Barry Wolfryd was born in Los Angeles, California but he has conducted the major part of his artistic career in Mexico, where he has lived for the last 40 years. The influences of sixties music from Dylan to Frank Zappa and the New York art scene inspired Wolfryd to carry out his first creative trials. These experiences developed an ideological base that he would bind with the culture by means of historic consciousness and social critique. Wolfryd began his artistic studies in 1972 at Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Connecticut, U.S.A. At 22 years of age he moved to Mexico, arriving in Cholula, Puebla and commencing his studies at the Universidad of the Americas. In 1975 he enrolled at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico. In 1982 he studied at the Chicago Art Institute and in 1984 at the National Institute for the Arts in San Luis Potosi, Mexico.
Since 1985 he has had 35 individual exhibitions and participated in more than 100 exhibitions in galleries and museums in the United States, South America, Japan, Mexico and Europe.
Artistic Statement
“I am a contemporary artist based in Mexico City whose work investigates circumstances in everyday life. Although born in Los Angeles, California I have conducted the major part of my artistic career in Mexico where I have lived for the last 47 years. My work encompasses painting, sculpture in ceramics and glass, object art and graphics. The work focuses on the use of iconographic and popular imagery as the vehicle to critique. My style has some attributes of Surrealism, pop art and expressionism that concerns itself with cynical content and context of the subject matter. It is my pursuit that my work becomes an “absurd” narrative for us. The icons and objects in my work are part of a larger internalization, which catapults us to what is both evident and unpredictable. Even though I explore distinctive themes, the basis for all of my work is the portrayal of elaborate symbols, icons and objects that we recognize consciously or intuitively across the globe. We are all inextricably linked in a chain of popular images that identifies “culture.” Human history is a common story, and because of this, we share the ability to interpret symbolic elements that represent our heritage. My art as a project encompasses working in other countries and cultures. Producing the work in new environments adds more elements to the complex alphabet I have derived from local imagery that becomes universal in the work’s narrative. “
