Che Lovelace @ Nicola Vassel Gallery, NYC - "Where the I Settles" Exhibition

Che Lovelace

Where the I Settles

Nicola Vassel Gallery, New York

1 May - 25 July 2025

CHE LOVELACE

Head Above Water, 2025

Photo: Luis Corzo

© Che Lovelace, courtesy Nicola Vassel Gallery

Nicola Vassell presents Where the I Settles, an exhibition of new and recent work by CHE LOVELACE, the artist’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Across a group of multi-paneled paintings, the exhibition radically expands his exploration into the relationship between nature and society in his native Trinidad. Che Lovelace attends to the many ways that these worlds contrast with one another before eventually reaching a state of unity, which he expresses above all through the act of painting itself.

A primary focus in Lovelace’s work has been both the vibrancy and specificity of life in Trinidad, a place where local history, custom and ritual exists alongside, and in constant dialogue with its post-colonial identity. Whether depicting the flora and fauna of its forests and coasts, or the urban sprawl of its built environment, Che Lovelace renders each form and every detail with descriptive complexity and formal ingenuity. Drawing inspiration as much from the rich history of Caribbean and Trinidadian art as he does from the legacy of Cubism, Che Lovelace is attuned to how these different histories create worlds that at first seem separate and distinct but which can ultimately be made to converge.

The fragmented yet unitary perspective that Che Lovelace identifies in the world of Trinidad is expressed not only by the paintings’ subject matter, where elements of the landscape so often abut or collide with what is man-made, but most importantly through their very structure. He constructs these works by joining together individual panels, which he either paints separately or works on in tandem after their unification, sometimes over a period of several years. Each work contains the meeting of different registers of time and distinct responses to the world which are, in the end, brought into relation with one another, though without losing what makes them singular. Where the panels meet is where he navigates their moments of dissonance while also forging new points of connection, thus allowing the paintings to preserve a fragmentary perception of the world that expresses an understanding of how we experience it.

Where the I Settles presents a view of Trinidad and Tobago where its many realities and temporalities are allowed to coexist. In a departure from previous exhibitions that cohered around a single theme, here Che Lovelace is taking the whole of his native country as his subject, showing us the intermingling of its lush and natural abundance with an urban space of geometric form and kaleidoscopic color. Though local wildlife, native plant species and sections of street and architecture remain legible in these paintings, Che Lovelace regularly surrounds them with passages of painterly abstraction and richly textured surfaces that connect what is specific in these forms to what is poetic or metaphorical in them as well.

The movement between abstraction and representation is essential for Che Lovelace, as he understands each approach not in competition with the other, but instead as two mutually reinforcing strategies for expressing the true character of a subject. Whether describing Port of Spain or the very substance of the cosmos itself, Lovelace always returns back to the ever-evolving spirit of Trinidad, a place his paintings allow us to see as multi-dimensional yet fundamentally interconnected.

CHE LOVELACE - BIOGRAPHY

Che Lovelace (b. 1969, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago) lives and works in his lifelong home of Trinidad. He received a degree from l’École Régionale des Beaux-Arts de la Martinique and currently lectures at the University of the West Indies Creative Arts Campus. In 2025, he was awarded the French National Order of Arts and Letters (Chevalier).

Rooted in the outskirts of Port of Spain, Che Lovelace considers Trinidad his ultimate subject. The flora, fauna and figures of island life are ever-present in his tropical vistas, painted on board panels which he assembles into larger segmented works. Lovelace’s vibrant, energetic compositions present a nuanced exploration of postcolonial identity, grounded in a deep commitment to the Caribbean landscape and its community.

Solo exhibitions include Where The I Settles, Nicola Vassell Gallery, New York (2025); Nightscapes with Palms and Egrets, Various Small Fires, Dallas (2023); Day Always Comes, Corvi-Mora, London (2023) and Cugoano250, St. James’s Piccadilly Church, London (2023). Group exhibitions include Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940, The Modern, Fort Worth, Texas (2024) and Soulscapes, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London (2024). Lovelace’s work is held in the collections of The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, X Museum, the Aïshti Foundation and the Art Gallery of Ontario.

NICOLA VASSEL GALLERY

138 10th Avenue, New York, NY 10011 

www.nicolavassell.com

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello Exhibition @ Pace, London - "Entre El Día Y La Noche"

Alejandro Piñeiro Bello

Entre El Día Y La Noche

Pace Gallery, London

September 4 — 28, 2024

ALEJANDRO PINEIRO BELLO 

El Misterio de La Noche, 2024 

© Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, courtesy Pace Gallery

Pace presents the first solo exhibition in the UK—and largest to date—of works by Cuban artist ALEJANDRO PINEIRO BELLO.

Titled Entre El Día Y La Noche (Between Day and Night), Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s exhibition features new paintings and works on paper that symbolically and formally explore cyclical journeys through time, and within the self. Alejandro Piñeiro Bello paints the sociocultural mystic splendor of Caribbean culture with a focus on Cuba and the surrounding island nations’ identities and histories. Using traditional materials, such as oil on raw linen or burlap, he creates striking dialogues between the deep beige of the canvas and an iridescent palette of jade greens, oranges, purples, and teals. Chromatic interplay in Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s work fortifies essential compositional structures, which often appear to revolve around an unseen center point. In these images, his fluidly handled paint forms endless landscapes that travel from dreamlike figuration to pure abstraction. Drawing inspiration from dreams and memories, Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s paintings describe fleeting, timeless feeling.

Taking their inspiration from the atmospheric and emotional changes throughout a Cuban night and day, the scale of works in Entre El Día Y La Noche represent some of the artist’s most ambitious to date. El Misterio De La Noche (2024), the largest painting featured in the exhibition, spans over six meters. Here, Piñeiro Bello employs the structural qualities of classical Western art history while upending expectations of the landscape through his alchemical use of color and non-linear storytelling.

Spirals, shells, and whorls abound throughout the works in Entre El Día Y La Noche, reflecting Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s interest in Transcendentalist and Buddhist belief systems. The spiral that dominates three-quarters of the painting La Espiral Luminosa (2024) draws viewers into the artist’s unique painterly vision. Sweeping from deep aquatic shades at its outer edge into increasingly flame-like hues toward its center, it is unclear if this depicts the cross-section of a deep ocean or if Alejandro Piñeiro Bello has lifted the surface of the water to reveal the reflection of a blazing midday sun. Like its dappled sea blues—created with an economical use of bright, light brushstrokes—the painting quivers between its marine depiction and a field of colorful abstraction.

Nature is dominant in Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s worlds. Figures, when they appear, are small, loosely rendered, and nestled within the dynamic landscapes that surround them. Formally echoing the arcs of the waves, wind, and flora that shape the compositions, these bodies appear to emerge from—and of—the very brushstrokes that describe their setting. Citing Antonio Gaudi, Piñeiro Bello reminds us that “there are no straight lines or sharp corners in nature.” This impression of interconnectedness is present in Nacimiento (2023-24), whose central figure materializes from a rose-blushed, lotus-like bowl. Recalling Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus (c.1484-1486), Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s painting is similarly infused with an environmental vitality that raises the natural world to the status of personhood.

Reflecting the island’s rich intercultural heritage, his practice is equally informed by the fiction, poetry, and music of his birthplace. Just as in the literary genre of lo real maravilloso (the marvelous real), these paintings depict the fantastic through an amplification of perceived reality. Inhered in the layers of Alejandro Piñeiro Bello’s compositions lie the metamorphic, expressive juxtapositions of Latin America.

In the lower ground floor gallery, Alejandro Piñeiro Bello displays a selection of his works on paper and sketches alongside books and poems that have inspired his practice. Employing watercolor, gouache, and ink, the artist’s works on paper respond to their medium: the ivory paper background, which Piñeiro Bello keeps partially exposed, lends a backdrop of luminosity to the deliberate pen-marked crosshatching. Included reference texts are the 1943 poem “La isla en peso” by Virgilio Piñera, the 1966 novel Paradiso by José Lezama Lima, and Alejo Carpentier’s 1949 novel El reino de este mundo—the text that introduced lo real maravilloso to the world of literature. Amongst these, Alejandro Piñeiro Bello has placed a childhood photograph of himself, taken in Havana. With this gesture, the artist affirms the awareness of selfhood and origin that saturates his paintings.

Through a practice rooted in identity and memory, ALEJANDRO PINEIRO BELLO (b. 1990, Havana, Cyba) paints the enduring spirit of the Caribbean. Alejandro Piñeiro Bello studied at The National Academy of Fine Arts San Alejandro, Havana, Cuba (2006–2010), later working as a professor in the Creative Painting department (2010–2011). He was awarded grants from The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, New York and The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New York in collaboration with Pioneer Works, New York. Alejandro Piñeiro Bello was a resident at the Vermont Studio Center in 2022, and in 2023, he was selected for the artist-in-residence program at the Rubell Museum. Recent exhibitions of his work include Future Past Perfect: Escaping Paradise, NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida (2023); En El Arco Del Caribe, KDR305, Miami, Florida (2023–2024), and Alejandro Piñeiro Bello, Rubell Museum, Miami, Florida (2023–2204). His work is held in important collections such as The Brownstone Foundation, Paris; Chrysler Museum Collection, Norfolk, Virginia; Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Marquez Art Projects, Miami; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California; NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida; Rubell Museum, Miami; and The Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation Collection, New York. Alejandro Piñeiro Bello currently lives and works in Miami, Florida.

PACE GALLERY LONDON

5 Hanover Square, London

www.pacegallery.com

Bianca Nemelc, Joiri Minaya, Monica Hernandez, Uzumaki Cepeda, Veronica Fernandez @ Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York - De Lo Mío, curated by Tiffany Alfonseca

De Lo Mío - Bianca Nemelc, Joiri Minaya, Monica Hernandez, Uzumaki Cepeda, Veronica Fernandez. Curated by Tiffany Alfonseca

Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY

13 February - 27 March 2021

Jenkins Johnson Projects, New York, presents De Lo Mío. A group exhibition curated by artist Tiffany Alfonseca, with an accompanying essay by curator and writer César García-Alvarez, features works by Bianca Nemelc, Joiri Minaya, Monica Hernandez, Uzumaki Cepeda, and Veronica Fernandez. De Lo Mío brings together a focused selection of works by an emerging group of women artists with varying relationships to their Dominican heritage. Originating from Tiffany Alfonseca’s ongoing interest in her generation’s evolving connections to a motherland, De Lo Mío envisions identity not as a definable set of associations but rather as a spectrum through which multiple personal and collective pasts as well as lived experiences come to forge how people exist. 

The artists included in this exhibition assemble a constellation of positions—each sited at differing distances from a shared culture—that challenge the notion that geography alone bonds people. Instead, each artist puts forth a unique perspective that push back against a history of art that thirsts for cohesive but oversimplified narratives. Intended to be a spirited dialogue between the work of artists who don’t see the world the same, rather than as a friendly sharing of common opinions, De Lo Mío is an introduction to a host of future projects Tiffany Alfonseca is developing with the intention to expand art histories of the Caribbean.

While each artist brings their own voice to the exhibition, their work does intersect, at times, along some difficult but necessary questions—like how does one pay tribute to Dominican visual culture without reinforcing stereotypes forged by institutions and popular culture? or how do we remain connected to our roots beyond immediate generations? or how do AfroLatinx lives find solidarity with African-American ones while not dismissing the meaningful specificities of their Latinidad? De Lo Mío will not pretend to provide answers to these questions but hopes to ignite a much belated public conversations about these issues. 

TIFFANY ALFONSECA (b. 1994) is a Bronx- based Dominican-American mixed media artist who creates vibrant and colorful artworks that celebrates Black and Afro-Latinx diasporic culture. Alfonseca continuously taps into her Afro-Dominican roots and leverages it as a conceptual cantilever that provides a dynamic framework for her artistic practice. Moreover, her work aims to visually articulate that the Black and Afro-Latinx diaspora does not exist within a monolith, but that these communities are a cultural cornucopia that is vast, varied, and complex. Alfonseca’s artwork is an intricate combination of beauty, diversity, and multilingualism that exemplifies the strength of the Black and Afro-Latinx diaspora. Through immersion and rumination, Alfonseca utilizes these experiences as reference material within her work as she toils to construct new narratives and build a universe that is reflective of her upbringing as a Dominican-American woman in the Bronx. These narratives harken towards dialogue about womanhood, colorism, class, family, ritual, and memory; all of which are building blocks in her creation of an ontological framework that is responsive to how she sees and experiences the world. Alfonseca has been included in such publications as Harper’s BAZAAR, Juxtapoz Magazine, and Artsy. Her work is included in collections such as The Dean Collection and the Perez Art Museum Miami. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts.  

BIANCA NEMELC (b. 1991) is a figurative painter whose work explores the connection between the female form and the natural world. Born and raised in New York City, Bianca’s work is inspired by her own investigative journey into her identity, paying homage to her heritage through the use of many hues of brown that make up the figures in her work. The worlds within her paintings are loosely inspired by the tropical and Caribbean landscapes where her families are originally from and her roots can be traced back to. Through her work, Bianca Nemelc aims to highlight the beautiful and symbiotic relationship between nature and the female body. Bianca Nemelc has been in several group exhibition in NY, SF and London. She recently presented works at SPRING/BREAK Art Show in 2019.  

JOIRI MINAYA (b. 1990) is a Dominican-United Statesian, NY based multi-disciplinary artist. She investigates stereotypes around Dominican womanhood in an attempt to understand where these constructions originated from and how they circulate. Often the stereotypes she finds are related to exoticism and expectations of entertainment. For this exhibition, Joiri Minaya contrinbutes her collage works, mixing fragmented bodies found from google searches of the phrase ‘Domanican Woman’. Joiri Minaya has exhibited across the Caribbean, the U.S. and internationally. She has recently received a NY Artadia award and BRIC’s Colene Brown Art Prize, and has received grants from foundations like Nancy Graves, Rema Hort Mann, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. She been awarded in two Dominican biennials (XXV Concurso León Jimenes; XXVII National Biennial) and has participated in residencies at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Smack Mellon, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Red Bull House of Art, LES Printshop, Socrates Sculpture Park, Art Omi and Vermont Studio Center. Minaya attended the Escuela Nacional de Artes Visuales (DR), the Chavón School of Design, and received her BFA from Parsons the New School for Design. 

MONICA HERNANDEZ (b. 1995) is a Bronx-based artist born in the Dominican Republic. Her paintings are imagined scenes that draw from a well of tucked away experiences ranging from religious guilt, to body anxiety, to realizing the first time the voice in your head could be switched from Spanish to English. She explores the body, desire, sexuality, identity, and representation. Hernandez has been including in publication such as Cultured Mag and Artforum. She has been is several group shows including at the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts. She received her BFA from Hunter Collage. 

UZUMAKI CEPEDA (b. 1995) textile tableau acts as a safe space for black and brown people all over the world. While addressing the stigmas of homophobia, transphobia, racism, and colorism that often affect queer people and women who feel unprotected by our current American policies and way of life. Her practice consists of transforming every day often found objects with brightly-colored faux fur to create interactive installations informed by traditional iconography of domestic spaces. Using her dream-like and vibrant work drawn from her childhood imagination growing up both on the islands of the Dominican Republic and in the Bronx. Bringing two worlds together. Uzumaki’s interactive installations have been shown from Los Angeles, California, to Montreal, Canada, and all the way overseas to Tokyo, Japan. She has been featured in print and digital publications including Forbes, Teen Vogue, Paper Magazine, Nylon Magazine, i-D, HypeBAE, L.A. Weekly, and The Fader. 

VERONICA FERNANDEZ (b. 1998) is a mixed media artist that discusses relationships between people and their environments. Frequently using personal memorabilia and experiences as a canon for her pieces, she explores the various ways we perceive our ever-fluctuating memories over time and the atmospheres around us. Using colorful, varying sized canvases full of an eclectic array of textures, paint is used as an expressive vehicle to highlight themes of disconnection, impermanence, and reconstruction, meanwhile putting a focus on the alternate realities we enter when reflecting on our past and present. In these pieces, she  uses techniques of fragmentation, and abstraction of space to form narratives about individuals and how the factors of their environment influence them, meanwhile discussing the indefinite roles we can take on in the world at any moment. Fernandez has shown nationally and internationally. She received her BFA from The School of Visual Arts. 

JENKINS JOHNSON PROJECTS

209 Ocean Avenue, Booklyn, NY 11225

www.jenkinsjohnsongallery.com

___________________________