The Lyle O. Reitzel Contemporary Art Gallery celebrated the opening of New Yok City-based Dominican artist Scherezade Garcia’s new series Memories Afloat with a private reception at its new location on the Lower East Side in Manhattan.
“Observing and talking to people is the way I collect stories and allow myself to imagine, fabulate and daydream through them,” said García. “By witnessing and experiencing places and its people, I compose and recompose, and I develop my visual dictionary.”
García’s Memories Afloat was produced in the summer of 2016 while she was residing in Granada, Spain and engages in that “always” conversation and the endless fascination the artist has had with history.
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), the creation of a new race as part of its multifarious consequences, 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 and spiritually lush, the series is an imbedded contradictory history of fleeing, rooting, freedom, enclosure, brutality and beauty.
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, Michael Lovett, Paula Bomer, Eladio Fernandez, Gerard Ellis, Andrew Raible, Rob Porta, Kiki Olmedo, Mike Yanicelli, Robert Dandarov, Abigail Lapin, Suzy del Valle, Gonzalo Casal, Deborah Cullen, Kimberly Leonardo, Ariela Ka, Arnaldo Morales, and Leonardo Cairo.
Pictured:
Lyle O. Reitzel, Scherezade Garcia