Carlos Uribe Artist Statement

I have been a printmaker for almost 30 years. My initial printmaking activities included intaglio, lithography, relief prints and wood cut. It was an indirect circumstance in which I discovered silkscreen and since then I have never really looked back.

I’ve worked as a designer, colorist, fabric printer and finally educator. A strong technical base has always been my most important asset and source of confidence that allows me to undo the strictness that surrounds so much of ‘print logic’ and create with a freedom that most printmakers would probably find unsettling.

 I love all aspects of printing both old and new and have always made an effort to maintain traditions while embracing new techniques. I maintain this dual connection to keep my work evolving within a historic context. My background in both design and fine art are a major point of departure. Qualities from both areas combine to blur boundaries and create images that are unique in either sphere. I call myself a “universalist” (or “maximalist” as one friend puts it) always searching to symbolically explore the endless qualities of visual relationships.

Here is part of a descriptive text written for a recent opening that I feel aptly expresses my ideas and methods:

“If there is a message lying in the surface beyond the surface of Uribe’s work, it may be that the mind is free to invent something that transcends the boundaries that we only think are present. While grounded in essential techniques, his many-colored processes and multilayer tableau expresses a newness that is not derived from prior art of printmaking so much as from an ancient method of divination. Balancing color, texture, abstraction, and representation, the improvisational process of production yields work that resembles surrealist collage, expressionist painting, and op art.

Frequent use of patterns from electronic circuit etchings and mechanical drawings evoke the connections running through the geography of our lives, laying bare the means of production, while both contrasting and blurring the boundaries between industry and nature. Nonlinear geometric textures circumscribe spaces where an extravagant universe reveals mythological symbolism on an equal footing with whimsical absurdity.”