Although representation is key in Nona Garcia’s art of stark realism, there are always moments when looking at her work involves confrontation with what is hidden, a bout with the indecipherable essence of things. From the illuminated films of sacred icons in her light boxes to portraits of sitters with their backs turned in her previous series of paintings, Nona Garcia’s realism is neither simple depiction of an overwhelming atmosphere nor the combination of particulars, but rather a piercing search for the essence of reality through isolation and intervention, through composition and elimination across objects inside the frame, or through mediation with a device such as an X-ray machine.
