C. Finley: Love, Thy Will Be Done
La MaMa Galleria presents
C. Finley: Love, Thy Will Be Done
EXTENDED! Now thru May 31, 2021
Artist C. Finley debuts Love, Thy Will Be Done, a solo exhibition featuring large-scale paintings as celebrations for beauty, joy and rapture. La MaMa Galleria presents the exhibition from May 4th-21st, during which time the space will be additionally activated as a live painting studio where the artist will be present, creating new work during gallery hours.
Love, Thy Will Be Done (a nod to Prince’s song) will feature vibrant and sensual paintings in the artist’s signature style, incorporating intense color and geometry, ranging in size from intimately scaled works to enveloping large-scale works reminiscent of the artist’s outdoor murals. The paintings are conceived as talismans that Finley has charged with rapture, divine light, unconditional love, and the celestial realm.
The drive behind Finley’s work is to emanate positive energy and joy through inspiration from elements of her own life. Spirituality is represented in PHOENIX 21, an icon for rebirth in 2021, and Dual Nature, making ripples in the cosmos. The Tiger is the divine feminine; and a life-sized painting of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Santa Teresa, merging surrender to sensual pleasure with yearning for spiritual union, bridging the artist’s life in Rome with her life in New York. Departing from the canvas, Finley is collaborating for the first time on a new sculpture with couture crafter, Athan Vennell, creating a 20x larger than life leather glove that represents the divine helping hand, a symbol traditionally associated with the intervention or approval of human affairs. From the figurative to the abstract, all are connected through her love of color, a powerful form of communication, expressing life's vitality.
Finley has previously worked with La MaMa Galleria as one of the sites for the 2019 Every Woman Biennial, I Wanna Dance With Somebody, that she founded in 2014.
C. Finley, based in New York City and Rome, is known for her elaborate paintings and intense use of color, monumental murals, multi-disciplinary collaborations, and her activism through urban art interventions, including her acclaimed Wallpapered Dumpsters. As the creator of the 2019 Every Woman Biennial she exhibited over 500 female and non-binary artists in New York and Los Angeles. Finley has shown internationally and her work has been featured in The New York Times, La Repubblica, Dazed, Fast Company, Women’s Wear Daily, and more.
La MaMa Galleria
Founded in 1984, La Galleria is a nonprofit gallery committed to nurturing experimentation in the visual arts. La Galleria encourages an active dialogue between new media, performance, the plastic and visual arts, curatorial projects, and educational initiatives. It serves the East Village community by offering diverse programming to an inter-generational audience, and expanding the parameters of a traditional gallery space. As a non-profit, La Galleria is able to provide artists and curators with unique exhibition opportunities that are largely out of reach in a commercial gallery setting.