"Sometimes a painting isn’t what I’m trying to say, but a mirror for whatever people want to project on it," Noelia Towers told us recently of her recent body of work, Night Visions. "I like themes of departure, solitude, loss, despair, and instability, and I have found that seeing a figure facing the opposite way works quite well for me." Towers is a painter of something quite uneasy, a tension that is something of a universal fear, or omnipresent pressure. The Barcelona-born, Chicago-based artist doesn't seem afraid in her role as the conductor, and gives her subjects both a sense of power in their containment, a fighter's chance, a cinematic resilience.
On view now at Marquez Art Projects in Miami, Night Visions expands on Towers examinations of power and dreams, intense in their cropped action and leaves the viewer with a sense of something that can only be described as ominous. As the gallery notes, "The resulting paintings, rich with observational power and symbolism, convey both the intimacy of naturalism and the historical and political references of social realism." Though they don't directly address the world-at-large, they feel fitting of the moment. Power corruption, nature in peril, the individual left to make sense of it all. —Evan Pricco
Installation images Courtesy Marquez Art Projects. Photography by Zachary Balber
