NEW YORK, NY.- Denny Gallery announces Time & Tide, a two-person exhibition by Amanda Valdez and Caris Reid.
Time & Tide is the third collaborative project between Valdez and Reid. They began with an interview for the publication Women Artists in 2014. This interview led to their two-person show in Dallas in 2015, called Diamond Seat, and a continued dialogue between the two artists. Both Valdez and Reid are deeply concerned with gender, power, symbolism, ancient traditions, and mysticism. While their interests are directly aligned, their shared source material manifests in two distinct aesthetics. Reid is a figurative painter, who works methodically in acrylic on panel. Valdez is an abstract painter using diverse media.
The exhibition Time & Tide is structured around the themes of duality, lunar cycles, and symmetry that are important to both artists’ work. This iteration of intensive joint research involved consuming text centered around the moon, leading them to 1970’s feminist lunar consciousness text, anthropological based text, astronomy text, mythological stories, and pre-Christian society text. Every culture has developed ideas and relationships to the moon, Valdez and Reid are mining those various stories, rituals, and beliefs to construct their works. The texts serve as conduits for dialog and development of this new body of paintings between the two artists.
The exhibition will occur in two phases, with two distinct but related iterations during the course of the show. The opening, April 7, coincided with the new moon, and the second phase will open on April 23, with the full moon. The exhibition will close on May 15.
Caris Reid’s work deploys symbolism and pattern to explore femininity throughout history and across cultures. The female figures directly meet the eye of the viewer and impress with the strength of their pose. These female archetypes are covered with iconography such as cats, flowers, eyes, peace signs, ying yangs, birds. Reid extensively researches symbols from ancient history through the contemporary emoticon. Reid was born in 1983 in Washington D.C. She received her B.F.A. from Boston University. She lives in New York City.
Amanda Valdez’s work is also deeply embedded in history, from western philosophy and abstract art history to non-western art practices and literatures. Her diverse influences include weaving, Islamic art, pattern & decoration, and color field painting. Her work explores the physical immediacy of the body, structured by imperfect symmetry and responding to gravity and material. Valdez was born in 1982 in Seattle. She received her B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her M.F.A. from Hunter College. She lives in New York City.
