LOTTI

    Biography

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    Jefreid Lotti (b.1989) is a Cuban born, award winning artist and educator based in Miami, Florida. He holds an MFA degree from the University of Florida and has done artist lectures, residencies and workshops in multiple museums, universities and cultural institutions across the US. Lotti's oeuvre has been exhibited and published professionally for over a decade. Lotti makes primarily oil paintings, monotypes and sculptures. He obsessively represents a multitude of personal interiors with an abundance of impasto oil paint. In 2012, he co-founded the group Serverus with Miguel Saludes and Alvaro Labanino and their project resulted in multiple collaborations and painting centric exhibitions. Through the years his work has been exhibited at the Frost Art Museum, The Trout Museum of Art, WI. The ICA in Miami and the YAA Museum, Davie FL and the Coral Gables Museum. Notable galleries that have exhibited his work include Bernice Steinbaum Gallery, FL,  James May Gallery, WI, and Amat Gallery, FL. He has also exhibited in cultural institutions like The Frank C. Ortis Gallery, Lawton Gallery at UWGB, WI. and The Hollywood Art and Culture Center, FL.  His most recent solo exhibition MECHANICS at the Coral Gables Museum was featured in El Nuevo Herald  and was reviewed in the Palm Beach Arts Paper by Gretel Sarmiento. His works are in numerous private and public collections across the US, including Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, Santa Fe College, Gainesville, FL, The University of Wisconsin Green Bay, WI, the University of Florida galleries, Gainesville, FL, the University of Miami Business school, Miami, FL and the Coral Gables Museum, Coral Gables, FL. Most recently he started the duo Convivir with his life partner Krystal T. Rodriguez and they completed a residency and exhibition at Bucknell University.     

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Artist Statement

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    Essential Work (2020 - Present) is a series of observational paintings of the mechanic shop where I work a full time job. These oil paintings of lone objects are done in isolation and after closing time. The shop being an "essential business" remained open during the worst of the pandemic, while most of the world was on lockdown. I ceased on the opportunity to use the space as a studio and subject matter. These paintings are as much about cars and formalism as they are about becoming resilient through challenges and isolation. I also see these works as a homage to the blue collar workers that keep the modern world running. Moreover, making oily paintings of the greasy metallic surfaces of the shop just made sense. The time constraint of working after closing time (5:00-8:00 PM) and the heat of an unventilated closed wearhouse, contributed to the speed of my gestures, the use of colors straight from the tube, and utilizing the white of the canvas as part of the value structure. As the series evolves there are inexhaustible possibilities of new forms and compositions since the tools of both trades, painting & mechanics have started to interact creating unusual pairings. This juxtaposition allows the objects to act as figures, still-lifes and landscapes of this unfamiliar metallic universe that is my daily environment.

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