Abelardo Lopez & Luis Gal: Landscape Expressions

Ruiz-Healy Art is pleased to present an exhibition that features the different ways of depicting landscape. The works of Gal and Lopez are warm and breezy, yet devoid of movement, images captured in a liminal state with implied meanings and associations beyond their temporal or physical immediacy. Lopez exhibits a bold handling of the physical materials and his construction of images unencumbered by complex narratives or explicit meaning. Gal’s material handling, on the other hand, is minimal and soft with no visible texture. 

Abelardo López focuses on the elements of nature in his paintings, yet he transforms the genre by pushing the medium of painting itself with his signature style of carved impasto. "I like to paint the surroundings in which I grew up as a boy. I like cloudless skies, forms of nature without any shade, to paint something not seen before, to invent. I paint in the most pleasurable way for me, with my own seal and style. When painting, I let myself go by emotion and the fantasy of recreating nature more than calculations." –Abelardo López

Luis Gal provides an interesting take on landscape because he avoids the typically saturated, tropical Latin American colors. Instead, he is more interested in the sophisticated play of light, but not the physical phenomenon, but the only light that matters in art: light in the artist’s mind. His colors translate the essence of things, the landscapes and the beings he loves, while at the same time attesting to his emotions, an exercise in artfully disguised melancholy. His paintings are quiet, slow, deliberate and poetic.

Both artists achieve an understated mysticism built on essentials: earth, sky, sustenance, and perception – both visual and metaphysical.