Listen With Your Eyes
Andres Chaparro 05.24.2018 - 08.02.2018 Narthex Gallery
About the work
Listen with Your Eyes is an installation of paintings and collage pieces interfacing with jazz that raise social consciousness and cultural awareness. Chaparro’s color pallet is bold, and his lines and strokes evocative of the graffiti artists. Keith Haring is an influence, as well as Rammellzee and Dondi White. As with the paintings, the collages have a freedom and improvisatory character. In the artist’s words: “I sometimes feel that I relate more to a jazz musician’s process of composing or performing then I do with an artist creating a piece of art.”
About the artist
Andres Chaparro is a mixed media painter and collagist whose bold and expressive art is a visual representation of jazz music. Chaparro’s work most recently in 2017 has been published in the book “Making The Cut, Volume 1, The Worlds Best Collage Artists” by Crooks Press in Australia. As his work continues to rise in recognition and garnered by art and music enthusiast around the globe, Andres continues to refine his own visual vocabulary through the his focus on the intersection between art and music.
Music and art have been an important part of his life. At the age of 13, Andres was introduced to jazz music which he made an instant spiritual connection. This was a defining moment in his life as an artist. While in high school he would make frequent visits to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum, which opened up the world of visual art for him. He always had an affinity for drawing, but it was the museum visits that made him fall in love with art.
In the late 1980’s Andres began painting on canvas, while completing his studies in New York City. He explored jazz as an enthusiast and visited SoHo art galleries and other major museums during this time. Chaparro early paintings explored different mediums and subject matters; but he was always drawn back to Jazz inspired work.
Andres’ paints out of his Windsor, CT studio, his mix media paintings incorporate collage, oil pastels, marker, crayon, pencil, acrylic, spray paint and found objects. His artwork is fluid and free, and the paintings reflect more concern for spontaneous emotion rather than traditional conventions, strong color contrast, and distorted subject matter.
“I draw upon music, and the idea of universal love to create work that challenges the viewer to accept the unfortunate divide and divisiveness that exist in our society.”
Charles Mingus, 2018. Mix media collage.