Stefanie Guerrero & Ana Villagomez ENTRELAZADAS

May 5 - June 3, 2023

Martha’s is proud to present Stefanie Guerrero and Ana Villagomez–a painter and a sculptor–whose material-oriented abstractions mirror personal histories of obfuscation and resourcefulness. With clever remixing of mediums mundane and magical, Stefanie and Ana create works that demand attention despite evading full understanding and together provide new vectors for dynamically relating to infrastructures of power.

Entrelazada hopes to generate space for new understandings of art objects’ relationship to their makers’ identities: highlighting the perspective of women with Mexican heritage whose work looks towards a future in which each loss is an opportunity for evolution and interconnection. Ana Villagomez’s paintings often scale several feet across the wall, reliant on canvas and acrylic with the lightest touch and leaping into a feverish mixing of flash and trompe l’oeil mixed materials rendered with a compositional precision evocative of mid-century design elements. Villagomez’s shapeshifting abstractions cascade from dry to wet materials and back again, evading certain knowledge of their makeup and reference points, echoing the resourcefulness bred through her Mexican family and summers spent in a borderless zone marked by ever-changing landscapes as architectures cycled through new hands and into obsolescence.

Through her sculptures, Guerrero prompts us to confront the complexities of our existence and recognize our interconnectedness with the world around us. Her works provide a powerful commentary on the essential role of adaptation and transformation in our survival, as well as the importance of nurturing our relationships with the natural world and each other. By using clay as her primary medium, Guerrero adds profound depth to her sculptures, capturing the weight of memory and history in their texture. By transforming soft and delicate life forms into sharp and menacing structures that offer protection and defense, Guerrero reminds us that the complexity and tenderness of the human experience are integral to our wholeness. We must constantly strive to redefine and purify our surroundings to thrive by challenging our perceptions of strength and vulnerability, which allows us to contemplate the dynamic interplay between the two.

Together, Guerrero and Villagomez offer vital perspectives on the function of art objects with their unique approaches to material value, cultural construction, and its potential for liberation.