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Two Women Abstractionists Exhibit in Shared Emotional Terrain
The hushed, expectant atmosphere of a gallery opening night is a feeling I know well from years spent in theater lobbies, but at Tampa’s OXH Gallery, that familiar energy is channeled into a powerful, wordless dialogue between two remarkable artists. ‘Where Form Remembers,’ the new exhibition featuring multimedia artists Avani R.Patel and Julie Gladstone, is less a simple display of abstract works and more a carefully orchestrated duet, a shared performance on a canvas of emotional memory. Stepping into the space, one is immediately struck not by a cacophony of competing visions, but by a resonant harmony, as if the curated walls have become a stage where each piece speaks its line in a larger, poignant narrative.Patel’s work, often layered with textured materials that seem to bear the physical scars and whispers of process, converses directly with Gladstone’s explorations, which might employ ethereal color fields or subtle, repetitive gestures that feel like half-remembered rituals. This isn’t abstraction for abstraction’s sake; it’s abstraction as the most honest form of emotional archaeology, where form itself becomes the vessel for everything too complex or raw for literal representation.The choice to present these two women artists in tandem is a curatorial masterstroke, reminiscent of pairing two brilliant actors in a play where their chemistry unlocks deeper meanings in the script. It highlights a generational and methodological conversation within contemporary abstraction, moving beyond the historically male-dominated narratives of the mid-20th century towards a more introspective, embodied practice.Critics and scholars have long noted how women artists have often pioneered approaches to abstraction that privilege the personal and the tactile over the purely formal or dogmatic, from the organic shapes of Lee Krasner to the immersive installations of Mona Hatoum. Patel and Gladstone operate firmly within this vital lineage, using their chosen media—be it paint, fiber, digital elements, or found objects—not just to make a mark, but to record a presence, to map an interior landscape.The ‘emotional terrain’ they navigate is both deeply personal and universally accessible; a viewer might not know the specific memory behind a particular swirl of muted ochre in Gladstone’s work or a jagged, embedded thread in Patel’s, but they feel its weight, its history, its quiet urgency. This is the magic of the best non-representational art: it bypasses the cognitive centers and speaks directly to the somatic, much like a powerful musical score underpinning a dramatic scene.The exhibition’s title, ‘Where Form Remembers,’ is the key to this entire production. It suggests that the shapes, lines, and textures on display are not arbitrary but are instead active participants in recollection.
#art exhibition
#abstract art
#women artists
#Avani R. Patel
#Julie Gladstone
#Tampa
#OXH Gallery
#featured
