Threadbare

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Threadbare, an exhibition of recent works by Eva Rocha. Threadbare includes the multimedia artist’s most recent series of thread drawings on canvas. The exhibition opens on Thursday, July 20 with a reception from 6 – 8 pm and continues through September 1, 2017. This will be Rocha’s first solo exhibition at Reynolds Gallery.
Tactile yet ephemeral, Rocha’s threaded works present contemporary concepts of the human figure rooted in memory and ritual. Fluidly draping black thread over ungessoed canvas, she organically draws a woman’s body. As the female’s position transforms from piece to piece, it engages a varied emotive quality from erotic to apprehensive to serene, and always vulnerable. This vulnerability is heightened by the stark contrast between dark lines and raw canvas, which evokes a primal nature in its fleshy hues. Intentionally fraying the canvas’s edges, Rocha expands on ideas of ritual and instinct as she reenacts her childhood habit of pulling threads from her grandmother’s cloths. The frayed cloth’s impermanence is paralleled in the naked forms, malleable in their emotion and physicality. She weaves concepts of objectification and reclaiming control into each form, provoking feelings of sensuality, empathy, disgust, or rejection.

Rocha was born in Brazil and later moved to Richmond, where she received her Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies in Cultural Studies and Arts and her Master of Fine Arts in Kinetic Imaging from Virginia Commonwealth University (2002, 2016). She also studied art in Brazil and Peru in the early 2000s. She has exhibited at the Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C.; Museu Brasileiro de Escultura, Sao Paulo, BR; William King Museum of Art, Abingdon, VA; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach; 1708’s InLight Exhibition, The Valentine, The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, all, Richmond, VA; and in 2017 the Taubman Museum, Roanoke, VA. She was awarded the Theresa Pollak Award for Excellence in the Arts and Style Magazine’s “Woman in the Arts” (2015), and recently received a residency at Santa Fe Art Institute (2017-18). Her work is held in numerous collections, including the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and Try-Me of Richmond, VA.