Javier Arizmendi-Kalb

JAVIER ARIZMENDI-KALB grew up in Mexico City, where he learned to paint at a young age from a group of landscape painters that included his grandfather, Marcos Kalb. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1986 with a degree in engineering and art history, receiving the Ames Fine Arts Award. In 1991 he completed an MA in Architecture with distinction at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Since 1994 he has lived in the Bay Area, working for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where he is presently a Design Director. 

Artist Statement

My recent paintings are characterized by greater scale and abstraction, allowing me to communicate a stronger emotional content through the use of color and gesture.

The work reflects my interest in ideas of space and landscape, and utilizes visual mechanisms evocative of perspective, mapping and cartography to structure visual information on the canvas. The paintings are layered with resin-rich paint — which at times supports the structural map or space and at times denies it — to emphasize the process of painting as an act of discovery where intuition and chance happenings play a critical role in developing images of emotional resonance. 

One series of my work is inspired by sketches done from the air, depicting the San Fernando and Central Valleys and the Sacramento Delta.  The tension between their geometric compositions and the emotional energy carried by the brushwork and color evokes the tension between the man-made and the natural, as well as the landscape’s constant state of change.  Two examples of this series: San Fernando 2 (2016), oil on canvas, 48 in. x 120 in. and Delta (2017), oil on canvas, 48 in. x 120 in..

Another series explores the pictorial structure of space, and the relationship between color and the representation of light. These paintings are inspired by sacred spaces such as chapels, where strong illumination enters interiors through small and controlled apertures that endow light with symbolic meaning. Examples of this series are illustrated with Chapel 2 (2018), oil on canvas, 72 in. x 72in. and Diffraction (2017), oil on canvas, 48 in. x 72 in.. 

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