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Ricardo Brey, 2021. Photo: We Document Art.
Alexander Gray Associates presents Blue Shore, the Gallery’s second one-person exhibition of work by Ricardo Brey (b.1955, Cuba). Since the late 1970s, Brey’s practice has examined the origins and nature of humankind’s space in the world. Working across drawing, sculpture, and installation, Brey is concerned with exploring philosophical concepts like time, mythology, human expression, and the natural universe.
Blue Shore is a presentation of works made during the global Covid-19 pandemic. Unable to leave his home and studio in Ghent, Belgium, Brey turned to the color blue, which he associated with the sky and the sea, symbols of an unattainable expansiveness and freedom. In his works from this period, Brey adopts an almost exclusively blue palette, a significant departure from the earth-colored ochres and rusty reds of previous works on paper. Just as the artist moves fluidly across various mediums, so do variegated blues wind through his two and three dimensional works. The works on paper in Blue Shore reflect Brey’s rigorous engagement with a wide range of media––including found objects, silverpoint, gouache, and ink––as well as his range with scale, from delicate drawings to massive, saturated works on paper.
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Ricardo Brey: Blue Shore, Alexander Gray Associates, New York (2021)
Throughout his career Brey has often worked on a single theme across various mediums. Here, a panoply of blues emerges not only on wall-hung works, but in sculptures and Brey’s unique Boxes. In Cielo (2021), Brey deconstructs practices that humans have developed to understand the heavens. Inside the Box rests a large dark cast of a tortoise’s shell with stars affixed to its underside. By resting the deconstructed pieces of an orrery within the tortoise shell, Brey not only forms a physical representation of the heavens, but also creates a multitude of thematic contrasts between Western and Eastern cosmologies, science and nature, and ancient and modern forms of thought.
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Ricardo Brey, Blue Shore, Alexander Gray Associates, NY
Similarly, working blues into his earlier series of uncanny, classically inflected Kouros sculpture series gives the works a new dynamism and distinct emotional register. The kouroi of antiquity were free-standing sculptures of nude male youths that began to appear in the Archaic period in Greece. Brey’s kouroi often consist of a bird’s skull formed from wood and clay mounted on a metal rod along with carefully arranged found elements. Osain (2021) gets its name from a Santería divinity, or orisha, associated with herbs and healing.
The blending of cultural iconographies achieved via a rigorous chromatic, formal, and conceptual engagement is emblematic of Brey’s artistic ethos. Refuting reductive binarisms, Brey’s art surmounts divisions between myths, religions, and systems of thought and value to champion a holistic approach to understanding the human condition.
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Ricardo Brey’s work is featured in numerous private and public collections, including the Bouwfonds Art Collection, The Hague, the Netherlands; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo Wifredo Lam, Havana, Cuba; CERA Art Collection, Leuven, Belgium; Collection of Pieter and Marieke Sanders, Haarlem, the Netherlands; Collection de la Province de Hainaut, Belgium; de la Cruz Collection, Miami, FL; Fonds national d’art contemporain (FNAC), France; Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection, Miami, FL; Lenbachhaus, Munich, Germany; Louis-Dreyfus Family Collection, Mount Kisco, New York; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, Havana, Cuba; Museum de Domijnen, Sittard, the Netherlands; Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen (M HKA), Antwerp, Belgium; Nova Southeastern University (NSU) Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, FL; Province of East Flanders Monuments and Cultural Heritage, Belgium; Sindika Dokolo Foundation, Luanda, Angola; Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK), Ghent, Belgium; Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum, Aachen, Germany; Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo, Japan; and others.
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Ricardo Brey
Acanthus, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
26 x 19 3/4 in (66 x 50.2 cm)
29 3/4 x 23 1/2 x 2 in framed
(75.6 x 59.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR308)
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Ricardo Brey
Sheep Laurel, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
26 x 19 3/4 in (66 x 50.2 cm)
29 3/4 x 23 1/2 x 2 in framed
(75.6 x 59.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR306)
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Ricardo Brey
Trumpet Roots, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Gouache and pencil on paper
26 x 19 3/4 in (66 x 50.2 cm)
29 3/4 x 23 1/2 x 2 in framed
(75.6 x 59.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR314)
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A primary concern throughout Brey's career has been the relationship between human beings and nature, both in the global context of the climate crisis and the personal experience of witnessing ecological devastation in his native Cuba. His feelings of grief and loss are visible in works on paper like these ones inspired by botanical drawings, which are colored with blue gouache to create a vivid watercolor effect, leaving parts of the plant’s penciled silhouette unpainted. By contrasting the somber shades of blue against the unpainted sections, Brey creates a striking, almost ghostly effect, a visualization of the artist’s personal concerns about humankind’s harmful relationship with the environment and the frightening loss that can come from it. Nevertheless, Brey sees nature as a symbol of hope for the future, maintaining that “Nature, and life in general, is quite resilient. No matter how hard you try, a weed will always come back—it is their essence to hold their ground, to stand up, to survive.”
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Ricardo Brey
Blues Harp, 2021
Plaster cast, harmonica, and silver chain
Dimensions variable
(RBR250)
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Ricardo Brey
Blue Shade, 2019
Mixed media on paper
47 1/2 x 63 in (120.7 x 160 cm)
52 1/4 x 67 1/4 x 2 in framed
(132.7 x 170.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR209)
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Ricardo Brey
Interrupted Fern, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
19 3/8 x 26 in (49.2 x 66 cm)
23 1/2 x 29 3/4 x 2 in framed
(59.7 x 75.6 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR311)
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In 2012, Ricardo Brey began working on a series of Kouros sculptures, often comprised of birds' skulls formed from wood and clay that are mounted on metal rods and adorned with carefully arranged found objects, a series which he is now revisiting. Brey's kouroi allude to free-standing statues of nude male youths that begin to appear during the Archaic period in Greece, referred to today using the Ancient Greek kouros meaning "boy." According to the director of Gerhard Marcks Haus, because of his fusion of Classical references and those from his own unique cultural context, Brey's work "takes its place simultaneously inside and outside the Western European art world—a paradoxical situation that arises from the current status of international art."
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Ricardo Brey
Blue Curse, 2019
Mixed media on paper
63 x 48 in (160 x 121.9 cm)
67 1/4 x 52 x 2 in framed
(170.7 x 132.1 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR281)
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Ricardo Brey
Cinnamon Fern, 2021
Mixed media on paper
63 x 47 1/4 x 3/4 in (160 x 120 x 2 cm)
67 1/4 x 52 1/4 x 2 1/2 in framed
(170.7 x 132.7 x 6.3 cm framed)
(RBR315)
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Ricardo Brey
Foggy, 2020
Mixed media on paper
63 x 48 in (160 x 121.9 cm)
67 1/4 x 52 1/4 x 2 in framed
(170.7 x 132.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR216)
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Ricardo Brey's ongoing series of Boxes consists of archival boxes that unfold to reveal miniature worlds of sculptural assemblages. Inviting performative engagement, as the boxes unfurl they divulge a complex web of symbols. Each work’s intricate interior juxtaposes enclosure with expansiveness, inspiring surprise and wonder while representing the vast unknowable intricacies of the human mind. Reflecting on the works' symbolic potential, Brey states, “The box is our head, the box is our cave, the box is the attic, the box is the memory and the world. The boxes are an attempt to spatially represent… a hermeneutics of the soul to create a topography of the mind.”
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Ricardo Brey
Maidenhair, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
22 x 30 in (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
26 1/4 x 33 3/4 x 2 in framed
(66.7 x 85.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR301)
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Ricardo Brey
Pasiflora, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
22 1/2 x 30 in (57.1 x 76.2 cm)
26 1/4 x 33 3/4 x 2 in framed
(66.7 x 85.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR280)
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Ricardo Brey
Parisian blue, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
22 1/2 x 30 in (57.1 x 76.2 cm)
26 1/4 x 33 3/4 x 2 in framed
(66.7 x 85.7 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR279)
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Ricardo Brey
Gaze, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
39 1/4 x 27 3/4 in (99.7 x 70.5 cm)
43 1/8 x 31 5/8 x 2 in framed
(109.5 x 80.3 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR264)
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Ricardo Brey
Ciprés, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
27 3/4 x 39 1/4 in (70.5 x 99.7 cm)
31 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 2 in framed
(80.3 x 109.5 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR273)
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Ricardo Brey
Three Branches of Red Cedar, 2021
Signed, titled, and dated on recto
Mixed media on paper
27 2/4 x 39 1/4 in (70.5 x 99.7 cm)
31 5/8 x 43 1/8 x 2 in framed
(80.3 x 109.5 x 5.1 cm framed)
(RBR267)
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Unable to leave his home and studio in Ghent, Belgium, due to the global Covid-19 pandemic, Brey turned to the color blue, which he associated with the sky and the sea, symbols of an unattainable expansiveness and freedom. In his works from this period, Brey adopts an almost exclusively blue palette, a significant departure from the earth-colored ochres and rusty reds of previous works on paper. Combining this bold new color palette with the powerful environmental and cultural themes that underlie much of his work, these new works are emblematic of Brey's continually evolving artistic ethos.