Profiles of Contemporary Art and - ARTisSpectrum

Marcela Cadena
For Mexican painter Marcela Cadena,
color and abstraction offer the purest
expression of emotional experience. She
tempers her canvases’ powerful palettes
with subtle textures and dramatic
encounters between clashing tones
that convey complex mental states and
catalyze incredible formal spectacles.
Some compositions evoke abstracted
landscapes — seascapes, horizon lines,
and obstructed windows glowing at their
edges — but these readings are fleeting.
Far more enduring are the potent
sensations evoked by Cadena’s broad,
strong brushstrokes and thickly applied
mixtures of acrylic and oil paints. She
creates areas of densely packed details
and expanses of pure, smooth color by
layering tones and changing application
styles repeatedly in each work.
There’s a geometric rigor to the shapes in
the Mexico City-based artist’s work that
reminds the viewer of color field painters
like Josef Albers and the late work of
Piet Mondrian, while intimations of her
emotional state in the alternately calm
and forceful paint daubs recall abstract
expressionists like Barnett Newman
and Mark Rothko. But Cadena’s work
doesn’t quite fit with any precedent; she
combines a dazzling palette of explosive
reds, golden yellows, lush purples
and bright blues with an unexpectedly
nuanced capacity for shading,
combining, texturing and varying paints.
Her colors are breathtakingly powerful,
but her brush works as dexterously as
a feather.
She cites the significance of Mexican
culture in her appreciation and innate
understanding of color, a fluency she
demonstrates with great style in every
canvas. She creates meanings through
juxtapositions of colors in often largescale
works. These can take the form of
two evenly matched opposite tones, or
a dominant hue traversed by rhythmic
lines of a quieter shade. This technique
Marcela in her Studio
affords magical discoveries, like crests
of frothy white paint where strong fields
of purple and yellow collide, or traces
of gold rippling along the rim of a bright
red area. Cadena orchestrates these
intimate moments within paintings that
have a rare visual force. Her ability to
temper an explosive palette with such
sensitive application and detailing
continually astounds and delights.
www.marcelacadena.com.mx
www.Agora-Gallery.com/Artistpage/
Marcela_Cadena.aspx
Entre Sueños Oil & Acrylic on Canvas 39” x 39”
44 ARTisSpectrum
Tu Luz Siempre Brilla en mi Oscuridad Oil on Canvas 55” x 55”