| ANDRES MICHELENA |
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Born in 1963 in Caracas, Venezuela, Andrés Michelena studied Architecture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Fine Arts at the Instituto de Arte Federico Brandt, Caracas. Now living in Miami, Michelena has exhibited his work extensively, with solo shows at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach; the Museo de Arte de Las Americas, San Juan; the Venezuelan Embassy in Washington, D.C.; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville.
Michelena’s recent work centers around the practice of Zen meditation as a means of identifying a sense of place and frame of reference within the world. “…( )…” No. 30 is from a series which the artist exhibited at the Museo de Arte de Las Americas, San Juan, and at the Miami Art Gallery, Miami in 2003—04. Purged of any reference to the visible world, these monochromatic pictures show simple, ethereal shapes floating in undefined space. According to Michelena, this imagery reflects his own experience of Zen meditation, and the saying of the 11th-century Zen Buddhist Master Fuyu Dokai: “I cannot educate you, because, in short, you must understand by yourself.”
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