Kunstinstituut Melly

Christian Vinck was born in 1978 in Maracaibo, Venezuela, and currently lives and works in Madrid, Spain. What is important to him, as a painter is not his subjects, but his technique. His palette is delicate and expressive. Painting offers a means to weave personal and daily narratives through the history of Latin America. He renders epic themes on intimate scales. Vinck is characterized by being a collector of images and creator of works that depict and reinterpret documents and themes inspired by an endless variety of visual stimuli.

Including more than 100 new paintings of oil on canvas, his exhibition at Witte de With includes two bodies of work, one that Vinck calls the unofficial history of aviation in Latin America; a second series focuses on the national birds of Venezuela and Curaçao. Vinck is originally from Maracaibo in Venezuela, and is one of many people who have left the country recently due to the political situation there. In Spain, he has been addressing more profoundly the intersection of the Dutch and Spanish heritages that culturally inform this part of the Caribbean where he grew up. This influences Vinck's painterly practice. He has been fascinated by picturing in this painting the images provoked not only by dominant histories and archives, but also by oral histories and urban legends. His exhibition at Witte de With gives attention to these more informal ways of creating legacies and in representing cultural identity.

This is the artist’s first exhibition in the Netherlands.

Curators: Rosa de Graaf, Sofía Hernández Chong Cuy