Todo fine is Spanglish for “everything is fine.” When asked, Timo Fahler and Daniel Gibson say that not everything is fine. It never was and will never be. But here we are. Todo fine then also means everything is not fine. While certain parts of our world collapse––democracy, the environment, a sense of community–– others parts are built––awareness, social (infra)structures, a new sense of community. The exhibition is an attempt at being open to everything; the things we want to see and hear and those we do not.
The spatial sequencing of Todo Fine follows Gibson and Fahler through the conception of their relationship to their current practice. The back room of the exhibition deprived of color, references the artists’ past and returns to their time spent at their San Diego artist-run space in 2000. This was before they established their art practice, while both were developing a reliance on various substances. Less than to relive this time period and elevate its circumstances, the artists chose to return to this moment as it marks the beginning of their artistic careers as well as their friendship, which culminates here in this duo exhibition at New Image Art.
Migration, identity and change are themes that surface in the work of both artists, whose families crossed the border earlier in the previous century, and become more prominent in the works in the front room. In Gibson’s paintings we see a family atop a train hiding as it rides through the night, or figures wading through a field of flowers hardly recognizable as they begin to resemble their surroundings. The sun and the moon alternate positions in his work, guiding and hiding the people that Gibson depicts, and illuminating their existence to the viewer to which these lives and journeys remain largely invisible. Fahler’s work in the front room, although more abstract, refers to familial histories of both his paternal and maternal sides and coalesces Mexican and German heritage into his understanding and experience of American identity. Utilitarian materials and mercado paraphernalia are used to create objects, such as Classical columns, framed paintings or pedestals, reminiscent of but in contrast to their Western archetypes. Fahler’s work here reverses hierarchies and opens up room for a reinterpretation of what American can mean.
Rooted in subjective pasts and moving into larger societal conversations, the works in Todo Fine, rather than solely criticizing current affairs, consider the role of contradicting perspectives and how within opposition room for change might unveil itself.
-Text by Laura Schoorl
