Guías Y Portales/ Guides and Portals
MFA@CIIS alumna Lola Victor reflects on authentic art making and her new body of work.
My recent exhibition, Guías Y Portales/Guides And Portals was an emergence of myself in the world contributing what I want to say as an artist, and it was a revealing of the most authentic work I’ve made public thus far. After a lifelong inquiry into feminism, mysticism, and surrealism, it was a moment to show what has become of my making and the art in the broader context of art in the world. Still it felt a point of expansion, a step beyond fear, a step to show myself with my art, and a step into surrender to the art — to allow the paintings to show me how powerful they are in their own energy.
The paintings in the exhibition were the result of a two year process, where I was located in Mexico, painting, remembering, and claiming my deeply personal and authentic artistic expression. In the works you can see my own seeking to belong as a woman, an outsider, an artist. Through material and aesthetic processes, I intertwined my own concepts and understandings of identity and ethereality, symbolism and intuition into physical paintings.
To paraphrase the curator, Ramon Tenorio Mondragon from his eloquent exhibition statement, ‘The works are a collision of worlds, in which the artist uses her highly personalized style of colors, lines, and symbols to paint abstract surrealist landscapes that factor in the cosmos. These landscapes have meaning, that present as a divinely feminine to the artist, and offer within each painting an entrance into the ethereal, a depiction of mulitverse that gives a mystical significance to life.’
Guías Y Portales/Guides And Portals, is a body of work that is informed by my own perception of living among the architecture and myth of Mexico, and it is inspired by a complex history and mixture of surrealism and magical realism. All of this influence is portrayed in this exhibition in my authentic and characteristic style. Perhaps for the first time I felt I created and released a body of work that are each unique, but identifiably my own. You can see these paintings in the world and recognize the varying thick lines, three color palettes, minimalized dimensionality rich with unique symbolism, a unique visual language always displaying a metallic element. For me that is a success that takes many artists many years, to come home to themselves in their making, and to have the courage to release it to the world. For this I am very much looking forward to what is to come.
Lola Victor creates abstract surrealistic art. Her focus is on sharing glances of the mystical, the ethereal, and the sacred feminine. Her work is recognizable by her line work, unique symbolism, and tri-color palettes — minimal and metallic.
She was born in San Diego, and has since lived and worked internationally. She obtained her BA from Tulane University, and her MFA from The California Institute of Integral Studies.
