Opening Reception of Cinta Vidal’s “Viewpoints” and Benjamin Garcia’s “Panacea”

Thank you to all those you came out to the opening of Cinta Vidal’s “Viewpoints” and Benjamin Garcia’s “Panacea” this month. A handful of Vidal’s pieces in this exhibition include a rotating mechanism that allows you to see the pieces from various viewpoints; and Garcia’s figurative subjects and mesmerizing layers, draw the viewer in. Both exhibitions are on view now through October 6th.

Cinta Vidal “Viewpoints” WIP via Instagram

Cinta Vidal’s Viewpoints is opening this Saturday, September 15th showing the completed work of the pieces she has teased on Instagram for the past few months.  Join us as Vidal’s work takes over the Thinkspace main room, and read her interview with us for more insight into the inspiration for Viewpoints.

Follow Cinta Vidal on Instagram for studio updates and more.

 

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Cinta Vidal – Viewpoints | Main Room

September 15, 2018 – October 6, 2018

Cinta Vidal
Viewpoints (Main Room)

Thinkspace is pleased to present Viewpoints, the gallery’s second solo presentation of works by Barcelona-based painter Cinta Vidal. Trained professionally at the Taller de Escenografia Castells Planas in St. Agnès de Malanyanes as a scenographer to create larger than lifesized theatrical backdrops for opera and dance, Vidal has balanced an apprenticed theater trade, work as a freelance illustrator, and her independent output as a muralist and fine artist. Her highly detailed paintings stage a surreal simultaneity in which multiple vantage points intersect, unfettered by gravitational laws. These fractured landscapes and architectures represent a multiplicity of experience, as Vidal hopes to convey the endless variations and relativisms of subjectivity. Her imaginative and dizzyingly fractured works remind us of the feeling of existential disconnect when faced with the incongruity of our inner and outer worlds.

Vidal has always pursued her own work alongside her other professional art ventures, the technical demands of her scenography and illustration work shaping the aesthetic resolve and fastidious execution of her personal output. Her ongoing series of gravity-defying forays into physical and metaphorical space began in 2013. She has since continued to refine and perfect the direction of this fragmented world of spatial free fall, increasing the level of detail and realism in each piece. This unexpected fusion of chaos and control, in which the laws of physics are no longer absolute but the exaction of realistic rendering, perspectives, and shading, is no less meticulous, compels the viewer to consider the inherent heterogeneity of personal perspective. Vidal eschews abstraction in favor of relatable objects and identifiable spaces to explore this feeling of strange familiarity in a universally accessible way.

The artist’s paintings have evolved from a practice primarily based in drawing. This illustrative aesthetic is evident in even her most hyper-realistically rendered painted works, anchoring them visually in a graphic confidence. Her deconstruction of daily spaces ranges from the more architectural and at times abstractedly geometric to the organic and nondescript. Her figurative subjects are anonymous and random, but the personal finds expression through the artist’s choice of objects and mise-en-scène; often pieces from her own memories and life, like the mid-century modern furniture belonging to her grandparents.

In Viewpoints, Vidal offers her patented spatial and experiential synchronicity in the creation of worlds that feel both united and estranged in their divided closeness. Just as in real life, several versions of the same moment coexist imperceptibly to the subjects, as they themselves are caught in the confines of their singularity. Working primarily in acrylic on panel, Vidal combines seeming contradictions in a concurrence of extremes. Structurally and symbolically, she reorganizes elements of the known and every day into jarring disarticulations of conventional structures and places in a single frame. This has manifest in the past as more specific themes, such as the environmental impact of industry and the coexistence of multiple cultures and histories.

Thematically, this work emerges from the impossibility of ever fully understanding the “other’s” experience; this is the fundamental metaphor that governs Vidal’s visual empathy. Envisioning our diversity as a positive divergence that can lead at times to common and shared experience, a brief respite of cohesion in an otherwise endlessly divided world, Vidal reminds us of the endless potential of altering our vantage points.

INTERVIEW WITH CINTA VIDAL

Opening Reception with the Artist(s):
Saturday, September 15, 2018
6:00pm – 9:00pm

Interview with Cinta Vidal for her exhibition “Viewpoints”

We are two weeks away from our first major solo exhibition with Cinta Vidal, “Viewpoints.” In her latest body of work Vidal continues to explore the idea of viewing the world from different perspectives and how to translate that vision. It has been two years since her last exhibition with us, Gravities,  at the Culver City gallery and we are excited to share our interview with Cinta Vidal that explores her growth as an artist, how she challenged herself with this new body of work, and her time travel destination.
SH: How do you approach developing a new body of work?

CV: The exhibit in Thinkspace gallery’s main room is my biggest challenge to date. I’ve never exhibited in such a big space, it is a big opportunity for me to present a large collection of my new work. My focus now is to explore deeper into the concept of sharing the same world but seeing it from different points of view.

SH: Were there specific themes or techniques you wanted to explore in “Viewpoints”?
CV: In this show, I wanted to explore to the maximum of all the possibilities that the gravity style can give me. Also, I wanted to develop more of the different ideas that I have evolved over the last two years. Like round detailed worlds, stairs compositions or floating furniture. I also changed the painting technique in the majority of the pieces. I use to paint in acrylic, now I paint in oils.
 
SH: Your pieces always have multiple interesting scenes and focal points, do you develop those scenes before starting and composing the complete piece or do they evolve and come to you as you’re working on one section.
CV: I’m a crazy perfectionist and I usually work in a very detailed sketch before painting the final piece. Sometimes I decide to add elements in the scenes while I’m painting them, like trees or cats. But much of the composition is always decide previously. Maybe I should start improvising more in order to give a more fresh touch to the pieces.
 
SH: Are the locations in your work inspired by real places?
CV: Sometimes yes. In ‘Viewpoints’ I present 5 pieces that are inspired by real places. 3 of them come from recent trips: Tai-O (Hong Kong), La Gomera (Canarias) and Nijo (Japan). These pieces are really special to me because they are like a summary of my experiences in those places. I really want to explore more of this line of work – that means that I need to travel a lot!
SH: You’ve traveled around the world for your mural work. What locations had one of your favorite meals?
CV: It’s hard to say, I’ve enjoyed a lot the meals from all the places I visited. Maybe I should say that Japan was one of the most splendid, culinarily speaking.
 
SH: Is there a particular piece in this exhibition you feel really challenged you? If so, why and what makes you proud of this piece?  
CV: The piece CITY is very special for me. It is a mix of stairs, people, trees and architecture, something that I had never done before. The composition is very different than I usually do because the building surrounds the painting. It was a bit complicated to me to solve this piece and I’m proud because it keeps a consistency with others, but it has a different accent.
SH: What excites you about your work / creative process?
CV: The most exciting part is that everything around me could be a big inspiration. I’m always looking for new buildings, textures, trees, etc. My phone is full of ‘inspiration’ from my walks. Then I start to draw, it’s the part I enjoy the most.
 
SH: What frustrates you about your work / creative process?
CV: The big amount of details. I love to lose myself painting for hours, it’s like a meditation. But sometimes it is a bit frustrating when I look at the piece from afar and I’m not convinced by the overall result. It’s part of the process. Until I’m no longer uncertain about the results, I do not end it. It’s an internal fight.
 
SH: After a show what do you do? Do you take a long break, vacation, a particular ritual? Tell us.
CV: After a show, I try to relax and not to start new projects. But that’s easy to say.
I clean the study thoroughly in order to make space for the new projects and sometimes I go travel to totally disconnect.
 
SH: Who is an artist; musician, director, any art form – who would be a dream collaboration for you and what would you create?
CV: I love theatre, and contemporary dance. The choreographer Pina Baush is a big inspiration to me. Sadly she passed away. But one day I would love to be involved in a project with contemporary dance. 
 
SH: Has there been someone or some event that has made a significant impact on you that lead you to where you are now? An artistic catalyst of sorts?
CV: The most important catalyst for me was working as an apprentice in Taller de Escenografia Castells Planas in St. Agnès de Malanyanes. I learned from Josep and Jordi Castells to love scenography and the backdrop trade. There I learnt how to paint and to be rigorous with work
 

SH: You have a time machine, and you could do anything / go anywhere for 24 hours, and would not interfere with the space-time continuum. What would you do?
CV: I will go to do plein air with fauvism painters, to spend a day with Paul Cézanne, André Derain and Henri Matisse. That would be a dream come true.

Join us Saturday, September 15th from 6 – 9 pm for the opening reception of “Viewpoints” 

COMING UP ON SEPTEMBER 15th AT THINKSPACE CULVER CITY

CINTA VIDAL
Viewpoints
Our first major solo exhibition with Cinta Vidal out of Catalonia, following a smaller solo showing in our project room and art fair solo appearances with us at SCOPE in Miami and MONIKER in London.
BENJAMIN GARCIA
Panacea
Our debut solo exhibition with this exciting new talent out of Valenzuela.
– Additional details on both exhibitions shared next week –