Dave Ortiz has created THE GOYA SERIES, Spring 2015
During the first months in 2015 Dave Ortiz has created a new body of work entirely dedicated to the silkscreen printing process evoked and enabled by his residency at the Gowanus Print Lab in Brooklyn. The process of silk screen printing is by many considered as the artisanal approach to printing requiring manual intervention by the artist in the context of a medium of mass production.
This manual intervention is what attracts Ortiz to the medium of silkscreen print - it provides the perfect translation of his artistic challenge to leverage and express his individual and highly personal experience within the context of a mass produced environment. The method of silkscreen printing itself was a big challenge for Ortiz as he was a novice in this practice. But he quickly advanced from one color prints to working with up to 10 colors in only five weeks of exploration of the technique. In the weeks after his residency he continued to adapt and explore the medium to apply and integrate more of his painting techniques in the making of prints. Mixing sharpness of distinctive lettering and logos with blurred color fields Ortiz ultimately used three types of processes during his residency: silk screen only, silk screen as the foundation with painting added afterwards, and the addition of silk screen printing into finished paintings. For “The Goya Series” Ortiz used silk screen only but to each individual print he added a lot of free hand adjustments and manipulation.
The Goya Series - The Goya Brand evokes memories for nearly every Puerto Rican. What was originally a playful exploration of Boricua heritage in the face of white American pop art, has become a very personal project for the artist in the review and analysis of his own life and family history, the challenges of family dysfunction alongside the definition of Hispanic culture by corporate branding through the emotional and sentimental ties formed around family meals and food related memories of his childhood.
“The Goya Series” prints of mundane everyday items are on the most superficial level a cheeky tribute to Andy Warhol’s iconic Campbell soup can, but this alone would be a way too one dimensional and most of all not all that original approach. Other artists have worked around the “can”.
For Ortiz the two main topics of exploration in “The Goya Series” are:
Ortiz’s own history of crossing lines of expectation both within his family standing out as the black bean amongst red beans as the odd kid who was a dreamer, loved to paint and was different than the others, and as Boricua from East New York leaving the ghetto yet always staying the other in his group of friends being called Chocolate Bar or “B-Dave” yet successfully “making it” in the eye of a mass audience.
And on another level this work series points at the other American realty - the non white one - of a corporate brand framing and becoming an intrinsic part of family memories by feeding and bringing up generations of Hispanic Americans for decades.
The Goya print series is part of a larger project and interactive installation “Bodega Ortiz”. The installation features a Bodega on the Lower Eastside of New York - one of the core cultural infrastructures of Boricua life in NYC. “Bodega Ortiz” is built by the artist and his team, and is targeted to open in Fall 2015 or Spring 2016.
Four of “The Goya Series” prints were selected for Robert Wilson’s prestigious annual “The 22nd Watermill Summer Benefit and Auction”.
The full Goya Series consists of:“ Adobo, Black Beans, Condensed Milk, Garbanzo Beans, Ginger Beer, Guava Paste, Malta, Olive Oil, Red Beans, Sardina, Sazon, Soda Crackers, Sofrito and Tomato Sauce.
The Goya Series is for sale on Artsy to benefit the Watermill Foundation Fundraiser, the artists own website or . the artists Saatchi Gallery.