Never Yes/No Me/You

Recent MFA graduate Doraelia Ruiz wants us to understand the tragedy of heartbreak with work that forces honesty and brutality to conflate in dynamically confused and often unresolved art. Coming to Brainworks Gallery March 4th, Doraelia’s first solo exhibition in the gallery, vies for what we can never have; what will never be real; what is always chopped up; pieces of illusion fabricated into one compelling lie.

Doraelia uses a combination of found imagery, popular culture images, her own paintings, and other artists’ work to create a new image. She combines these elements digitally then prints them on commercial grade vinyl and stretches them on panels and wood bars. They go from the artificial to the supremely masked, posing as traditional “paintings”. Once stretched, Doraelia physically paints over the image once more and combines the techniques of the digital and manual in one piece.

The tension and unresolved nature of the work causes one to try to define its origin to a distinct place, image, medium, or technique. No such one answer can be found. The image exists neither in the here or there, but in an ever-continual limbo. She may be held and seen but never truly ascertained.