As we hibernate in our respective homes, safe and sound but separated from one another, we cannot help but wonder when we will all be together again. Even when we emerge from confinement, we shuffle back and forth, our faces hidden from view… still disconnected. With all the masked faces that are out and about and the dreary weather that’s upon us, TOGETHER is a joint presentation of vibrant patterns, honest faces and open spaces.
Featuring the insightful portraiture of Marguerite Wibaux and the intricate mark making of Dhanashree Gadiyar, each work possesses a signature strength and liveliness that inspires us to remain positive and persistent during these trying times. Exuding warmth, activity and dynamism, TOGETHER brings a seemingly distant but much-needed familiarity to our sterilized lives. TOGETHER is an endearing exhibition of expression that seeks to subtract from the contemporary stoicism that comes with the endless march of masked covered faces and our nearly constant confinement.
Born in Argentina, raised in Peru and Italy, French painter Marguerite Wibaux has spent a great deal of her life abroad meeting new people and exploring new environments. Now living in New York City, Wibaux often exists as a stranger. In essence, she is a perceptive nomad whose only possessions are her paintbrush and an open mind. While the endearing quality of her work is very much apparent, Wibaux’s approach to encountering and eventually capturing her subjects borders on social experimentation. Much like herself, those who sit for Wibaux are strangers themselves. It is existential documentation of the human condition. There is a sentient science involved in a delicate and sometimes awkward waltz between Wibaux and her subjects. This dance, so to speak, can be choreographed or happenstance but reaches its peak once the music has ceased and Wibaux has successfully immortalized her subjects in paint. It is just a matter of Wibaux putting herself in the right place at the right time and putting her subjects in the right light. Wibaux’s canonization of our community’s common core is steeped in the spirit of inquiry and unending admiration.
Embarking on a similar journey but under a different visual narrative, Dhanashree Gadiyar is a traveler in her own right. Taking inspiration from her various voyages through India while growing up, Gadiyar taps into the human condition through nostalgia and patterning–a patterning that she freely describes as “obsessive.” One becomes intoxicated when drinking in one of Gadiyar’s pieces. Each gesture gathering in a hypnotic formation and entrancing onlookers. Creating from a space of cultural reverence, Gadiyar’s ornate mark making is conceptually bolstered by an intimate palette that is not only soothing and enchanting but transportative as well. Her lushly colored landscapes take her audience to a sacred place of recollection and emotional reflection. It is this act of reflection that proves key in times like these and ultimately allows Gadiyar’s work to really sink in. Gadiyar confesses that her latest works are an exercise in which she has chosen to cope through happiness.
Wibaux and Gadiyar have joined forces to bring us all, individually, under one roof, under one overarching sentiment of connectedness. TOGETHER is a marrying of perspectives. It is an interaction of variables that sums itself up to a concerted crescendo. TOGETHER is a compassionate union of the micro and the macro–the human glue that bonds us all.
Curated by Akeem K. Duncan and powered by the good folks at Quiet Lunch, TOGETHER debuted on Thursday, February 11th at The Yard (234 5th Avenue) located in the Flatiron District. The exhibition will be on display to the public but in an effort to remain healthy and safe, viewing will be limited and by appointment. Appointments can be reserved at RSVP@quietlunch.com For press, please contact Akeem K. Duncan via email: akeem@quietlunch.com
Quiet Lunch is a grassroot online publication that seeks to promote various aspects of life and culture with a loving, but brute, educational tinge. When we say, “Creative Sustenance Daily,” we mean it.