Since moving out of my hometown, I have amassed a small trove of Polaroid photos documenting the clutter in all my living spaces. I’d always liked the idea of keeping pocket-sized time capsules of the things I used to own and person I used to be in those places. Walking into Anna Valdez’s exhibition My Own Private Arcadia at Ochi Projects, I immediately knew that this impulse to document our environments and ephemera was something we shared.

At first glance, the subjects of Valdez’s richly hued paintings seem like curated collections of found objects, the canvasses crowded with patterned fabrics, conch shells, houseplants, art books, and decorative vases. But closer inspection reveals that, altogether, these items of personal significance conjure narratives about the artist’s own domestic life and serve as autobiographical records of her human impact on places and things.

Valdez’s mastery of painting across genres is abundantly evident in the way she reinvents and honors its lineage. She gives a nod to the Dutch still life tradition by incorporating cultural objects and animal skulls, symbolic reminders of contemporary life and mortality. Across paintings, ceramics, and one sweeping mural, Valdez boldly commands a hyper saturated spectrum of colors and creates compositions that are endlessly stimulating without being overwhelming.

Certain objects take on multiplicities of meaning, too, and seem to coexist in parallel realities — such as the same flowerpot or red bandana being depicted several times in different mediums and varying levels of realism. Valdez thus blurs the line between representation and abstraction and reminds us à la Magritte that the image of an object is not the object itself.

Although Valdez offers a generous peek into her sacred arcadia, there is also the uncanny feeling of absence and lack of human intervention in her representative spaces, leaving me wondering who or what might be hovering just out of the artist’s gaze, remaining forever unknown to the viewer.

I could never fully explain why I so dutifully photographed all my living spaces, chalking it up to my sentimental nature for years, until Valdez showed me why she does it. She recognizes that the objects of our surroundings — the trinkets strewn across tables, the books we dog-ear and re-read, the views from our windows — have the capacity to outlive us and tell stories about who we were in those bygone moments.

Ochi Projects
3301 W. Washington Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90019
Thru Dec. 18th, 2021