Jean-Pierre Villafañe (b.1992, Puerto Rico) received his MA in Architecture at Columbia University in New York in 2019 and his BFA from SCAD, Savannah. In 2017, he collaborated with Tatiana Bilbao’s office on the architectural installation (Not) Another Tower; for the Chicago Architecture Biennial at the Chicago Cultural Center. In 2019 Villafañe shifted his focus to concentrate on developing his painting practice. Recent solo exhibitions include 2022, Fireworks, Hoffmann, Maler and Wallenberg, Nice, FR (2022), Baile Latinoamericano: Museo de Arte y Diseño, San Jose, CR (2021), Divertimento: Donde Hay Una Catastrofe, Hay Un Escape, EMBAJADA, San Juan, PR (2021), Apartamento, 54 Elizabeth, New York, NY (2020). In the fall of 2022 he will open a solo exhibition at ATM gallery in New York. He currently resides and works between San Juan and New York.

Sombras is a rich, rhythmic composition teeming with illusionistic depths of field, geometric tricks, and tangible verve expressed through satirical groupings and dramatic figures. Influenced by his formal architectural training, Sombras renders the social environment and its identifiers with a sharpness and spirit that dances out of the canvas. Through a complex, cubist sense of layering, the artist explores notions of intimacy, sexuality, self-concept, and performativity through a destruction of the distinctions between figure and environment.

The viewer finds Villafañe’s animated characters each arrested in brief moments of ecstasy and bacchanalian indulgence. Accessories, embraces, and figurative interminglings weave integrally through the architecture of their setting, physically and interpersonally. The artist has hand-embellished the edition with additional acrylic details in the scene, making each print a unique work.

Jean-Pierre Villafañe
Sombras, 2022
Archival pigment print
24 x 18.5 inches

Edition of 25 with 5AP 1PP
Hand-embellished, signed, and numbered by the artist