Tatiana Escallón and Marisol Valencia: Dialogues: A Convergence of Color and Form

January 12 - February 24,2024

From Anya Tish Gallery: "Anya Tish Gallery is excited to present, Dialogues: A Convergence of Color and Form, an exhibition featuring two Houston- based Latinx artists: Colombian-born Tatiana Escallón and Mexico-born artist Marisol Valencia, who will share the gallery space with their thought-provoking, meticulous, and highly textural artworks. Tatiana Escallón’s large format abstract paintings confront the viewer with raw vivid markings and brilliant self-authored texts. Complimenting the space with a subtle grace are Marisol Valencia’s minimal, yet highly complex monochromatic porcelain sculptures. Although employing different techniques and mediums, both artists embrace the emotive value of color and form, highlighting themes such as memory, displacement, and feminism. With a background in graphics combined with an affinity for poetry, Tatiana Escallón creates large scale abstract paintings that are riddled with accentuated gestural marks, energetic etchings, and a hidden language of her own. Utilizing a strict, yet pleasing, color palette, Escallón incorporates written poetry, improvising and teetering between her native language of Spanish and the adopted English. Many of Escallón’s poems are inspired by her continuous intellectual journey as a woman and mother. In her most recent, highly visceral works the artist experiments with a variety of materials such as acrylics, oils, graphite, rope, and wood; moving away from symmetry, the artist lets the lines and splashes of contrasting colors arrange themselves in space, thus pushing the physical boundaries of the canvas. Placing her in the broad realm of Abstract Expressionism, her striking works suggest contemporary artists such as Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Cy Twombly, and Franz Kline. Marisol Valencia’s new mixed-media sculptures Ways to Endure, is a series of works that seek to understand the stress and the breaking point of materials. Pushing porcelain to the outer limits of its physical capabilities, her new work investigates the boundaries and connections between strength and vulnerability. Utilizing an ordinary carboard box as the armature for her fascinating sculptures, Valencia covers a series of identical boxes with a porcelain slip, then fires each one at an unusually high temperature. This controlled effect causes cracks, deformations, and sometimes even total collapse of the pieces, as each identical box endures the firing process differently. This anamorphosis of matter and purposeful chaos in Valencia’s work acts as a metaphor for what individuals may experience when going through a tragic time in their lives. Some may bend to the will of a tragedy, while others remain resilient, some may need to be re-fired and put back together again like the pieces of Valencia’s delicate sculptures. The arduous and demanding process results in distinctly powerful sculptures, imbued with beauty, texture, and depth. Born in Bogotá, Colombia, Tatiana Escallón received her B.A. in Graphic Design at University of Bogotá Jorge Tadeo Lozano in 1991, and a Fine Arts Degree at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. Since then, the artist has exhibited regionally and internationally: Casa Museo El Romeral, Madrid, Spain; Museo Silverio Perez, Tulantango, Mexico; World Textile Art, X Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo, Manizales, Colombia; Art Museum Texas, Sugarland, TX; The Holocaust Museum, Houston, TX; Institute of Hispanic Culture, Houston, TX; Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, TX. She has also received several awards and grants such as: Wendy Wagner Award Grant (2023), and Houston Arts Alliance, SACI Grant by the City of Houston. In 2023, the artist completed an artist-in-residence at the Asia Society Texas Center, Houston, TX. In October 2024, Escallón will be exhibiting at The Nave Museum, Victoria, TX. Born in Guadalajara, Mexico, Marisol Valencia has lived in the United States since 2004, and most recently completed the Block XXI program at the Glassell School of Art, where she was awarded a certificate of achievement for her studies in ceramics. While in Mexico, Valencia studied Conservation and Restoration of Art and History at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Her work was recently a part of the noteworthy exhibition, LatinX Art in Times of Conflict at the Holocaust Museum, Houston, Texas, and Visiones de México at the Consulate General of Mexico, Houston, TX."

Reception: January 12, 2024 | 6-8 pm

Closing: February 24, 2024 | 2-5 pm

Anya Tish Gallery 4411 Montrose
Houston, TX 77006
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