Press Release - FOG Fair 2022
Soumya Netrabile
”The Nightingale”
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 inches
2022
pt.2 Gallery
FOG Fair 2022
Kelly Ording
Liz Hernández
María Paz
Muzae Sesay
Soumya Netrabile
January 20-23 2022
Fort Mason in San Francisco
pt. 2 Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in FOG Design+Art with a booth of new work by Kelly Ording, Liz Hernández, María Paz, Muzae Sesay, and Soumya Netrabile. A sense of timelessness permeates the work selected for the booth, wherein each artist responds to the contemporary moment in a visual language that bridges past, present and future. Through abstraction and figuration, landscape and text, the presented artists engage in critical dialogue about cultural preservation, awareness of time, an affinity for kinship, support and recognition of the sublime.
Muzae Sesay
”The Lake in the Shadows of a Tall Building”
Acrylic, vinyl emulsion, oil, oil pastel, and colored pencil on canvas
47.5 x 173 inches
120 x 440 cm
2022
Muzae Sesay explores sociological conditions of the idea of home. The worlds Sesay paints invite the viewer to enter without restriction or preordained assumption. They exist in counterpoint to metropolitan reality, favoring intangible, surreal arrangements instead of geometric, orderly sprawl. In the painting The Lake in the Shadows of a Tall Building, the tower developments in downtown cast a shadow, physically and metaphorically over Lake Meritt and the surrounding culture and encampments central to the area.
Liz Hernández
”Mi permiso secreto (My secret permission)”
Clay, gold leaf, and vinyl paint on canvas
72 x 60.5 inches
2022
In a monumental self-portrait Mi permiso secreto (My secret permission), Liz Hernández probes the complications of identity and gaze. Working with a textured clay finish on canvas that alludes to the canvas as antiquity, the figure stands not only as a self-portrait but as a portrait of women across time. In a moment of introspection, while looking in the mirror, the woman repeatedly paints the evil eye in gold leaf across her body as if to ward off the gaze of others. Surrounded by snippets of Spanish text that translate to permanent solitudes, all the fears I have, what I once had and lost, and my dreams, Hernández displays the necessity and tribulations of embracing individuality in pursuit of the self.
María Paz
”Camilo Marcelo Catrillanca”
Stoneware and glaze
22 x 26 x 12 inches
2021
María Paz’s ceramic sculptures serve as offerings for her ancestors as well as meditations on her queerness, her history with migration, and the exploration of her spiritual practice. In two new works, Paz uses text in different forms to tell stories of love and loss. Camilo Marcelo Catrillanca pays homage to the eponymous Chilean Mapuche activist who was murdered by the police, guiding his spirit to a safer place while honoring the activists who revolted following that tragedy.
Soumya Netrabile
“Malnadu”
Oil on canvas
60 x 72 inches
2022
In a series of new large-format canvases, Soumya Netrabile continues her search for the sublime. At times allegorical of literature or poetry, Netrabile seeks to hone in on ephemeral moments of beauty and preserve them on canvas. Her dynamic work eludes definition as abstract, landscape, or figurative, yet seen on a larger scale, her gestural marks fluidly weave moments of each in a rich world of energy and exploration.
Kelly Ording
”Fill Your Heart Up”
Acrylic on dyed paper
58.5 x 49 inches
Framed in museum glass
2022
Kelly Ording explores the relationship between time and abstraction, investigating the capability of painting as a marker for time. Undulating between precise, geometric compositions, and intuitive, landscape-inspired works, Ording’s paintings suggest a sense of ease in the dichotomy between surrender and control. In a new work on the paper Fill Your Heart Up, Ording revisits the similar forms she has painted for years, studying how a smaller scale on a large picture plane, multiple shapes, and colors interact with one another.
Across their work, subtle nuance and technical mastery provide a record of the contemporary experience; each archiving their individual perspectives. Painting and ceramics are tools for the manifestation of these artists’ search for truth and understanding in a complex world. Exhibited together, the work of these five artists displays a compelling vision of the underlying currents that connect the self and its expressions to landscape, both human-made and natural.