NYAB Event - Erika Ranee and Carlos Rigau “Conversations”

Erika Ranee and Carlos Rigau “Conversations”

LMAKgallery

This event has ended.

LMAKprojects presents Conversations featuring the works of Erika Ranee and Carlos Rigau. This exhibition invites the viewer to take part in the discourse about abstraction and iconography. The artists find inspiration within the daily vernacular; grit and discarded ephemera set the tone for a complex palette that documents everyday routines and their incidental absurdities. Each painting in the exhibit has a unique rhythm and undertone and creates an interesting dialogue with one another. The push-pull mentality that appears in the works creates a balance between the expressive brushstroke and colors that are built upon a solid framework and reference of form.

Erika Ranee hoards snippets from her daily eavesdropping ventures in the city. These various notes on life and other discarded memorabilia are embedded in the layers of the paint like capsules: their presence felt as the fragments set the rhythm of the painting. Each artwork is an exercise in pushing paint around to articulate a new approach to using materials and techniques that are in opposition to each other: geometric and biomorphic; glossy and matte; thick and thin, the immediate gesture, and the more deliberate and slow mark-making. These dichotomies unfold in each painting serving as a reflection of the unpredictable, hyper-kinetic urban environment. Ranee’s work is currently on view at the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Carlos Rigau intends to ruffle up commonly understood western percepts and their normality. Beginning with a Rorschach composition he manipulates and collages the form through silkscreens and the brush allowing him to use our perception and guide our understanding as to what constitutes, represents or comprises reality and truth. These forms are used to convey a singular and independent meaning, as well as a larger collective expression. Rigau’s work will be on view in “Cut N’ Mix” at el Museo and the Bronx River Art Museum this summer.