Untitled (self portrait as a failed painting), oil on canvas, 60" x 48", 2010
Quintana's works references a pre-post-anti-pro revolutionary gumbo/ajiaco potpourri of image making that navigates between narratives and abstractions. Whimsical in style, Quintana embraces ambiguity and contradictions. His oeuvre is infused with irony and satire that often speaks of current events ideological conundrums, and lost idealism.
Juan Carlos Quintana (b.1964, Lutcher, Louisiana) is primarily a self-taught artist raised in New Orleans, Louisiana of Cuban lineage. He is a 2016 recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. Currently living and working in Oakland, California, he has exhibited in many venues nationally and internationally including at the Jack Fischer Gallery, John Berggruen Gallery, and Galeria de la Raza in San Francisco, CA, as well as at the San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA, Skyline College, San Bruno, CA, and Torrance Museum of Art, Torrence, CA, among others. Internationally, he's had solo exhibitions at the Freies Museum in Berlin and at the Centro de Desarollo de las Artes Visuales in Havana, Cuba and various group shows in the Philippines, Cuba and Germany. Quintana has been awarded artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Program in Woodside, CA, and the Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany and a collaborative residency with the Manila/San Francisco based Artist Formerly Known As Friends (AFKAF) at EDELO (En Donde Era La Onu Where The United Nations Used To Be) in San Cristobal De Las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.He is represented by Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco, CA.
He is co-founder of Random Parts, an artist run gallery in Oakland, CA .
Recent interview with Painters' Painters here