Instantly disarming and wonderful to behold, Gabriela Epstein’s paintings feature gentle, layered brushwork that engenders a soothing atmosphere – perfect for the viewer’s contemplation.
Drawing inspiration from her native Mexico, the importance of color is the vanguard of her style and, in concert with concise line work, saturates her painting with a sense of emotion and drama.
She also has a magnificent knowledge of composition, often working in diptychs and triptychs; Epstein’s work is identifiable for her supple, geometric configurations.
Born in Mexico City, Epstein developed a liking for the plastics arts and has shown a talent for it since childhood. She took diverse painting classes, even though her development as an artist has not been basically academic, but autonomous and independent.
She draws her artistic inspiration directly from life events and transmits them through an exceedingly individual painting style.
Epstein’s paintings seem to focus on elements of formal order. The pleasure for color, shape, and, above all, the materiality of the painting (which builds the body but not the pictorial language’s sense) becomes evident in her work, granting every narrative strategy as second term.
A set of shapes that surprise us for their massive character and organization; when looking at them, you can have the certainty that if one of the elements is removed, the whole composition would fall over, that there is no space for the inclusion of anything else than what Epstein allowed to be included.
Her painting has gone through several stages, starting with a very figurative image and evolving to a geometrical abstraction, on which she is working at present.
Her consistency in finding new techniques, art movements, and proposals is evident, for she believes it is of great importance to find new and different ways of expression to allow inner and individual growth.
“Everything I know, do or express in a canvas is a result of my own personal experience,” Epstein explains. She has educated others in the arts for the last ten years, sharing her ideas about painting while learning from others’ perspectives, has been a very positive influence in her artistic life.
Epstein lives and works in Mexico City. Her work is a space where shapes call on each other, luck of mutual and infinite reciprocities that cannot allow the abandonment of a glance.
Nude matter. It rescues the qualities of oil and acrylic paint taking them as the primary element for the construction of her statement.
Language that articulates by a sober chromatic management to enunciate each and every word, each and every silence.
The artist will be in attendance during her Opening Reception on Friday, January 26, from 6 pm to 9 pm at Galeria Contempo.
This airy two-story gallery is at Basilio Badillo 252 on the South Side.
Galeria Contempo energetically sponsors El Paseo del Arte.
Phone: (322) 223-1925; www.galeriacontempo.com
