Jean-Pierre Villafañe took a drag from his cigarette before he introduced himself with an accent that I recognized as my own: Puerto Rican. In September 2022, standing outside of a bar in the East Village, I asked him if he was visiting from the island. He shook his head no and told me that he had been living and working in the city for the past eight years. That night, the now 30-year-old artist was out celebrating the opening of his exhibition “Outside and Aching,” at the ATM Gallery NYC, on the Lower East Side.
The ATM Gallery NYC exhibition displayed Villafañe’s carnival-like paintings of figures mingling in both sensual and bacchanalian ways. His work caught the attention of Michael Cecchi-Azzolina, a New York maître d’ turned restaurateur, who commissioned a mural from Villafañe for his new restaurant in the West Village, Cecchi’s, which opened in July.
