Jesus Oviedo is an MFA recipient from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He was born in San Luis Potosi, Mexico and grew up on the Southeast side of Chicago. Since age seven, Jesus has been interested in both visual art and music. His work which has been exhibited all over Chicago and other cities, is interdisciplinary and includes painting, printmaking, installation and other two and three-dimensional media. He uses unorthodox techniques in printmaking such as using the weight of his body to press a print onto a surface. He also employs innovative ways of recording marks such as applying printmaking paper to a rusty surface to record the imprint or pattern as well as submerging surfaces into the ground or underwater. Oviedo is currently working as a Studio Coordinator at Chicago Commons Association, a social service Agency. In this position, he is responsible for curriculum development, training teachers and maintaining the art studios. His long-term teaching experience encompasses a wide range of populations, each with its own particular needs and interests. These teaching experiences range from the Chicago Public Schools to the Early College Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Statement
My recent work focuses on the recording of such things as marks, imprints and occurrences. Some examples are: the making of an apparatus from an old turntable that makes spiral LP record-like drawings, the stressing of painting surfaces by leaving them outdoors in order to record marks, and finally, the fabrication of handmade surfaces. I’ve recently been collecting debris from my floor and then binding it with acrylic medium to create surfaces. The title of each surface is the date on which the detritus was collected, offering an alternative record of a time period between each individual work. Associations can be made with routine, ritual, the recycling of unwanted material and the repetitiveness of everyday life. This work shows it’s relevance to an art venue by offering alternative visions of a space, occurrences and time periods.
