Gallery Juno is pleased to present a new series of paintings by artist Rebeca Mendoza, whose large-scale works reflect a dialogue between the internal, emotive driving forces of visual creation and the plasticity and physicality of paint and canvas.
The mixed-media paintings in Serie Rosa attempt, on one level at least, to forge an expressive truth… a concurrence of the metaphysical spirit of the artist – of emotion and intuition- and the formal language of art – of painterly drawing and shape-making – to be able to communicate and make concrete that which is intangible.
These dynamic works are a coalescence of soft forms and vigorously applied paint on raw canvas. Through gestural abstraction and a vibrating patchwork of color and tonal nuances, the drama of Mendoza’s inner vision plays out. Pale pink, for which the series takes its title, is the star here, casting a serene, warm shadow over the proceedings and immediately affecting one’s experience of the paintings. Pulsing irregular shapes and bold linear strokes float in open spaces and merge together to form a poetic visual fantasy. Loose, broken horizontal lines of a deeper, stronger tone – often black – bisect, dissect, and seemingly cleave these harmonious amalgams, these pleasant reveries, in two… like the dark trail of a smoking missile piercing the clouds as it streaks through the open sky.
Mendoza’s painterly gestures and shape-making, combined with the perceptual effects of color, line and form… of gravity and levity, of the drama of light and shadow, all contribute to the tension of the pictorial space, the ambiguity of reference, and ultimately the synthesizing of individual experience to visual metaphor and concrete emotive sentiment. If there is a truth, it is, with Serie Rosa, that Mendoza is an artist engaged in a work and process that translates this experience with great intensity and refinement.
Rebeca Mendoza was born in the Buenos Ares in Argentina. She is a graduate of the Prilidiano Pueyrredón National School of Fine Art. Mendoza has worked closely with celebrated Argentine artists such as sculptor Aurelio Macchi, and painter Alberto Delmonte.
GALLERY JUNO
594 Broadway, Suite 202, New York, NY 10012
Tel: (212) 431-1515 info@galleryjuno.com
REBECA MENDOZA
“Beyond Words”
November 7 – December 12, 2014
Opening Reception: Friday, November 7, 6:00 – 8:00PM
The language of painting changes with history, as it is testimony of the present and cannot escape current circumstances. I think, however, that the message that transcends of an artist is the one that can go beyond the present and touch a part of eternity. Humanity advances and so does art. Man evolves and so does the human mind. Therefore, art, genuine expression, inevitably reflects that.
Aesthetic pleasure, emotional stability, no illusionism, pursuit of purity, of balance, of the essence, of the least I need to “be”… A stroke, a black pencil, the legacy of my gesture on the plane, the most pure graphism after all that has been learned, the power of the primitive essence after many years of painting the apparent, the superficial. There is no greater pleasure than the genuine expression as we return. I spent years drawing bodies so that the line spoke from the body of the model, the flesh. Today the focus of my work returns to myself, tells my own story for those who are willing to share it.
www.galleryjuno.com/rebeca-mendoza
Please join us Friday, November 7th from 6-8 PM to meet Rebeca Mendoza.
NEW YORK, NY – Artemisa Gallery is pleased to announce the show “Being-Doing” by Rebeca Mendoza. The exhibition will be on view at the gallery from January 29th to February 28th, 2015. The artist will be present at the opening reception and for private showings.
The work of Mendoza and Vilar have something essential in common. In both of them, the brush seems to be the extension of the arm, mind and soul of the artist. Both artists focus on their creative process and it is their intuition and playfulness that drive their brushstrokes and the colors present in their work.
Rebeca Mendoza paints without a preconceived idea; in her work there is a synchronicity between emotion and action. She lets her inner energy flow, and that energy guides her intuition. Mendoza overlaps layers of color, forms and meaning. The upper layers exhibit traces of the unique gestural intervention of the artist with shapes, stains and lines; the inner ones suggest archetypes that the viewer, intrigued, seeks to uncover.
Valeria Vilar’s work takes the spectator to a world of innocence and fantasy. Her strokes move freely in the paper, where she mixes chalkboards, pencils and acrylics, generating ethereal paintings that remind us of childhood tales and happy endings.
Artemisa Gallery, co-founded by Mariana de Diego Broda and Vanina Waizmann, specializes in Contemporary Latin American Art.
Hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11 am – 6 pm and by appointment
For press or sales inquiries, please contact the gallery directors at 212.929.4506 or by email at:
Vanina Waizmann: vanina@artemisagallery.com Mariana de Diego: mariana@artemisagallery.com
http://www.artemisagallery.com
Los vestigios de la pintura señalan ante nosotros caminos variados y guiados por concepciones profundas que sobreviven el paso del tiempo. Pero, por suerte, estas guías son lo suficientemente porosas para permitir nuevas propuestas o búsquedas. La apertura de un espacio personal dentro del caos de la multiplicidad de imágenes y sentidos es una tarea ética, estética y espiritual muy compleja. En este sentido la obra de Rebeca Mendoza se afirma, con la autoridad que irradia una experiencia singular, en un campo tan revisado como es el de la abstracción, en el cual se torna difícil la elaboración de nuevos paradigmas. En ella subyace en bruto la potencia de la liberación que detenta el arte en tanto práctica y le devuelve en espejo una imagen íntima junto a la apertura de una búsqueda personal y obstinada. Su repertorio es un homenaje a sus referentes, pero sus estrategias, sus formas de construir sentido, brillan de vitalidad y renovación. El trabajo en sus obras responde a un modelo mixto que se mezcla y se alimenta en el proceso de la experiencia pictórica. Es intuitivo y consciente, una síntesis entre la tempestad de expresionismo abstracto y la lucidez explicita de color field painting. Su trabajo sobre el campo plano de la pintura se basa en la superposición de capas de formas y sentido. Las capas superiores exhiben registros del paso gestual de la artista en formas orgánicas, manchas y líneas, texturas veloces que desafían al plano y afirman la presencia física de la pintura. Las capas internas, entre grafismos y símbolos, sugieren arquetipos que el espectador, intrigado, busca develar. Esta tensión que genera la lectura entre la abstracción y las pistas de un sentido sin resolver modifica el acuerdo tradicional, cada vez más inactivo, entre el artista y su público. Las presentes obras vuelven a la contemplación inocente en una experiencia dinámica y excitante.
Máximo Jacoby
Miembro de la Asociación Argentina de Críticos de Arte (AACA)