CONCRETE REALITY

Solo exhibition by Dionis Ortiz

Gallery Hours: Saturday & Sunday 12:00 – 5:00pm

Exhibition Dates: September 23 to October 31, 2023

Exhibition on view at the Children’s Art Carnival, 62 Hamilton Terrace, New York, NY 10031, Weekday visits available by appointment only, email us at info@childrensartcarnival.org

Dionis cultivated his interest and background in the arts to establish Inspiration Fine Art, a fine art gallery located in Harlem. Since its inception in 2005, he has organized and curated various group exhibitions and showcased the works of emerging and established artists from New York City.

In 2008 he assisted Metropolitan Transit Authority grant recipient Jose Ortiz in painting eleven panels on canvas. In 2009 he assisted lead muralist Eduardo A. Rabel in painting five concrete water pipes at the Teaneck Creek Conservancy in New Jersey. He designed a mural for Heineken as part of their Mural Arts Program. He is also being commissioned by the Addition Research and Treatment Corporation in Brooklyn in creating a mural painting on canvas.

In 2021 he was Artist in Residence at the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling, and his mural design was selected by PubliColor for an elementary school in East Harlem. His work has been featured in The New York Times several times and is included in Latinx Art: Artists, Market, and Politics by Arlene Dávila.  His community work extends to teaching and Ortiz teaches all ages from pre-K to teenagers and undergraduates at Hunter College and Cornell University. He received his B.F.A from SUNY Purchase College and his M.F.A from CUNY Hunter College.

Drawing from his experiences as a child born and raised with his Dominican family in West Harlem, Dionis continues to live and create in our beloved neighborhood, where his geometric, process-based works from ill-regarded and found materials to celebrate the people of the African diaspora. And I am happy, for one, to have gotten my daily dose of concrete reality at the CAC’s exhibition, if only to relive for a fleeting moment, the carefree life of illusion we all did as children.