Carlos G. Gomez: Life’s Journey, A Bato in Alaska

Ben Bailey Gallery 
On View: September 8 – October 8, 2014
Artist Talk: Thursday August 25, 2:00PM
at The Little Theatre
Artist Reception: September 25, 6-8PM

The first art exhibit of 2014-2015 at the Ben Bailey Art Gallery at Texas A&M University-Kingsville features a journey of sorts, by a long-time art professor. Life’s Journey, A Bato in Alaska, by Carlos G. Gomez, opens Monday, Sept. 8, and continues through Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the Bailey Art Gallery. Gomez will be on campus Thursday, Sept. 25, to give an artist talk at 2 p.m. in The Little Theatre. He will be honored later that day with a reception in the gallery from 6 to 8 p.m. 

“Never one to stop playing and taking things for granted, this body of work is a journal of the mysterious hallucinations of a profound experience,” Gomez said. “The imagination runs rampant with surreal overtones and nothing matters except for those visual images that burn deep into the brain and rattles emotions that are transformed into graphic representations.

“Spray paint and wax colored pencils produced these abstract memories, where thought and isolation conjure analysis of human interaction and those oppressive tenets associated with human experiences. Life’s Journey is an optimistic body of work, despite the sense of isolation worked with ‘felt’ energy transforming an aesthetic balance of space and kinetics,” he added.

The Ben Bailey Art Gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. 
For more information, call 361-593-3401.

About Carlos G. Gomez
Gomez was born in Mexico and raised in Brownsville. “Brightly colored buildings and the surreal atmosphere of the Mexican border towns gave me the first appreciation of color, line and the generalization that my chosen images would have to be bold and realistic,” he said.

“As a person who has been painting for over 30 years, I have explored many ways by which one can apply paint on a support,” Gomez said. “I have dealt with a vast amount of concepts and themes and still feel that I am barely scratching the surface as a painter. I look for things that have to do with life and the things that matter.” Gomez has been included in the Arizona State University Hispanic Research Center publications Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Art Work: Artist, Works, and Education and Chicano Art for Our Millennium.

His work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including the 24th exhibition of Painting and Sculpture at Barnegat Light, New Jersey; the 70th American Annual at Newport, Rhode Island; the Second National Jury Exhibition in Washington D.C.; the Latin Spirit of the 80s in Houston; Art in Nature at the Museum of Natural History in Austin; Cara on Cara: Texas Faces in San Antonio; Tres Proyectors Latinos at the Austin Museum of Art at Laguna Gloria; and the Eighth Parkside National Small Print Exhibition in Kenosha, Wisconsin. In addition to his own work, Gomez is an active curator and has curated more than 100 exhibitions. Gomez is currently professor of fine art and chair of the visual arts department at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He has been honored five times as a Meritorious Faculty Member. He received his BFA from Pan American University and his MFA from Washington State University.

 -TAMUK-