Red Hook

Joan Belmar

“Organic qualities of the acrylics, gouache, and ink mix and move spontaneously on a fixed structure, canvas, plastic, or paper. I play with light, transparencies, and the sculptural qualities of these elements to evoke- Time, Change, and Movement,” he says.

Joan Belmar (b. 1970) was born in Chile. He graduated with a degree in Graphic Design/Technical Drawing in 1993 from the Fundacion DUOC in Santiago.

At age 24, Belmar moved to Spain where he began his professional career as an artist. In 2003, he was granted permanent residency in the United States on terms of extraordinary artistic merit, and in 2010, he became an American citizen. He was awarded the ‘Outstanding Emerging Artist of the Year Award’ by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities at the Kennedy Center, the Individual Artist Grant by the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County, MD, and the state of Maryland. In 2016 he won first place in the Osten Biennial of Drawing in Macedonia. His works have been featured in several exhibitions and collections including the University of Maine Museum of Art, Maine, USA, and The John Wilson Building, Heart of DC, City Hall, Washington, DC.

Belmar's works bear testament to the collage of conflict of assimilation and identity that he has experienced as immigrant several times in life. He combines abstract expressionism and traditional folk art to create complex hypnotic worlds. Since the start of his artistic practice, he has been interested in exploring the properties of contemporary materials. “Organic qualities of the acrylics, gouache, and ink mix and move spontaneously on a fixed structure, canvas, plastic, or paper. I play with light, transparencies, and the sculptural qualities of these elements to evoke- Time, Change, and Movement,” he says.