Artmedia Gallery is proud to present Apply it to this side, a solo exhibition conceptualized for this venue by Ángela Valella.

Apply it to this side gathers a video installation, collages, and ink-jet prints on acetate. They jointly work as a specific installation thanks to the interrelationships and exchanges that they generate among each other, and the disposition of creating a spatial plot through which perception and meaning transit and cross each other.

Located in the center of the room, the video installation, On being slightly suspicious, works as the discursive core. Two projectors and other objects, among Plexiglas sheets, make up the resources that allow the circulation of images in motion, and that are accompanied by a succession of sounds and silences -the latter being voluptuously active, as Barthes would have liked to identify them.

The video installation is configured as a solid sensory structure from which fundamental issues slide that are at the base of the artist’s exploration. These, to generalize, could be considered as: the ways in which images are formed as a result of acts of production and as a result of the processes materials undergo; or as the potentiality and weakness of the images as objects of perception or reception.

To emphasize this, the artist investigates the spatial juxtapositions over the bi-dimensional plane of transparent acetate prints hung on the left and back half panels of the space, postulating them as a reflection of the process in the constitution of the visual of things. Meanwhile, selected collages from the series Guided Tour, placed on wooden shelves, are displayed on the rest of the gallery walls. These collages, made up of sheets of photographic paper, overlap reproductions of works of art from important museums, and call for a discussion on the readings of the images as cultural and artistic products.

Thus, Apply it to this side operates as both a visual laboratory and a place of research of artistic processes from its genesis to its reception.

About the artist:

Angela Valella is an artist, educator and artistic promoter born in Cuba based in Miami. Valella works in a variety of media including painting, collage, installation and video. Her work has been exhibited at Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno, Guatemala City; Centro Cultural Español, Miami; Miami Dade Public Library, Miami, and The Art Center at Colorado as well as Colby Gallery, Chicago. She is currently the director of The Nightclub project. Recent shows include On and Off the Stage, Buena Vista Bldg, Art Basel, 2012 (solo show), and collective shows Never Ending Moment, The Art Link Gallery, Miami; Biennial, Art and Culture Center of Hollywood; Recycle, installation, Hardcore Gallery, Miami, them all in 2013.

About the curator:

José Antonio Navarrete is a renowned art critic and curator based in Miami. Joining a team of International scholars, he is currently conducting research on Intellectual Networks:  Art and Politics in Latin-America, sponsoring by the JP Getty Foundation’s program “Connecting Art Histories”, 2012-2013. At the
moment, he is working on other curatorial projects in the United States and abroad.

About the gallery:

Artmedia Gallery is dedicated to promote and exhibit contemporary art, providing a space for reflection and critique with strong attention to photography and video.