PRESS RELEASE
Margaret Thatcher Projects is pleased to present Compositions + Drawings, an exhibition of new works by Carlos Estrada-Vega. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery.
Estrada-Vega’s sculptural paintings incorporate a variety of media and a unique process of assemblage. Small canvas-covered blocks, each magnetized to hold its place within the larger composition, are painted highly saturated colors, the palette inspired by the artist’s Mexican heritage. Seemingly monochromatic arrangements are revealed on closer inspection to be a dazzling array of distinct hues, an effect that is enhanced by the varying lengths of the projecting blocks.
The luscious texture of each cube effuses a tactile temptation that is difficult to resist. Estrada-Vega furthers this tension between touch and restraint by magnetizing the individual pieces and creating the potential for movement. Each rectangle and square is considered to be a distinct monochrome painting, the overall composition of multiple individual blocks conceptually and visually equaling greater than the sum of its parts.
Carlos Estrada-Vega’s paintings are in the collections of the Museum Katharinenhof, Kranenburg, Germany, the Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR, and The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA, as well as numerous private collections. Estrada-Vega exhibits actively internationally, and is represented by galleries in Germany, Switzerland, and Australia.
Margaret Thatcher Projects is located at 511 West 25th Street, Suite 404 (between 10th and 11th Avenues). Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 11 am to 6 pm. For further information, contact the gallery at (212) 675-0222 or info@thatcherprojects.com.
The Central Park Draguerreotypes D.70 to D.76 were created for the exhibition You AreHere*. For this the artist has overlaid the gallery floor plan on top of a detail from a map of Central Park, so that, as one walks through the gallery, it's space "morphs" into the familiar landscape of the corresponding section of Central Park. The map serves as the intersection between inside and outside, mashing the two into a series of established codes of scales, colors, and lines used in cartography, acknowledged as guides for getting you from one place to the other. The map will be available at the exhibition, and features an essay by Rafael von Uslar.
This past year Gary Carsley completed a major public commission for the Attorney General's Department Building in Parramatta, Sydney. The artist exhibits regularly in Amsterdam and Cologne as well as Australia. Later this year he will participate in Intrude 366 Art & Life at the Zendai Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai.