July 14, 2022 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Transonic, a solo exhibition of works by Bay Area composer and artist Guillermo Galindo. A selection of the artist’s cybertotemic sonic objects will be presented in dialogue with his graphic scores, collage works, and his new body of original works on paper. Galindo’s work engages with the practice of sonic healing, rooted in his post-Mexican heritage and his ongoing study of pre-Columbian traditions. Combining his experimental compositions with observations and objects from the Mexican-American borderlands, Galindo brings his multidisciplinary creations to the public at Qualia this summer. Transonic will be open from July 20 – September 2, 2022, with an opening celebration hosted on July 23rd from 4:30–7 PM PDT.

Known for his work along the Mexican-American border, Galindo continues to engage with the idea of borders in his new work, expanding the concept to encompass all meanings of the term from physical barriers to ideological divides. Walls, man-made and natural, seen and unseen, are critical structures that form the basis for the artist’s genre-defying works. Galindo’s approach to art making is as multifaceted and nuanced as his<>her creations; layered and dynamic, they refuse to be relegated to a single spiritual, psychological, or material realm. The liminal space between consciousness and unconsciousness is of particular interest to the artist, whose work navigates all boundaries and mediates the expanse. 

Cybertotemic sonic objects also serve as portals to other states of being, and as markers on the fraying edge of reality. Galindo’s sonic objects and spirit animal sculptures draw from Jungian archetypes and his deep-seated belief in wholism and the animism of all things. One example, Tree of Life, represents the connection between land and sky and the healing abilities of the earth, manifested by sound vibrations transmitted through coils in the tree’s roots. Another piece, Ascending Eagle, is an installation of wooden crosses discarded by the Border Patrol from mass shallow graves along the Mexican-American border. Sources from nature, such as deer antlers, recall the grief and detritus that remains in nature after death.

The framework and iconography of musical notation function similarly as scaffolds in Galindo’s graphic compositions. Whether or not the arrangements are audible, the visual forms alone are deeply felt. Data sets are interspersed throughout, lending new meaning and potential interpretations to the abstract scores. In Dawn Revelation, Galindo embeds information sourced from the Missing Migrant Program of the Colibrí Center for Human Rights, a group that helps identify the remains of migrants found along the southern Arizona border. Adding profound texture and depth to the piece, the incorporation of this data in Galindo’s work also adds context and dimension to the facts and figures themselves. 

In Galindo’s studio, the process of making is inextricable from that of healing. Unidad, the 177-page graphic score presented in Transonic and activated through a series of accompanying animations, stemmed from a cathartic exercise during Galindo’s recovery from a serious injury. The work is a dual expression of pain and hope through graphic composition, with lines and notes flowing freely across the pages. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Galindo also found consolation and community by way of mail art; the series of small drawings exhibited in Transonic arose out of a mail-mediated artistic dialogue between Galindo and fellow artist María Magdalena Campos-Pons, and represented an unconventional means of countering the lockdown-imposed isolation with collaboration and art making. 

Whether by the sonic vibrations of Galindo’s sculptures, carefully tuned to their resonant frequencies, or by the memorialization of loved ones lost to the cruelty of the desert borderscape, the artist’s compassion touches all who engage with his work. Methods of translation become tools of transformation, ritual, and sensory connection in Transonic, as do the visualization, animation, and physicality of sound. 

About Guillermo Galindo

Guillermo Galindo is an experimental composer, sonic architect, and performance and visual artist whose work redefines the conventional limits between music and art. His multidisciplinary approach explores politics, heritage, humanitarian issues, spirituality, and social awareness. Galindo’s acoustic work covers everything from commissioned orchestral compositions for the OFUNAM (Mexico University Orchestra) and Oakland Symphony Orchestra and Choir to computer interactive works, audible sculptures, visual scores, and more.

Galindo has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, including at major biennales and art fairs XIV FEMSA Biennial, Mexico; Art Basel, Miami, FL; FIAC, Paris, France; and Documenta 14, both at Athens, Greece and Kassel, Germany. He has held exhibitions at The Getty, Los Angeles, CA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Stanford, CA; Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA; Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, CA; The John and Geraldine Lilley Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis, MN; MOCA, Miami, FL; The Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice, NY; and more.

Galindo’s recent work emphasizes healing and crossing borders between man and animal, corporal and spiritual, sight and sound. His previous work, Echo Exodus, which showed in Documenta 14, and Border Cantos, which traveled nationally, focus on the effects of physical borders and the plight of migrants. Border Cantos exhibited at Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Pace Gallery, NY; and more. 

Galindo’s work is in the permanent collections of the National Gallery, Washington D.C.; LACMA, Los Angeles, CA; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Thomas Foundation Art Museum, Santa Fe, NM; and Rollins Museum of Art, Winter Park, FL. Galindo is a recipient of the Fleishhacker Foundation Eureka Grant and a 2022 SFMOMA SECA Award Finalist. He presently teaches at the California College of Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA.

July 14, 2022 (Palo Alto, CA) - Qualia Contemporary Art is pleased to announce Collision, a solo exhibition of mixed media works by Oakland-based artist Gregory Rick. Recently honored as the winner of SFMoMA’s 2022 SECA Award and as a winner of the San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Award for 2022, Rick employs techniques from printmaking, papermaking, painting, and drawing, to construct his own genre of “History Painting”, focusing on “the obscure, the forgotten”, and “common knowledge”, alike. Rick found reading as an escape from a tumultuous childhood, and discovered drawing as a means of reclaiming agency. The study of history, in particular, has been vital to Rick’s development as an artist, and his well-being as a veteran of the War in Iraq, providing ample sources for his illustrated narratives that weave personal history in among the many threads of political, social, and global history. Collision will be open to the public from July 20 – September 2, 2022. An opening celebration will be hosted on July 23rd from 4:30 – 7:00 PM PDT, with a tour led by the artist starting at 5:00 PM PDT.

Rick has sought refuge in the collapse of histories and their anachronistic interplay, using the fragmented framework of postmodern thought as a reflexive canvas for his own expression. The absurdities and paradoxes of the accepted historical timeline are of particular interest to the artist, who sees these areas of contradiction as ripe for creative intervention. In the act of making, Rick probes the authority of history, while injecting his own story into the so-called “grand arc” with each mark. His current focus is on the Industrial Revolution, and the conflict, anxiety, and division wrought upon society in its wake. Rick considers this context applicable to the exponential growth of the technological sector in recent decades, a parallel phenomenon he sees as partially responsible for the present global resurgence of Industrial-era social attitudes, authoritarianism, disparity, and class warfare. History – malleable, incomplete, and eternally under revision – is as integral a medium in Rick’s studio practice as painting, drawing, and printmaking.

The artist writes, “My life has been full of tribulations; I look at them as initiations. For every hardship I endured, my art has grown with me. My father went to prison for murder when I was eight years old. Although losing my Dad was rough, him giving me two books, one on history and one on art, started my infatuation with both, and serves as a means of connection with my Pops. Similarly, art was a bastion of light after I returned from Iraq and helped me deal with my guilt about the war. Where myth gives voice to the underbelly, the lumpen, in tandem with displaying the familiar and grandiose. My work tethers together seemingly opposing ideas as I teeter between the personal, the historical, and the political. I approach my art practice with the certainty that my position will shift on many things given ample time. Reflecting on the absurdness of history, I mean, whose history is it?”

Rick’s rhetorical question echoes throughout his work, complicating and enriching each historical narrative. In a moment of profound uncertainty, unrest, and cultural anxiety, Collision shows how such widely-shared sentiments of disillusionment can be artistic fodder for catalyzing change, connection, and inclusion.

About Gregory Rick

Gregory Rick was born in 1981 and grew up in South Minneapolis. He received his BFA from the California College of the Arts (CCA) and his MFA in art practice from Stanford University. Developing an imagination for the historical past and a fondness for drawing stories, Rick collapses history while confronting personal trauma. His works exist as reflections of his personal experience while being in dialogue with the wider world. Rick has exhibited widely nationally, with a focus in Minnesota and California, at Stanford Art Gallery, Palo Alto, CA; Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Bass & Reiner Gallery, San Francisco, CA; slash art, San Francisco, CA; Ever Gold [Projects], San Francisco, CA; Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA; Hair and Nails, Minneapolis, MN; Rochester Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and more.

Recently, Rick has received the SFMoMA’s 2022 SECA Award, 15th annual San Francisco Bay Area Artadia Award for 2022, and the Dedalus MFA Fellowship from the Dedalus Foundation. He is also the recipient of the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award from SomArts, the Nathan Oliveira Fellowship from Stanford University, and the Hamaguchi Print Media Scholarship Award from CCA.