Reuben Negrón: Dirty Dirty Love
May 22nd – June 21st, 2009

Opening Reception:Friday May 22nd
6:30-10pm

F**k Dinner:May 29th
8:00 pm - RSVP Required

Like the Spice is pleased to present Reuben Negrón: Dirty Dirty Love, an exhibition of the artist’s magically delicious watercolors. (Because who knows what magical realism is supposed to mean anymore?)

Photorealism is usually associated with cold, clinical cityscapes that reveal the ways photography orders reality. The watercolors of Reuben Negrón partake of the deep photo-visual honesty and technical mastery of the photorealists but are also imbued with a deep humanist emotional intelligence. Based on photographs the artist takes of real couples in domestic and intimate moments, Negrón's is the photorealism of Nan Goldin - only minus the eighties blank-generation angst.

Perhaps Negrón's greatest achievement is his ability to be searingly honest and achingly sweet in the same moment. His works depict private moments as they really are, fraught with insecurity; yet tender, joyous, and vulnerable. Never saccharine, Negrón gives us hot little slices of true romance.

Born in Orlando, Florida in 1979, Reuben Negrón holds a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of Visual Arts. He is the illustrator of the recently released Democracy for Beginners and the forthcoming Poetry for Beginners. As a comic book artist he was included in the Rabid Rabbit Comic Anthology in 2008 and New York Press' Underground Comics Spectacular, March 2006. This is his first solo exhibition at a commercial gallery in New York. Reuben Negrón lives and works in Connecticut.