Hidrante is pleased to present Cáscaras II, by Culeybo, on view from May 23rd to July 4th.

In Cáscaras II, Culeybo explores ideas of resilience, perception, and the corrosive affects of American mass media on Puerto Rican culture by drawing from found imagery and advertising. Culeybo pokes fun at portrait and representation art genres, inviting us to a space of inclusivity and diversity that allows us to explore identities beyond the standard social spectrums through a series of paintings that portray dogs with orthodontic braces, the cheapening of the erotic in advertising, and the devaluation of landscape as an object of consumption. The artist plays with the tension between protection and vulnerability, layering oil paintings under hard resin shells to probe at the layers that make up our ideas of beauty.

The work of Culeybo (Sebastián Gutiérrez; b. 1996, Gurabo, PR) focuses on the influence of identity on personal behavior and lust as a protagonist in public settings, operating within the matrix of our relationship between the public and private in both the individual and the material. The subject stems primarily from personal development, manifested in everyday coexistence with strangers and the intersections between beauty, class, and appearance. Culeybo draws from diverse sources to create pieces that reveal contrasting ideas learned through the intrinsic friction contained in his work, such as the contemporary anthropocentrism of canine companions, the parcelization of public space, and the layers that mediate our relation between the covetable and the loathsome.