Deborah Colton Gallery is pleased to present Canto y Calavera, a Houston debut solo-exhibition of paintings by Mexican artist Alfredo Gisholt. The exhibition opens Saturday, January 10th, 2015, with a reception for the artist from 6:00 pm until 9:00 pm. An Artist Talk, with a focus on the relationship between painting and works on paper, will be hosted on Sunday, January 11th 2015 at 12:00 pm.

As Boston-based art writer Leah Triplett notes:

“Alfredo Gisholt’s paintings are never one thing. Like the 20th-century Moderns preceding him, Gisholt resists precise categorization of aesthetic, conceit or even nationality. His work, ranging from figuration to hyper-abstraction and back, is marked by a transformative restlessness fraught with literal and symbolic forms.

While expressed in an abstract idiom, previous bodies of works from Gisholt were highly figurative, suggesting narrative through symbolism. Their aesthetic and process were aligned with the work of John Walker, Gisholt’s mentor at Boston University, whose abstract paintings are rooted in the specifics of a particular place.

In Canto y Calavera, Gisholt has evolved familiar motifs into more liminal forms that occupy a space between the real and the imaginary. The ‘piles,’ which are almost always central to his compositions, are accumulations of human and abstract forms, evoking rubble as much as abundance. The piles might be indeterminate in substance, but they nevertheless imply decay in our society due to overindulgence and violence alike.”

Alfredo Gisholt attended Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City, received his BFA from Florida International University and his MFA from Boston University. He was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2002 and a Dedalus Foundation fellowship in 2000. Gisholt has taught at Boston University and since 2004 serves as Assistant Professor of printmaking and drawing at Brandeis University. He has recently shown at the University of Maine Museum of Art, the Recinto Project Room in Mexico City, as well as a solo exhibition at CUE Art Foundation in New York City.

Of his own work, Gisholt writes:

“De Kooning was once asked how he felt about Matisse. He replied “he has no –isms, that’s very true, it’s just a painting, a marvelous large painting … just paints a picture. It is a good thing for me to remember.” I am just trying to paint a picture, a marvelous large picture. I use simple tools and I have no words.”

Deborah Colton Gallery is founded on being an innovative showcase for ongoing presentation and promotion of strong historical and visionary contemporary artists world-wide, whose diverse practices include painting, works on paper, sculpture, video, photography, performance, conceptual future media and public space installations.