Juan Travieso Currently based out of Miami, creates visually complex worlds suspended in a state of fracture. Dismantled into seismic shards, these fragments are subject to the disorienting effects of constant spatial interruption. Combining a realist painting technique with surreal juxtapositions, spatial splicing, bright palettes, and geometric abstraction, Travieso conveys the textures of a universe in breach, distorted and split by its endless potential for loss. Fascinated by the extinction of countless endangered species and the often irrevocable influence of human intervention, Travieso presents the reality of a world in transition. His compositions often look like digitized renderings, informed by the awkward, artificial simultaneity of 3-D models, and devolve in moments to pixelated digital facsimiles, reminding us of the unavoidably temporal nature of disappearance. Travieso was born in Havana, Cuba. He credits his love of color in his work to the scarcity of resources in his home country, a stark contrast to the sheer availability of art supplies and imagery in the US. Inspired by this profusion of access to information and paint colors, the artist has taken on a series dedicated to endangered bird species, capturing them on the cusp of imminent disappearance. In the works, their facets are compartmentalized into geometric patterns and their edges striated to dissolve into quasi-architectural grids. A requiem of sorts for the irremediably compromised state of our biodiversity, Travieso’s paintings capture the cataclysmic energy of its decay and the transience of this biological exhaustion and loss, proposed in stark contrast to the permanent ambitions of the digital age. This re-articulation of environmental damage through the visual and graphic language of digital culture gets at the fundamental contradiction between the organic and the artificial, the finite and the infinite; the natural world is forever at odds with the perpetuity of artificial, manmade technologies. As an activist and environmentalist, Travieso hopes that his dynamic works will draw attention to the ecological carelessness we’ve abetted and the necessity of our continued vigilance in the preservation of what’s left. This compassion for the vulnerable and voiceless has clear political affinities for Travieso, relating to his personal experiences growing up in Communist Cuba where persecution for perceived dissent was a constant threat and the silencing of censorship unavoidable. Perhaps in keeping with this tendency to combine oppositions like freedom and constraint, Travieso depicts the lawlessness and diversity of nature at odds with the enforced geometry of human constructs. Travieso has exhibited in ten different Art Museums nationwide.  These include exhibitions at The Ft Lauderdale Museum, Orlando Museum, MOAH, Honolulu Museum Art School, Cornell Museum, Berkshire Museum, Long Beach Museum and Naples Museum of Art. Travieso is a dynamic maker he approaches painting with great appetite and produces a feast for the eyes and mind.  Travieso is a graduate of New World School of the Arts in Miami Florida, and Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California. Most recently he received a Masters of Fine Arts from The Museum School of Fine Arts in Boston.  He has had numerous exhibitions in New York, Miami, Boston, Los Angeles, as well as internationally. His work is included in multiple collections throughout the United States and other parts of the world.