What is Gone

Art NXT Level Projects, Chicago
Reception: Friday, March 18, 2016

In this exhibition, Mandy Cano Villalobos mingles cultural histories and personal narrative to make sense of nostalgic sentiments and life’s ephemerality. Her materials include dirt, human hair, and pig blood, which she employs as a dual symbol of filth and redemption. In the Sisyphus series, the artist repetitively marks the paper with circular patterns, thus transforming the action of painting into a meditative ritual. Erogenous and mournful, Modern Day Magdalene is a bed of burlap and human hair, a quiet reflection upon the disappointments and desires of an aging woman. Among these pieces and others, Cano Villalobos provides a thoughtful, somewhat sad pause, through which viewers might recognize their own vulnerabilities amidst her visceral materials and the stories she grafts into her work.

Bio: Mandy Cano Villalobos is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores the passage of time and collective memory. Her work has been featured in numerous venues including the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum (Clinton, NY), Maryland Institute College of Art (Baltimore, MD), Van Der Plas Gallery (New York, NY), Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival (Chicago), The Museum of New Art (Detroit, MI), Hillyer Art Space (Washington, DC) and La Casa Pauly (Puerto Montt, Chile). Cano Villalobos has also received grants from multiple organizations including the Puffin and Frey Foundations. She earned her MFA from The George Washington University in Washington, DC. and currently resides in the Midwest.
—

Mandy Cano Villalobos
www.mandycano.com
www.facebook.com/MandyCanoVillalobos