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Rosario Bond Back to my Garden X, 2019 Acrylic-Flashe Paint on Canvas 72 x 72 LR

Subject Matter/Acid Times

By Milagros Bello, PhD

The virtual show Subject Matter/Acid Times surveys on 20 artists during these pandemic challenging times in which artists develop an ample spectrum of art expressions. Translating the term Subject Matter from its formalist modernist conception to an expanded notion of post-modern expression, the exhibition interplays nonobjective approaches with hyper political narratives, from optical effects to sociological stanzas, in a plunge into realms of a turbulent era. A vast myriad of the show art expressions confirms the strength of contemporary art.

Perez Art Museum PAMM

Clark Medley’s mixed media wood bidimensional works (Love, and A Mother’s Love is Never Forgotten), proposes a deliriant self-made imaginary calligraphies in contorted forms interweaving one over the other in a reminder of the sensual fluid approach of the Art Deco, intermixed with contemporary techniques in sparks of glitter, and gold and silver leaves. Humberto Poidomani’s mixed media works (Alicia, and I Miss You Sony), set in a more existential approach. His use of a contemporary neo-figurative method with frontal feminine figures connoted through a mixture of daily objects, ideological phrases, and thick layers of paint, reminds the lessons of freedom of the Art Povera. Lorien Suarez-Kanerva’s paintings (Elan Flow 3 and Elan Flow 12) expands the notions of nature and immateriality through her quantic visions of water and cosmic fractals geometries. Mariana Soto’s photography (Passover Blessings, and Through My Window) gazes on the intimate rituals and gatherings of her Hasidic neighborhood in pandemic times spotlighting the force of tribal unite of the community. Nancy Pirela (Fiancée, and With the Hope to Return) swings between 3D and 2D art proposals, always conjuring up the feminine spirit in its visual metaphors. Ricardo Carbonell’s collages on canvas (Road Series 8, and Road Series 11) envisions existential trajectories, using electric tape cuts outs, and multiverse collected memorabilia that functions as memorial relics of the past. Rosario Bond’s large canvasses (Back to My Garde 4, and Back to My Garden 6) foresees contraposing forces of cosmos and nature, through clashing strokes, marks, dots, stripes in “bravura” colors that transmute into inner and outer energies. Wuilfredo Soto’s works (Untitled 1, and Untitled 2, Post-Kinetic Series) revives the essence and legacy of the optical art in a sober chromatic approach. A breadth of generations is coming out to the art field: Alfredo Mele in his Billboard Says Series connotes the power of media nowadays; his social approach to communication using conceptualized phases over billboards, defines the dominance political collective mentality in America. Clarita Camacho’s metal and laser cut kinetic sculptural structures (Hope, and Poderosa) magnify the power of the space and its optical intervals. Carla Ruiz’s neo-landscape paintings (Sunset Series 4, and Sunset Series 5) project forces of light and nature through strong cut shaped palette strokes on dissolved chromes, and imaginary topographies of pictorial universes; skyscrapers, contorting waves, and fleeting sunset passages, shape dreamscape sceneries. Carola Orieta’s fluid sculptures (Lianas, and Reverie II) evoke liquefied worlds of immanent energies flowing freely in the space in musical interludes. Eliana Barbosa’s photographs (Fight, and The Fisherman) of her paint-over-paint can figural worlds (an invented original method of translating pictorial techniques) display critical scenes of pandemic struggle and solitude. Francisco Ceron’s digital photographs on canvasses (Las Vegas, and Venezia) present intertextual cultural worlds through transposing, and deliriously mixing up icons of the cities he had visited. Gary Sterba’s figurative neo-baroque resin sculptures (Humanity, and Untitled) reflect on the sublime human power of embrace and hold through intense seizing body encounters. Javier A. Lara’s powerful video (Against Happiness) critically exposes the radical social and human pandemic changes in our times, reflecting on the false stereotypes and values leading our society. Jinny Roth (Fear. Courage. Protest, and Close. Cloying. Covid Interior) forwards up powerful portraits of black people (that she just extracts from her own immediate environment) to impacting visual human dimensions: undulating silhouettes-like characters of textured skin and peculiar expression transpose their modest allure towards empowered worlds. Karina Matheus’ whimsical and gestural abstracts paintings (Untitled ,1 and Untitled 2) display realms of mystic vibrations and acoustic evocations pointing out to joyful and blissed ecstasy. Mercedes Inaudi’s paintings/collages multiples (Untitled Series 1, and Untitled Series 2) offer a world of deconstructed scenarios of typography, newspaper cuts outs, resin, and textured surfaces as a metaphor of the artist’s world. Rafael Montilla’s neo-concrete paintings echoes the rhythms and geometric compositions of the masters Latin America concrete art with new emphasis on dislocations and reordering of the color and geometry.