MEETING AND PERFORMANCE OF THE ARTIST JOHN WENTZ

On the occasion of his new solo exhibition at the London gallery StolenSpace, John Wentz, who is visiting Europe, has chosen to stop by Fluctuart on Sunday, November 21st from 3pm to 6pm for an artistic performance. For our greatest pleasure, he will create small original drawings that will be sold in our Bookshop.

About the artist

John Wentz is a contemporary American artist who brilliantly reinvents the art of portraiture. Inspired by classical painting, abstraction, and realist photography, his painted faces break through conventions and codes to focus on the essence of people. Everything in the artist’s process and techniques – composition, framing, destructuring, texture in broad brushstrokes, restore the sensitivity, mystery and unique presence of the human figures he chooses. Oscillating between representations of anonymous people, images of modern heroes or mythical archetypes, his portraits, sometimes fragmented or blurred, invite us, thanks to the energy of the retained colors, to vibrate with the emotions and snippets of stories that they give off, and to dialogue with our alter egos; the whole constitutes, over the years, the extraordinary fresco of our disturbing humanity.

John was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. His interest in graphic arts began at the age of 6 when he discovered Batman and Spiderman comics. He spent his early years copying them, frame by frame. As an adult, he began working as a muralist, commercial billboard designer and freelance illustrator. After acquiring the technique of airbrushing on panels, he turned to oil painting, which became his favorite field. He graduated in 2006 from the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, and between 2006 and 2012, he taught drawing, painting, anatomy, composition and color theory at the same Academy. In contemporary art, his art, which evokes the hyperrealism of Antonio Lopez Garcia, the purity of Mark Rothko’s colored fields, the tension of Francis Bacon’s portraits… asserts itself as the singular voice of an observer of the human condition.

Since 2009, he has had 7 solo exhibitions in San Francisco and participated in over 50 group, national and international exhibitions. “Liminal Spaces” his new solo exhibition will take place at StolenSpace Gallery in London from November 5-26, 2021. His work has been frequently published in magazines and has won numerous awards, praising the freedom and original strength of his artistic language.