Bending Perception: Figures, Lines, and Reality Curated by Taylor Ernst

Bending Perception: Figures, Lines, and Reality Curated by Taylor Ernst
On view: October 3–November 29

Throughout this body of work, each artist explores the idea of lines and perception, and how a viewer might perceive the artwork within the presentation on the gallery wall. In Bending Perceptions are three artists, Gissette Padilla, Kevin Lopez and Devin Ratheal, all working in a variety of mediums and context. Through their artworks, they question the narrative of how either humans or structures are presented, along with an understanding of what the viewer is seeing. Each artist discusses the identity of either the figure or structure and how it can be reshaped or reconfigured to be presented in a new way.

Ratheal comments on the violent destabilization of identity through his work, where figures are distorted in an almost painful way against detailed backgrounds. The structural work is continued into Padilla’s views of indigenous imagery often forgotten or overlooked, but the printing of this imagery allows it to be presented in a contemporary practice on fabric. Lopez uses realistic figures in barren settings, constructed around unique forms to emphasize the difficulty of forming a definitive perspective of what the viewer is seeing. Throughout the exhibition, the artworks invite the viewer to explore not only what they might recognize in the artwork, but also how the artwork might relate back to themselves.