top of page
EFRAÍN LÓPEZ
MOUNTAINS ARE INSIDE ME 
April 30 - June 28, 2024
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_1.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_8.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_7.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_13.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_10.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_9.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_12.jpeg
EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_5.jpeg

EFRAÍN LÓPEZ

MOUNTAINS ARE INSIDE ME 

April 30 - June 28, 2024

NEW YORK, NEW YORK

Efraín López is pleased to announce Mountains Are Inside Me, an exhibition of new works by Puerto Rican-American sculptor, Gisela Colón. The exhibition will be on view from April 30 through June 22, 2024 in Tribeca. For her first solo show at the gallery, the artist will present two new sculptural works alongside an early painting, a suite of intimately-scaled works on paper, and an architectural intervention. Mountains Are Inside Me will be accompanied by an essay authored by curator César García-Alvarez.

 

Gisela Colón’s sculptural practice explores identity, transformation, energy, time, and space. Her work is grounded in minimal organic aesthetics that refuse stasis, and instead embrace transformation and transcendence. Throughout her practice, Colón employs strategies of abstraction to both subsume and conceal the complexities of identity and personal narrative. Her work crosses geographic, political, and national boundaries, to form multicultural dialogues and create space for Latinx voices.

 

Contextualizing the origin of the monolithic form, the presentation opens with an early painting titled Pinnacle (El Yunque), 1996. Conjured from her observations and experiences in El Yunque, the tropical rainforest of her homeland in Puerto Rico, this work marks the first appearance of the monolithic structure that has become the principal occupation of Colón’s work. The artist’s use of abstraction and universal geometries belies an alternate reality shaped by complex diasporic conditions. Colon’s monoliths simultaneously evoke the fraught collective history of militarized colonialism in the Caribbean and draw upon her own layered experiences with gun violence. Shaped by a process of healing and transformation, the soaring verticality of the monoliths reflects the mountainous peaks of Puerto Rico’s captivating geology, an enduring source of materia prima for the artist.

 

Anchoring the main exhibition space, Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), builds upon Colón’s distinctive organic minimalist language while further elucidating her personal history and often-illegible identity as a diasporic Puerto Rican artist. In Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), Colón's use of red earth from her family’s plot of land in Arecibo connects formative moments of a childhood surrounded by violence and displacement to an early fascination with outer space and the cosmos nurtured at the Observatory de Arecibo—until recently the largest telescope in the world. A deeply personal work, Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), is the bedrock that lies beneath the artist’s own biographical story, concealed within layers calcified by the broader implications of Puerto Rico's stratified history with colonialism. The distinctive ochre color of Puerto Rico’s red earth comes from the mineral hematite, an iron oxide formed over time. Hematite, one of the earliest pigments used by man, appears in ancient cave drawings throughout the world, as well as on other planetary bodies. In Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), Colón constructs a vessel that imagines an expansive cosmic world filled with the energy of nature, ancestral memories, and a universal consciousness larger than any single individual. In imagining this vast expanse of space and time, subjective lived experiences on a human scale are absorbed into the universal, infinite form of the monolith—a structure shared across time by geological formations, prehistoric archeological structures, and ancient architectures. Colón’s larger-than-life totemic structure encapsulates a transformative moment in time, where the complexities of an infinite cosmos, composed of cosmic matter and energy, swirl within its confines.

 

While rooted in Colón’s personal relationship to land and encounters with violence, Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite) works to absorb the specificities of individualized negative experiences to form a transformative vessel of healing, light, and life. In this work, Colón has invited us to consider what lies beneath the surface and sits within the infinite potentiality of the cosmic world, grounded in the raw dirt that bore ancestral life on earth.

EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_11.jpeg

Pinnacle (El Yunque), 1996, Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 inches.

Based on her observations and experiences in El Yunque, the tropical rainforest of her homeland in Puerto Rico, this work introduces the monolithic structure that has become a main focus of Colón's art. Through abstraction and universal geometries, the artist alludes to an alternative reality influenced by complex diasporic circumstances. The monoliths created by Colón bring to mind the turbulent collective history of militarized colonialism in the Caribbean and also draw inspiration from her own personal experiences with gun violence. Shaped by a process of healing and transformation, the towering height of the monoliths mirrors the majestic peaks of Puerto Rico's captivating geography, which serves as a constant source of raw material for the artist.

EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_4.jpeg

Llevo La Tierra Por Dentro (Serie Montañas de Puerto Rico) - (Los Picachos de Jayuya, El Yunque, La Cordillera Central, Las Piedras del Collado Cayey, El Cerro Maravilla), 2024,

Five line drawings on archival arches 140 lb. rough paper with harvested earth, pulverized particles, and hand-processed pigmented matter, 7 x 10 inches each; 7.75 x 10.75 x 1 inches (framed); approximate installed dimensions 10.75 x 75 inches.

In the series Llevo La Tierra Por Dentro, Colón explores identity through the metaphor of the orogenic mountain-building process. This process involves movements in the earth's crust that lead to folding, faulting, volcanic activity, igneous intrusion, and metamorphism. The creation of majestic mountain forms serves as a symbol of strength and transformation. Each line drawing represents a mountain range in Puerto Rico that holds personal significance for Colón. These land formations embody the artist's personal journey of becoming something convergent, blended, layered, irreversible, eroded, and transformed through cataclysms, gravity, and time.

EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_6.jpeg

Autorretrato Tectónico (Oxígeno), 2024, Body of the artist as silhouette and blow-molded acrylic, 67.75 x 26 x 10 inches.

Self-portrait created using the artist's body silhouette. The form represents mountains, trees, and bullets brought to life, symbolizing elements of nature that are alive. The artist's body emerges from the earth, reaching towards the sky, reflecting the transformative and regenerative experiences she has encountered in her life. Inspired by nature's ability to change, heal, renovate, reconstruct, and revive itself, the artwork draws upon cosmic universal energy in a process of rebirth.

EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_2.jpeg

Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), 2024, Aurora particles, stardust, cosmic radiation, intergalactic matter, ionic waves, organic carbamate, gravity, energy, and time, 98.5 x 24 x 12 inches.

Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite) builds upon Colón's organic minimalist language while further elucidating her personal history and identity as a Puerto Rican artist in diaspora. In this artwork, Colón utilizes red earth from her family's plot of land in Arecibo, connecting her childhood experiences of violence and displacement to her early fascination with outer space nurtured at the Arecibo Observatory, which was once the largest telescope in the world. Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite) is a deeply personal work that serves as the foundation of the artist's biographical story, concealed within layers shaped by Puerto Rico's complex history with colonialism. The distinctive ochre color of Puerto Rico's red earth comes from hematite, an iron oxide that forms over time. Hematite, one of the earliest pigments used by humans, appears in ancient cave drawings worldwide and on other celestial bodies. In Tierra De Substrato Arecibo (Parabolic Monolith Hematite), Colón constructs a vessel that envisions a cosmic world filled with the energy of nature, ancestral memories, and a universal consciousness larger than any individual. By imagining this vast expanse of space and time, subjective human experiences become absorbed into the universal, infinite form of the monolith—a structure shared across time by geological formations, prehistoric archaeological structures, and ancient architectures. Colón's larger-than-life totemic structure encapsulates a transformative moment in time, where the complexities of an infinite cosmos, composed of cosmic matter and energy, swirl within its confines.

EfrainLopez_GiselaColon_3.jpeg

De La Tierra Nací Y A La Tierra Regresaré (Architectural Intervention / Excavation), 2024, Excavation of the gallery floor reveals negative space that corresponds to the elliptical base form of the parabolic monolith hematite. This space is filled with red earth matter and hematite rocks sourced from Arecibo, Puerto Rico, which is the birthplace of the artist's father and ancestors.

24 x 12 inches; depth: dimension variable.

The title of this work draws inspiration from the phrase "Dust to dust, ashes to ashes," which originates from the Book of Common Prayer and is used in burial services. This phrase is poetically used to acknowledge the fleeting nature of human life. Colón explores themes such as origin, mortality, place, and time to remind us of our impermanence and the natural cycle of life and death. We begin as simple elemental particles and eventually break down into the same basic materials, similar to the reddish soil collected from Colón's hometown in Puerto Rico. In terms of materials, the use of hematite rocks scattered on the surface of the blood-colored soil creates a landscape rich in symbolism. These elements reference violence and redemption, while also providing a subtle sense of requiem.

bottom of page