An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989
Edited by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué & Erich Kessel Jr. Introduction by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué.
A revelatory trove of Gustavo Ojeda’s previously unseen 1980s drawings of New Yorkers in motion
Cuban American painter Gustavo Ojeda (1958-89) was known primarily for his lush and meditative urban nightscapes, which brought him notoriety in the 1980s downtown New York art scene. He exhibited alongside artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz, before dying from AIDS-related complications in 1989, just two weeks shy of his 31st birthday.
Ojeda's paintings were notably unpopulated; in his private sketches, however, Ojeda fixated on the people of New York, filling thousands of pages with disembodied faces, the bodies of sleeping people riding public transportation and on the street.
In the margins of his sketchbooks, Ojeda often wrote that he felt anxious about his productivity, shaming himself for not being able to paint more. An Excess of Quiet answers Ojeda’s worries with the recovery of what was always right in front of him, his most obsessive and tender practice.
Featured image is reproduced from 'An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania
Johnathan D. Katz
[Gustavo] Ojeda’s drawings perform a high-wire act, crossing and recrossing from abstraction into figuration and back again with... alacrity, finesse, and resolve.
Author of Ugly Feelings
Sianne Ngai
In these sketches of New York City in the 1980s... [o]ne suddenly becomes aware of the tension in the tine of a fork, or in the arc of a streetlamp.
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Wednesday, December 9 at 5PM EST, Printed Matter presents a conversation between Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué, co-editor of An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989, and writer, curator and critic Jarrett Earnest. The book presents a selection of over 200 never-before-seen sketches by Cuban American painter Gustavo Ojeda, best known for the lush and meditative urban nightscapes of 1980s New York City that he created prior to his death from AIDS-related complications in 1989. This event brings Earnest’s work with queer archives, most recently in his exhibition The Young and Evil, into dialogue with Ojeda-Sagué’s recuperative construction of Gustavo Ojeda’s archive, which led to the publication of the artist’s sketches in An Excess of Quiet. Ojeda-Sagué and Earnest will discuss queer archives, the subject of “private work,” horizontal approaches to art history, the reconstitution of artistic lineages and legacies and other current and related research. This event will take place on zoom. Click here to register! continue to blog
An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989
Published by Soberscove Press. Edited by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué & Erich Kessel Jr. Introduction by Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué.
A revelatory trove of Gustavo Ojeda’s previously unseen 1980s drawings of New Yorkers in motion
Cuban American painter Gustavo Ojeda (1958-89) was known primarily for his lush and meditative urban nightscapes, which brought him notoriety in the 1980s downtown New York art scene. He exhibited alongside artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz, before dying from AIDS-related complications in 1989, just two weeks shy of his 31st birthday.
Ojeda's paintings were notably unpopulated; in his private sketches, however, Ojeda fixated on the people of New York, filling thousands of pages with disembodied faces, the bodies of sleeping people riding public transportation and on the street.
In the margins of his sketchbooks, Ojeda often wrote that he felt anxious about his productivity, shaming himself for not being able to paint more. An Excess of Quiet answers Ojeda’s worries with the recovery of what was always right in front of him, his most obsessive and tender practice.
