Barbara Davis Gallery is pleased to announce With Two Tales, a solo exhibition by Miguel Ángel Madrigal opening Friday, January 13th with an artist's reception from 6:30 to 8:30pm.
Standing Still, acrylic on wood carving sculpture and candy machine, 75 x 18 x 11, 2022
We build memory from circumstances, space, and time. Memory alludes to a past that has lost its place and hovers as a curious fragmented presence, hiding until a new event revives it. Memory constantly undergoes a mutation, becoming a story—a story that molds a fictitious space.
Miguel Ángel Madrigal works in this fictitious space to provoke new conceptions of memory in the movement between his pieces, discovering symbiotic relationships between animals and everyday objects. The objectification of memory is realized in sculptural moments made from the everyday, a familiar place with empty spaces to be contemplated by the viewer. It oscillates between representation and the hidden, between tension and elusion, generating physical and imagined interventions in the viewer’s perception. His pieces come alive in the spaces they inhabit, exploring and generating new stories.
Miguel Ángel Madrigal works in this fictitious space to provoke new conceptions of memory in the movement between his pieces, discovering symbiotic relationships between animals and everyday objects. The objectification of memory is realized in sculptural moments made from the everyday, a familiar place with empty spaces to be contemplated by the viewer. It oscillates between representation and the hidden, between tension and elusion, generating physical and imagined interventions in the viewer’s perception. His pieces come alive in the spaces they inhabit, exploring and generating new stories.
Topa, acrylic on wood carving sculpture, 16 x 25 x 14 inches, 2022
In “With Two Tales,” Madrigal explores these ideas through graceful figures of dogs and everyday objects—they are curious and unraveling a narrative the viewer forgot existed. His sculptures feel deeply and strive to connect with the viewer, acting as a vehicle for memory that swirls in the back of the viewer’s mind. Evoking tender moments of belonging, feeling lost, excitement for new beginnings, and playful connection, Madrigal offers the viewer a renewed relationship with their own past, present, and future.
The story being told is not a story that we have lived, but that we recover in fragments of time contained in our experiences and expectations. Memory is easily altered, existing as an invisible entity that is inevitably modified when recalled later. Trying to grasp a memory over and over again can tear it apart even more. The details are never what they used to be and the more you think about them, the more they break apart, lost to fiction and found in connection.
The story being told is not a story that we have lived, but that we recover in fragments of time contained in our experiences and expectations. Memory is easily altered, existing as an invisible entity that is inevitably modified when recalled later. Trying to grasp a memory over and over again can tear it apart even more. The details are never what they used to be and the more you think about them, the more they break apart, lost to fiction and found in connection.