Crescent Tree Gallery is pleased to present Warm and Cool: Watercolors by Kimley Maretzo. The exhibition opens on January 6, 2024 and will run through February 25, 2024, with an opening reception on Saturday, January 6 from 6 PM to 9 PM. The reception is free and open to the public.
Abstract artist Kimley Maretzo investigates the physical and emotional experience of color, balance, and form through her dynamic geometric works on paper. Her work is centered on the push and pull of opposing energies, as well as the ambiguous spaces to be found between them. Working primarily in ink and the notoriously unpredictable medium of watercolor, the artist’s layered configurations of circles, bars, and hatched lines explore the tensions between planned compositions and the immediacy of a gesture, as well as competing attractions to human-made perfection and the fundamental imperfection of natural forces.
Inspired by early abstract artists including Hilma af Klint, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee, Maretzo’s glowing forms bloom across the paper, forming arrangements of tightly syncopated clusters and lyrical looping arcs. Music, similar to color in its visceral impact on the human psyche, forms the backdrop of her painting practice and lends the titles for her abstract works. The artist’s premeditated geometries are inherently challenged by the fluidity of her watercolor medium, which is difficult to precisely control and often produces unexpected results. The harmonious spatial and color relationships between her forms generate an overall structural coherence particular to each work, with jumbles of squares converging along invisible magnetic field lines and translucent discs which seem to trace a series of interrelated orbital paths.
Kimley Maretzo has studied art, design, and new media at New York University, Otis-Parsons in Los Angeles, and the University of California, Los Angeles. She has worked as a graphic designer on both the East and West Coasts and is currently based in West Hollywood.
