We stopped by Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery to check out Scherezade García ’s new series Memories Afloat.
Lyle O. Reitzel Contemporary Art Gallery has history. Founded in Santo Domingo in 1995, the gallery has regularly hosted groundbreaking works with a flair for international style. The latest opening is a bit more local: New York City-based Dominican artist Scherezade García’s new series “Memories Afloat.” A private reception at the new Reitzel location in the heart of the Lower East Side in Manhattan gave guests a glimpse at a burgeoning art scene (likely overtaking the sterile Chelsea), and the enthusiastic art collection.
Notable guests included Scherezade García, gallery owner Lyle O. Reitzel, visual artist Alina Landry, Chief Curator of “No Longer Empty” Manon Slome, Curator of El Museo del Barrio Rocio Aranda-Alvarado, Eduardo Ayala Fuentes, Tiffany Tendra, Director of CONTEXT Art Miami Julian Navarro, and many more, all eager to see the female artist’s approach to baroque styles.
They are unique in their activation, if not more tame and minimal compared to her other works: spurs and blobs of color, contrasting but safely muted, almost translucent- approaching vibrant. One visualizing a girl in the wind seems as if it was soaked in amber, the energy tending toward rushed, but not frantic. Further, that’s not to say they are wistful: faces emerge and exit from the paper, unfurling or crawling out of bursts of color. The charcoal portraits that dot the paper are brought to life with these bursts of color.
García’s “Memories Afloat” was produced in the summer of 2016 while she was residing in Granada, Spain. Her work delves into what she calls “the politics of inclusion,” playing on her attraction with the first European settlements in the American continent (with its atrocities and beauties), and the American dream with its many layers, aesthetics and inventions. These paintings on paper are multi-layered and presented in her traditional baroque style. Visually inspiring, García places a mellow and amber magnifying glass on the ideas of history, freedom, departure, and comfort.
The work of García has been exhibited worldwide and her most recent credit includes “My Floating World” at the Los Angeles Art Show at MOLAA booth/Relational Undercurrents exhibition. Her work is also included in the permanent collection of The Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., and El Museo del Barrio in New York City.
Lyle O. Reitzel Gallery
139 Eldridge Street New York, NY
Memories Afloat on view:
February 16th – March 30th, 2017