The mesmerizing new work of Cristina Toro is on view at LaCa Projects. Her exhibition, Strike a Match to Hear My Sound is up through April 7, 2017. Pictures do not come close to doing these brilliant works justice. The indescribable vibrant colors, rhythmic imagery, and impressive scale can only be fully appreciated in person.
The works represent the artist’s ongoing dialogue with humanity and the natural world. Toro addresses natural and supernatural phenomena related to fire and light. The inspiration for the works began in the artist’s kitchen, where she experienced the phenomenon of luminous plasma from static electricity creating a glowing light, or Saint Elmo’s Fire. This exhibition shares a number of examples related to energy and luminosity: ritual bonfires, polaroids, candles inside of kettles, phosphorescence, human energy fields, and the various properties of light, real and imagined, that come from the sun and the moon in relationship to one’s body.
Influenced by Indian miniature painting and Japanese woodblock prints, the colors and technique are flat yet quite intense. Each work is a narrative revealing her sensory experience to nature. Toro’s work is not preconceived. She repeats motifs such as moths, mushrooms, eyes, flames, floral and fauna, in an imperfectly symmetrical arrangement that is both aesthetically pleasing yet intriquing in its slight imbalance.
The collages are more of a journal for the artist. Through placing beloved photographs and old sketches into these pieces, she is allowing a part of herself to go out into the universe in her artwork. The layered, personal nature of these collages shows the vulnerable side of the artist in a very mysterious way.
Cristina Toro has been creating and exhibiting work on a global scale for the last ten years. Her paintings, dually inspired by her colorful upbringing in Puerto Rico and introspective life in New York, illustrate a mortal journey rife with discovery and loss, laughter and grief, and love and longing. While her work is representative of her Latina roots, her visionary approach to painting is uniquely her own, and one that honors a new age of cross-cultural dialogue within contemporary art. She received her BA in painting from the University of South Florida in 2005, and in 2007, received a Strategic Opportunity from the New York Council of the Arts. She was also awarded a New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship in 2010. Toro has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Japan, Mexico, and the United States, and her work can be found in prestigious private collections, including the Dana Farber Institute in Boston, HPFRANCE in Tokyo, Japan, and The Mint Museum.
Please contact LaCa Projects for pricing and more detailed information on works seen here.
For more design inspiration, please follow along on Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter and subscribe to Bespoke Banter. Thanks for reading!
