Painter, sculptor, and former dancer Gabriela Gil has opened her first New York solo exhibition this week.
The Honduras-born, NYC-based artist showed the first volume of her “Time and Space” series at a private opening in Soho, next to MarieBelle New York.
Gabriela explains, “Timing is important in this project because I am purposely taking advantage of the Covid lockdowns to present this body of work in creative ways.”
The exhibit will run from Thursday, December 3 through Sunday, December 20, 2020.
“I’ve been working on this series for two years,” Gil says. “My previous work was more figurative, and this new series breaks away from the figure completely. This is making way to abstract work that explores line, color, and rhythm.”
Notable attendees included: Gabriela Gil, Maribel Lieberman of MarieBelle New York, Li Jing, Malan Breton, Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin, Stephane Maisonneuve, Adele Nino, Andrey Stanev, Anusha Ricci, Beatriz Barletta, Olga Orellana, Paula Rochette, Samuel Peralta, Natalie Gonzalez, and Michelle Herbert.
In volume one of the series, Gil shows roughly 20 highly detailed miniature sets, inspired by the hand-made nativity scenes she saw as a child in Latin America, each with small paintings.
The miniatures are displayed alongside large-scale paintings from the series.
Despite having worked on the project for years, Gil says that the Covid-19 pandemic recontextualized her vision.
She says that she is leaning into the fact that people have been exposed to high levels digital content during the Covid-19 lockdown – the time during which she created the second half of the series.
“We are all consuming content on this tiny screen,” she says. “So, the idea was to create a play on perception. A lot of my paintings in this series are really big. I wanted the virtual exhibition itself to become an artwork.”
Gil has moved throughout South and North America for her entire life and that “constant migration” shaped her multicultural perspective and nurtured her “interest in art as a way to transcribe personal experience using a unique visual language.”
This series is heavily inspired by Latin America – its colors, its textures, its dances, its nature, and its warmth.
However, I wouldn’t say this series encompasses my whole Latin American experience. Maybe another way to put it is that I am exploring my roots or going back to my roots with Time and Space, with the intention of building from there.
“I thought, if we can’t actually go somewhere physically, what is a way we can travel to a different place without really going?” she says. “And if I can only show the content virtually, on the tiny screen, then why not flip it on its head, go all the way and do something that would be harder to do in real life at a physical showing.”
Photo credit: 1) Gabriela Gil, and Adele Nino. 2) Maribel Lieberman. 3) Andrey Stanev, and Anusha Ricci. 4) Beatrice Barletta. 5) Li Jing, and Gabriela Gil. 6) Paula Rochette, and Olga Orellana. 7) Malan Breton, Consuelo Vanderbilt Costin. 8) Michelle Herbert.
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