Since his first individual exhibition at Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1972, Eugenio Espinoza has been working in many forms and mediums such as conceptual, photography, ephemeral sculptures, drawings, paintings and installations. He has a prodigious output with some works created in the 1970s that are thoroughly post-modernists, such as: his Impenetrable, now at Tate Modern Collection; Functional (1971); The Rite of Spring (1977); Circunstancial (12 Coconuts (1971); and Negativa Moderna (2006). The intervened post cards and grid canvas photographed outdoors, as well as his textiles grids which were exhibited at Conkright Gallery in 1973, and distributed ramdomly, by the yard, to the audience. These grid canvas were photographed by the artist during the exhibition and later used as clothing, table cloths or bedspreads according to individual preferences. Eugenio Espinoza’s visual language is an amalgam of many modernist traditions such as Minimalism, Arte Povera and Geometric Abstraction; at the same time he maintains an intensely poetic spirit that expresses his Venezuelan roots. Eugenio Espinoza’s current show Numbers at Negativa Moderna, includes a selection of the artist’s latest works: acrylic paintings stapled on wood; using very simple means to construct a kind of system that allows equilibrium and dis-equilibrium. In the words of Eugenio Espinoza, “ I search for a possible formal disequilibrium or an a unexpected balance. My interest in Geometry lies in the search for dysfunctional patterns within its order system”. As in his early works, Eugenio Espinoza’s interest in art history as well as the stretcher as part of the painting is evident in Numbers.
