By Any Other Name
Charlie James Gallery is pleased to present By Any Other Name, the first solo exhibition by Los Angeles artist Gabriella Sanchez. In a series of new works, the exhibition explores visual signaling, markers, and language. The title is inspired in part by the iconic line: “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Echoing the past, the artist tests the truth of this phrase through a modern American narrative and the current socio-political moment. Exploring the zeitgeist, Sanchez also considers the particularly close relationship the rose has with Latinx culture, which is often positioned in the Mexican culture as a symbol of love, remembrance, heritage and even means of commerce as in the downtown flower district where the artist’s studio is located.
Referencing a wide-range of iconic texts and visual works including Ed Ruscha and Oscar Wilde, Sanchez abstracts and remixes lauded signifiers with more mundane objects like flowers, street lamps, and traffic arrows. The collaged paintings reframe visual cues, reconsidering how meaning is crafted and received. By utilizing text in the work, the paintings may be perceived as proclamations, affirmations, or sly remarks. Playful or derisive, Sanchez treats the ambiguity of her marks as psychographics: revealing truths about the viewer themselves. A rose is not always a rose…but sometimes it is.
Gabriella Sanchez (born 1988, Pasadena, CA) is a multidisciplinary artist working in her hometown of Los Angeles. Studying fine art, Gabriella received her BFA in 2011 from PLNU. Upon graduation she moved to Paris, France where she worked as a live-in nanny and freelance graphic designer in support of her fine art practice, which at the time was video and installation. It was at this time that she began to bring design elements such as typography and iconography into her artwork. Upon returning to Los Angeles in 2013, Sanchez applied and was accepted to several MFA graduate programs but in the end declined, instead concentrating on her work as both a designer and illustrator for clients such as NIKE, The White House (during Obama's presidency) and Planned Parenthood. In 2016 she turned to painting as a way to fully integrate her design experience with her fine art sensibilities. Sanchez has shown her work at CCCM: Mexican Center for Culture and Cinematic Arts and will be participating in an exhibition curated by Nina Chanel Abney at the soho Jeffrey Deitch gallery in New York in Fall of 2018.
Selected Works
Installation
