EVA MITALA
Float
June 14 – July 13, 2019
Extended to August 10!
Gallery Hours
Wednesday + Thursday 5-7 pm
Saturday 1-5 pm or by appointment
Please call 650.451.9366
Opening Reception
Friday, June 14 | 6-8pm
Float constitutes a vast and subtle meditation on the reality of urban living.
Recognizing absence as the presence of a conscious activity within the brain, these works are a result of a meditative process that engages what is considered trash, forgotten and unwanted as a starting point to honor the decay and the beauty of things modest, humble and impermanent. Impermanence (literally, “the pathos of things) has probably the clearest link: the works embrace the wear, tear, and sometimes damage that comes with age. They reveal the transient and mystical as well as the mundane and obvious as features change.
A big rolled vintage raster film found in the garbage, was appreciated, taken and cut into pieces that led to eight large scale experimental handmade wooden silkscreen canvases. After a test print of all canvases on a paper surface, the first piece of these works appeared, transforming the medium of silkscreen into painting.
The paintings were created using in studio silkscreen techniques, which translate the defaults and irregularities of the process into an aesthetic that simplifies the form and prioritizes material experimentation. In these works, the actual silkscreen canvas takes the place of the brush and when the ink comes in contact with paper or cotton, instead of a technique for mass production, the process becomes a way to produce unique prints. The result sometimes appears blurry – as if frozen in a permanent state of becoming, like the ethics of Wabi-Sabi that focus on finding beauty within the imperfections and accept peacefully the natural cycle of growth and decay.
By deliberately defying permanence, through a state of freedom and joy of being imperfect and incomplete, new ephemeral spaces are revealed and a whole body of work comes out naturally. These unique prints, defined by delicate forms which fully blend with each other, appear in the space in between; willing to alter expectations regarding gravity, the surfaces have no weight and assume an abstract meaning of floating where anti-gravity is visually natural. Floating has almost the same meaning as traversing, it indicates a mode of indeterminate human behavior. A shared common space.
Eva Mitala was born in Athens. Studied painting in the Athens School of Fine Arts (20002005). Lives and works between Athens and Berlin. Mitala has had solo exhibitions in Athens at the Ileana Tounta Gallery, in Tokyo at the Muramatsu Gallery and at the N Room Gallery in Berlin. She has shown extensively in group exhibitions across Europe, Romania and China.
Saturday, June 22 | 1pm
Meditation with Scarlett De la Torres
Scarlett will lead us through a powerful manifestation meditation using monoatomic crystal bowls focusing on the sacral, heart, and third eye chakras as we join our voices together in an ancient Egyptian alchemical meditation of quantum sorcery.
300 Dpi images:
oil & ink on canvas
24 x 20 in
oil & ink on canvas
24 x 20 in
ink & oil on canvas & cotton
16 x 18 in