October 27 thru November 24, 2007

Three Solo Shows by

Nina Dotti: 99 Cts Cliche

Sydia Reyes: Urban Breads

Elba Luis Lugo: Recent Works

Nina Dotti’s show ‘99cents Cliches’ presents a systematic overturning of conventions of women’s stereotypes in current times. Through video, installation and photography Dotti proposes a set of crucial statements on femininity and its constrictions. With an over toned sense of humor, the artist scopes the multitasked roles women perform in their daily life routine.

In 99cents clichés Nina Dotti has created a store-like environment in which the viewer can recognize the art work as commodities. Dotti’s approach involves a sharp criticism on cultural and social typecasts on marriage, divorce, femininity, fertility. Departing from her own biography, she develops a wider vision of women’s societal condition.

Elba Luis Lugo’s show “TALAMO” focuses on the crucial ordeals and the intimate episodes couples confront in a marriage crisis. TALAMO is a bed-like installation from which soft lights emerge as well as whispers and intimate sounds emanate creating an atmosphere of subtle suffering and confrontation. The artist points out the critical and silenced moments of anguish and distress, torment or affliction that women undergo in their marriage.

“Erotic Drawings” Series by artist Felix Angel reflects on male sexuality. He profiles young male individuals in crucial encounters where the viewer will perceive loneliness and inexorable isolation. Angel uses sharp pencil over paper delineating subtle lines of contours to draw meditative faces, where what prevails is the sensual impulse and a libidinal drive, awkwardly impossible to meet the alter entity, the distanced partner, the unattainable other. The artist dares to reveal the secret passages of a forbidden world.

The outdoor installation “Urban Bread” by Sydia Reyes are sculptures made out of wheat, in the forms of breads, and casted on iron or steel. The artist goes beyond concepts and techniques; her three dimensional work performs a different visual, in which what prevails are tactile forms and textured surfaces. The pieces show a fragile stanza in their core sensual mass, that it is immediately seized by the strength of the metal. Opposite forces intercross in the new materials: soft and hard, sensual and straight, contra posse as two main languages for contemporary sculpture.

By Milagros Bello, Curator