Biography
The works have been viewed through the spectacles of traditional clichés for too long—works that belong to the collective pictorial memory on the one hand, but can well stand to be reassessed and perceived anew in their painterly potency and conceptual complexity on the other,
Paola recreates scenes from this marginalized slice of folk culture. This important new body of work—which includes paintings, robotics, installations, and videos—negotiates the aesthetic value of clichéd nostalgia inspired by neoclassical painting.
Known for both her imaginative subject matter and consummate skill as a multidisciplinary artist, Paola’s work is influenced by both the French 20th century salon painter, Bouguereau, and the pop-surrealist Mark Ryden, where offbeat subject matter is rendered in a more traditionally beautiful painting technique. Her simultaneously nostalgic and dystopian narratives underscore our culture’s attraction and repulsion to kitsch, while linking its ebb and flow as an accepted notion of taste to larger periods of art history. As such, Paola has a keen interest in what becomes kitsch in our cultural landscape.
The artist explores clichéd notions of “Mexican Art,”, the decorative, horror Vacui, paganism and the morbid celebration of death (“La Vida al Otro Lado”), with a dark and complex sentimentality. Integrating the Virgen de Guadalupe and symbols of Memento Mori among the compact worlds she creates, Paola presents the viewer with an unreal and very oddly representational version of Mexican culture. Exploring what becomes cliché, what becomes kitsch and what becomes forgotten. Yet through it all Paola makes some of the most richly rendered, beautifully glazed, idealized yet disturbing works of contemporary art. Like his contemporaries Mark Ryden, Lisa Yuskavage and Neo Rauch, Paola de la Peña uses a skillfully honed technique to render her polished and emotionally charged works.
Paola is in the process of receiving her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Paris College of Art. She studied robotics and was a member of “The MICA Furry Club” at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She has exhibited both nationally and internationally. Most recently she has had a solo presentation at SAQQARA’residencies (San Pedro Garza Garcia, NL, Mexico), Two person show, China Darlinger at Vitrine-65 (Paris) and participated in a performance piece at the Palais du Tokyo(Paris) and was part of a traveling exhibitions at (CCA, Oakland , CA), ( KCAI, Kansas City, MO) and (MICA, Baltimore, MD).
