VIeW ON ARTSY
Creativity Explored is pleased to present the first solo exhibition featuring Ana Maria Vidalon.
The show invites viewers to take a closer look at Vidalon’s oeuvre. As an artist with a developmental disability, Vidalon herself is a hidden figure among the densely populated landscape of contemporary figurative and abstract artists. Her work consists of an unending series of marks, curls, and swivels that amass into wavering forms; often encompassing small figurative elements. Are the figures caught in the web of marks or do they create them? Vidalon's practice has a musical quality that straddles cacophony and the serenity of white noise; much like a sheet of music, her marks imply harmonic rhythm, one which only emerges with careful viewing.
Curated by Ann Kappes
Watch our Curator Talk
About the Artist
Ana Maria Vidalon (b. 1957, Peru; CE artist since 1993) is known for her graphically strong compositions of layers of tiny faces.
Ana Maria Vidalon in the CE studio in the 1990s.
Her process is one of compulsive repetition, and this working rhythm is evident in each completed piece. For many years, Vidalon filled the entire picture plane with these forms, but over time their size has become variable, while she has become more discriminating with the use of negative space.
In 2009, printmaking was introduced in the studio and Vidalon developed an entirely new iconography. Using sheet music as their basis, her prints convey an abstract typographical sense of musical notation, combined with bold design and color. This idea was expanded into the unique artist’s books wherein Vidalon fills an existing musical score with her own complexly layered, non-representational markings, which then are bound in a hand-printed cover of her own conception.
Ana Maria Vidalon at work in the CE studio in 2019. Photo by Peter Prato