Watercolors:1985-2017, an exhibition of figurative expressionism by Carmen Cicero, intoxicating, while poetic, perspectives of the artist’s relentless fixation with human responses to life’s shifts, will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 166 Mercer Street, on Friday, February 12.  The exhibition will remain on view through March 2.

Cicero’s artistic form, dramatic in both literal and satirical nuance, captivates the viewer.  Harnessing the power of storytelling to create a more compelling and meaningful visual experience is totally his domain.  Cicero piques curiosity right from the start prompting an emotional connection with the viewer such as a sense of fear as in the painting titled Hesitation, 2017, in which a lone car with glaring headlights moves along a desolate strip of iced roadway amidst towering menacing forms not unlike formidable icebergs advancing toward the protagonist.

In this body of work, it is apparent that through the decades Cicero has maintained cutting-edge baiting, indistinguishable from his artist personae that triggers scrutiny with clashes between the sexes, ideals, and behaviors.  With brilliant color, erratic line, and gesture, evocative scenarios replete with double entendre and symbolism, the painter Cicero sidles into master storyteller, allowing viewers’ imagination to complete the narratives.  Perhaps, for Cicero, the telling of a story lies deep in the social behavior of human groups and visual narratives are agents for conveying information in an absorbable manner.  Thus, Cicero’s paintings become structures for introspection personally and generally.

Quixotic describes Cicero’s body of watercolors as visual intrigue in each mirror him incendiary, stimulating query that dares to seek beyond instant response to the image. Stirring underlying revelation of disguised issues with likely puzzling stories is a Cicero constant, as in the painting titled, Leisure III, 1998, in which a curvaceous female reclines dreamily, perhaps, seduced by sound of Cicero’s toy-like Choo Choo train in the far background, while in the moment shadowy male silhouettes lurk in margins of the composition (does Cicero lure with conundrum to conclude this woman enjoys her leisure or her cognitive drama?) Settings suggestive of issues between the initially apparent and conclusion are painted with Cicero’s meticulous detailing, bursting contours, flamboyant gestures suspending emotion for turn of events.

Cicero gives us scenarios in which the protagonist faces a situation and in which the viewer becomes invested in the visual narrative.  Images help with fostering cognitive empathy, in understanding other emotions and experiences to comprehend concepts and behaviors, creating introspection personally and generally.

A native of Newark, New Jersey, Cicero holds a BA from Newark State Teachers College and an MFA from Montclair State University. He lives in New York City and summers in Truro on Cape Cod. He is also an accomplished jazz musician. His work is represented in numerous public, corporate, and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Newark Museum, Montclair Museum of Art, National Academy Museum, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, MA; West Publishing Company, St. Paul, MN; and Musei Boymans-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

In 2016 Carmen Cicero received the Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters; in 2012 Carmen Cicero received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and in 2007 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. A monograph, “The Art of Carmen Cicero,” was published in 2013 by Schiffer Publishing in Atglen, PA.