OPENING: Saturday, April 24th, 6 – 8 pm
GALLERY HOURS: Tuesday - Saturday, 11am - 5pm

Couturier Gallery is pleased to announce Aimée Garcia’s and Carlos Montes de Oca’s exhibition “Shared Space” opening Saturday, April 24th (through June 5th). The show will include Garcia’s recent embroidered oil paintings and photographs and Montes de Oca’s photographs. The opening reception for the exhibition will be Saturday April 24th, from 6 - 8pm.

Aimee Garcia’s newest work, embroidered oil paintings, continue her discourse on the role of woman in art and society virtually always using herself as the subject. Garcia has embroidered each canvas, using cotton thread, an image of either the circle, the square or the cross. Each of the symbols are held in Garcia’s hands, like the children’s game of “cat’s cradle” and appear as an offering lifting off the surface of the painting, immediately gaining the sense of her hand having worked these patterns into the canvas which she in fact did. Of this, she states:

The works that make up this exhibition deal with the relationship between my personal experiences as a woman, and the use of conventional symbolism to delve into a spiritual quest into that cosmic symbology. Specifically, these paintings use the circle, square and cross as fundamental symbols that represent time and space, the cycle of life, creation, communication and earth-sky energy in the universe.)… Through the use of these … I try to guide people into thinking about life, history, memories, death …
Aimée Garcia

These self-portraits convey Garcia’s intentions in a profoundly personal and effective manner, with the silence and determination that elegantly speak of female strength, valor and determination. In addition to these canvas commentaries, Garcia will also be her recent photographic work delving into similar territory in a different format.

Conceptual artist, painter and sculptor Carlos Montes de Oca will be showing “Zen Sentido,” a series of photographs which continues a concept he has been developing regarding space and memory. For this series, Montes de Oca photographed a herd of goats in the exhibition space where these works were to be exhibited in the Galería La Casona, Havana, Cuba 2007. The photos were then viewed in the very same exhibition space disorienting the viewers and prompting them to contemplate the space they inhabit, in its present tense as well as what was once in the past and what will be in the future.

Aimée Garcia (born in Matanzas, Cuba, 1972) is a graduate of the Superior Institute of Art, Havana in 1996. García began her artistic career in the early 1990s working in painting, installation and more recently in photography. She has participated in Biennials in Havana, Cuba (2003, 2009), Cuenca, Ecuador (1998), and in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic (1996). Her works can be found in the public collections of: ASU Art Museum, Arizona, U.S.A.; Museo del Barrio, New York, U.S.A; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba; Oficina del Historiador de la Ciudad, Havana, Cuba; University of Virginia Art Museum, Virginia, U.S.A..

Carlos Montes de Oca is a self taught artist. He has participated in Biennials in Havana, Cuba (2006, 2009), Santo Domingo 2003, Cuenca, Ecuador (2001), and twice won the distinguished First Prize for Painting at the Concurso 13 de Marzo in Havana, Cuba (1991 & 1993).

For additional information or visual materials, please contact the gallery.