Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to announce our participation in Art on Paper NY 2022.

For our seventh showing at Art on Paper, we will be presenting Lucha Rodríguez's newest exhibition: "Sense and Vision". This year we will be part of the special projects at the fair. Art on Paper's Projects challenge, expand, and engage visitors with their interactive presentation and immersive constructions. This invitational program works with participating galleries and cultural organizations to activate Art on Paper's public spaces.

Philadelphia’s Paradigm Gallery is pleased to present Sense and Vision, a solo exhibition of works on paper by Atlanta-based Venezuelan-Panamanian artist Lucha Rodríguez. Sense and Vision features four distinct collections of the artist’s “knife drawings”, created with her inventive bas-relief technique on watercolored paper. Abstract forms arise from the optical play of light and shadow over the hand-cut surface of the paper, stimulating the senses, and inviting a synesthetic experience Rodríguez describes as “touching with your eyes”.

Rodríguez begins her work in the studio with a ritualized routine informed by her training as a certified hypnotherapist. The process allows her to access her subconscious and sensory memories, the pursuit of which forms the basis of her practice. Foggy recollections from the deep recesses of the artist’s mind are brought into sharper focus, as she engages her senses, and concentrates on the flickers of clarity that arises. Seemingly insignificant details, like the weight and texture of an object in her hand, or the fleeting smell of a cool breeze, allow fragmented memories to resurface in her consciousness. The color pink, present in all of Rodríguez’s work, serves as a conduit for the sublime, and anchors the act of making in the fleshy warmth of the embodied self. Each cut of the knife requires unwavering precision and dexterity. The methodical rhythm of Rodríguez’s hand and the blade, cut after cut, guides her into a state of flow and awareness.

Art making is, in its essence, a metaphysical act of transformation – a process made visible through Rodríguez’s studio practice. Rodríguez’s work invites slow looking, encouraging viewers to embrace the idiosyncrasy and illusion of perception. In each step toward its actualization, the body of work in the exhibition is rooted in phenomenological experience and sensory knowledge, driven by the artist’s intuition and the ephemeral alignment of mind and body, past and present, Sense and Vision.