Join David Castillo Gallery for the opening of Atopia, a group exhibition curated by Claudia Mattos and Alina van Ryzin, featuring the work of Adam Amram, Rachael Anderson, Chris Dougnac, Alanna Fields, Maria de los Angeles Rodriguez Jimenez, Jillian Mayer, Liz Ferrer and Bow Ty, Lee Pivnik, Illeana Tolibia, Nadir Souirgi and Ricardo Zulueta.
The artists in this exhibition engage in practices that work against a desire for univocal meaning, claiming their Barthesian “sovereign right to wander off the point” as a creative necessity. Each work included wanders and journeys, treating contradiction as celebration and the elusive as final form. In a paradoxical exchange, the artists embrace the ineffable, defined as that which is too great to be expressed, while creating something tangible. The works presented in this exhibition, explore, negotiate and deconstruct without arriving at any determinate conclusion.
Atopia provides a pathway to escape discernment while holding material form. Where Utopia refers to a place that can never be, Atopia refers to a place that can never be fully conceived. Dominant aesthetic and material structures malfunction in the face of Atopia, unable to curb the distillation of singular meaning. The works in this exhibition give way to complex, comedic, and sincere pluralities that transcend their material conditions.
Image: Detail of Nadir Souirgi, Bee-eater, 2023. Acrylic and liquid dispersion on canvas, 48 x 48 inches. Courtesy of the artist and David Castillo
