Opening reception: Saturday, February 10th, 7-10pm

Arts + Leisure is excited to announce CAMA, an exhibition of new collages on fabric by Eloy Arribas. Drawing upon the allusive power of language and forms, the work presents a network of associations in a discourse of shifting relationships, grounded in a vibrant multimedia framework.

A self-described "plastic artist,” Arribas' work embraces spontaneity and the impromptu dynamism of artistic creation. Fields of negative space are punctuated by freewheeling abstract forms and seemingly incidental marks, bursts of unfettered expression that charge the work with a surging energy. Unbothered by conceptual pretenses and the influence of the contemporary art market, his practice exists as a pure dialogue between artist and canvas.

Language plays a central role in Arribas' art, and several of the collages feature words which, divorced from a narrative structure, take on an iconic, sigil-like character. Paired with scrawls, smudges, and other bits of studio detritus, the collages evoke a disjunction between text and image, a sort of non sequitur that reflects both the allusive possibilities of language and its restrictions - for example, the feeling of being "at a loss for words." As postmodern parables of communication and miscommunication, the works grasp for a mode of describing life's ambiguous states, a response, in Arribas' words, to the "lack of nomenclature that we have for the world of sensations, fears and desires."

One of the collages bears the word "Dragon," accompanied by patches of free-form drawing and fabric cutouts, while another includes the word "Sol," placed within a similar environment of disconnected forms. Two of the other collages feature skull motifs--one is an almost naive rendering of simple fabric forms, while the other is a found image. As a body of work, CAMA resists rigid interpretation, and the collages instead thrive as reflections of present, momentary experience. 

Eloy Arribas was born in 1991 in Valladolid, Spain, and received his BFA from Salamanca University in 2014. He has had solo shows at GalerÍa Herrero de Tejada, Madrid, Spain; Silves Arte Contemporáneo Gallery, Madrid, Spain; Mojácar Factory Gallery, Mojácar, Almeria; and DA2 Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain. He received the Premio-Grant from the Corselas Foundation of the University of Salamanca in 2016, and has completed residencies at Atelierhaus Salzamt in Linz, Austria, as well as at Javier Silva Gallery in Valladolid, Spain.

Please join us for the opening reception with the artist on Saturday, February 10th, from 7pm to 10pm. A limited edition, full-color artist’s book will be published to accompany the exhibition. For further information, please contact nick@artsandleisure.net or call 212.691.7700.