Poor Dog Bright
JULIA GARCIA
June 14th, – July 20th, 2024
Opening Reception:
June 14th, 2024, 5-8 PM
KDR | 790 NW 22nd, Miami, FL 33127
JULIA GARCIA
Poor Dog Bright
Opening Reception:
June 14th, 2024, 5-8 PM
KDR | 790 NW 22nd St, Miami, FL 33127
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
KDR is delighted to present “Poor Dog Bright,”a solo exhibition of new works by Cuban-American artist Julia Garcia. This exhibition marks her first with the gallery and will be on view from June 14th to July 20th, 2024.
Garcia's process, a collage-like application of acrylic and ink onto a wet raw canvas, is a poignant reflection of her childhood, growing up near the Everglades. A place where the natural current of the wetlands, much like the flow of her materials, has been slowly corralled and shaped by urban development.
The themes of material, flow, time, and permeability in her work are deeply rooted in her personal history, invoking a sense of nostalgia and connection to the audience. Water, a dominant element in her process, disrupts and carries pigment, blurring the discernible edges of forms and allowing them an interminable quality. Garcia works primarily flat on the floor, allowing the pigment to diffuse with more control. This process can be slow and methodical where edges crisply meet or fast-paced where bleeding forms intermingle their boundaries.
Time, an actor carrying both urgency and inevitability, is also present, holding a record of marks on a surface that is, at times, sheerly painted. In all the work, there is a particular unforgiving procession of marks from start to finish, and the translucency of the technique necessitates that each painting is essentially worked on from start to finish in one shot. This unique approach, where brush marks and swaths of paint are manipulated while the surface is still wet, allows the unpredictable flow of pigment as water dries and preserves the motion of their final moments seeping into the canvas.
Garcia’s collection of found 35mm slides and researched stock photography is the bedrock from which they begin; the images in “Poor Dog Bright,” are blocked out in tape and then drawn in water-soluble crayon, creating a structure for the Alla Prima painting technique. This relationship between framework and hazy formlessness echoes the quality of the chosen source imagery hangs between becoming and dissolving. The intimate scenes feel like moments in time, accessed by memory; each time we recall, stories can seem rewritten, morph, and degrade in accuracy- much like an over-shared file recycled on the internet. The paintings distort and unravel the discreteness of objects and bodies within the composition. They appear frozen in time, domestic and youthful figures with a playful exploration exude a sense of foreboding, voyeurism, and nostalgia.
Julia Garcia b. in 1992 in Pompano, Florida. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2014 and her MFA in 2016 from the Hoffberger School of Painting at Maryland Institute College of Art. Recent solo exhibitions include Gaa Gallery, New York, NY; Galerie Fran Reus, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Night Club Gallery, St.Paul, MN. Garcia's work was included in group exhibitions at Hair + Nails, Minneapolis, MN; Gaa Gallery, New York, NY; Night Club Gallery, Minneapolis, MN; and O'Flaherty's, New York, NY. Garcia had her first institutional solo exhibition in 2023 at NW9 in Cologne, Germany. She lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Image Above: Julia Garcia, Girlhood, 2024, Acrylic, ink, and dye on canvas, 60 x 72 in.
