Ronald Gonzalez

www.ronaldgonzalezstudio.com

Gonzalez@binghamton.edu

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artist biography

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Ronald Gonzalez is a contemporary figurative artist based in upstate New York.

Since the mid seventies the artist has worked from his garage studio creating elegiac

sculptures and installations that are embodiments of death and loss infused with

grotesque narrative, and pathos. Gonzalez works primarily in a series with steel

armatures and macabre collections of time worn objects, and detritus from his

surroundings. The work is then further eroded with metal filings, burned wax, glue,

wire, and black soot creating a dramatic tonal range that both obscures and reveals

anthropomorphic heads, torsos and figures that appear as charred fetishistic

mementos possessing a visceral quality imbued with a sense of primal energy and

distress that permeates his work. His obsessive production of angst-ridden

sculptures explore the emotive, social, and psychological associations of decaying

found objects that function as autobiographical metaphors charged with potent and

recurring symbols with childhood and nostalgic references. Gonzalez’s sculpture is

mournful, confrontational, and estranged, standing on the border between human

personage and doomed phantom. His restless investigation of animating materials

has produced an art of dissolution with archaic, apocalyptic, and quasi-alien

elements that convey an animistic mode of thought and intensely evocative

expression of the human condition.

 

His work has been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including the

Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D C. De Cordova Museum & Sculpture Park,

Lincoln, MA. Savanna College of Art & Design, Savannah, GA. The Marianna Kistler

Beach Museum of Art, Lawrence, KS. Laumeier Sculpture Park, St. Louis, MI. Everson

Museum, Syracuse, NY. Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art, NY. University of

Southern California, LA. Allan Stone Gallery, NY. Salina Art Center, KS. Intar Gallery,

NY.N.Y Anthony Brunelli Gallery, Binghamton, NY, The Hudson Walker Gallery of

Art, Provincetown, MA. Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva NY, Hartwick

College, Oneonta, NY, Jonathan Levine Projects, Jersey City, V.23 Gallery, London UK.

Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY. Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell

University, Ithaca, NY. Spoleto Festival, Charleston, SC. Snite Museum of Art, Notre

Dame, IN. Atlanta College of Art, GA. Gallery 24, Berlin, Cavin Morris Gallery, NY,

Alternative Museum, NY. Institute Cultural Peruano Norte Americano, Lima, Peru.

Art Omi, Ghent, N.Y. Rhode Island School Of Design, Providence, RI. Muse De Arte

Modern, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Art Basel, Miami Fl. Galerie Protégé, NY Galerija

SULUJ, Belgrade, Serbia, Menier Gallery, London UK, Czong Institute of

Contemporary Art, Gimpo-Si, Gyeonggi- do, South Korea, Aqua Miami, Fl., Space

Millepiani, Rome Italy, Los Angeles Convention Center, Los Angles, Ca. Art in

Embassies, Benin, Africa, Guerrilla Zoo, Newspeak house, London UK, George Billis

Gallery, NY. Sculpture Fields of Nova’s Art. Bridgehampton, NY.