Miami has long been a complex, tangled landscape, which continues to intrigue and beguile over four generations of visual artists. For Ernesto Kunde, transforming the mangroves, wild birds, and crackled Deco architecture into a physically viable format is a simple process. He displays a keen eye for interpreting his tropical surroundings maintaining a colloquial tone: the vital elements of Miami as a natural and urban biosphere are omnipresent for Kunde, appearing on cuts of canvas, found wood, corrugated aluminum, and stainless steel. He infuses his work with a Pop Art sensibility, choosing highly saturated, contrasting tones with completely opaque shadow. Color gradients and differentials are just barely visible beneath intense layers of paint; the world may not be rendered in such stark appearances, but Kunde remains impressionable as each moment is firmly imprinted onto his media.

 

Ernesto Kunde was born in Paraíso do Sul, Brazil in 1973. After a brief stint re-discovering his family roots in Germany (where he worked in agriculture in Mosbach), Kunde returned to Brazil in 1995. There, he continued his work in agriculture and began his artistic journey by experimenting with works on paper: drawings and controlled coffee stains. In 2006, Kunde moved to Miami, where he found new inspiration in the local environment. Since then, Kunde has expanded his aesthetic focus into painting on a diverse range of surfaces. Kunde has shown extensively throughout South Florida at venues such as the Boca Raton Museum of Art, the Coral Gables Museum, the Cornell Museum in Delray Beach, Miami-Dade College Kendall Gallery, Sardinas Gallery at St. Thomas University, the Art and Culture Center of Hollywood, Arthouse 429 in West Palm Beach and the Little Haiti Cultural Center. He has exhibited his work during Art Basel Miami (at CONTEXT, SCOPE, and SPECTRUM) since 2012 and Wynwood Art Fair since 2013.