On December 17, 2022, from 5 to 8 pm, Otro opened its door to fellow artists, art collectors, and art enthusiasts that are on the island. “Otro” (a Papiamentu and a Spanish word meaning different or other) has a compact monument, antesala space, and a meeting room where artworks and artistic projects and investigations can be discussed. The main idea behind this initiative is to have a space where fellow artists can engage during their development and process of art-making. Another part of this idea is having a knowledge exchange between the creator of the work and an invested network. Saturday evening Raily Yance will be the first artist to show his new series of works entitled "Muestrarios" at Otro Gallery.
Raily Yance uses his interpretations and life experience to raise questions and concerns about his contexts. The point and the line as the most basic and fundamental elements used in art, and daily mundane tasks in his everyday life become a start for most of his works. Over the years, he has participated in and initiated different research projects that are continuously developed into new paintings, drawings, and installations.
Born in Zulia Maracaibo, Raily Yance obtained his Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Zulia (2018). At a very early age, he won the Youth Prize by the Chiara Lubich Biennial (Maracaibo-Germany). Between 2014-2015 Yance worked as a duo with artist Fabio Bonfanti, where he realized the exhibition "Marte" in Alborde (Maracaibo) and won the CPPC Award in Jóvenes con Fia (2014) and the Eugenio Mendoza Award #12+1 (Caracas, 2015). In 2016 he won the regional prize at the XII Salón de jóvenes artistas del Zulia and received the "Otro" Prize (Armando Rosales' work in Jóvenes con Fia).
Since 2009 he has been invited to exhibit at different art exhibitions and participated in various curatorial projects. For example, in 2018 he had a solo exhibition at the Museo de arte contemporáneo del Zulia called "40 Pájaros" and another solo exhibition called "La Condena Doméstica" at the Galería ABRA Caracas was shown that same year. In 2019, he worked together with Rafael Díaz at Espacio Producciones (Bucaramanga) on the exhibition "Psicotropías". Between 2016-2018 he created the independent art space CónsulToría-Rotain Maracaibo, where different artistic investigations were carried out and shown with various artists. In 2019, together with Juan Pablo Garza they created an exhibition called "Pach Pan" at Diablo Rosso Gallery in Panama. He was also part of the exhibition “Dekada” from Uniarte in 2020 and the newest “Estetica Provisional: A traveling exhibition and projects he has together with Rodrigo Urbina At Bellas Artes Zulia in 2022 in Maracaibo.
When it comes to residencies, Yance participated in Lugar A Dudas in Cali, Colombia, he also got a spot at Caribbean linked V in Aruba, and did a residency at Plataforma Caníbal Barranquilla, Colombia. Since (2020) Raily has been based in Curaçao, where he works. He recently created and has shown work for the exhibitions, "La Alegria del Cansancio" at Uniarte (Curaçao, 2020), Historial de la Fe at Ateliers'89 (Aruba, 2021), and "Entropías de los Cotidianos" at Quartair (The Hague, 2022)". Today, Raily Yance continues to study landscapes, the object, and the connecting relationship of traditions through everyday tasks.
Tiempos de Color (2016) © Raily Yance
Before "Muestrarios"
The "Muestrarios" series follows his works called "Tiempos de Color" and "Detergentes". At the time Raily created "Tiempos de Color" he attempted to answer questions about the creation, use, and relationships of color. Through the installations of "Tiempo de Color" and "Detergentes" he is, among other things, delaying someone's stay within a space by bringing attention and merging the applications of color together with the behavior of light in a space. According to his personal artistic theories, he says that the more colors there are, the slower the passage within a space becomes.
“Detergentes” is an artistic research project that started when Raily Yance was still in Maracaibo. There he could observe and feel the increasing economic crisis. Raily says; "In the neighborhood where I lived you started to notice a growing informal economy where you could see detergent cleaning powders or shampoo-like brands were being sold in Coca Cola bottles in front of people’s houses". Yance noted how this situation came about as an urgency and created a temporary aesthetic. Without access to detergents, people could not maintain hygiene and human safety needs.
Change of context leads to new works
In Maracaibo, Raily Yance was interested in his work being seen in its random state, since that was something that was fighting with his context. Upon moving this started to change since he now was in a new context in Curaçao. An immediate reference for Yance since his arrival on Curaçao, were the sky and the clouds formation on the island. The Curaçao sky slowly informed his transition from the works, "Tiempo de Color" to "Muestrarios".
The first work of the series "Muestrarios" was shown at the exhibition Dekada presented by Uniarte in Curaçao. The second of the series "Muestrarios" was exhibited in Aruba at Atelier 89 during the residency that Raily did after having also participated in Caribbean linked edition 5. And now he made a special series which will be accessible for purchase to art collectors on the island.
“As an artist I was attracted to the paint samplers, and I felt that the blue was a conceptualisation of that sky in Curaçao.”
When he came across the paint samplers at the hardware stores and saw the importance of the hardware stores here in Curaçao he understood that the art master was communicating something to him through the experiences he was having.
Yance sees these samplers as an object that concentrated an image he saw when he looked at the curacao sky and ended up admiring that method of scale and technique that has a relationship to painting. For Raily, the paint sampler concentrates a story of a time, a day and a sky in a small, free, disposable object that with only color on cardboard has been able to narrate a story and sing the look of a landscape in a few repetitive squares with shades of blue. The paint sampler as an object for Raily becomes a symbol of a resource that also narrates the economic context and the actions possible and implicated with this object. That the hardware stores on the island have an importance speaks to him of the new context, a difference of dilemma and political situation, which are part of his new reality.
With the first “Muestrarios”, Raily experimented with how much sky he could place in each unit. For this project, the iPhone was also an interesting source as it has a weather app section where the different skies per country are visually presented and for me it had a parallel with the paint samplers. For the “Muestrario” series that was shown in Aruba, he connected various samples to narrate an experience at Rogers Beach in Aruba. From his research and visits he understood that when it rains at night the next day you are able to see the Punto Fijo of the Northern Fálcon state in Venezuela. This landscape speaks of a proximity that Venezuela shares with the islands geographically. But also immediately indicated the distance between Venezuela and Aruba, something he communicated by extending the Sampler and appending it by drawing. In this series one can see the most subtle nuances where he also talks about the phenomenology of color and superstition of color that he can further talk about with you in person.
We are happy to have Raily Yance among us to share his work and thoughts and we would like to also use the opportunity to announce that next to the gallery antesala, Otro has an additional meeting room where we will be hosting meetings for artistic projects and artists in the future.
© Otro