CLARE ROJAS

In her work, Rojas employs a deeply personal visual language as she moves freely between dense figurative scenes, and minimal, abstract compositions. Rojas approaches both with a consistent, lyrical sensitivity as she interjects totemic references to her own life, and the Northern Californian landscape that surrounds her studio, seeking to distill fleeting memories and experiences into concrete shapes. Throughout her work, Rojas looks for new forms to communicate narrative, drawing on her interest in languages shared throughout the natural world, particularly that of birds that are capable of recognising human faces through geometric forms. The resulting works are akin to a musical arrangement, mixing symbolic elements, formal decisions, as well as autobiographical allusions, and play on our instinctive desire to decode, and comprehend images.

For her first exhibition with the gallery, Rojas presents a series of interconnected paintings that follow a central female figure, and her search for home. In The Sacred Bird Tree, she sits within a densely layered landscape, having found peace in the natural world. Functioning both as a remedy to her search and a rubric, the work represents a macro view of the subsequent paintings in the exhibition, which focus on the fleeting moments from life’s cycles—from sickness to health, entrapment to freedom, and birth and rebirth. Moving from interior scenes, to urban, and rural settings, each environment demonstrates its own challenges and dangers, from natural elements, to predators, and the accidental, suggesting the precarity of both our interior worlds, and the world we inhabit.

Clare Rojas lives and works in Northern California. Rojas’ work was recently included in the California Biennial 2022: Pacific Gold, on view at the Orange County Museum of Art from October 8, 2022 – January 22, 2023. Additionally, her work was recently included in the exhibitions Color Code, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, 2022, IN A DREAM YOU SAW A WAY TO SURVIVE AND YOU WERE FULL OF JOY, The Contemporary Austin, 2022, and Shifting the Silence, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2022. Past solo exhibitions have been presented at venues which include Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco, SOCO Gallery, Charlotte, NC, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK, Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, MA, Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, and CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, San Francisco, among others. Clare Rojas holds a BFA in printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has been awarded grants and residencies from Artadia, Eureka Fellowship, Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, and the Headlands Center for the Art. Rojas’ work is held in the permanent collections of MoMA, New York, SFMOMA, San Francisco, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, Spain, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, and the Smart Museum, University of Chicago, Chicago, among others.