Who Are ( You ) Are Who...? This is where Lola Gil begins her new body of work, with a question and a play on words. Where in the early years of the century, Lola was playing with the extensions of reality through pop surrealism, her newest bodies of work and this show on view at Nino Mier Gallery in Los Angeles, have subtle hints of surrrealism and obscured visuals. The glass animal figurines pose in the foreground while figurative elements are blurred in the back, and yet reflect with a mysterious clarity through the glass. That she uses stock imagery as the basis of each work seems to play with the idea of strangers, people that are used to tell a story who are almost employed to have no individual story at all. As the gallery notes, "These figures act as the protagonists of her paintings, highlighting the stranger as a sort of anyone and everyone character. " Anyone and everyone. Who Are (You) Are Who.
The glass figurine provides depth, an almost multifaceted interpretation of what a self can be in a scene, or even in the context of stock photography. These people are supposed to be malleable, to be used in multiple places at once. And maybe this is where Lola Gil is taking us in our own world of what seems to be an endless stream of stock imagery. Lives put on social media, viral videos defining our collectiveness, just weeks at a time. Social media and the accounts we follow and the people who become famous through these channels become almost stock imagery, anything or everything.
As Lola Gil says, "In our current climate, I have felt an overwhelming sense of emotion and interest in the ‘stranger’. Through this new body of work, I am driven to dedicate an intimate investigation of the human spirit. The subjects are dependent on me to share their multifaceted components, in a way that highlights each one of us having unique experiences through life separately. The doors we go in and out of over the course of our lives shape us, whether for the good or bad […] The stranger has history. The stranger has suffered, enjoyed, loved, etc. in some capacity. I paint these subjects in two mindsets. First, I offer the viewer perspective of the ‘other,’ the ‘stranger’. The stranger is also you from others’ point of view. But I also paint these subjects for me. To offer solace for relationships past, and to let the very damaging ones have forgiveness through the understanding that we are at varying degrees of respect and understanding of the other.”
text by Evan Pricco
