Katia Santibañez’s work utilizes grid structures to examine the intricacies and minutiae of organic forms. Beginning with a grid, she approaches the canvas precisely and allows every inch to have its own expressive quality. Santibañez examines how objects of nature can be structured to magnify a canvas. Layers of sharp, kaleidoscopic patterns come together to create hypnotic, yet tranquil abstract canvases. There is a vibrancy reflected through the order. She draws individual shapes resembling leaves, flower petals, or shells onto a grid, and continually repeats the shape, slightly shifting the position to create a mesh of crisp, angular forms. Each shape is then filled in with paint, which develops into an intuitive process for the artist, deciding the colors as she goes. The meticulous layers transform, through color, into something deep and mesmerizing. The mixture of a rigid formal base with swirling swaths of color leads viewers to contemplate each component as its own entity while simultaneously absorbing how they come together as a whole.

Katia Santibañez is an American, born in France. She studied painting at Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux Arts. This is her first show at DC Moore Gallery. She has been in residencies at Yaddo, NY; Casa Wabi, Mexico; The Albers Foundation, CT; Sitka, OR; and Civitella Ranieri, Italy. Her work has been collected internationally and is in both private and public collections including The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, The Bibliotheque Nationale de Paris, The Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, and The Morgan Library and Museum.

This exhibition is on view concurrently with Robert Kushner: Reverie: Dupatta-topia.