Ariel Vergez

Ariel Vergez, known as BlackBrain, is a pop-noir artist who layers allegory, pop culture and history into new and sometimes bizarre stories, bringing color to the mundane, dialogue to the mute and personality to the dull. Born in the Dominican Republic and raised in Florida, he began his training at Design and Architecture Senior High in Miami and studied industrial design at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

His design career took him to award-winning firms including Hasbro, Takara, Eleven and Karten Design, where he was recognized with a CES Innovation Award and an IDA Residential Sustainable Design award and was named the 2009 IDA product designer of the year. He has since returned to his first love, art, painting murals around the world, many of them in Los Angeles and Miami, and working with philanthropic groups such as Generosity.org on ending the world's water crisis. He is co-owner of Vergez, Inc., an arts-centric design collective that creates high-concept environments.

In 2023 he became mentor artist for the early career residency run by moCa Cleveland and the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center, and in 2024 moCa showed SCRD GRDN, an immersive painting installation he made with the residency's artists.