On reality, movement and abstraction: 

Marela Zacarías (Mexico/US) and Virginie Hucher (France)  

Curated by Barbara Stehle, Ph.D.

December 2, 2020 – January 11, 2021

Opening events, December 2 and 3, 6-8 pm.

Sapar Contemporary is delighted to present all new works by two noted female painters, Marela Zacarías (Mexico/US) and Virginie Hucher (France) in a show “On reality, movement and abstraction” curated by Barbara Stehle. The abstraction is too often understood as something essentially imaginary and disconnected from reality. Hucher and Zacarías remind us that abstractionists as much as figurative painters express something of the reality of their time, their culture and the history of their art. Over many years, both women have defined a creative practice that is highly personal and physically demanding: Hucher dances, and Zacarías wraps and sculpts. Their works and painting processes are distinct and particular to each artist, but in the gallery their dialogue points to the poetics of paint and movement in space.

About Artists

Marela Zacarias works with a labor-intensive process that merges sculpture with painting.  She fabricates forms out of wire screening attached to wooden supports or found objects to which she applies layers of plaster to create undulating forms. Through sanding, polishing, and painting, she creates sculptures with the quality of fabric, filled with movement and expressive quality. She then paints the sculptures with original patterns and geometric abstract shapes that are inspired by her research. Her work is characterized by an interest in site specificity, socially committed history and current events. Zacarias has had solo exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum; Praxis Gallery, the National Arts Club and at Art at Viacom at 1515 Broadway building all in NY; and at the Brattleboro Museum, Vermont. She has taken part in group exhibitions at the British Society of American Art, Praxis Gallery, Y Gallery, Rush Arts Gallery and El Museo del Barrio, all in NY. Zacarias has received large-scale permanent site-specific commissions from The Sea-Tac International Airport, Seattle; Facebook HQ, CA; The William Vale in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; the American Consulate in Monterrey, Mexico. Her murals can be found in Washington DC, Virginia, Connecticut, Ohio, Mexico and Guatemala. Zacarias has had residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson; University of Connecticut; Storrs; and at the Corcoran School of Art, Washington, DC, among others. She was profiled in the Art 21 New York Close Up Series in 2013, 1214 and 2016. Zacarias received her BA from Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio, and her M.F.A. from Hunter College, New York. She lives between Brooklyn, NY and Mexico City.

Virginie Hucher is a French artist graduated in plastic arts. After training in various striking workshops (Michel Gouéry, Bruno Lebel, Marc Alberghina), she developed a mostly abstract aesthetic in its own forms. Fine colorist, her work focuses on themes related to nature, the body and the living through several mediums: acrylic, oil, performance, sculpture.The colored masses are centered on the canvas, duly delimited in strange shapes which escape classical geometry. These elements, often alone in space, obey a vacuum-filling relationship dear to Taoism. The backgrounds are as neutral as the figures are full and no superfluous detail disturbs their unity. In harmonious and shimmering colors, it is nature that inspires. Virginie Hucher does not hesitate to define her artistic approach under the auspices of a commitment in favor of the protection of the environment, fauna, flora and life on Earth. These organic, vegetable, or mineral hybridizations form a means for the artist to limit himself to the essential. “Raw bodies” to use Lucrèce's periphrasis in De rerum natura, they play on the absence of scale to tackle a work of microcosm in the macrocosm. Do we see the last or first organisms on our planet? In her artistic approach, Virginie Hucher likes to recall the notion of mystery that makes the present moment the first creative principle

About Curator

Barbara Stehle, Ph.D. is an art historian and independent curator. She worked at the Pompidou Center in Paris before moving to the US. She currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and directs Art Intelligentsia through which she offers art historical services. She has given a Tedx talk about “Architecture as Human Narrative” and writes mostly about European Art, Architecture and Women’s contribution to the art historical field. She recently completed an essay for African American Abstractionist Lula Blocton upcoming monograph