MIAMI, FL (March 2018) LnS GALLERY continues its exhibition season with INSIDE OUT, featuring the work of William Osorio, a Cuban-born, Miami-based artist. The show is accompanied by a catalog with an essay by journalist, writer, and art critic Luis Leonel León. Osorio’s work defines a style that could be called visceral neo-expressionism; his oeuvre is categorized by a gestural looseness of unrestrained paint, taking inspiration from Contemporary greats such as Francis Bacon, Gerhard Richter, Jenny Saville, and Eric Fischl. His canvases are characterized by a distinct use of large areas of impasto, adding layers of texture that transform his two-dimensional planes into near-sculptural pieces.
The INSIDE OUT series touches on the search for identity. As Luis Leonel León explains: “He opens his lens like an immense funnel to recount stories. In his work we find the bedazzlement of an island kinsman faced with the visual onslaught of extraordinary conurbations, the grandfatherly epic that is the history of his island, the sapient tenderness of the fiancée, the family victories, the downfall of the heroes that he never met, desire and terror, love and destiny, his subconscious palavering with the paintbrush, with the tips of his fingers, with his fists. And in all of them, his eyes, watching them, watching himself.”
Luis Leonel León continues: “A theoretical-literary reference in Osorio’s work is Gustave Le Bon’s The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind. This book caught Osorio’s attention in a profound manner by connecting him with some of the characteristics of the psychology of the masses: ‘impulsivity, irritability, incapacity for reasoning, the absence of judgment from a critical spirit, and the exaggeration of sentiment’. Osorio has remarked that ‘based on these ideas I practice observational work in my environment, wherein I analyze the cultural and social conduct of those around me, along with my own, translating such behaviors to the visual setting’.”
Of the relationship between Osorio’s art and those who experience it, Leon says: “Those who open themselves to his pieces will be able to contemplate the intense dialog between the mind of the creator and his emotions. And those who acquire them, those privileged to contemplate them throughout diverse instances of life, beyond enjoying the skill and imagination of the artist, will be able to corroborate that place where William Osorio’s art is born, his created universes and those still left to be created.”
The exhibition full-color catalog includes an essay entitled “Inside William Osorio, or the art of portraying the impossible,” by journalist, writer, and critic Luis Leonel León. English text translation provided by Gined Vitali Ganem.
