Prima Materia

Prima Materia brings together new and recent works by Blanka Amezkua, Esperanza Cortés, and Anthony Carlos Molden, three interdisciplinary artists working across a dynamic range of expressive forms, including but not limited to sculpture, painting, ceramics, musical and theatrical collaborations, performative actions, curatorial work, community interventions, site-specific installations, and public art commissions. All three artists are experienced makers actively creating provocative artworks that relate to materials and techniques associated with crafts such as embroidery, beadwork, decorative paper folding and cutting, and elements from the scenic arts. Their efforts consistently yield marvelous results, including novel sculptural objects, sumptuously detailed and evocative two-dimensional works, and challenging mixed-media installations that appeal to the senses through their impressive individual and collective visuality. Whether anchored on the wall or displayed in the round, the works selected for Prima Materia generate visual and spatial synergies imbued with a powerful combination of subtle yet vibrant energies and symbolic archetypes. Not unlike living entities, these works exert their agency upon us, in a sense “arresting” our sensorial attention through their ability to convey something tangible and concrete about the ephemeral and transcendental nature of the creative impulse.

Host or Publisher Rowan University Art Gallery