Guillermo Kuitca

Guillermo Kuitca is a contemporary artist whose work directly addresses both formal and poetic responses to the map as a dynamic force.  He is currently represented by the Sperone Westwater Gallery, which we will tour during our stay in New York.  The following is from Katherine Harmon's book The Map As Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography:

"The relationship between presence and absence is a major theme of Guillermo Kuitca's work.  People are visibly absent from his paintings and drawings - or are the invisibly present?  While human figures are never represented, the maps, diagrams, and objects in Kuitca's works suggest human activity, as if time has been momentarily suspended until someone arrives to impart meaning to these spaces.  Although Kuitca's artworks are often described as desolate or empty, the places and things that they depict - beds, theaters, prisons, hospitals, cities, intersecting roadways - suggest human use and social activity.  Kuitca removes the narrative of human presence to offer outlines and abstractions that are static, melancholy and also, often, beautiful."