Altar- Structures

Congrats to Monica Valdez Harb, winner of the GearBox Gallery Award in our 2024 Juried Exhibition, Abstraction NOW!, juried by Auriel Garza. As winner of the award, she was granted a special exhibition in the Inner Room of the gallery.

Altar-Structures: Artist’s Statement

There is always something that draws me to ideas of appreciation and adoration in my work. I am interested in creating a structure or a compilation built out of parts, fragments, and essences from everyday reality. I would like to elevate these details of everyday life and assemble them into a form that feels, in a way, transcendent. Picking from parts of reality: whether it be pastries, plant-life, clothing, buildings, an archway, and then transforming them into something other. At the same time, I aim to create some sort of unknown sculptural presence in a pictorial realm. In this way, the relationship between the known and the unknown world of objects and structures is what I find fascinating.

I’m interested in assembling an object from different parts into something that is idealized. For example, connecting architectural details of a visit to a cathedral, combined with a walk in a grove, and coming across a tree wrapped in fungi. Furthermore, experiencing the weight and solidity of an intense color combined with the bounce of a ruffled silk ribbon. When I look back at my experiences, it is the particular characteristics that have become memorable. These distinctive details form a whole structure or object in my work that becomes something other than reality.

~ Monica Valdez Harb