Natalia Garcia-Lee

Deering Estate
June 9th, 2020 – June 30th, 2020
Curated by Melissa Diaz

16701 SW 72nd Ave
Miami, FL 33157

https://deeringestate.org

The Deering Estate is pleased to present Natalia Garcia-Lee’s Monkey Mind, as part of the Deering Estate Contemporary Projects program. The exhibition is currently on display in the historic Stone House Great Hall gallery through June 30, 2020.

Monkey Mind is Natalia Garcia-Lee’s new suite of paintings, which are an extension of her study of human behavior. In Monkey Mind, Garcia-Lee set out to illustrate the framework of human experience from the perspective of neuroscience. Her process involves painstakingly and intricately applied layers of paint and interlacing patterns that trace the chemical processes of the brain that cause human beings to react, feel and exist in response to a world of stimuli. The notion of the “Monkey Mind” refers to the Buddhist concept of the restless state of the mind that is constantly in a reactive state. Each painting in the series illustrates a reaction or chemical process and can be understood within the interconnected frameworks of neurons and neurotransmitters that form the mind and cause behavior.

Garcia-Lee’s works resist being read as scientific illustrations and become catalysts for the process that our minds undergo in viewing the works. The Monkey Mind paintings locate themselves at the intersection of art and science. Through her atmospheric application of colors and gridded layering of geometric forms, Garcia-Lee’s paintings recall the depth of color field painting and demonstrate her command of the language of abstraction.

Monkey Mind is currently on display in the Stone House’s Great Hall gallery at the Deering Estate. Photos by Francesco Casale are available online. The Stone House was built in 1922 by Charles Deering, and the Great Hall originally held many of the masterpieces of his collection, including paintings John Singer Sargent, Ramon Casas i Carbó, Rembrandt, Goya, among others. The Great Hall serves as a rotating exhibition space at the Deering Estate where we continue Charles Deering’s legacy of supporting artists through a robust program of rotating contemporary exhibitions.