The West Gallery is proud to present ‘Second To Twin,’ a group show that pairs recent students’ works with the abstract paintings of Brazilian born painter, Augusto Sandroni. The tensions and harmonies of these juxtapositions bridge many gaps between representation and abstraction.
Tiffany Huerta’s photorealist landscape presents a fifty-fifty split between a luscious green foreground and a vaporous pale-blue background. Augusto Sandroni’s primary black and white abstract canvas has a symmetrical yin and yang balance of forms and values. The works by Huerta and Sandroni share an uncanny compositional tension between solid ground and thin air; light and shadow; matter and anti-matter. The visual activity in these two works are a friendly reminder of how places and ideas overlap and inform our perception.
The paired works of Natalie Marquez-Solorzano and Augusto Sandroni share violet tones and strong value contrasts. Color seems to operate like a vivid radiance that magically illuminates a wavy landscape horizon or like a centrifugal energy that stimulates a flora molecule. Sandroni’s abstraction can be read as a compass that leads you to the magnificent light and color in Marquez-Solorzano’s piece.
In Damairis Lao’s painting, a male figure is situated at the bottom edge of a serene blue field. Rendered with gentle features, his face is obscured by a brassiere. In Sandroni’s abstraction, a colorful graphic grid sits atop a raw canvas ground and is embraced by orange forms along the left and right edges. The openness of the pure canvas and the vulnerability of the soft skin are adorned by feminine curvilinear shapes that enhance color, identity, and beautify.