Daniela Martén, Costa Rican artist, winner of the CROMA Biennial, exhibits in New York together with two renowned artists from the United States and Mexico. On November 9th, she inaugurated the exhibition “The Cutting Garden” (El JardínCortante)” with works by the Costa Rican artist Daniela Martén, the Mexican Carlos García-Noriega Bueno and the American Sophie Parker in the respected Room57 Gallery, located in the traditional New York Art Street, 57th Street.
Martén presents 6 works from her Limbic Tropical Sensual series that develop the theme of the female psyche along with the tropical exuberance of Costa Rica. Her paintings of plants, leaves, petals, and foliage suggest an erotic relationship between flora and the body. Through colours, layers and assaults on the canvas, she seeks to free herself from sexual oppression through beautiful forms and brilliant colours.
Having grown up surrounded by great tropical abundance like all Costa Ricans, Daniela Martén addresses how flowers uncensored indulge in an explosion of color and sensual beauty. “Tropical vegetation seduces us by calling our attention to its sexual nature,” she personally mentions. The artist represents these flowers in search of a banner of sincerity towards the sexual nature of all living beings. Through this act, each work aims to change the energy of the people who look at it and the places it protects.
For her part, the artist Sophie Parker looks at the botanical world as a sculptural medium. Drawing from her background as a painter and visual artist, Parker fuses the handmade with the organic. Her work aims to challenge classical notions of flower arranging by reinventing traditional forms and offering new ways of thinking about what is “natural.”
Likewise, the artist Carlos García-Noriega Bueno, on the other hand, has a more reduced and minimalist approach to sculpture made of steel and electrostatic paint. Hailing about Mexico City and Buenos Aires, she cites memorable trips taken with her grandmother to modernist cathedrals throughout Mexico, a devout Catholic and artistically inclined. Her work incorporates geometric lines, straight edges, and dimensional twists and turns resulting in adventurous, architecturally minded sculptures.
In this exhibition, the 3 artists fully immerse themselves in their media of flower arranging, oil painting, and architecture as a way to both honor these worlds and transgress them; detaching them from their original function and freeing themselves through the game.
Prominent Costa Ricans living in New York attended the inauguration, including Elena Ketelsen González, curator at the Moma PS1, headquarters of the Museum of Modern Art in New York; and Lara Blanco, Deputy Director of the UN.
The exhibition will be available until January 12, 2023.
More about the gallery
Room57 gallery is located at 235 East 57th Street in New York. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. m. to 6 p.m. The gallery is located on 57th Street, Manhattan’s grand cross-town boulevard, a two-mile cultural corridor, the street of Carnegie Hall debuts and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; packed with art galleries, fashion stores and long-standing family businesses.
Room57 Gallery is built on the idea that art and design discovery should be organic, and that collectors should be able to personally interact with works before bringing them home. As such, the exhibition space welcomes visitors as a home would, rather than a traditional gallery, incorporating an eclectic yet clean selection of works, in a rich, warm and welcoming setting. Equally Suitable for both seasoned collectors and newcomers to the world of art and design beginning to grow their own collection.
More about the artist
Daniela Martén is a Costa Rican artist, graduated in Fine Arts from the University of Costa Rica and with independent training with Joaquín Rodriguez del Paso, Nelly Eyo and Nela Salgado.
She won the first prize at the CROMA Biennial and is a participant in the National Salon at the Costa Rican Arts Museum 2022. She was also part of the invited artists in the first exhibition of the feminist collective Casa Ma and in Valoarte 2012. She has participated in several exhibitions curated at Klaus Steinmetz Contemporary and John Juric Art Studio’s CASINO auctions.
Currently, she is part of the co-management Queremos Pintar, an initiative for the visibility of living women painters and manages the independent space for artist studios Amante Art Lab.
She examines forms of nature, especially flowers, and their relationship with the erotic and creative energy, using colors, layers, and attacks on the canvas. Her work explores feminist themes approached from sexuality, agency, and forms of oppression.
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