Bio:
Claudia Paneca is a Cuban-born, Brooklyn-based visual artist. She studied sculpture at the San Alejandro Academy of Fine Arts in Havana, Cuba. After moving to NYC in 2004, she attended School of Visual Arts with a focus on ceramic, sculpture and printmaking. Currently, she is an Artist-in-Residence at The Invisible Dog, a multidisciplinary arts center located in Brooklyn, New York. She spent the winter of 2013 as Artist-in-Residence at Wassaic Artists Residency program in Wassaic, NY. Paneca has participated in several collective shows in both Havana and New York. In 2014, “State of Matter” her first solo exhibition in United States was presented at The Invisible Dog in New York. Paneca works in several media, including: sculpture, drawing, ceramic, installation, photography and video.
Artist Statement:
I create my artwork as a practitioner of what I call 'The Essence Ritual': a rite that engages the essence of Being in relationship with the self and its environment. This ritualistic approach is my way to transform common notions of reality, perception and spirituality in a deeply subversive way of thinking, expressed through a personal vocabulary of images and symbols. I create imaginary characters and substances, working with physical materials and poetic texts on a metaphorical level.
My work evolves in multiple series that are open processes themselves, like concentric circles unfolding in time from a creative core. Each series asks for specific materials and mediums, each one playing a role in the consciousness manifested as a big installation: my most vital and essential gesture. Art offers me freedom through its practice and becomes a healing process as well as a quest for knowledge of my own truth, the primordial untouched by words.
http://www.claudiapaneca.com/
Claudia Paneca
White Drawing #6, 2013
Ink on Arches paper
9" x 12"
