June 20 – July 20, 2024
Sweet Heat welcomed the warmth and freedom of the season — evincing intimacy, idealized beauty, and a keen attention to the bare flesh shining in the heat of summer.
Justin Natividad: Sweet Heat, on view at VillageOneArt from June 20th, presented a vibrant exhibition of Natividad’s works celebrating the male figure, demonstrating both painterly technical prowess and a flair for figuration. Evincing intimacy, idealized beauty and a keen attention to the bare flesh shining in the heat of summer, Sweet Heat welcomed the warmth and freedom of the season. The exhibition invited in the seasonal rhythm, as the artist noted that figures evoke, “…the tangle and weave… conjuring a mood and visual language specific to a warm summer’s day.” Natividad paid careful attention to the warm light playing along the contours of his carefully modeled figures, at times centering the beautiful torsos of his models, while in other paintings his models held a transfixed gaze reminiscent of Renaissance portraits of martyrs in the throes of spiritual ecstasy.
Where Natividad shone as a painter was his ability to capture the undulating musculature of his figures along with their taut skin in careful detail in two-dimensional form, building tones of flesh in a skillful manner and style that hearkened back to Flemish Baroque painter Peter Paul Rubens. Natividad kept his imagery focused and impactful, presenting a figure’s torso or a face in profile with minimal background. He honed in on distinct details of these male paragons of beauty, forming a snapshot that evoked the tenacious memory of lounging bodies soaking up the sun on halcyon summer days gone by.
Works in the Exhibition
Sweet Heat was on view at VillageOneArt, 150 West 25th Street, Suite 403, New York, from June 20 to July 20, 2024. For inquiries regarding available works by Justin Natividad, please contact info@villageoneart.com.