Last night we were at the well-attended opening reception of Vision & Emotion, a Latin American group show at Diego Salazar Art Gallery (GMAP), a stimulating new space where the works will be on display until October 20.

In April, Diego Salazar moved his antique frame business out of 21-25 44th Avenue in order to turn the space into a gallery. This month, coinciding with Hispanic Heritage Month, the gallery is showing work from 14 artists of Latin American origin. The list of established and emerging artists includes Queens-based creators such as Shaun El C. Leonardo and Rafael O. Gonzalez.

An excited crowd took in the art last night to the music of two-thirds of the Latin jazz trio La Voz de Tres. Delicious refreshments were provided by Pachanga Patterson, Buenos Angie’s, and other local businesses.

Some of the visual highlights included the bodies in motion detailed in Jorge Posada‘s six-foot paintings and the blur of tango dancers in Sanda Llano-Mejia‘s digital prints; the whimsical beetles on flat wallpaper backgrounds in Ragnar Lagerblad‘s paintings and the personality-infused crowds of people in Pietrapiana‘s works; and the shine of Christian Brandner‘s gold leaf-laced paintings and Rafael O. Gonzalez‘s panoramic photos printed onto aluminum sheets.