Beyond the Veil: Exploring the Tensions Between
It's perhaps most interesting, the possibilities that exist in the spaces between. Between thoughts, between questions, between reality and the things beyond. In that suspended place of tension is the beginning of “newness”, the birth of novel thought and perhaps a kind of resilient peace given form by hope and a curious calling to explore.
Beyond the Veil: Exploring the tensions between is a solo exhibition with artist Bianca Valencia Criscuolo that envisions a thread between her diverse body of works founded on the idea that each series in some way explores a tension between, a place of juxtaposition and inquiry.
Origins is one of Criscuolo’s most developed series and finds foothold in the tension between future and present cosmology; expanding on the idea that our ancestors asked very different questions about the universe then contemporary humanity. While we are burdened with the exact question of HOW humans and the universe were made. The central cosmological question for ancient humans was nearly always “WHY were we made?” The Origins series therefore, finds its tension and play in Bianca Valencia Criscuolo's desire to explore these contrasting questions as they push back on her personal belief; spirituality and concept of reality.
The tension between the physical and the spiritual.
It is in the dark where consciousness dissolves, and one dances most intimately with dream and spirit. Black lines bleed forth, weaving truths of the unseen. Criscuolo’s illustrative work explores beneath the veil of waking life, where symbols whisper, landscapes shift, and figures flit up from the subconscious. Ink stroke’s give physicality to the depths of the mind, where verity, discovered truth and forgotten memories intertwine with archetypal forms and echoed prophecies from the divine.
The Muse's body of work traverses the question of ethics in artistry as it relates to idolatry and objectification in contrast with love, appreciation and the existence of a muse. Can you have a muse without objectifying and idolizing the subject? Where is the line between appreciation of beauty and objectification?
Bianca Valencia Criscuolo’s series titled Observations of Silence is most simply observing what is birthed within the space between intentional silence and the self. What is found in conscious meditative quiet?
Elohim is Criscuolo’s first series that followed a period of not painting for 3 years. The piece "Inevitable Redemption” began the Elohim series and then expanded concurrently with the Origins series. Elohim takes a theological approach to depicting the essence of heavenly beings. The work is meant to spark conversation around historical interpretations of angelic/heavenly beings; contrasted by scriptural accuracy sited through her studies of Ezikiel.
An apropos theme for Bianca Valencia Criscuolo’s first solo exhibition, Beyond the Veil; Exploring the Tensions Between, follows the energy that starts every grand adventure. As a young artist with dreams of wonder, play, pain and questions, we see Bianca Valencia Criscuolo on the start of her journey; only just beginning to pull on the threads that manifest the curious calling to explore.