Biography

CARLOS GUTIERREZ-SOLANA is an artist, curator, arts administrator, museum professional, birdhouse maker, and gay man.

As an artist he has exhibited his work and site-specific installations and presented his performances throughout the country since 1972. Originally trained as a figurative/representational painter most of the work has focused primarily – though not exclusively, on the body, specifically the male body, gender, sexuality, space manipulation, mark-making, and AIDS. He has worked, and continues to work, with a variety of materials formats and genres including (but not necessarily restricted to): painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, theater, dance, glass, collage, text, and computer imaging, and now birdhouses.

As a curator he has developed numerous exhibitions and events in a wide range of subjects and media (including hooked rugs; ceramics; architecture; fashion, drawing, installation, photography, painting, sculpture, and AIDS) on both coasts and throughout New York State, but he is probably best known as “that guy who did a miniature golf course created by artists for Artists Space.” Exhibits he has created have been presented at the University Art Museum, Berkeley, CA; The Queens Museum, NY; The Newark Museum, NJ; The Munson Williams Proctor Institute, Utica, NY; Jamestown Community College, NY; Lake George Arts Project, NY; and Artists Space and the New York Transit Museum, both in NY, among others. 

As an arts administrator and museum professional he has been an exhibit designer/fabricator for the Staten Island Children’s Museum; curator for the Queens Museum; director of the Visual Artists Program for the New York State Council on the Arts – for 10 years; artistic and executive director of Artists Space, and deputy director for the New York Transit Museum. He’s also lectured extensively on a variety of subjects and served on numerous panels throughout the country. 

As a gay man he’s been out since 1970 and was diagnosed HIV+ in 1989. He has been asymptomatic with an undetectable viral load for many years. He is single and leading a happy, productive life.