Personal and Cultural Identity via Paint at Mindy Solomon Gallery

“Friday,” 2024, oil on canvas, 23.6 x 57 inches, by Yam Shalev is one of several works on exhibition at the Mindy Solomon Gallery. (Photo courtesy of Zachary
Balber)

Three exhibitions on display at Mindy Solomon Gallery explore diverse ways of navigating personal and cultural identity in a globalized world. They bring together Amani Lewis, Gabriel Sanchez, and Yam Shalev, whose works offer nuanced meditations on belonging and storytelling within an international landscape.

Each artist’s paintings utilize photography as a tool within a painter’s palate. The cropping of photographs and its inherent resulting flatness from Shalev, the photographically informed paintings by Sanchez which appear as if they had been cleaned by a digital filter, and the photo silkscreen-style layering of Lewis each have tension between the flatness of the picture plane and the presentation of space.

While Sanchez’s works convey heat, as per his show’s title “Helter Swelter,” each body appears unaffected. In “Holding on to Nothing,” the figure sits on the ground looking possessively at the viewer while grasping a wooden construction, walls clean and tile unmarred. The body is idealized: untouched by the sun, hairless and smooth.

Gabriel Sanchez, “As Above so Below,” 2024, Oil on Panel, 18 x 24 inches (photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)

Miami-born Sanchez lives in both Boulder, Colo., and Havana. He is currently a student at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, known for its championing of Academic painting.

What the people are thinking in his paintings remains for the viewer to discern. “Talking to the Plants” contrasts a spiky succulent with the smooth youthful skin of the figure as if captured by the momentary photograph, mid gesture. In “Muerte Colonial,” the Cuban tile aggressively asserts itself and tension is created by the contrasting smooth, hairless figure, lost in thought, holding the center. This artist is an observer rather than a participant. He offers us this dispassionate perspective to experience along with him.

The severely compressed space within each painting is important to their narratives and conveys the oppression of unrelenting humidity. The play between “figure” and “ground,” what is in the foreground and what is background, is successfully tense.

Gabriel Sanchez, “Holding on to Nothing,” 2024, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40 inches (Photo
courtesy of Zachary Balber)

Sanchez’s paintings document everyday life, offering viewers a glimpse into quieter moments. These works suggest that even in the face of political upheaval and economic challenges, there exists a quiet dignity in the lives of ordinary people.

To compare Shalev’s work to Sanchez’s, the former has the intermittent charm of awkwardness reminiscent of some early still-life paintings by Americans Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe’s and Thomas Hart Benton. The latter’s elegant painting “As Above so Below” recalls Maxfield Parrish in in its idealization of the figure, color space and lack of surface texture.

Yam Shalev, “Paris Studio,” 2024, Oil on canvas, 43.3 x 59 inches (photo courtesy of
Zachary Balber)

Shalev, born in Tel-Aviv and based in Europe, invites us into the subtle poetry of his introspective paintings. His works contain food, something we all understand, as a universal means of symbology. By omitting human faces, Shalev leaves space for viewers to insert their own narratives, transforming the painting into a shared experience between artist and audience. Near empty rooms, vibrant yet melancholy, suggest both the joy and sadness—a meal finished, a space waiting to be filled. Shalev offers not just windows into moments but invitations to sit at the universal proverbial table, the wine, the fruit, the figures non-specific. Everything in the room is part of a fractured portrait of the inhabitant as well as perhaps the viewer.

These paintings verge on inelegance; the objects don’t sit in space and are arranged through compositional devices. This self-consciously “not beautiful” style has been found in art for over 100 years and has a solid, nonpejorative lineage. This lack of polish is charming and direct, without pretense.

Amani Lewis, “With You, The Spirit Lives in Me, Romans 8:2-6, 2024,” Acrylic, glitter, and digital collage on canvas, 65 x 45 inches, (photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)

Lewis depicts heightened religious transformation, the shimmer of the glitter like goosebumps we receive during such experiences. The deep colors and multilayered paintings offer a view into personal and pivotal revelations, of an active relationship with God. Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s famous sculpture “The Ecstasy of St. Teresa” is akin to these subtle, emotionally complex paintings, but that is as far as one can reference after a cursory look into the history of this kind of image-making.

The titles are directly from the Bible. However, the images are fresh and free from the normative depictions from art history, save the aforementioned sculpture which parallels in intent not physicality.

A reach towards God’s helping hand is seen in “With You, The Spirit Lives in Me, Romans 8:2-6,”  a familiar gesture in the material world as a child would reach for a parent. These adult hands move towards each other without hesitation, in God’s time, shades of red the color of the blood. The figures exist within each of us and are symbolic portraits rather than that of single individuals.

It is refreshing to see work borne from tragedy and strife that is transcendent, offering a release from, not a capitalization on, pain. Lewis depicts a journey through difficulty, not avoidantly around it, and shows the redemptive process as seen from within, from deep inside us individually.

Yam Shalev, “Woman reading with red dress,” 2024, Oil on canvas, 53 x 71 inches (Photo courtesy of Zachary Balber)

In terms of progenitors, the work recalls that of Afri-COBRA (African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists), a collective from Chicago. Artists like Sherman Beck, Jeff Donaldson, Napolean Jones-Henderson and Barbara Jones-Hogu are nuanced throughout Lewis’s work. However, this legacy is inclusive, and Lewis’s work is non-derivative, but it has cousins, aunts and uncles.

Together, the works of Lewis, Shalev, and Sanchez underscore the importance of art as a means of preserving, interrogating, and reshaping identity. Lewis relates spiritual interaction, Shalev explores the emotional resonance of objects and absence, and Sanchez captures the tireless spirit of Cuban culture.

WHAT: “Yam Shalev: New Blue,” “Gabriel Sanchez: Helter Swelter,” and “Amani Lewis: CHAPTER 1, The Mind in Chaos Meets the God of Clarity”

WHERE: Mindy Solomon Gallery, 848 NW 22nd St., Miami

WHEN: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.,  Tuesday through Saturday and by appointment. Through Saturday, Nov. 23.

COST: Free

INFORMATION: (786) 953-6917; https://mindysolomon.com/exhibitions/

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