An Excess of Quiet: Selected Sketches by Gustavo Ojeda, 1979–1989

"Cuban American painter Gustavo Ojeda (1958-1989) was known primarily for his lush and meditative urban nightscapes, which brought him notoriety in the legendary downtown New York art scene of the 1980s. He exhibited alongside artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz, Tom Bianchi, and Luis Frangella, before passing away from AIDS-related complications in 1989, just two weeks shy of his 31st birthday. Ojeda's exhibited paintings were notably unpopulated; in his private sketch practice, however, Ojeda complemented and opposed his painting by fixating on the people of New York, filling thousands of pages with disembodied faces, the bodies of sleeping people riding public transportation, and the movement of people within urban space. The selection of sketches presented here showcases Ojeda's enormous productivity not through his most known work but rather through his most private work. 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 before his death. 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 artistic practice, rendered with adept craftsmanship and rapt attention"--