The Hogar Collection is pleased to announce, The vaporesque veils of atmosphere and light, an exhibition of recent paintings by Rafael Bueno — on view March 13 – April 13th. In his first solo exhibition at the gallery he will present works that weave a dialogue between mystical and spiritual evocations of the sublime that simply, poetically and romantically reflect history and the web of humanity. With raw and painterly gestures that attempt to capture pure essence and emotion, his paintings conjure undetermined spaces, presumably landscapes, yet at many moments they seem to call to mind mysterious interiors. They are places where space and its field are ghostly and vaporous atmospheres that waft along timelessly in whispery tones. Like the residue and buried little treasures of what the tides ebb leaves behind on the shore, the imagery exists in terms of ephemeral breaths.

Bueno’s paintings are abstract in the sense that no apparent representation or recognizablity exists. The pictures themselves are a visual camouflage of hide-and-seek where we can become lost in moments of unknowingness and the sublime. Mystified in a field of existentiality, mirages of faint, ghostly and discordant figures materialize either solitarily or in groups, where they ambivalently occupy the space inside of atmospheric, bleak and vacuous landscapes.

Figureless figures whose appearance is informed and guided by loose gestures of broken and lingering lines hint at and define the figure while they simultaneously reciprocate the abstract and fade into the space; a result that enacts subtle poetic gestures that are erotic, sensual and unassuming.

Physically the paintings contrast between thin and washy backgrounds that are covered¬—hidden and interrupted in part—by thick, vivid and globular brushstrokes whose tactile material quality speaks in the most expressionistic and painterly of terms. The paintings read like free-form visual poems from an unwritten and non-spoken verse. Without a beginning or an end, they describe scenarios that float and whirl inside the eddies of a vortex—metaphysically and metaphorically caught in the midst of the space-time continuum. Energized scenes and situations fill a void with an urgency that exudes suspenseful and mysterious auras. The paintings are, to the utmost degree, abstractions that embrace tenuous roots in the romantic side of raw and pure “painterly paintings.”

With a goal to fulfill the noble artistic quest of capturing, encapsulating and finally emulating the essence of pure emotion, Bueno’s paintings present something more tangible that asks and reminds us to stop, breathe and enjoy the wondrously ephemeral and frivolous moments that pass in time. Beuno freezes and traps these moments for mere joy and he allows us to revel in the complexly simple.

Rafael Bueno was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1950 where he received a Masters degree in architecture at The University of Buenos Aires and studied drawing at the Asociación Estimulo de Bellas Arte in Buenos Aires. He moved to New York in 1985 where he currently lives and works. Since 1974 his work has been exhibited Internationally and particularly in Buenos Aires, New York and Paris at the places such as The Albright Knox Museum, Buffalo NY, M13 Gallery and Howard Scott Gallery, NY, the Museum of Modern Art, Bs. As., El Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Bs. As., Aina Nowack Gallery, Madrid, Adriana Rosenberg Gallery, Bs. As., the Klemm Foundation, Bs. As., Centro Cultural Recoleta, Bs. As., America’s Society, NY, the Grand Palais Paris, Kouros Gallery, NY, Virginie Boissiére Art contemporain, Paris, Cite Universitaire de Paris and IILA de Roma among others. He was awarded First Prize in Painting from The Jewish Society of Argentina in 1978, First Prize Architects painters at the Galeria Rodrigo Carmona in 1983 and the Air France Award in 1984. His work is included in the collections of Chase Manhattan Bank, The Museum of Modern Art, Buenos Aires, Fundacion ESSO, Buenos Aires, Museo Castagnino Rosario Santa Fe, Argentina, Museo Caraffa, Cordoba, Argentina and el Museo Arte Contemporaneo De Maldonado in Uruguay among other private collections.