Sanctuary
María Dusamp, Hunde o flota; las intenciones arrastran (Sink, or float; Intentions Drag) I, II, III, Oil based clay, resin and plaster, 18 x 18 x 25”, 2020
Sanctuary
Curated by: Hayley Ferber
Participating Artists: Pamella Allen, Cecilia André, María Dusamp, Stephen Hilger, Guillermo Mena, LuLu Meng, Jeffrey Morabito, Frank Parga, and Manju Shandler
Gallery Reception with Artists: Thursday, July 6, 6-8pm
On View: July 6th - July 25th, 2023. Open weekly from 11 AM-7 PM
Gallery: Abrazo Interno Gallery, 107 Suffolk Street, New York, NY, 10002
Curator and Artist Talk for ‘Sanctuary’ on Wednesday, July 19, 6-7:30pm in the Abrazo Gallery. Participating artists include: Pamella Allen, Cecilia André, María Dusamp, Stephen Hilger, LuLu Meng, Jeffrey Morabito, in conversation with the curator, Hayley Ferber.
Sanctuary brings together nine artists using a vast array of media to explore their connection to place. Pamella Allen, Cecilia André, María Dusamp, Stephen Hilger, Guillermo Mena, LuLu Meng, Jeffrey Morabito, Frank Parga, and Manju Shandler create works from handmade paper, wood, sand, oil paint, and other mediums to layer intrinsic associations of materiality to the “landscapes” they are depicting. Their works convey relationships with specific and symbolic sites, rendering the locations themselves or implying their lingering essence. These artists evoke the spirit or soul of a place through themes of emotional connection, mysticism, identity and cultural heritage, presenting examples of the interconnectedness of the migratory experience, synthesizing the perception of one's home through new geographies.
Stephen Hilger utilizes a photogravure process on handmade paper to construct an archive of images that distills everyday experiences in and around his family home in California, rendering visible changes and patterns of absence and presence over time. Although rooted in reality, Hilger’s photographs depict moments that have disappeared, exploring the mortality and mourning of generations of individuals. Frank Parga creates sparse and surreal images depicting figures in isolated and often misplaced settings inspired by the landscapes of his upbringing in El Paso, TX. Parga’s prints are adhered to wood burned backgrounds combining aspects of fine art and traditional craft to explore place through themes of heritage and exploration.
Jeffrey Morabito’s oil paintings pull from his multi-cultural heritage, half Italian half Hong Kong-Chinese, to amplify visual and sensory juxtapositions, using heavy impasto techniques to create the feeling that the scenery can be touched. He sources his subject matter from his day to day experiences living in NYC, capturing abstracted impressions of moments with expressive brushstrokes and emotive colors. With a self described nomadic practice, Guillermo Mena’s rotoscope animations are inspired from the varied landscapes he inhabits, transferring atmospheric movements into physical traces through projected drawings. Reconciling his acceptance of an itinerant life with the idea of belonging and his home in Argentina, Mena grapples with identity through the expression of his current location, evoking environmental phenomena inspired by natural patterns deeply connected to memory and place.
Colombian born María Dusamp’s sculpted multiples probe feelings of vulnerability and isolation, creating a landscape of emotional connection. Dusamp’s characters hint at the crossroads of life's highs and lows, creating a sacred space for introspection and reflection through allusive gestures and abstractions of natural subjects. LuLu Meng employs repetition in their conceptual multimedia works through durational and interactive components. Meng employs light, mirrors, and translucent materials to conceal and reveal the depths and complexity of humanity. Their time based installation transports the viewer, providing glimpses into various realms. Cecilia André, a Brazilian painter from a family of Lebanese immigrants, creates sculptural paintings that capture light to produce colored shadows. Using translucent materials Andre creates the reflection of an alternate dimension, immersing viewers in a fragmented rhythm of color, transforming the space around them.
Jamaican born Pamella Allen’s mandalas, inspired by their travels to Africa, Asia and the Americas, meditate on the regenerative cycles of nature. Using mandalas as a tool for ritual therapeutic storytelling, Allen imbues them with their own artifacts and archetypal images, appropriating the motion of repetitive form, the written word, and earth elements such as sand and soil to create a landscape grounded in the mystic of nature, a place of “one-ness” and peace. Manju Shandler’s mixed media landscape dives into the human experience using magical realism to create a richly layered narrative. By employing the concepts of astrology as seen through her own visual language her canvases tell symbolic stories reflective of our times.
Whether identifying instances of nostalgia and memory, recording a current moment or creating space for introspection and meditation, a “place” has endless associations outside of its physicality. The visceral reaction to a location correlates to the human condition in how we search for answers, identify ourselves, question our past or long for new experiences. Accentuating the commonalities of shared experiences, Sanctuary embraces the diasporic relationships, cultural exchanges, and shared identities that occur within and between communities.
IG: @hayleyferber, @allen.pamella, @stephenhilger, @_frankparga_, @cecilia_andre_art, @mariadusamp, @morabitostudio, @guillle_mena, @manjushandler, @lulumeng.space
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