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| Installation view |
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| Untitled (Kerel's Self Portrait #53 Acrylic and medium on paper 29 1/2" X 43 1/2" 2016 |
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Untitled (Happy Bandits #44)
Acrylic and medium on canvas, metal frame and light Variable dimensions 2016 |
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| Untitled (Kerel's Self Portrait #53 Acrylic and medium on paper 29 1/2" x 43 1/2" 2016 |
Artery Art Space proudly presents “Collective Memory” from September 10 to October 1, 2016 featuring mixed media work and sculptural elements, embroidered textiles, paintings and works on paper, by Jon Cuyson, Arvin Flores, Kat Medina, and Tanya Villanueva. Reflecting on the shuffling diversity of aesthetic manner to plumb the range of subjects and interpretation, Collective Memory explores the notion of pastiche in artistic production to instigate genuine insights apart from formal parody, to become another space and tactic in developing alternate philosophies along with the formation of common cultural consciousness.
Jon Cuyson creates a constellation of abstract tableux utilizing elements of modernism: its histories, its personalities, its frailties, and its styles, through borrowed forms from theater, readymade and personal objects that function allegorically. This mise-en-scene suggests a memory of modernism as a series of scripted gestures to be arranged, performed, and endlessly repeated. Presenting new figurative paintings using an expressionist trope, Arvin Flores portrays the iconic image of an idiosyncratic pop icon that continues to pervade the collective memory, turning media spectacle into a radical cultural performance that authenticates alienated reality with a passion for the aesthetic. Through a series of textile work called “Its Trash Until There’s a Minder”, Kat Medina embroiders text that suggestively correspond with random textile samples used for upholstery, nominally designating value back to ordinary material like subconscious truth brooding beneath the surface. In here she ponders on the words: “Jungle Fervor” (textile has animals and tribal patterns), “Steal Life” (a textile with pomegranates and leaves), “In the room” (the sample has a full-bodied elephant taking half of the composition), and, “Subtle Pressure” (Geometric pattern in rich and deep colors of green and red). Tanya Villanueva explores gesture and material with smudges and oozes of glittering membranes brandishing the walls like memorials to an ecstatic evening encounter. As part of her artistic process, Villanueva employs the method of embellishment and artificiality as a means of acting out her ideas about reality, edited memories and the discrepancies in between.
