Commonwealth & Council presents an exhibition of new work by Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza that positions its subject with a slanted viewpoint.

For two decades, Mendoza has explored the plurivocality of everyday objects. In this new body of work, her colored pencil drawings on paper and sculpted foam are rendered in isometric perspective, confronting the acculturation of our cognitive vision to linearity. Aligning her practice to the painted signs of grocery items on display windows and murals of mom-and-pop markets, Mendoza adopts the visual communication strategy of the non-native speaker. This perceived distortion is grounded in Perspectivism that addresses the agency of the viewer’s residing perception.

Directly corresponding to the exact dimensions of the referent (its likeness differentiated by individual usage), Mendoza’s trompe l’oeil reinterpretation skews the ordinary ‘objecthood’ of a closed book, a taped box, a partially opened letter, and a ticket stub that indicates the time and place of a shared event. Whether she takes a drawing out of the 2 dimensional format or creates an object that flattens out in real space, Mendoza advocates for the significance of an object’s history and the meaning that can be generated only through the specificity of our common engagement and accessibility.

Maryrose Cobarrubias Mendoza received her MFA from The Claremont Graduate University, her BA from California State University, Los Angeles, and attended The Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design. Mendoza has had solo exhibitions at Solway Jones Gallery, YYZ Artist’s Outlet-Toronto, Haus Gallery, and S1F Gallery. Her work has been featured in numerous group exhibitions including: A Gathering Place: Artmaking of Asian-Pacific Women Artists at Pacific Asia Museum; Direct Encounters: The Essence of Portraiture at Forum Gallery; and most recently, Between Two Worlds at CSULA’s Fine Arts Gallery. She is a recipient of a 2012 C.O.L.A. Fellowship from The Department of Cultural Affairs and a grant from Art Matters Foundation.