Juxtapoz Magazine – Mònica Subidé “Ramona” in Marfa

Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to present Ramona, an exhibition of new canvas and paper paintings by Spanish artist Mònica Subidé.  The exhibition will be on perspective at Nino Mier Gallery, Marfa by way of November 19, 2022.

Mònica Subidé’s paintings are portraits and however lives set in opposition to shallow, colour-blocked backdrops.  The surfaces of every perform are highly textural, possibly revealing the artist’s hand at do the job or incorporating collaged motifs beneath the paint. Subidé is effective with a formal language that refines scenes into their elemental sections, melding the figural with the geometric and the summary in a quasi-cubist approach to figuration. The difference involving determine and floor is articulated through line, not by way of depth, in this inscrutable, psychological room.

The topics of Ramona are enigmatic and obscure, their faces blank slates alternatively than revealing an interiority.  The affective demand of her will work are as a substitute cultivated by means of the loaded, deep shade schemes and lush dealing with of paint. Displayed in varying calm postures in the bold, colorful any-space, the figures get on a timeless, mythic good quality for their totemic stature and lack of overt sentiment. 

Waiting around in the blue home, 2022, for occasion, depicts two girls sitting or lying down on a desert pink aircraft, hunting blankly into the unpictured length. The wall at the rear of them is bifurcated in two—a grey aspect and a blue side—and a inexperienced vase with flowers fantastically floats atop the reposed determine. The title’s invocation of “waiting”, the distant gazes, and the unnaturalistic representation of objects in space lead to an environment of beguiling thriller that pervades the exhibition.

Subidé writes that “Ramona is a landscape, the landscape of the face” — as even though the confront had been an item with a content historical past and possessing normal power.  Recalling how the display began, with the eponymous Ramona, 2022 oil on linen painting, she proceeds:

“I bear in mind the working day I considered the painting was completed, but I can under no circumstances be confident until finally a several days have handed. I established the painting aside, going through the wall, and begged for it to be finished. When I turned it about, I not only saw that it was completed, but also noticed my grandmother inside of it.  Her name is Ramona. I thought that it was a painting that would choose treatment of all the other individuals as soon as it was exposed, as she took care of me.”