18 December 2011
RAFAEL FERRER’S WORK IS FINDING MANY NEW AUDIENCES | THE NEW YORK TIMES
At 78, Mr. Ferrer, who was out of the limelight for years, is on a roll. A retrospective last year at El Museo del Barrio in New York, part of its series for mature and under-recognized artists, received mostly glowing reviews. Mr. Ferrer “is finally having his moment,” Roberta Smith wrote in The New York Times, praising his “instinctive facility for color and materials of all kinds.” The retrospective, she wrote, was “almost criminally overdue.” Now, Guild Hall in East Hampton is keeping up the momentum with “Rafael Ferrer: Contrabando,” an exhibition of paintings, sculptures and assemblages from the 1970s to the present. The show, organized by Esperanza León, a guest curator who is on the board of Guild Hall, remains on view through Jan. 16. Read the entire article by Karin Lipson in The New York Times
4 November 2011
RAFAEL FERRER | CONTRABANDO guest-curated by Esperanza León at Guild Hall of East Hampton | THE EAST HAMPTON STAR
As with others who have chosen the East End as an artistic retreat, Rafael Ferrer, 78, who lives in Greenport, made his way here in a circuitous route, one that reflected his own journey in making art.
Beginning on Saturday, Guild Hall will present “Contrabando,” an exhibit that started out as an abridged version of a much larger show at El Museo del Barrio in New York last year and ended up being something else entirely.
Esperanza Leon, who acted as guest curator for the exhibit, said she had previously worked with Museo del Barrio and had wanted to work with a Latin American artist. Although Mr. Ferrer said that as a Puerto Rican-born artist he is not technically a Latino, he is quoted in the show’s catalog as saying his art has “an accent, one influenced by a Latin temperament.”
Mr. Ferrer wrote in an e-mail message that a “Puerto Rican cannot be a Hispanic or a Latino because Puerto Rico is not a sovereign country. Puerto Rico is owned by the United States and remains the oldest colony in the world. So the short answer is that I began and remain an individual artist.”
Read the entire article by Jennifer Landes, Rafael Ferrer, an Artist Astride Two Worlds, in The East Hampton Star
28 July 2011
SOLAR IN GET ARTSY IN THE HAMPTONS ON NEW YORK MAGAZINE:
INSIDER’S TIP
Join in-the-know art lovers at the fifties-modern home of Esperanza León, which also houses her SOLAR gallery (hours are by appointment and openings are by reservation only). The Venezuela-born gallerist gave up her East Hampton gallery space six years ago and has been hosting bi-monthly openings and artist talks for emerging Latin American artists in her home ever since. Don’t miss the “Artists on Artists” discussions, when she invites local artists to lead discussions of the work on view, or her sporadic tours of local artists’ studios.
Read the entire article by Carrie Nieman Culpepper on NY Magazine
26 July 2011
SOLAR joins the EAST HAMPTON GALLERY WALK TO FOSTER THE LOVE OF ART
At Solar, a low-profile space inauspiciously tucked into a subterranean room on residential David’s Lane, Ms. Zeiger’s group heard about the galley’s concentration on Latin American art from its owner, Esperanza Leon. On view now are paintings, works on paper, and sculpture by Esperanza Mayobre and Gonzalo Fuenmayor, New York artists who were born in South America.
Read the entire article East Hampton Art, on Foot in The East Hampton Star
Visit and join the Facebook page of East Hampton Gallery Walk
August 2010
SOLAR FEATURED IN LI PULSE MAGAZINE: INNOVATIONS IN ART
Back in venerable East Hampton, we find Esperanza Leon, who has staked out a unique vantage point where Latin American art meets the South Fork.
Leon is the owner/director of Solar, a space devoted to Latin American art and design. It’s kind of funny how perfectly many of Solar’s artists fit into the New York art cosmos. The love affair between our coast and the Spanish has been in full bloom since the 1500s, and Esperanza is a twenty-first century chaperone for this ongoing romance that has skewed to our south in recent decades…
…Esperanza is the best of what collectors should look for in a gallery owner and friend. “I grew up in East Hampton. It was once a place of quirky stores that stayed open daily until 11pm, with throngs of visitors and residents looking for fresh ideas. I recognize the place that great global brands play in the panoply of East End commerce, but I am committed to a revitalization of the quirky, creative and uncommon…after all, that’s what made the Hamptons great.”
Read the entire article by Jonathan Willard in LI Pulse
13 October 2009
SOLAR RISES IN THE EAST…. AND HEADS WEST! FEATURED IN THE PRESS
October brings pumpkins, colder temperatures and fewer cars to the East End. This year, it has brought a crop of new Hamptons art spaces westward to Manhattan.
Adding a city location to their Hamptons businesses are Boltax Gallery on Shelter Island, McNeill Art Group of Southampton, James Kennedy of Surface Library in East Hampton and Keszler Gallery of Southampton. Returning for another season of exhibiting in New York City is Solar of East Hampton.
Read the entire article by Pat Rogers in The Press
2 October 2008
ESPERANZA LEON: ILLUMINATING LATIN AMERICAN ART IN THE STAR
Esperanza Leon sat at her desk on a kitchen chair covered in Astro Turf one day last month. “I grew up here in East Hampton, but I was born in Caracas,” she said. The word “Caracas” rolled off her tongue and swirled through the room with a timbre gloriously Latin.
A gallerist, curator, and private art consultant, Ms. Leon is best known for the exhibition venue she founded here in 2001 — Solar Art and Design, where she presides over a lively schedule of shows focused largely, but not exclusively, on Latin American artists.
Read the entire article by Janet Goleas in The East Hampton Star