Juan Carlos Quintana, lives and works in Oakland, California
Juan Carlos Quintana uses random cartoon and found imagery out of context to create quirky, ambiguous, non-linear narratives that speak to the fear of impending doom, self-doubt, and sublime melancholy. Ultimately, these paintings ruminate on a culture ready to self-implode teetering on its own false pretenses. His work challenges conventional representations of identity, ethnicity, politics, and history through imaginative psychodramas that illuminate the individual's plight against dehumanizing standardization.
Juan Carlos Quintana was born in Louisiana in 1964. He is a self-taught artist currently living and working in Oakland, California. He has shown in many San Francisco Bay Area venues such as John Berggruen Gallery, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Jose Museum of Art, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts just to name a few. He has also shown internationally at the Freies Museum in Berlin and Centro de Desarollo de las Artes Visuales, in Havana, Cuba . He has been awarded artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Program in Woodside, California, and most recently at the Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhausin in Schwandorf, Germany in the summer of 2010. He is part the collaborative teams MIJU, with Michele Muennig, and Artist Formerly Known As Friend (AFKAF) based in San Francisco and Manila.