2014 05 11 16.56.44 

Curator: The painting before us is titled “2014 05 11 16.56.44" by Jimmy Ortiz. It’s an acrylic on canvas, marked by bold applications of color and impasto. Editor: Immediately, the overwhelming quality is its frenetic energy, those swirling lines against broad, striated blocks of color! The thick paint creates real texture; it practically vibrates. Curator: It strikes me as a piece firmly rooted in the tradition of abstract expressionism, channeling both the gestural freedom and intensity that defined much of the art scene during the post-war era. I find it compelling. Editor: Definitely seeing that, although those color choices! The fauvist leanings give it a very distinctive character. Observe the planes, those near-horizontal color fields. Do they represent a stylized landscape, maybe? Curator: Could be. Ortiz is definitely playing with spatial ambiguity. The "landscape," if that’s what it is, offers a stage for some more pressing socio-political dynamics to emerge. Is there a message that Ortiz sought to capture within a moment in time? The date encoded within the title, do you think it marks an important turning point of personal or global significance, especially within its socio-historical framework? Editor: It certainly feels loaded with meaning! Take that mass of scribbled figures or objects, perhaps, densely packed at the base – their lack of distinction is crucial. All that frenzy! The rhythm pushes upward to the white spray in the center of it all. What to make of that stark image? Is it hope, release, destruction? Curator: Well, whatever reading we subscribe to, it's quite evident that Ortiz used painting as a direct method for expressing, not merely showing. And that kind of openness and unreserved engagement with material really positions him within a lineage of activist-artists that used the art world as a public forum. Editor: I agree, that uninhibited approach to process and materials, and how he teeters so engagingly between representation and abstraction, really gives us so much to think about. Curator: Indeed. A great piece of work. Editor: Yes. Powerful stuff.