If we believe what some people have been saying, we might be at the tail end of the pandemic — where travel has been one of the hardest-hit aspects of human life. Many found themselves circling small enclosures to get that semblance of mobility.
Now a small group of artists: Katrina Cuenca, Meghan Hildebrand, and Gabby Prado are gathered in a pocket garden, waiting to show us their recent adventures in art; with twists and turns that bring you to a magical place.
As if an apparition, Katrina Cuenca’s talismans appear to both grow out of nowhere as well as remain floating, suspended in time and space. Grown out of the notion of sympathetic magic, these pieces flesh out the artist’s psyche: transformed and evolved into arrangements of flow and fold — a prayer reaching out to its viewer to hold hands and walk a flowery path together.
Nothing is as wondrous as a breathtaking sight. Meghan Hildebrand zooms out and depicts what appear to be landscapes from afar. Her lively palette permeates the canvas in various edges, strokes, marks, and forms. What seems to be more curious here is that over time, it becomes as if a microcosm — a tiny kingdom hidden in the bushes.
Part of a continued exploration of her synesthesia, Gabby Prado traverses the loud and soft of beats and keys – think kalimba and piano, Tchaikovsky and deep house. Think of the paintings as a new kind of notation that only Prado understands, but the organic composition and the spectrum of color draw us in to appreciate and marvel at these “bouquets” — a flora of sound into sight.
Contained as a small journey, the exhibition is framed as a walk through a garden. Eighteen small works by Gabby Prado wrap around the space – a figurative path that goes from start to finish. Each point of view is at least a sight of the three artists in bloom. Upon entering the space, key works by Katrina Cuenca, Meghan Hildebrand, and Prado greet from the further end of the gallery, as if a tree in the distance beckoning with its fruits. Hildebrand’s paintings, with their pastoral imagery done with jolting pinks and purples, are reminiscent of a corner in a garden where one has discovered a captivating scene only possible through nature’s doings. Cuenca has blessed the space with two sculptures that dance in the air, a complete reversal of its metallic material. One can think of them as birds that have found refuge amongst the flora and foliage. And in one section of the path, Prado’s small paintings go up and down: six dominant notes matching the beginning of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
From the personal to the experienced to the whimsical, we coped through spaces that seemed small or blunt at first, but over time revealed bends in the path that took us to places we never knew existed in our lives; places that did not need faraway travels.
Exhibition Notes and Exhibition Design by Francisco Lee
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