Silvia Poloto
Silvia Poloto is a mixed media artist who has exhibited across the United States and around the world in Taiwan, China, Jordan, Greece, United Arab Emirates, Croatia, Turkey, Argentina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Austria, France, Romania, Germany, and Azerbaijan. She is represented by Slate Contemporary Gallery in Oakland, California and recent exhibitions include galleries, museums, and institutions such as San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Museo Italo Americano, Triton Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California, Gallery 555, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Seattle Arts Museum Gallery, the United Nations, and Scope New York.
Containing complex methods of creation, Silvia uses mediums such as acrylic and ink on wood panel with ink drawings made on habotai silk and collaged over the acrylic painting in the Habotai series. In the Fiberglass series the medium becomes fused with resin along imagery created on rice paper and then cast as the paper dissolves into the surface. The pieces are translucent. Each series has drastically different approaches, methods, and mediums from one another despite all being presented similarly to a two-dimensional painting.
Steeped in process and often displayed in grids, diptychs, or triptychs, the various mixed media works could be described as ‘serene chaos’, offering contradictions in spontaneity but also organically controlled to convey heightened contemporary design principles. Silvia incorporates text, squiggly lines similar to cursive text, linearity, spheres, web-like forms, and negative space to create a compositional formula which remains expressive with complex sophistication. She instills the viewer with highly stimulating visual content which harmoniously yet wildly shouts and overtakes a room, arranged in a manner of controlled chaos. The bright and dark colors within the works are highly contrasted and subdued at the same time by the often neutral or monochromatic negative space.
The Fiberglass series (pictured above) probably contains Silvia’s most interesting and dynamic works. The sheer unfamiliarity of the methods and mediums creates a finished composition which expresses a deep measurement in spatial relationships and organic substance. The forms lay in vast portions of negative space, demanding attention and pop out towards the viewer through harsh reds and blacks. These works could be described as a cross between minimalism and pop art.
Silvia Poloto creates breathtaking, imposing works which demand attention and command space. Her intricate and varied methods enable a body of work which expresses numerous emotional impulses with stimulating components. The work could be described as philosophical and laborious as these mixed media work artworks convey bridges and crossings between various contemporary approaches in commanding attention yet providing relaxing stimuli, pushing space and form.
