Puerto Vallarta, Mexico - On Friday, January 26 from 6-10 pm, during this week's South Side Shuffle, a cocktail reception will open two special art exhibitions by artists Israel Zzepda and Juan Carlos Navarro at Galleria Dante, Basilio Badillo #269 in Puerto Vallarta's Romantic Zone.

Israel Zzepda

At only 47, Israel Zzepda has already been a professional artist for almost 30 years. Israel's body of work is remarkably large given his age, but when you consider he became an apprentice at the age of 15 and a full-time art teacher at the age of 19, it isn't so surprising. He taught both art and fashion illustration for more than 13 years, and, as a teacher, he has influenced many young artists, including several members of his family.

There is a sensitivity, innocence and refined discipline about Israel. His work explores religious, spiritual, sexual and existential realms, reflecting truths and questioning established thinking, and he is not afraid to express himself. "The artist is a reflection of daily life. I want to be a chronicle of my time," says Zzepda, who seeks to reflect his own unique style and honesty in all his work.

In his approach of the human figure, texture plays an extremely important role. Instead of painting photo-realistic portraits, he sacrifices the perfection of the human figure in hopes of revealing part of the shared human experience that resides within him. "We are all good and bad, we construct and we destroy, we are of light and somewhat dark, journeying daily through the streets of the planet."

Israel's imaginative capacity is, perhaps, the most dominant striking feature of his work. The viewer cannot help but be drawn in and intrigued by the thematic contents of his paintings. Some of his works appear to be recreating ambiguous and mysterious worlds often made up of strange, desolate environments while others display serene, sometimes humorous, eroticism. He also embraces notoriously religious topics, as well as ontological and metaphysical subjects.

Israel has also painted more than 1000 meters of murals, both public and private, in Cancun, Uruapan, Michoacán and Jalisco. In addition, he completed 6 murals in Sardinia, Italy, in 2011. He also participated in a collective show in Turin, Italy, on March 15th, 2014. He is also working on a new conceptual art project that delves into human and social justice in the setting of globalized power and its effects on ecological consciousness and human rights.

Every 6 months the gallery receives new works that over reach our wildest expectations. His latest work represents a new cycle of creative production and personal growth for Israel, and we are all very anxious to see where it leads. Visual ideas have a common conceptual aspect, the geometry, like a chess board, as a symbol of the duality in the claroscuro of the human soul. Wisdom and instinct in spiritual cohabitation that does not explain the progress and human growth without such duality. "The universe, known and unknown, is the vital space where we discover ourselves through suffering, happiness, loss and gain. There can be no certainty without uncertainty or light without the comparison of darkness. We are in this daily cycle of self-destruction and self-reinvention. All ideas had the challenge of constructing themselves in the experience of memory without using a single model."

2018 New Works:
"Journey towards oneself" is a collection composed of thirteen paintings - different formats in both acrylic & oil on canvas. This series had it's birth three years ago during a period of experimentation, when I sought to find a technical way to give more dynamism and expressive character to my metaphysical subjects psychic ethereal. The technical result was slowly being integrated into the thematic development until I was satisfied with the results, a work visually amalgamated in the physical and the soul.

Beyond proposing a painting as a mere object that decorates a space, although containing sufficient aesthetic elements that can harmonize the environment where it is placed, attempts in the honesty of my reflections is possible to materialize and make visible my investigations, conclusions and truths obtained on my own path of introspection.

Readings of existence, dreams, reflections, sensations and potential of psychic energy. My work is a visual writing with symbols that tries to leave record of the voyage in the deep waters of the own and collective subconscious, a way to understand the existence of the others through understanding myself as someone unknown beyond whom my History has said that I am... seeking to find the hidden potential that leads to transformation and wise way to exist.

From September to November 2017 I had my third trip to Sardegna, Italia, to complete my seventh mural there. The mural was realized in the Comuna de Solarussa, in an antique structure called Casa Neitana, in the esplanade of the 12th century temple of San Gregorio - an estate that formerly belonged to a potentate cacique - today recovered by the government for the community as a cultural center.

The mural was completed during a period of two months, covering an area of more than 150 square meters, the thematic was the Sardinian culture and its integration of the Acogiente migrants. In December, on the completion of the mural, the community government distinguished Israel as an honorary citizen for artistic merit, being the first to receive this honor in the history of that community.

Juan Carlos Navarro

Juan Carlos was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1975. He graduated as an Engineer-Architect. A self-taught painter, he participated in exhibitions as early as 2006. For the artist, the search is given in the light, in the space and figure, in the balance that gives us his artistic vision, in the landscape that is formed through a discreet and bright language. He plays with women's faces, images of children, nostalgic trees, changing landscapes that are located in areas where the value is more tonal than thematic, where the color is amending the forms and composition.

In each of the works in this pictorial exhibit, Juan Carlos creates an expressive and aesthetic universe, a visual discourse, a powerful metaphor in which figurative, spiritual, ecological and mystical currents are intertwined. The paintings refer to a comprehensive and questioning worldview: Contemporary life relationships between human, environment, rhythms of nature and attempts depth passing through the Earth, its existential journey.

His "naturals" are closer to the substances and poetic alchemy, than to mythological research or historical treatise. They are hybrid beings, beings of light, in which converge the animal, mineral, vegetable and human, to make us shudder with their very presence, with their reference to a space and time where everything is integrated and linked, where the macrocosm and vice versa, where everything flows and really communicates it's true meaning and significance, where the most important and urgent voyage is the one we do within ourselves: time, space, vitality, where the only thing is ... to be.

With this metaphoric clarity, Juan Carlos has realized that which corresponds naturally with his essence and most intimate dreams: to carefully paint those "naturals" with all the esthetic quality possible, limbs and tress in the head, crowns of flowers, old and new tree trunks to cross the labyrinth of everyday life, branches of wind and light, birds flying filled with hope and dreams, meetings with imagination, creativity, art, a communion with nature and human sacredness, a perception of the possibility of choosing to raise mankind's universal conscience.

This year he has added elements of the sea to his paintings. He has advanced into other styles of art, from abstract musical to surreal, while not exhausting his love of nature and humans in harmony. 2018 holds much for Juan Carls, as he will be exhibiting in Chelsea, New York. You will not be disappointed in his latest works.

Don't miss your chance to meet these two talented artists for cocktails at Galleria Dante while you're out doing this week's South Side Shuffle on Friday, January 26 from 6-10 pm.

While you are there, be sure to check out Di Vino Dante, a chic wine and tapas bar overlooking the gallery's sculpture garden. In late June, Di Vino Dante opened a small dining area on the ground floor in a corner of Galleria Dante, for those who like to people watch.