The Art Of Molina And Vignoli In Southampton

The Oscar Molina Gallery’s new exhibition, “Molina/Vignoli,” will be on view from July 28 to August 22, and opens with a reception on Friday, July 29, from 5 to 8 p.m.

Curated by Esperanza León, the exhibition at this intimate space on Jobs Lane in Southampton Village brings together a selection of works by Oscar Molina and Fernando Vignoli for whom the interpretation of human dramas — individual and global — is a consistent theme.

Paintings from Molina’s “Raindrops” series, such as the recent 66” x 120” untitled acrylic on canvas, will be featured with four of Vignoli’s works, including the prominent 73” x 73” oil on canvas from 2008 titled “Time Does Not Stop.”

Fernando Vignoli was a Brazilian artist (b. Belo Horizonte, 1960) active on the East End since the early 2000s. For several years he ran an eponymous gallery in Sag Harbor where primarily he showed his own work and could often be found painting on site. Vignoli was known for his unique stylistic combination of surrealism and expressionism. Highly talented and charismatic, Vignoli died in 2016 having created an extensive body of work that met critical acclaim and was widely collected locally and worldwide. A 2006 canvas, “Untitled (Cryotherapy),” could seem a foreshadowing, as this vital artist succumbed to leukemia, while “Time Does Not Stop” serves as a poignant reminder, given Vignoli’s untimely death, to remain present and live each day to the fullest — something he very much did.

Oscar Molina is a Salvadoran-American artist based in Southampton. The work he has created through the last 20 years has been inspired primarily by his life experiences. The series of paintings and sculptures entitled “Children of the World” consists of particularly sensitive, abstracted representations that reflect the vivid memory of his journey to the United States: a vision of silhouetted figures in the night, the figures of faceless individuals making the treacherous crossing to a new life. For Molina, the “Raindrops” series represents a related idea that “Rain can cleanse anyone’s mood and shift their state of mind;” … a suggestion that one can transcend a dark hour by allowing that circumstance simply to flow over and through you. Stylistically and conceptually, the figures and raindrops are connected. In Molina’s view, “rain connects Heaven and Earth drop by drop. That is to say, drops are connected to Earth as they hold the heavens from falling.”

Curator Esperanza León is an art historian and independent curator who has worked with artists of Latin American background since 2001 through ArtSolar in East Hampton.

Oscar Molina Gallery is at 28c Jobs Lane in Southampton. For more information call 631-514-4414 or email visit omolina.com.