New Work by Andreina Davila and Maritza Ruiz-Kim
Curated by Toni Gentilli
RECEPTION: Aug. 9th, 6pm – 9 pm
August 9th through September 14th, 2014
The Compound Studio Artists Gallery – Oakland, CA
Artists Andreina Davila and Maritza Ruiz-Kim explore individuals’ self-representation and collective cultural identity. By using innovative interpretations of portraiture, they simultaneously parse out and conjoin idiosyncratic and universal aspects of the human personality.
The works of both Davila and Ruiz-Kim are rich with layers. Beyond the physical interleaving of materials like wax, acrylic paint, ink, and metal leaf, the two artists’ routes to their final pieces are stratified processes in and of themselves.
In the [I Am] series, Davila invites visitors to her website to participate in the creative act by taking a simple survey, which is then transformed into a painting through the artist’s own unique interpretation of the subject’s self-selected source information and imagery. Davila’s collaborative process not only entwines the artist and her subjects, but ultimately the individuals she works with are melded into a larger investigation of our personal and collective descriptions of self.
From left to right: [I Am] Snowdrop – Identity of Elena Caron, [I Am] a Writer – Identity of Heather Gabel, and [I Am] Light – Identity of Karen Josephson
While contemplating the basic concepts and forms of what constitute portraits in her project Core, Ruiz-Kim creates abstract monoprints of encaustic wax and pigment impressed directly from the viscous media into paper. She then makes a series of iterations of the original in varying media including photography and video. Her continued work with the same image considers the various ways the self is internally understood then subsequently projected outward for understanding.
Although their work is formally different, Davila and Ruiz-Kim both employ abstraction to express the unarticulated aspects of personality that realistic portraiture alone cannot. Moreover, this approach allows space to actively engage the ultimate paradox of all human existence; our lives are at once a singular experience and an accretion of similar experiences repeated ad infinitum throughout the course of our diverse history.
~ Toni Gentilli, Curator