Artist Statements

Cande Aguilar

This series of barrioPOP paintings pays tribute to the lively tradition of hand-painted signage—known as rótulos—that colors everyday life in border towns. Inspired by growing up in Brownsville, Texas, where there were no formal museums or galleries, each piece channels the spirit of the mom-and-pop storefronts whose bold lettering and vibrant palettes served as a kind of grassroots art form.

Large, blocky text and energetic brushstrokes capture the spontaneous feel of these signs, celebrating the unique typography and color clashes found throughout local markets, food stands, and family-owned businesses. By stacking words and phrases—ranging from everyday items like “Pecans” and “Milk” to expressions of gratitude and cultural references—the paintings echo the layering of voices, traditions, and languages that define the border experience.

In blending bright, pop-inspired hues with the raw, handmade quality of rótulos, these works embody a sense of place and personal history. They honor the resourcefulness and creativity of communities that transform ordinary walls into open-air galleries. Ultimately, the series reflects the artist’s desire to elevate a humble yet deeply meaningful art form, reminding us that culture can thrive in unexpected places and that beauty often springs from the most unassuming corners of our daily environment.

Briar Bonifacio

Born and raised in Austin, Briar Bonifacio is a self-taught muralist and graphic artist whose artwork adorns some of the most popular spots in the city. Largely inspired by cartoon-like imagery, the subjects of Bonifacio’s artworks are usually inanimate objects with human characteristics. Bonifacio’s use of characters multiple times in different artworks gives his artwork a recognizable personality. Not only does the sense of humor Briar Bonifacio adds to his murals, serigraphs, and paintings make him a uniquely recognizable contemporary artist Austin, but he has also exhibited in New York, Miami, San Francisco, Portland, Chicago and won residencies in Hartford’s Pope Park and New York’s Deitch Projects Art Parade. During his most recent residency in Hong Kong, he researched Wing Chun Kung Fu History and put on an art and DJ puppet show in Central Hong Kongs Lan Kwai Fong Disctrict.

Ron Geibel

Ron Geibel’s artwork and research address the complex landscape among intimacy, pleasure, and authority as it concerns the opaque relationship between public and private desires that constitute queer identity.

Geibel received a BFA from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania and his MFA from the University of Montana. Geibel exhibits both nationally and internationally, and venues include the Bogert Gallery in Knokke, Belgium; Untitled Space, New York City; Susquehanna Art Museum, Pennsylvania; San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts, Texas; and Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio. His work is featured in Create Magazine, ArtMaze Magazine, Ceramics Art and Perception, and Artist Magazine, published in Taiwan City, Taiwan.

Raul Rene Gonzalez

My art investigates the multifaceted themes of work, fatherhood, identity, gender roles, construction, labor, pop culture, sports, movement, science, and abstraction. Utilizing a dynamic range of techniques—including painting, drawing, sculpture, and collage, I weave these elements into a cohesive narrative. Whether through the vivid storytelling of my paintings and drawings or the imaginative spaces within my abstract and mixed-media installations, my goal is to inspire and energize viewers. Each piece is a journey, inviting contemplation and connection.

This body of work reflects the labor world that is part of every community. The drawings on reflective tape capture moments sitting in traffic, acknowledging the manual labor occurring on a regular basis. The collaged image on tile is a self-portrait, visualizing myself in a cosmic landscape where putting up party streamers and shoveling dirt are one-in-the-same. Both actions alter their surroundings.

Emma Hadzi Antich

Emma Hadzi Antich's symbol-scapes provide unquiet evidence of alienation from communities, both environmental and cultural. Her paintings reconfigure the iconographic insistence of legible teleology to emphasize the absence of collective mythos and shared rituals in the postmodern, western world. This illusion of a complex narrative in the absence of any decipherable lexicon for allegory is intended to create new worlds where the hadži (or pilgrim) must search for meaning on terrain that is impossible to traverse. Instead of turning to the decadence of disillusionment, her intention is to use this disorientation to create space in which the painter and the viewer can collaborate on the creation rather than collapse.

Emma Hadzi Antich paints luminous mountains which fluctuate between figuration and abstraction. Paintings that explore collective belonging and individualistic estrangement honor the artist’s academic discipline in political theory. Hadzi Antich has completed several solo exhibitions, most recently at Northern-Southern and Dougherty Arts Center. She has participated in group exhibitions at galleries and museums including Sweet Art, London; Carlson Tower Gallery, Chicago; Beacon Gallery, Boston; Graphite Gallery, New Orleans; Clamp Light Gallery, San Antonio; and The Contemporary, Austin. She completed a painting residency at Centre Pompadour in France and an installation residency at Really Small Museum in Texas. Hadzi Antich currently lives and works in Austin, TX and is represented by Northern-Southern.

Soomin Jung Remmler

I am a daughter of a retired ROK army colonel, a full-time working mother of 2, an immigrant, and an artist.

Moving, traveling, transferring to new schools, adopting to the new landscapes and atmospheres in various regions and making new friends who were vastly different than from the previous places were a big part of my youth, and my family always had exceptionally strong bond through the changes. Naturally, I became interested in one’s perception of the world around us, the myriad influences that can distort the perception, and the landscapes and people that withstand the changes through time and generations. The conjunctions of the distortions such as the reflection of a mountain in a body of water, mirroring mountain valleys, changing lights in nature, and the sparkly things in the sky that make your heart sink such as snowflakes, lights coming through the windows of houses at night, stars and fireflies are the vessels to carry my thoughts beyond words.

A recent trip to Europe for an artist residency initiated to see more nature and landscapes in Europe was an eye-opening experience. I took my children with me for a month-long artist residency. There, I found the amazing and wondrous nature in my children, their tiny hands, giggles, laughter and joyous squeals, and the small wonders that make them astounded. How precious and wondrous those tiny moments are? Surrounded by the Alps and glacier lakes, in front of the magnificent nature, I realized that what really stir my heart were always with me. The small and marvelous children and the moments with them.

In this body of work, my drawings are photorealistic capturing magical moments in colored pencils on drafting film. Both body of work are aesthetically pleasing, ambiguous and easy on the viewers eyes. They meant to make the viewers feel warm and happy, and take the viewers to their happy place.

Yuliya Lanina

I intend to bring a dissonant charge to the work I create. Playful and quirky on the exterior, my work uses whimsy as a device to draw closer inspection.

Through my work, I examine the relationship between absurdity, sexuality, and trauma with a particular focus on physical and psychic reconstruction through reassembling disparate parts. Though I use various mediums: works on paper, animation, mechanical sculpture and performances, my theme is always consistent -- stitching together the fragments of traumatized consciousness.

My process is intuitive. I let the subconscious take the lead. I leave analytical thinking behind and embrace the nonsensical and surprising. Stemming from my specific experiences, my work aims to speak to the nature of being, to the heart as well as intellect, to make difficult topics accessible and to facilitate healing.

Leigh Anne Lester

In 2015, Lester attended the Berlin Residency Program, sponsored by The Contemporary at Blue Star; the time spent in Berlin inspired the artist to develop the work presented at this exhibition. The artist was moved by the city's adaptation after World War II: “When they couldn’t remove all of the debris in the city, they created public parks on the ‘rubble mountains’ and let nature take over. This acclimatization leads to places people find refuge, layered on top of destruction.” Like these parks, Lester’s imagery is layered with different histories underneath each surface. Lester pays homage to these repurposed rubble mounds in the work, The Eternal Series of Destruction and Resurrection, the use of wooden sculptural branches that are draped with painted sculptures of natural debris - a tree stump (long-lived) and a leaf (short-lived) found on the “rubble mountains,” emphasizing the passage of time and the silent power of flora to absorb humans actions and the unsettled potential of the technology we are capable of now.

Ana Esteve Llorens

Both, her scientific and artistic education inform her studio practice. In her installations and sculptural pieces craftsmanship and technology combine in the treatment of classical and industrial materials to link and expand the syntax of sculpture. Esteve Llorens has been the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, which include a Fulbright Fellowship, an Excellence award from AMEXCID, and Fellowship from Arte y Derecho Foundation. Her work has been shown in Europe and in The Americas. She has been an artist in residence at Yaddo in New York, The French Academy in Madrid, and The National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico City among others.

L. Renée Núñez

The exponential evolutionary growth of technology has affected the speed at which humans produce, consume and interact, a speed that can't be maintained or reconciled, causing an anxiety that finds me reaching backwards and inside to find connection with the primordial. For the last 10 years I have been creating Habitat: Other World populated by representatives of plants and animals in a direct manifestation of my reach for the primordial. These representatives have mutated characteristics that symbolize the nebulous, and thus connected, mass of newly forming primordial life. The work takes form in a painted, ever evolving installation as these creatures accrete. The intricately hand cut networks cast shadows and reflect color leading them to link the realms of two and three dimensional worlds.

Joseph Phillips

My work addresses the relationship between the chaos of nature and the attempt society makes to create order out of chaos. It is through this constructed order that I begin to understand our existence, desires, dreams, and fears. My work reflects my view of humanity, and the dualities that I believe are inherent everywhere in our world. My work reconciles the exponential growth of collective human knowledge with our inversely diminishing individual capacity to comprehend it all. It is as much a celebration of humanity’s creativity as it is an indictment of our carelessness. It strikes a balance between my disillusionment and my sense of wonder, and between my fears and my hopes. I am equally impressed with the ingenuity of our solutions as I am distressed by the scope of our problems. Through intentionally naive, oversimplified dissections of our environment, I am trying to come to terms with the complexity of our existence and the enormity of the problems that confront us.

Rebecca Rothfus Harrell

There are benefits and drawbacks to rapid development and growth in cities. One consequence can be the loss of smaller, local businesses. In the transition, what is left behind are abandoned storefronts, papered windows, and empty buildings awaiting demolition. The paradox is that the same is also found in small towns dotting the landscape between the large cities. I have been documenting what I identify as the primary signifier of this state of flux across the country. An empty sign askew above a bolted front door, a familiar shaped frame with exposed bulbs towering over the defunct gas station or the torn fabric of a sign exposing the supports. I find these structures visually and conceptually captivating. They have a history but no longer serve the intended purpose. These remnants often remain on site and in a decaying state for some time. They become something ignored, background noise in the landscape, both urban and rural. As I reinterpret these objects, I aim to visually transform the found structure into an architectural form, a partition or a window through which to view. These empty signs are given new context and new meaning.

Elizabeth Schwaiger

Elizabeth Schwaiger received her MFA from the Glasgow School of Art in 2011. In her decade-long exploration of power dynamics and the climate crises, Schwaiger uses a variegated symbolism of water, fracturing, dimensional overlay, gesture, and dialed levels of representational clarity to construct images suggestive of the interplay among unseen forces that govern our world. She has exhibited in venues in the UK and the USA including in The Walker Gallery National Museum in Liverpool, The Macintosh Museum in Glasgow, The National Portrait Gallery in London, Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff, Glasgow International, Embassy Gallery in Edinburgh, Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, and Co-Lab Projects and GrayDUCK Gallery in Austin. Recent projects include NYC solo exhibition Now & Now & Now at Nicola Vassell in 2024 and solo exhibition Pressing Shadows at Gana Art in Seoul in 2023, as well as a solo presentation at the Independent art fair in 2023 presented by Nicola Vassell. She was awarded a residency with the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation at Rauschenberg’s studio complex in Captiva Florida in 2019. Her work has been featured in Cultured, Artnet's Up Next, Forbes, The Brooklyn Rail, The Catlin Guide, fields magazine, Hyperallergic, Floorr, Fusebox Written & Spoken, Newfound, Conflict of Interest, Sightlines, and The Austin Chronicle. Schwaiger is represented by Nicola Vassell in New York City.

Shawn Smith

My work investigates the slippery intersection between the digital world and reality. Specifically, I am interested in how we experience nature through technology. In this era of Dataism, the human gaze serves as both architect and witness, shaping our world through the lens of screens and pixels. My artistic practice explores the entanglement between the real world and the pixel—the fundamental building block of our digitally constructed reality. With my work, I fuse data and nature to explore the delicate relationship between the analog and the digital.

Since 2005, I have been creating three-dimensional sculptural representations of two-dimensional images of nature I find online. I build my objects pixel by pixel in an overtly laborious process in direct contrast to the speed of the digital world. I explore how pixels come together to form a tapestry that mirrors our interpretation of the world. I am interested in how each pixel plays an important role in the identity of the object, the same way each cell plays a crucial role in the identity of an organism.

With this collision of data and nature, I invite contemplation on how our digitized perception of the world contributes to the construction of our shared visual narrative. As we pixelate reality through screens, we reveal the profound impact of the human gaze on the ever-evolving landscape of our digitally shaped world.

Claude van Lingen

Claude van Lingen was born in South Africa and moved to New York in 1978. He settled in Austin,Texas in 2006. Claude studied at the Johannesburg College of Art (University of Johannesburg), the Academie Notre Dames des Champs, Paris, and gained an MFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, in 1980.

Claude exhibited at the São Paulo Biennial in 1975 and in 1973 was awarded the prestigious Ernest Oppenheimer Memorial Trust Award at the Art South Africa Today exhibition. Since coming to the United States his work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in New York, and other cities in the USA, Canada and SouthAfrica. Claude’s work is in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art, AustinTexas, MUDAC, Lausanne, Switzerland and almost every museum in South Africa.

Since 1978 he has explored the theme, 1000 Years from Now. Drawings and paintings in which dates for 1000 years into the future and names from lists—written one on top of the other—have formed the core of his work since 1991. This approach has been applied to the writing of names in drawings such as 1000 Years from Now, The Victims of the World Trade Center Tragedy, 1000 Years from Now, The Casualties of the Iraq War, and 1000 Years from Now, The Casualties of the Afghanistan War.

Claude was chairman of the Teacher Training Department and the Fine Art Department at the Johannesburg College of Art, South Africa, from 1965-1978, he taught at the School of Visual Arts in New York, from 1982-1985 and was an adjunct professor at Austin Community College.

Michael Villarreal

I explore the often-overlooked geometry of a backyard from a casual perspective. Rows of cinder blocks, arranged stones, and brick patterns etched into the grass by garden tools form a visual language that reflects the interplay between nature, labor, and human intention. Using impasto techniques, I convey the tactile textures of these materials—rough stones, smooth bricks, and overgrown grass—highlighting the contrast between the organic world and human-made order. The paintings elevate these everyday elements, transforming them into meditations on the quiet labor of creation, the subtle beauty of overlooked details, and how ordinary spaces reveal deeper truths about our relationship with the world around us.