Working primarily in painting and mixed media, artist Juan Carlos Quintana (he/him) moves fluidly between narrative and abstraction. Whimsical in style, the artist embraces ambiguity and contradiction. Satirical in tone, his works oscillate between personal and forgotten histories, current events, speculative periods, and ideological conundrums.

Quintana’s recent body of work, developed during the Joan Mitchell Center Residency in New Orleans in the summer of 2022, explores his personal reckoning with Louisiana’s sugar plantation economy and the petrochemical industry along the corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. This subject holds deep personal significance for Quintana who spent the first five years of his life living on the grounds of a sugar cane refinery, in the historic Godchaux House in Reserve, Louisiana. Through this intimate lens, he reflects on how the legacy of these industries continues to be felt to this day in our cultural landscapes and political battlegrounds.

Juan Carlos Quintana (b.1964, Lutcher, LA) is a visual artist raised in New Orleans, LA. of Cuban lineage currently living and working in the San Francisco Bay Area. Using painting, printmaking, ceramics and mixed media installation, Quintana’s art is imbued with an anti-colonial sensibility. He has exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including Jack Fischer Gallery, John Berggruen Gallery, San Jose Museum of Art, Crocker Art Museum, and Torrance Museum of Art, among others. Internationally, he has had solo exhibitions at the Freies Museum in Berlin, Germany, and at the Centro De Desarrollo de Arte Visuales in Habana, Cuba. He was recently included in the exhibition, A Nation Takes Place: Race And Water In Contemporary Art at the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. He is the recipient of many awards and residencies, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculpture grant award.

Please join SEE(d) on Saturday, June 7, 4 - 6 PM to delve deep and learn from the artist in the spiret of belonging. As always, there will be interesting people, delicious bites and boutique wine! All proceeds go to support the artist’s studio practice.