V1 Gallery is pleased to present
About Last Night
A solo exhibition by Cristina de Miguel
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY JUNE 2. 2023. TIME: 16.00 - 21.00
EXHIBITION PERIOD: JUNE 3. – AUGUST 12. 2023.
Please note the gallery is closed for holidays July 9 – July 31.
The female protagonists in Cristina De Miguel’s energetic and expressive paintings surf, dance, do yoga and perform exorcisms, even the ones lounging appear to be in action. Empowered radiant women feeling freedom in their bodies. The sensation of motion is amplified by de Miguel’s painterly strategy, working with very liquid paint on large-scale canvases. A process that is difficult to direct, a constant negotiation between intention, gravity, velocity, surface tension and the accidental.
A compositional choreography that you can only train hard for, but never fully control, because that is not the intention, the independent painting is. De Miguel is channelling the work. An intuitive way of creating, based on years of practice, where subject matter, paint and process melt into one.
De Miguel is curious about our bodies in painting. How they physically express social interactions, liberation or anxieties. Body talk. Postures that communicate beyond shape. In de Miguel’s decentred paintings oil stick is often used to accentuate visual sentiments. Content and application of paint are interdependent in the works and one does not take precedence over the other. In this manner the paintings feel autonomous.
About Last Night consists of eight paintings and is an ode to freedom. The sensation you get when you do activities that makes you feel free, be it dancing, yoga, surfing, running, skating, meditating, watching the sun rise or painting. The euphoria of being present in the moment. Freedom in form and being.
Cristina de Miguel, born 1987, Sevilla, Spain, lives and works in Brooklyn, NY, USA. De Miguel holds a Master in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY, USA, 2012 and a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the University of Sevilla, Spain, 2010. Recent exhibitions include: Cristina de Miguel & Jenny Brosinski, Almine Rech Gallery, NY, USA, 2023, El Caer y el Viento, Villa Magdalena, San Sebastian, Spain, 2023, Gente Cayendo del Cielo, L21 Gallery, Mallorca, Spain, 2022, Wheels, Flying Bodies, and Other Stories, Fredericks & Freiser, New York, NY, USA, 2022, Procession Paintings, Tennis Elbow at The Journal Gallery, New York, NY, USA, 2021 and Paintings of Through and Fell, Allouche Benias Gallery, Athens, Greece, 2021. About Last Night is Cristina de Miguel’s first solo exhibition with V1 Gallery.
