Waterbury-LaSalle artist John ‘SinXero’ Beltran sees much more in the abandoned parts of Huntington Free Library than what meets the eye.
He sees opportunity.
The multi-disciplinary artist has just established the first residency in the historic library that dates back to 1891.
While SinXero has primarily set up shop on the building’s third floor, utilizing it as a massive 3,280 square foot studio, overall his inspiration comes from the entire building.
Especially what’s in the 127-year-old basement.
He’s spent most his recent time down there digging up ‘artifacts’ from the 1940s and earlier.
The 48-year-old Waterbury Avenue resident has been preparing for his residency by pulling doors off of furnaces, finding old pieces of the Morris Park Extension racetrack, to even compiling old copies of the newspaper, ‘The Home News.’
By the way, the Yankees won on July 13, 1947 in case you were wondering.
He takes a deep interest in destruction and deterioration, but with a very optimistic spin.
“Everything is in an ongoing flux, things are always changing, that’s the destructive process, but from that is when something new rises,” SinXero said. “I also grew up in the Bronx during the 70s and 80s, destruction is what I lived in,” he added.
SinXero’s critically acclaimed art hangs all around New York City and elsewhere.
From upscale Brooklyn residencies to galleries such as CUSP-NYC. He’s even going to be featured in the publication ARTSY for his unique, texture driven style.
That unique style is a process to say the least. It begins with SinXero making his own ingredients mixed from marble dust, to chemicals, oils and acrylic paints and almost anything that the painter can get his hands on. Like a loaf of bread, his handmade mixtures cause rising and elevation within the paint, thus giving his works the texture that they’re known for.
The process for painting is even more elaborate than that. SinXero works on multiple paintings at a time; partly because he’s racing the clock against his handmade paint drying too quickly and also from having the right amount paint falling from one mounted work onto another, stationed floor-side.
SinXero’s ‘brushes’ are more popularly used for sweeping up dust or removing snow off a car during the winter.
He uses brooms, scrapers, squeegees, exploding spray paint cans and many other household appliances to finish his work.
Although, ‘finished,’ has a different meaning to this artist.
“For me nothing is ever truly finished, once I have a painting completed I chisel the paint off and repurpose it for another work, I do this again and again until the painting tells me to stop,” SinXero said.
People have been astonished at the paintings that SinXero created and then destroyed during his repurposing process.
“That’s what I mean by destruction, just like the Bronx, what was destroyed is now in that flux and being recreated, taking these elements of history that I keep digging up and repurposing them towards a new light is my intention.”
