New works in Miami

2 Dec. 2020

I am excited to participate in the group exhibition, Four Women Artists: At the Crossroads, at Piero Atchugarry Gallery in Miami from December 2, 2020 to January 12, 2021 with a selection of new paintings. A virtual 3D exhibition walk-through is available at this Artland.com link

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION:

Sapar Contemporary presents Four Women Painters: At the Crossroads, an exhibition that highlights new developments in painting in Mexico, Hungary, UK, Russia and Mongolia. The exhibition is curated by Omar Lopez Chahoud and will be presented at the Piero Atchugarry Gallery. This is the fourth exhibition in Piero Atchugarry's PA Takeover program.

The exhibition focuses on paintings that blur the line between figuration and abstraction. The participating artists were carefully chosen to represent different approaches and styles with an emphasis on visual narrative. Storytelling in art has been present for centuries and in many cases has served as a point of reference to understand the social and political structure of past civilizations. The artists in this exhibition—all women—are well aware of their origins and personal histories: Mongolia, Russia, Hungary and Mexico are distinct countries facing similar challenges as a result of globalization. These conditions have brought about technological advances in communication and easy access to information, which results in an approach to artmaking one could call the contemporary homogeneous. Social Media has contributed further to this new direction, shifting artists’ production into ever greater accessibility and availability to anyone, regardless of social status or geographical location. This concept of the crossroads, then, represents a return to the meeting point at which consensus must be reached.

The exhibited works might come across as aesthetically beautiful and poetically embellished, but upon a closer look, a complex set of themes and emotions unravels. Layers upon layers reveal fears of isolation and belonging, further elucidating the creators’ inner concerns and humanity. Additionally, cultural appropriation becomes a means to an end in order to question the ills of society. These female artists reflect upon issues such as economic disadvantage, gender inequality, racism, and environmental concerns, and consumerism. For instance, in the work of Anya Zholud (Russia) and Zsofia Schweger (Hungary), both artists confront and question issues of gender role expectations and address mobility and migration through the metaphors of domestic and public spaces. Uuriintuya Dagvasambuu (Mongolia) appropriates traditional Buddhist motifs and iconography to orchestrate a contemporary narrative about the impact on, and the positioning of women in everyday life in a post-nomadic Mongolian culture. Lucia Vidales (Mexico) makes paintings that are loose expressionistic renderings of the human figure. With these fluid figures she re-envisions the language of painting and at the same time questions an old religious narrative as they tell a story most people encountered in medieval imagery. Vidales’s work gives birth to strange hybrid creatures in a space that echoes hundreds of years of civilization and traditions. The artists tell us a story of who we are and where we come from, and, perhaps—in presenting a scenario for a hopeful, better future - where we are going.

ABOUT THE NEW WORKS:

In my Miami paintings, I share a selection of interior scenes that I observed during my stay at Fountainhead Residency between December 2019 and January 2020. Taking my cue from the city’s pastel colours and its seductive, joyful Floridiana, I set out to identify and document moments of wonder. I was fascinated by (and could relate to) the palpable notion of nostalgia in one of the most transient cities of America. 

Based on sketches and photos I collected while I was in Miami, I made these paintings after I returned home to London, mostly during the strict pandemic-related restrictions of 2020. Throughout the painting process, I couldn’t help but feel nostalgia for the time I had spent in Miami.

The paintings take real, observed Miami spaces as their subject, each of which is noted in their titles: the kitchen of the Fountainhead Residency house, a piano in a Miami home, a living room of a Miami guest house, a fireplace with a taxidermy bobcat from the Deering Estate (a house museum), as well as a scene from a taco place on the beach (Lolo’s Cantina) and another from Jimmy’s Eastside Diner (near Fountainhead).

Images and further details of the paintings are available at this link: zsofiaschweger.com/art-project/miami-impressions/