FAY RAY AND DANIEL GIBSON

Los Angeles-based artist Fay Ray explores the fetishization of objects and the construction of female identity through high-contrast, monochrome photomontages and metallic sculpture. For her three-dimensional works, Fay Ray compiles cast aluminum objects, bored volcanic rocks, wire, chain, and natural materials into suspended sculptural masses. Conflating worlds of worship and desire, the works across mediums borrow from the symbolism and composition of traditional religious relics and the visual language of the occult. Ray’s sculptures and collages hint at the presence of a rematerialized body through a mysterious yet systematic organization of abstract form.

Employing references to the natural world while speaking to hardships, resilience, and freedom, Daniel Gibson's paintings explore a lexicon of symbols that relate to his familial past and his identity as a Mexican-American. Growing up along the California border with Mexico, Gibson witnessed the harsh realities of migration to America at an early age. In an effort to face the bleak nature of these grueling journeys, he turned to his imagination—often reshaping reality with fantasy. As a painter, Gibson brings to life the surreal narratives that captivated him as a child, presenting memories and family stories from the point of view of his earliest years anew.  

Gibson is largely a self-taught artist and has developed his visual language and painting process through intuition and imagination. Shifting between the genres of portraiture, landscape, and still life, Gibson's surrealistic scenes demonstrate an adoration for nature. Desert landscapes are populated with generously painted lush flowers that often take on an anthropomorphized quality. The ocean is prominently featured in many of his family stories and creates a stark contrast with the arid desert landscape of his childhood. Gibson revitalizes the world around him in painting, reverently returning to familiar symbols such as flowers, butterflies, figures, desert mountains, beaches, and seas. For the artist, his works are as much autobiographical as they are collective stories that document moments of struggle and celebration that would otherwise be lost to time.