Erick Sanchez

Erick Sánchez is a painter living and working in New York City. He was born in 1973 in Ponce, Puerto Rico. In 1996, Sánchez emerged as a self-taught artist after helping a friend paint a mural. In 2002, he enrolled in The San Juan Art Students League in Puerto Rico, studying with Luis Ivorra and Rafael Rivera Ortiz. Sánchez decision to study at The Art Students League of New York’s intensive program in Summer 2005 was the impetus for great artistic growth. In 2008, Sánchez relocated from his native Puerto Rico to New York, re-enrolling at the ASL. Within a year, he was awarded a study scholarship with the artist/instructor Bruce Dorfman. Sánchez’s artwork is in the permanent collection of The Tucson Museum of Art. His various awards include Artist in the Marketplace Program at the Bronx Museum of Art, Curate NYC 2011 Program, The Ruth Katzman Scholarship, The Fantasy Fountain Painting Grant, The Joan M. Rosenberg Memorial Scholarship, and The Jean Gates Foundation Painting Award in New York. His artist residencies include The Ruth Katzman Vytlacil Residency in Sparkill, NY and The Marchutz Residency Summer 2011 Program at the Institute for American Universities in Aix-en-Provence, France. His solo shows include “Dangerous Land” at the 2011 Governors Island Art Fair in New York; “The Journey: Point of No Return” at The Museum of The Americas in Puerto Rico; “Alternate Routes” at Rhode Island University, Providence Campus; and “Esencia” at The San Juan Museum, San Juan Bautista Gallery in Puerto Rico. His selected group shows include Paralelos Imposibles: Sánchez – Edwards, Abrazo Interno Gallery, New York, NY; Curate NYC 2011 – Art at Bay Gallery, Staten Island, NY; “Glimpse: Enigmatic Visions” at William Bennett Gallery in SoHo, NY; “Diálogo 365”, Ice Box Gallery at the Crane Arts Building in Philadelphia; Ivan Loboguerrero/Alejandro de Narvaez/Erick Sánchez: Recent Works, Jorge Sori Fine Art, FL; “Malescapes: Tria”, The Suchman-Bart-Metheny Gallery, New York, NY; and MOLAA Awards and Auction 08 at The Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California. Some consider Erick Sánchez, with his new proposal "Dangerous Land”, to be at the forefront of redefining 21st-century contemporary landscape painting. “Dangerous Land” is a response to environmental, social, political and inhumane worldwide contemporary issues. Sánchez gives shape to an unstable space in danger of disappearing because of globalization, industrialization, global warming, and other consequences of human behavior and the concomitant natural disasters which extinguish life and nature. Theologists call it the Apocalypse or the Rapture. He calls it destiny. The materials he is using for this series of paintings and installations include liquid and powder pigments in raw, various acrylic mediums, emulsion, recycled rubber, glass beads, copper and aluminum leaf, black magnum rock, carbon, graphite, urethane, stainless steel, gold, silver and aluminum powder.