Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
+5 Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence at Foltz Fine Art
Since Dorothy Hood, Dick Wray, and Richard Stout kicked the bucket, Ibsen Espada is arguably the big cheese of abstract expressionism in Houston. At the very least, he’s neck in neck with a couple of other Houston painters working in the abstract expressionist style, in terms of longevity.
Like his friends Hood, Wray, and Stout, Espada rarely deviated from his idiom, which wasn’t easy through the post-modern assault on abstract expressionism. Although, I believe the 2015 sale of de Kooning’s breathtaking gestural abstract painting “Interchange” for $300 million suggests the abstract expressionist style is too exciting to be immolated like some conquered Sardanapalus. Ibsen Espada (b. 1952), who has been painting in the abstract expressionist style since the 1970s, is showing his newest works at Foltz Fine Art. The exhibition Ibsen Espada: Abrasive Silence features over 50 vibrantly colored pieces that cut to the groin of gestural abstraction, through November 27, 2021.
New York born, Puerto Rico reared, Espada and his like-minded milords in Houston looked to the action painters of the New York School for inspiration, then found ways to personalize the style. Their path wasn’t without “struggle,” come hell or high water though, they stuck it out. “We always kept with it.”
Like the New York abstract expressionists drinking at the Cedar Tavern, Houston artists had their favorite watering holes for boozy discussions. Espada believes it’s very significant that he studied abstraction at the Glassell School with Dick Wray in the 1970s. “We were drinking buddies.” After knocking back a few, Wray squeezed paint into his hand and assaulted the canvas. “I’m gonna teach you how to paint.” Equally significant, Espada worked as studio assistant to abstract painter Dorothy Hood. His friendship with painter and University of Houston art professor Richard Stout possibly predates their showing together, along with Wray, in the 1985 Fresh Paint: The Houston School exhibition at Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts, and, continued until Stout’s death in 2020. Espada and Stout exhibited together at Foltz Fine Art the year before Stout died, in 2019. To be sure, other artists of that tenure worked and hung out together, I mentioned only a few to demonstrate connections and influence.
How does Espada stay fresh? By continually rejiggering techniques and materials. He changes from brush to palette knife to squeegee to windshield wiper blade. Splashing water summons washy fields, adding collage or silicon carbide lets rip with texture. In some paintings, recycled billboard images (“it’s free”) form the ground for painted strokes. I recalled gawking at Espada’s paintings at New Gallery in 2012, and, noting how finely he balanced black calligraphic lines with sweeping colorful gestures. In the new works at Foltz Fine Art, he seems to have eliminated black, although not entirely.
In Espada’s estimation, “this great movement” of abstract expressionism gives him the immediacy he needs. By this he means energetic interaction with the paint, driven by the compulsion to crank out remorselessly satisfying, visually seductive abstraction. Last week, painter and curator Jim Hatchett chimed in on social media calling Espada “one of the best abstract painters in Houston.” I included Hatchett’s photo of Espada.
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