Artist Statement

Immediate Abstraction

We are interested in how images are made and how they are seen, and the tension between those two states is what we want from the work. 

We do not plan the image. We cannot; the mind is unable. We find it through movement—paint, then the camera, then the file, then more paint. There is pleasure in the creativity of improvisation. It is the same pleasure as playing guitar: we want to invent the line in the moment.

We are seeking an image we already know but have never seen. We often choose the one that stops us first. Always the one that asks us to return. 

Biography

Justin Edward Menendez (b. 1981, Tampa, Florida) is a contemporary visual artist working with traditional painting and digital photography technologies. The practice asks what remains of image, aura, and perception after mediation by the digital screen. Analog painted marks are photographed and reworked until an unforeseen form asserts itself; that form is then returned to a physical surface, printed on aluminum and built up by hand in heavy acrylic. The work is characterized by a consistently bold visual language.

Menendez has shown in group exhibitions with Vedica Art Gallery & Studios in Paris and Mumbai, and presented a solo exhibition at 621 Gallery, Tallahassee. In 2026, they staged two mobile exhibitions in New York City from a glass-box truck, in Chelsea and Midtown. Their work is held in private collections in the United States and abroad. Menendez holds a BA in Cultural Theory from the University of Florida (2003).