New Paintings by Nihura

New Paintings by Nihura Montiel comprises eight mixed-media paintings and sculptures made within the last year to be specifically installed @leiminspace. The pieces are unified by a fixation on the visual elements of private life— young girls' bath towels, household cleaning products, scraps of paper, and other artist’s paintings, are re-created to Nihura’s desire. The carefully considered proportions, synthetic textures, and plastic colors of Montiel’s works play upon one another, revealing a fisheye peephole onto an intensified subjectivity as it commingles with mundane relics of personal ritual such as bathing and automatic drawing.

Nihura paints with her surroundings, creating narratives out of the banal objects in everyday life. When the works’ content is considered wholly, one can sense the element of water taking many forms - from a surrealist bathroom scene, the re-creation of Echo and Narcissus (1903, John William Waterhouse), to the ironic glorification of Cinderella on a towel. The paintings remind us that as water is pliable, so is reality, and our most private moments need not be limited by a finite interior landscape.

Nihura Maria Montiel (b. 1988)  grew up along the Tijuana/San Diego border region. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California in 2013. Nihura currently lives in Los Angeles