Louis Stern Fine Arts is pleased to present Transmigrations: Sculpture by Cecilia Z. Miguez. The exhibition opens with a reception for the artist September 14, from 6-9 pm and continues through October 26, 2002.
What do pocket watch faces, gaucho riding spurs, a compass, a small bell, a Chinese trunk and retractable legs for a campfire stove have in common? All these lost objects have found homes in Cecilia Z. Miguez’s provocative new sculptures. In her fourth solo exhibition with Louis Stern Fine Arts, Miguez’s functional but world-weary found objects perform a kind of magical alchemy on her elegant bronze figures.
With a tiny chest of drawers where her heart should be, the long limbed moonfaced female, hands captured mid-gesture, acquires an unexpected poignancy. Sitting inside a rusted tire hub, a contemplative figure sifts through a web of steel fishing leader. In piece after piece, Miguez creates a fantastical landscape peopled by creatures poised for movement or transformation. Her meticulous integration of found objects into the sculptural composition seems to signal the figure’s past as well as its dream of the future. In an unspoken agreement with her native Latin America and its literary tradition of “magical realism,” Miguez’s work does more than make the magical real; it conjures the possibility of real magic.
In addition to her current exhibition with Louis Stern Fine Arts, Miguez will be opening a solo exhibition in October at the Uruguay Cultural Foundation for the Arts in Washington DC. Furthermore, Miguez’s work has been featured in exhibitions in California, Florida, Canada, Uruguay and Argentina and is included in many noted private collections. The gallery represents Miguez exclusively in the United States.