April, 2014, Jorge Arcos was commissioned from Westminster Schools to make a huge mural in a Latino Mall called Plaza Fiesta. Jorge painted a colorful abstract and figurative mural, where he integrated Mexican icons about its beautiful past, and present and future of Hispanic community in the United States. Mr. Jorge has had several art exhibitions in some countries, such as Germany, Portugal, Spain and United States, with private and corporative collections around the world. Currently his work is focused on abstract painting, with different mediums such as acrylic, oil and mixed media, on wood and canvas, also working with encaustic.
Pedro Fuertes
(678) 368-2219
EMAIL: peterfuertesb@yahoo.com
WEBSITE: www.pedrofuertesb.com
INSTAGRAM : instagram.com/fuertes.art
An international artist, Pedro Fuertes Bolanos was born in Lima, Peru, February 22, 1958 in Jesus Maria, Lima, and grew up in the district of El Agustino, Lima. He is the oldest of four brothers, the son of Esperanza Bolanos and Placido Fuertes. He studied in the College of Jose Carlos Mariategui. He began painting and sketching from early childhood. In 1974, he won his first competition at the the college level, but his restless for the arts made him start working at an early age. In 1985 he came away from the Servulo Gutierrez art show with an Honorable Mention, being recognized as one of the best students in the show. He received his award in the specialty areas of Drawing, Painting, Teacher Training and Graphic Design. The necessity of abstracting without, at the same time, abandoning shapes entirely, has caused the master, Fuertes, to capture distinct harmonies from numerous relationships, developing them according to a new logic, conveying them to a new, unique level of their own.
A lifelong attraction to the sea led him to create themes based on the marine world, for which reason, his first solo exposition, in the Gala Art exhibition hall, was inspired by marine birds. In his second personal showing in the Gallery Barranco, there was a change. In this one, he broached the theme of warriors and mythical battles. In the third showing, which took place in Praxis Gallery, titled Baroque Concert, there could be seen in his works a notable connotation with surrealism such that his images seemed to emanate from the twilight shadows of a dream. His fourth one-man show took place in the municipality of Valparaiso, Chile. Regarding that show, Hugo Garcia, writing for the newspaper el Mercurio, wrote: He possesses a great technical dominance over composition and color; his bestiaries and depictions of myth become, each time, more surrealistic, but also more abstract, moving to reinforce the ontological value of his work.
In 1987, and since then, Pedro Fuertes has produced more than 250 collective expositions and 17 one-man shows in Peru and abroad, with the artist’s presence in fourteen countries including Peru, Chile, Italia, Polonia, Guatemala, Venezuela, Belgium, Ecuador, Bolivia, Spain, Germany, the Czech Republic, France, Puerto Rico, Kuwait and the United States. From the most populated districts of Lima where he construed his dreams and hopes to the dazzling world of the shows, Pedro Fuertes creates a strong and durable work in the irrefutable search for that prediction from an old teacher, that of becoming a great artist.
Pedro Fuertes currently resides in the United States, where he is engaged in an intense artistic effort, nationally and internationally.
Catalina Gomez-Beuth
(678) 663-8382
EMAIL: catagomezbeuth@gmail.com
WEBSITE: www.catalinagomezbeuthart.com
INSTAGRAM : instagram.com/catalinagomezbeuthart
My goal as an artist is to celebrate how our differences make our life richer, and to acknowledge — and celebrate — how in these differences we are so alike. Through my Art I narrate, with brush strokes in people’s faces, each person’s individuality, avoiding the boundaries created by skin color and ethnicity. This is why all my characters are expressed in various shades of gray. By emphasizing the gestures of the subject surrounded by vibrant colors, I invite the viewer to start a conversation and connect with something deeper to discover the humanity we all share and to feel the raw emotions such as innocence, hopelessness, loneliness, resilience, happiness, determination and more that I portrayed in each canvas
You can pierce through the soul of global humanity, childhood, feminine empowerment and taste the richness of different cultures when you experience the art of Catalina Gomez-Beuth. Catalina was born in Medellin, Colombia, where she studied fashion design at the "Escuela De Diseño Proyectual". Her love for art was deepened during her stay in Florence, Italy, where she pursued studies in design. However, her true passion has always been painting, vocation she showed since she was a child. Her culture, life experiences and concerns as a person, as a mother and as a woman serve as inspiration for her pictorial works. Currently she is working simultaneously in several art series. Diversity and multiculturalism deeply touch her artistic sensitivity becoming the inspiration for her series titled “ROOTS”. Her children and her role as a mother are the foundation for the development of her series ”DREAMERS," and women's essence have inspired the series "MUSAS." Catalina has lived in the United States since 2000; she currently resides in Atlanta, GA with her husband and her two children who have been her permanent source of inspiration. She has collaborated with her work to some non-profit organizations such as: “Caminar Latino”, “Pianos For Peace”, “JDRF Georgia Chapter”, “Wheels Of Happiness” and “Feel Beautiful Today”. She has also collaborated with the “Latin American Association” as a juror for their annual youth Art Contest 2020. Since 2016 she has been an active member and volunteer of the Art Committee at the Colombian Consulate in Atlanta that aims to spreading and exalting Colombian culture in the State of Georgia, US. Catalina was recently recognized by the Colombian Foreign Ministry among the 100 Outstanding Colombian #migrants of 2020. "I really believe in the importance that Art has to create bridges of communication and inspiration to build and improve communities"
Sensitive and subjective, the paintings by Dora Lopez, are purely emotional, since always part of a feeling each picture of her is then a story that at the same time is part of its own history. “My works reflect feelings and emotions, which come from the different experiences and circumstances that occur at a certain moment”
Dora Lopez showed her vocation and drawing skills since she was a child, those conditions led her to the National School of Fine Arts, which she entered in 1982, where she discovered the world of her dreams and a life full of shapes, textures and colors and maybe much more than that, he found that painting was a broad world to live and that everything could be expressed through it. The first year she studied in the workshop of Elio Palomino, but in the second entry in Andrés Molina, where I do regular work with models, and the classic drawings of still lifes. In his portraits, he pursued the essence of the characters he drew, perhaps because of that, that the face is the expression of the soul. After that common stage for all, she received the influence of Cubism and Molina herself, from then on Dora Lopez began her search to find her own language, then her emotions and feelings began to play a fundamental role in the construction of each of his paintings, to which he added elements collected from his research in the cultures of the past. Soon they would have lands and fabrics as symbols that allow a link between their personal history, with the other history, the great history, then papers would appear, always written and in their symbolism transmit that story to the future. Dora Lopez’s painting is totally abstract, and despite not recognizing a single figure, in her paintings there is always a character who is represented as a beam of light that travels through history.
The basis on which it sits is its past, and the horizon to which the future is directed, its moods will make that past or future bright or gray depending on the moment it goes through, a sad memory will result then in a gray box the future can be indecipherable, it will then have the same tonality. when optimism invades it, the future is in the broad and luminous picture. His painting always starts from an emotion, that state in front of the canvas, it provokes a charcoal drawing, then he sticks stones, sand, papers or glass. for which it uses glue or acrylate, then it begins to stain, later it pastes later it puts lighter colors. immediately after with brush or charcoal makes his graphics, works what he calls his drippings to which usually add gold dust and finally their lights clearer. Dora Lopez graduated from the National School of Fine Arts in 1987 with the third prize in her class. then he won the first prize awarded by the Barranco gallery at the school’s annual exhibition. His first solo exhibition was held at GALA SALA DE ARTE where his work was influenced by Orphism. Orphism was a denomination given by Guillaume Apollinaire, to artists who created a universe with elements not taken from visual reality, but created entirely by them, they supposed a rhythmic dynamics of color and consisted in transferring the cubist composition of the painting to the ground of expressionism. ” for his second sample, I travel invited to exhibit in the Art Room of the Municipality of Valparaíso Chile and the third in the Praxis Gallery of Peru, before leaving for Poland specially invited by the Embassy of Peru of that Country. It is the beginning of a promising career that was undertaken by Dora Lopez, who according to the critic Luís Lama, could be considered as the highlight of her promotion. A first step, no doubt in the difficult search to transcend his time and his history.
Carolina Rojas
+1 (786) 512-6177
EMAIL: carolina@carolinarojas.com
WEBSITE: https://www.carolinarojas.com
INSTAGRAM : instagram.com/cariku.studio
Born in Venezuela, Carolina Rojas lives and works in Black Mountain, North Carolina.
While most 9 -year-old children concentrated on coloring inside the lines, Carolina Rojas was drawing her coloring book. Given her passion for art at a young age, her family supported her creative side and placed her in art classes while growing up in Venezuela.
“When I was 13, we were drawing nudes,” she remembers. The human body, humanity as a whole, became the root of Rojas’ art as she started experimenting with painting and Sculpture.
Her famous “Global Man” series consists of large-scale androgynous figures, including a 9-foot tall sculpture that took two years to complete with a distinctive face void of gender or race. Today, Rojas works between Miami and North Carolina and shows in galleries around the World.
“There is a precision in her sculpture that is undeniable, a precision that is the very essence of her work. Like a scientist she analyzes the exact proportions and measurements of the formal idea, which she is projecting into new manifestations. Every aspect of the form is important, the choice of the material, the look of the surface. For Rojas, the technical aspects of the sculpture are directed toward a sensory meaning that becomes a metaphor of existence in time and space. In this sense, the precision of Rojas’s art is like a journey through some unknown metaphysical reality where the substance of life is explored and investigated, pulled apart and reconstituted. It is a purposeful equivocation poised between the physical and the metaphysical that endures in the sculpture of Carolina Rojas - welcome at planet peace".
”Art History Consulting
Dr. Barbara Aust-Wegemund
Carolina’s bronze sculptures are now in private collections throughout the United States, Venezuela, China, Mexico and Spain.
Carlos Solis
+1 (678) 920-3425
EMAIL: carlossolis735@hotmail.com
WEBSITE: https://carlosaugustossolis.blogspot.com/
INSTAGRAM : instagram.com/caslos735
In my infinite world of my imagination, I tried to convey and stimulate the mythical and spiritual elements of visual expression. My passion in painting started with the magnificence elements of nature, fauna and flora, and it’s natural beauty that involves its selective conditions. For example: the majestic animals of the Amazon or Indians from Venezuela (Guajiros). However, I always try to expand my work to other areas of reality and with a spiritual meaning; therefore, I, occasionally, have the tendency to go from one extreme to another in order to explore, and show the ranges of styles and techniques by creating the most beautiful and delicate components of life to the most complex and strange art.
Fortunately, I have the pleasure and the opportunity to experience the richness of many cultures in South and North America, which allow me to expand my imagination even more; it also helps me to understand the differences and similarities of both worlds. My work reflects the distinctness of my artistic perception from those experiences, which provides vivid colors and physical details in order to make something visually pleasing, grotesque or unfamiliar to look at. Furthermore, I also try to create awareness and express an opinion about our delicate habitat and lack of knowledge about cultural and racial diversity in South America.
Carlos Solis is a curator and the founder of the Latin American artist collective “Contrapunto”. Solis has curated several shows including Blackness in Latin America which premiered in New York, moved to Chicago, New Mexico, and ended in Atlanta, and Surrealist Apparatus which travelled along the east coast of the United States. Born in 1966, in Maracaibo, Venezuela, Solis lived in Venezuela until 1990 when he relocated to Chicago, IL where he studied Graphic Design at College of DuPage. In 2006, he moved to Atlanta where a few years later he dedicated his life to his fine art career. In 2008, the idea for a Latin American artist collective.
Melvin Toledo’s interest in art began as a teenager with drawings of characters from the popular Japanese manga series, Dragon Ball Z. Encouraged by family members, he left his small hometown of Ciudad Antigua in northern Nicaragua to attend the School of Fine Arts in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. His goal was to learn how to create the still life paintings that his uncle’s home decorating company sold across the county. At the School of Fine Arts, he focused on graphite and pastel drawing. After a year of study, he left the school to take private classes from a still life painter and soon after he began to paint for his uncle using a mixture of oil paint and lithographic ink.
In 2007 he married Lauren, a Peace Corps Volunteer working in Ciudad Antigua and soon after moved to the United States where he began to paint exclusively in oils.
“Once I arrived in the States, I continued to paint still life. I took some classes and attended workshops that helped me improved the quality of my work. In 2011 after moving to Atlanta, GA, I started to sell my work through galleries in the south. Lately, I have shifted my attention to portrait painting, a subject that I have always found very fascinating. I am currently working on a new series of work about immigration in the United States.”
Melvin lives in Tucker, GA.