Tamara Gonzales “Horrible Beauty”

Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery

This event has ended.

September 10, 2021 will mark the opening of Tamara Gonzales’s fourth solo show with Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery. Titled Horrible Beauty, the show encompasses large scale canvases, a series of new works on paper, and sculptures. The title refers to a concept of life described by the American spiritual teacher, Ram Dass, while discussing a poem by Thich Nhat Hanh, “Please Call Me By My True Names.”

Whether in her studio or traveling abroad, drawing has always been a constant in Gonzales’s practice. Her sketchbooks and drawing pads are filled with depictions of fantastical creatures resembling beings such as birds, snakes, humans or butterflies in garden-like settings. Gonzales combines a variety of media in her work, inventing different marks and textures to translate her experiences to paper. Where the hardness of colored pencil creates one kind of line, the softness of markers washed with water or the defined contours of graphite create something different. Horrible Beauty will feature the full scope of material usage in her works on paper.

The scale of Gonzales’s paintings and their canvas surface allow the artist to explore imagery differently. Though her new paintings employ a framing device used in her works on paper, the inner areas are mistier and painterly, with bold colorful patterns created with lace stencils and spray paint. Areas of solid color are obscured with brushstrokes, looking back to similar areas in the drawings. More abstract than the works on paper, Gonzales talks about these painterly forms as beings emerging.

Some works in the show refer more overtly to the title. One painting is of a large bird-like figure, standing with arms/wings stretched, its face made from a found beaded mask. This painting is the most defined, and the most experimental in its use of materials. The central figure, created with collaged elements, is surrounded by pools of glitter, hand-prints, and heavily painted lines, creating a bold and graphic glow. Two sculptures made from a turkey’s wing and tail feathers are also included in the show. While driving on RT28 Tamara Gonzales found a perfectly intact body of a turkey that had been hit by a motorist. She later created fans with the feathers, which will be displayed in boxes made from cedar harvested in Woodstock, NY, near the site of the accident.

Taken together, works in this exhibition highlight an exciting range of visual languages, and display the depth of Gonzales’s practice.

Tamara Gonzales was born in Madera, California and currently lives and works in Brooklyn and Bovina, New York. Her work has been written about in the New Yorker, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, and ArtNews. Recently her work has shown at the Beeler Gallery, Columbus Ohio, Jeffrey Deitch, Los Angeles, The River Arts Collective, Catskill, NY, The Pit in Los Angeles, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Public collections containing her work include the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA, the Bronx Museum of Art, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the Colby College Museum of Art.