Chelsea’s Agora Gallery will feature Catalonian artist, Clara Gràcia, in Portals of Perception. The exhibition is scheduled to run from November 23, 2010 through December 14, 2010 (opening reception: Thursday, December 02, 2010).

Catalan painter Clara Gràcia draws inspiration from nature’s atmospheric sensibilities. Having been formally trained in Paris, Gràcia’s aesthetic looks to the Impressionistic and Fauvist idioms that emerged in the nineteenth-century French school. The artist employs traditional materials, including oils and acrylic paints as well as canvas supports. Her compositions vary in size from small and intimate to large and dramatically commanding. However, her botanical subjects alleviate any sense of intimidation the spectator may feel upon viewing her large-scale paintings, in turn enabling one to meditate on the bright and saturated blues, greens, and pinks that often dominate her landscape paintings.

In using a palette knife rather than traditional brushes, Gràcia captures scenes from nature with hurried and equally broad strokes of paint. However, the artist does not sacrifice nature’s intrinsic complexities. Rather, Gràcia’s thick impasto intensifies these complexities with its palpable texture. Her forms seem to blend and interact with one another, harking back to the existing symbiosis within nature.

Exhibition Dates: November 23, 2010 – December 14, 2010 Reception: Thursday, December 02, 2010, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m. Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, New York City Gallery Hours: Tues – Sat, 11a.m. – 6 p.m.