SAN ANTONIO, TX.- Artpace announced the Fall 2021 International Artists-in-Residence exhibition opening featuring artists, Dan Herschlein (Brooklyn, NY), Shana Hoehn (Texarkana, TX), and Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa (Guatamala City, Guatamala). The three artists were chosen by Guest Curator Natalie Bell. Bell is Curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center, where she recently organized solo exhibitions of Leslie Thornton and Sreshta Rit Premnath (2021). Previously, Bell was Associate Curator at the New Museum, New York.

Dan Herschlein’s exhibition, Plain and Sane, contemplates the tension between light and dark as a means of examining ideologies. Utilizing wood, plaster, and paint, Herschlein has constructed a thin house-like structure with one side cast in darkness and the other covered in light. As you walk through the house, two figures stand inside a pantry, passing sacks to each other. Are the figures hoarding or are they preparing for some inevitability? Are they looking out for themselves exclusively or are they helping others? Indications of scarcity and individualism peek out to the viewer, but Herschlein leaves the scene largely ambiguous.

In Folding, Floating, Falling, Shana Hoehn transforms wood, furniture, ceramics, and found objects into sculptural forms that recall uncanny elements of a girlhood fantasy and appropriations of the female form. One series draws influence from American automobile hood ornaments that are mostly hybrids of women and jet planes. Her interest in these ornaments stems from their use as symbols of industrial progress and the connection between these marginalized forms and American ideals. Hoehn told Artpace, “In these new wooden forms, bodies fold into themselves. Folded hair becomes serpent-like forms, weapons, or tools like rope. Furniture such as desks, tables, stair bannisters also become swamp-like surfaces where spines, braids, and plants emerge.”

For Naufus Ramírez-Figueroa, conflicting stories collide in his exhibition Cecília rebelde. Ramírez-Figueroa explores the catholic St. Cecilia and the story of the Totonicapán Uprising of 1820 of indigenous Maya peoples (K'iche') against the Spanish Empire in Guatemala. More specifically, the artist focuses on the rumor that Atanasio Tzul crowned himself king with the crown of St. Joseph, borrowed from the church, and used the crown of St. Cecília for his wife, Felipa Soc. Cecília rebelde includes paintings referencing source patterns from Saint’s clothing, bronze and symbolic resin sculptures of the catholic St. Cecília and the folk Cecília, and an audio piece written by collaborator St. Ezequiel with Melodic Adaptation and Vocal Performance by Julieta Garcia Reyes. Through a catholic saint and indigenous folk tale, Ramírez-Figueroa continues his series of work examining atrocities and rebellions.