The artist generously hosted a studio visit by students at UC Berkeley Extension and the San Francisco Art Institute. His website is http://juancarlosquintana.org/. Comments were taken from an interview with him appearing on http://painterspainters.tumblr.com/interviewJCQ

1. Juan Carlos Quintana Studio Visit
11-8-15

2. Juan Carlos Quintana (b.1964) has shown in John Berggruen Gallery, Jack Fischer Gallery,
Galeria de la Raza, San Jose Museum of Art, MACLA and Skyline College.
Internationally, he’s had solo exhibitions at the Freies Museum in Berlin and at the Centro de
Desarollo de las Artes Visuales in Havana, Cuba.
He has been awarded artist residencies at the Djerassi Resident Program in Woodside,
California, and most recently at the Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany.

3. My work is a pre-post-anti-pro revolutionary gumbo/aliaco potpourri of image-making that
navigates between narrative and abstraction. The characters come from past experiences as
well as my imagination. I do not name them, but they are a motley crew that may or may
not include denizens, barflies, wanna-be-revolutionaries, lackeys, clowns, hobos, hillbillies,
zealots, opportunists and zombies.

4. Being a product of the Cold
War has had a huge influence
on me and I am always
thinking about it. My parents
came from Cuba to Southeast
Louisiana a few months after
the Bay of Pigs in 1961. I grew
up in a household where there
was daily discussions (and
yelling) of regime change,
counter revolutions, elections,
democracy, dictatorship. As a
kid, it was all-intoxicating and
as you can imagine at times
distressing.
The use of humor balances out
the cynicism and becomes a
buffer from all the craziness.

5. I’m after an aesthetic filled with gritty scrawls of comments, jokes and statements like on a
bathroom wall or a revolutionary slogan painted out time and again by a dictatorial goon-
squad. It’s funny but also distressing in a compelling way.

6. For me, the style known as “Bad Painting” constitutes paintings that challenge what is
good and bad taste. Its one whose goal is not to please but to challenge. Its painting
that can be so grotesque, repulsive or kitschy that it challenges not only what is
beautiful and good taste, but also challenges the latest trends in contemporary
painting.

7. A painting crumpled
and crammed into a
display case called
“Essays on Cold War
Rhetoric.”

8. There is a lot of
improvisation and stream
of consciousness
involved.
I may start with an idea
or image, but it soon gets
erased and another layer
added until the painting
evolves and takes on a
life of its own.

9. I go through a
process of
elimination or
distillation to get
to a point where I
think the painting
is complete.
They tend to be
labor intensive. I
never seem to be
satisfied until I
feel that there
has been a
significant
amount of work
and sweat
involved. Some
could take
months to finish.

10. I am always aware of failure and
try to have fun with it; failed
painting, failed exhibition, failed
art career. I have had my share.
I accept and embrace it.
It’s all part of the process;
experimenting and being
playful in the studio and not
being afraid of failure is an
important part of art making.
And who is to say what is failure
and what is success? As an
artist you just need to trust and
listen to yourself and keep
moving forward.