May 11 - June 15 2019
Everything Has Changed is an exhibition including three artists who all think about light and landscapes, both imagined and real. Escobar‘s paintings are reminiscent of “Lost Light,”. Morell’s work “began as a series of imaginary neon signs that pose as displays one would encounter in the real world… vehicles for an experience imbued with mystery and longing.” Ruiz’s sculpture “investigates fictional landscapes from the distant future. Like snow globes collected from travels, Esther’s sculptures act as markers of time, commemorating sacred and valuable moments, imagined or real.”
Natalie Escobar paints imagined environments based on reality that appear to exist in a mysterious unknown. They depict rendered repetitive shapes, lush foliage, and hints of human presence. She lives and works in Atlanta where she received her BFA in painting from Savannah College of Art and Design in 2013. Her first solo exhibition, Falling Stranger, was presented in Atlanta by MINT in 2016 as a part of their Leap Year Fellowship.
Aliza Morell lives and works in Queens, New York. Her paintings began as a series of imaginary neon signs that pose as displays one would encounter in the real world. As opposed to advertising places, brands, or services though, these signs are decoys––vehicles for an experience imbued with mystery and longing. The images are invented. She draws from plastic flowers and her own un-manicured hands, which are then altered and composed in the vernacular of neon. Limiting the iconography underscores the posture, color, touch, and mood as the real conduits of meaning. Morell holds an MFA from Rutgers University (2014) and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005). Her paintings have been shown throughout New York at Thierry Goldberg Gallery, SPRING\BREAK Art Show, Small Editions, Castor Gallery, Knockdown Center, Pioneer Works and Elijah Wheat Showroom, as well as Pulse Art Fair (Miami Beach, FL) and Tempus Projects (Tampa, FL), among other venues. Her work was included in New American Paintings Northeast in 2017 and 2014.
Esther Ruiz (b. Houston, Texas) currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Inspired by space operas, pop culture, geometry and the setting sun, Ruiz creates objects that operate simultaneously as miniature landscapes from a distant future and actual size sculptures informed by the family of Minimalism. The cylinder, the semicircle, the triangle, and other Euclidean forms are combined into colorful and expressive freestanding sculpture. She tops cast cement columns with Plexiglas triangles, neon arches and fractured geodes in a way that leaves viewers thinking of (among other things) Dan Flavin, Pink Floyd and the stark beauty of the desert. Ruiz investigates and celebrates both fictional landscapes and material honesty. Ruiz received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sculpture from Rhodes College in 2011. She has shown nationally and internationally at various galleries including HILDE, yours mine & ours gallery, New Release Gallery, Planthouse Gallery, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Platform Baltimore, Vox Populi, Field Projects, Fridman Gallery, Regina Rex, and The American Center for Physics. In 2015, Spaceworks awarded her the Artist Grant and Williamsburg Studio Lottery.
