" [The architect] background is evident in Ángel’s collages, constructed from snippets of printed text. Arranged in regular patterns, the assemblages contrast the bright colors of magazines with the blacks and grays of newspapers. The tidiness, however, is ironic. Close inspection reveals that the words have been cut from accounts of war, corruption and other iniquities. Ángel’s goal is not merely to correlate chaos and order, but also to question how the media trim complex events into simple stories."
"Among Ángel’s other works are mixed-media impressionist renderings of bicyclists, equestrians and baseball players. These pictures are featured at Adah Rose Gallery, along with one landscape in a similar style. Evocative of strength and motion, the images celebrate the physical, if not always the human. Ángel’s bicyclists are brawny and dominating, perched on undersized two-wheelers, yet his horsemen are upstaged by their steeds, which seem built for power rather than for speed."
Mark Jenkins
Art Critic
The Washington Post, Washington DC, April 2015
“Artist, art critic, and cultural manager, Félix Ángel presented in the main exhibition space of ArteXArte gallery, in Buenos Aires, the exhibition Arqueologías de Papel, curated by Eduardo Medici. The show featured collages and collage photo-editions, fragments, colors and textures in images excerpted from the media to problematize his relationship with them and allow the viewer a second reading. The artist calls into question the accelerated rate of information in the world around us, composing his works with stripes and bands that have its origins in scraps of magazines, newspapers, posters and advertisements. Thus, he arrived to a kind of geometry that generates angles, repetition and symbols, plays with illusion, and debates information.”
Victoria Verlichack
Art Historian, Critic, Winner of the National Critic´s Award, Buenos Aires, Argentina Arte al Día, International, No. 128, 2009
“Felix Angel describe su trabajo expuesto en la galeria ArtexArte, Fundación Alfonso y Luz Castillo en Buenos Aires bajo el título sugestivo de ”Arqueologías de Papel.” La disciplina está relacionada con lo solido, lo volumétrico, la reconstrucción de templos o laberintos del pasado. Como un arqueólogo desmenuza los vestigios pero reconstruye, en un marco totalizador los indicios dispersos. El papel es signo de fragilidad y el uso de folletos o revistas, -medios de comunicación o de información- , le dan el carácter social de pieza de cambio o intercambios. Bajo la necesidad del hombre de vivir la actualidad, de asimilar con rapidez los procesos del presente y la velocidad. Un desmenuzamiento que se entronca con estructuras arquetípicas de la mente: la cruz, el laberinto e incluso visiones aéreas que mas allá de los títulos o elementos fotográficos minuciosamente elegidos y nos trasladan hacia otro espacio o hacia lo imprevisto. Como si hubiera más dimensiones de las que el mismo artista desea controlar. Allí encontramos una nueva contradicción entre lo dado por los datos y lo latente: una revelación a posteriori, donde el espectador interviene para llenarlo con el contenido de su propia experiencia. Hay una narrativa además que se define subterráneamente agregando mas dimensiones a la lectura posible de la superficie. Informacion- a través de la imagen realista-, y vacío…, los espacios intercalados se entroncan como los mosaicos de un friso o quizás los ladrillos frágiles de una construcción imaginaria.”
Susana Sulic
Art Critic, Artist, Paris, France, 2009
“The bright, shiny colors of glossy magazines interact with the opaque, velvet tonality of black and white daily periodicals, unfolding Angel’s aesthetic discourse. Photos are clipped and accumulated over a period of time by theme, sometimes taking many weeks. The assemblage and paste up of these small surfaces on acid-free cardboard generate new images, which are cut into little pieces, like tiles, and then regrouped in an orderly fashion, as in ancient mosaics or modern geometric composition.
Hues and textures capture our eye and attract us. Only when we penetrate “inside” the work do the gathered fragments connect with our memory and we understand the message, perceiving a notion of reality that sometimes we wish to forget.
Ángel´s recent work is a process that goes from de-constructing to re-constructing; we think we have a perception of something and connect certain visual patterns. The final effect may be disconcerting but, at the same time, it is highly evocative and uplifting.”
Irma Arestizábal
Cultural Secretary of the Instituto Italo-Latinoamericano, Rome
Curator of the Latin American Pavillion at the 50th, 51st, 52nd, and 53rd Venice Biennial
Rome, Italy, January 2008
“The beauty in this new series by Félix Ángel does not disguise its provocative character. The transformation of the relationship between image and text determines its syntax, that is, the formal surface of the collage, while its content - but not the subject - inevitably links voice and sight, creating a "visual commentary" about whatever he has selected and organized in a new context. He creates an ambivalent space ruled by an unpredictable structure construed by strongly emphasized chromatic sensations that metaphorically and symbolically circle around topics that intrigue him. The fragments of paper recomposed by color association, texture and intrinsic symbolism, acquire a sign-like value on the supporting surface. In the development of the collage, the elements incorporated configure a pictorial discourse of abstract representation. The artist resorts to these resources and his own experience to produce a work that responds to our most current and contemporary reality.”
Bélgica Rodríguez
Former Director of the National Gallery of Venezuela; the Art Museum of the Americas (OAS), in Washington; and President of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), in Paris.
Caracas, Venezuela, January 2008
“Multifacético, Ángel es arquitecto, pintor, grabador, escritor, promotor cultural, crítico, investigador y curador especializado en el arte de América Latina, tareas todas en las que ha desarrollado una intensa y fructífera labor a lo largo de tres décadas. En esta ocasión (Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima) ha sabido desdoblarse, tomar distancia de su calidad de artista y, asumiendo criterio estrictamente curatorial, seleccionar y reunir con acierto, un conjunto que, pese a la diversidad temática y cierta lejanía temporal, logra presentarse a cabalidad, más que con una propuesta lineal o unívoca, con el instinto expresivo y la fuerza de una convicción profunda del arte como posibilidad y necesidad singular.¨
Élida Román
Historiadora, Crítica
El Comercio, Lima, Perú, 2003
“De un temperamento reservado y poco convencional, Félix Ángel prefirió a una retrospectiva –que sin embargo se justificaría plenamente (en el Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima), un simple ¨muestrario¨. Más que una selección antológica, en la que pudo incluir proyectos de murales –ejecutados para el Metro de Medellín, optó por presentar diferentes facetas de su oficio, consideradas por él como fundamentales: el dibujo, la pintura y el grabado. Queremos subrayar la vertiente gráfica, cada vez más postergada en el arte contemporáneo. Por el contrario, el artista, oriundo de Medellín, se ha apasionado por la estampa, sumando a los cortes enérgicos del linóleo, el colorido y la tersura de la serigrafía….El caudal expresivo dicta la estructura. Un colorido fauvista marcha su independencia. Luego, omnipresentes, monumentalidad y dinamismo prescinden de grandes formatos. Es una serie de singular maestría.”
Marianne de Tolentino
Presidenta de la Asociación Dominicana de Críticos de Arte, Historiadora
“Félix Ángel, artista Colombiano, curador y dirigente cultural”, HOY
Santo Domingo, República Domincana, 2003
“Cruzando Fronteras/Crossing Boundaries” exhibits six D.C. area artists of Latin American origin. Much contemporary Latin American art is figurative a trend vigorously represented by the work of Colombian artist Félix Ángel. His large “Composition in Brown and Gray,” features an unmistakably Mestizo male, against a huge white horse. Using iconography that speaks of masculine power, Angel’s figures are not victims. On the contrary, these are images of empowerment and healing, well designed and strongly painted.”
Claudia Rousseau
Art Critic, The Gazette, Maryland, U.S.A., 2003
Félix Ángel uses the figure as a declaration of empowerment. His athletic images speak of masculine prowess and individual struggles. His paintings are boldly designed and almost confrontational in their lack of foreground. His use of blacks and grays simplifies the forms while adding intensity to the whole. He speaks of his work as metaphors. His occasional use of humor helps to temper the imposing images.”
Kay McCrohan
Chair, Art Department, Montgomery College, Maryland, U.S.A., 2003
“I must confess that I was surprised when I saw (Félix Angel’s) recent prints, drawings and paintings. The images are full of energy and movement while still maintaining a visual intensity that I recognized in his works of twenty eight years ago. His technique has become looser, relying more on the content of the image to evoke a dynamic that I had not seen in his earlier work. Salisbury University is privileged to present Félix Ángel to his University Community. I am sure that visitors to the exhibition will leave the show with great insight into the world around them through Félix´s eyes.”
Kenneth Basile
Director, Cultural Affairs and Museum Programs
Salisbury State University, Maryland, U.S.A., 2002
Catalogue of the exhibition Félix Ángel: Selected Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 1990-2002,
Fulton Hall Art Gallery, Salisbury State University, Maryland, U.S.A.
“Félix Ángel is both a curator and an artist, and the Riverside Art Museum is currently exhibition evidence of both of his talents. The Riverside Museum opens both an exhibition of his own work today, titled “Félix Ángel: Painting, Drawing, and Linocuts” that demonstrates Ángel spare but emotionally powerful style, along with a collection of graphic art that Angel has curated. Angel’s strength lies in his ability to construct images that are simple and yet not overly reductionist. He suggests far more than he says…..as if they require our presence to be finished.”
Devora L. Knaff
Art Critic, The Press Enterprise, Riverside, California, U.S.A, 2002
“The new Metro System of Medellín (Colombia) has established a new order for traffic, and is the most defined spatial experience in the City; now we can appreciate our urban space through the unique element of speed. The placement of Félix Angel’s mural at Stadium Station respond with intelligence to these premises, and the use of ceramic tile endow the image of the bicyclist with limpid forcefulness. Slapping a gigantic image on an empty wall is not, it itself, urban art; the artist has to respect the environment that belongs to the passerby and not infringe on our freedom as we move about the urban landscape. The discretion with which Félix Ángel has designed and incorporated his mural into the new rhythm of the City, remind us of forgotten aesthetic values.”
" [The architect] background is evident in Ángel’s collages, constructed from snippets of printed text. Arranged in regular patterns, the assemblages contrast the bright colors of magazines with the blacks and grays of newspapers. The tidiness, however, is ironic. Close inspection reveals that the words have been cut from accounts of war, corruption and other iniquities. Ángel’s goal is not merely to correlate chaos and order, but also to question how the media trim complex events into simple stories."
"Among Ángel’s other works are mixed-media impressionist renderings of bicyclists, equestrians and baseball players. These pictures are featured at Adah Rose Gallery, along with one landscape in a similar style. Evocative of strength and motion, the images celebrate the physical, if not always the human. Ángel’s bicyclists are brawny and dominating, perched on undersized two-wheelers, yet his horsemen are upstaged by their steeds, which seem built for power rather than for speed."
Mark Jenkins
Art Critic
The Washington Post, Washington DC, April 2015
“Artist, art critic, and cultural manager, Félix Ángel presented in the main exhibition space of ArteXArte gallery, in Buenos Aires, the exhibition Arqueologías de Papel, curated by Eduardo Medici. The show featured collages and collage photo-editions, fragments, colors and textures in images excerpted from the media to problematize his relationship with them and allow the viewer a second reading. The artist calls into question the accelerated rate of information in the world around us, composing his works with stripes and bands that have its origins in scraps of magazines, newspapers, posters and advertisements. Thus, he arrived to a kind of geometry that generates angles, repetition and symbols, plays with illusion, and debates information.”
Victoria Verlichack
Art Historian, Critic, Winner of the National Critic´s Award, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Arte al Día, International, No. 128, 2009
“Felix Angel describe su trabajo expuesto en la galeria ArtexArte, Fundación Alfonso y Luz Castillo en Buenos Aires bajo el título sugestivo de ”Arqueologías de Papel.” La disciplina está relacionada con lo solido, lo volumétrico, la reconstrucción de templos o laberintos del pasado. Como un arqueólogo desmenuza los vestigios pero reconstruye, en un marco totalizador los indicios dispersos. El papel es signo de fragilidad y el uso de folletos o revistas, -medios de comunicación o de información- , le dan el carácter social de pieza de cambio o intercambios. Bajo la necesidad del hombre de vivir la actualidad, de asimilar con rapidez los procesos del presente y la velocidad. Un desmenuzamiento que se entronca con estructuras arquetípicas de la mente: la cruz, el laberinto e incluso visiones aéreas que mas allá de los títulos o elementos fotográficos minuciosamente elegidos y nos trasladan hacia otro espacio o hacia lo imprevisto. Como si hubiera más dimensiones de las que el mismo artista desea controlar. Allí encontramos una nueva contradicción entre lo dado por los datos y lo latente: una revelación a posteriori, donde el espectador interviene para llenarlo con el contenido de su propia experiencia. Hay una narrativa además que se define subterráneamente agregando mas dimensiones a la lectura posible de la superficie. Informacion- a través de la imagen realista-, y vacío…, los espacios intercalados se entroncan como los mosaicos de un friso o quizás los ladrillos frágiles de una construcción imaginaria.”
Susana Sulic
Art Critic, Artist, Paris, France, 2009
“The bright, shiny colors of glossy magazines interact with the opaque, velvet tonality of black and white daily periodicals, unfolding Angel’s aesthetic discourse. Photos are clipped and accumulated over a period of time by theme, sometimes taking many weeks. The assemblage and paste up of these small surfaces on acid-free cardboard generate new images, which are cut into little pieces, like tiles, and then regrouped in an orderly fashion, as in ancient mosaics or modern geometric composition.
Hues and textures capture our eye and attract us. Only when we penetrate “inside” the work do the gathered fragments connect with our memory and we understand the message, perceiving a notion of reality that sometimes we wish to forget.
Ángel´s recent work is a process that goes from de-constructing to re-constructing; we think we have a perception of something and connect certain visual patterns. The final effect may be disconcerting but, at the same time, it is highly evocative and uplifting.”
Irma Arestizábal
Cultural Secretary of the Instituto Italo-Latinoamericano, Rome
Curator of the Latin American Pavillion at the 50th, 51st, 52nd, and 53rd Venice Biennial
Rome, Italy, January 2008
“The beauty in this new series by Félix Ángel does not disguise its provocative character. The transformation of the relationship between image and text determines its syntax, that is, the formal surface of the collage, while its content - but not the subject - inevitably links voice and sight, creating a "visual commentary" about whatever he has selected and organized in a new context. He creates an ambivalent space ruled by an unpredictable structure construed by strongly emphasized chromatic sensations that metaphorically and symbolically circle around topics that intrigue him. The fragments of paper recomposed by color association, texture and intrinsic symbolism, acquire a sign-like value on the supporting surface. In the development of the collage, the elements incorporated configure a pictorial discourse of abstract representation. The artist resorts to these resources and his own experience to produce a work that responds to our most current and contemporary reality.”
Bélgica Rodríguez
Former Director of the National Gallery of Venezuela; the Art Museum of the Americas (OAS), in Washington; and President of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), in Paris.
Caracas, Venezuela, January 2008
“Multifacético, Ángel es arquitecto, pintor, grabador, escritor, promotor cultural, crítico, investigador y curador especializado en el arte de América Latina, tareas todas en las que ha desarrollado una intensa y fructífera labor a lo largo de tres décadas. En esta ocasión (Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima) ha sabido desdoblarse, tomar distancia de su calidad de artista y, asumiendo criterio estrictamente curatorial, seleccionar y reunir con acierto, un conjunto que, pese a la diversidad temática y cierta lejanía temporal, logra presentarse a cabalidad, más que con una propuesta lineal o unívoca, con el instinto expresivo y la fuerza de una convicción profunda del arte como posibilidad y necesidad singular.¨
Élida Román
Historiadora, Crítica
El Comercio, Lima, Perú, 2003
“De un temperamento reservado y poco convencional, Félix Ángel prefirió a una retrospectiva –que sin embargo se justificaría plenamente (en el Museo Pedro de Osma, Lima), un simple ¨muestrario¨. Más que una selección antológica, en la que pudo incluir proyectos de murales –ejecutados para el Metro de Medellín, optó por presentar diferentes facetas de su oficio, consideradas por él como fundamentales: el dibujo, la pintura y el grabado. Queremos subrayar la vertiente gráfica, cada vez más postergada en el arte contemporáneo. Por el contrario, el artista, oriundo de Medellín, se ha apasionado por la estampa, sumando a los cortes enérgicos del linóleo, el colorido y la tersura de la serigrafía….El caudal expresivo dicta la estructura. Un colorido fauvista marcha su independencia. Luego, omnipresentes, monumentalidad y dinamismo prescinden de grandes formatos. Es una serie de singular maestría.”
Marianne de Tolentino
Presidenta de la Asociación Dominicana de Críticos de Arte, Historiadora
“Félix Ángel, artista Colombiano, curador y dirigente cultural”, HOY
Santo Domingo, República Domincana, 2003
“Cruzando Fronteras/Crossing Boundaries” exhibits six D.C. area artists of Latin American origin. Much contemporary Latin American art is figurative a trend vigorously represented by the work of Colombian artist Félix Ángel. His large “Composition in Brown and Gray,” features an unmistakably Mestizo male, against a huge white horse. Using iconography that speaks of masculine power, Angel’s figures are not victims. On the contrary, these are images of empowerment and healing, well designed and strongly painted.”
Claudia Rousseau
Art Critic, The Gazette, Maryland, U.S.A., 2003
Félix Ángel uses the figure as a declaration of empowerment. His athletic images speak of masculine prowess and individual struggles. His paintings are boldly designed and almost confrontational in their lack of foreground. His use of blacks and grays simplifies the forms while adding intensity to the whole. He speaks of his work as metaphors. His occasional use of humor helps to temper the imposing images.”
Kay McCrohan
Chair, Art Department, Montgomery College, Maryland, U.S.A., 2003
“I must confess that I was surprised when I saw (Félix Angel’s) recent prints, drawings and paintings. The images are full of energy and movement while still maintaining a visual intensity that I recognized in his works of twenty eight years ago. His technique has become looser, relying more on the content of the image to evoke a dynamic that I had not seen in his earlier work. Salisbury University is privileged to present Félix Ángel to his University Community. I am sure that visitors to the exhibition will leave the show with great insight into the world around them through Félix´s eyes.”
Kenneth Basile
Director, Cultural Affairs and Museum Programs
Salisbury State University, Maryland, U.S.A., 2002
Catalogue of the exhibition Félix Ángel: Selected Paintings, Drawings and Prints, 1990-2002,
Fulton Hall Art Gallery, Salisbury State University, Maryland, U.S.A.
“Félix Ángel is both a curator and an artist, and the Riverside Art Museum is currently exhibition evidence of both of his talents. The Riverside Museum opens both an exhibition of his own work today, titled “Félix Ángel: Painting, Drawing, and Linocuts” that demonstrates Ángel spare but emotionally powerful style, along with a collection of graphic art that Angel has curated. Angel’s strength lies in his ability to construct images that are simple and yet not overly reductionist. He suggests far more than he says…..as if they require our presence to be finished.”
Devora L. Knaff
Art Critic, The Press Enterprise, Riverside, California, U.S.A, 2002
“The new Metro System of Medellín (Colombia) has established a new order for traffic, and is the most defined spatial experience in the City; now we can appreciate our urban space through the unique element of speed. The placement of Félix Angel’s mural at Stadium Station respond with intelligence to these premises, and the use of ceramic tile endow the image of the bicyclist with limpid forcefulness. Slapping a gigantic image on an empty wall is not, it itself, urban art; the artist has to respect the environment that belongs to the passerby and not infringe on our freedom as we move about the urban landscape. The discretion with which Félix Ángel has designed and incorporated his mural into the new rhythm of the City, remind us of forgotten aesthetic values.”
Darío Ruiz Gómez
Novelist, poet, art, architecture and urbanism critic, Medellín, Colombia, 2001