Young artist’s work a reminder of his roots
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It’s been a good year for New York artist Omar Chacón. For the first time, he’s been able to live off of his art without a second job, due partly to a solo exhibition in Sarasota, Fla., a major group show in California, and the award of the $10,000 William and Dorothy Yeck Award as the winner of the Miami University Young Painters Competition.
In addition to the cash, the award includes an exhibition of his work, and 29 paintings will be part of the exhibition “Sancochos Casiqueños a la Cimabue,” opening next week at the Hiestand Galleries.
The title of the show refers in part to a traditional soup from his native Columbia that blends elements of Spanish dishes with indigenous ingredients, because like the soup, his work uses different elements to create something new.
“It’s a celebration of paint, but it’s driven by an investigation of culture, of the people coming together,” he said in a phone interview.
His signature motif — the layering of dots of paint on a canvas — was inspired by a visit to his grandfather in Colombia while he was in college.
“My grandfather in his life made a few paintings and when I went to visit him in Columbia he did a little dot painting,” Chacón said. “He told me, ‘I don’t want to paint like anybody else,’ he said, and it wasn’t. He just made the painting out of his own creative mind.
“I thought about all the people I went to school with, appropriating ideas from other artists, flipping through art magazines. So I thought, ‘I can rip off my own blood, can’t I?’”
The Miami University competition solicits works from U.S. residents ages 25-35 who have achieved “a significant degree of success as an emerging artist of noteworthy talent.”
In addition to the purchase award, Chacón becomes a part of the Miami Best Young Painters of the 21st Century collection.
Winners of this year’s competition will be announced at a reception, 5:15 p.m. Friday, Jan. 18, at Hiestand. Juror for the competition is Peter Plagens, art critic for Newsweek magazine. Plagens, based in New York, is a Dayton native who also is an author, artist and educator.
