Ángeles Agrela: FAUNA

Anat Ebgi is pleased to present Fauna, the first solo exhibition in America of Ángeles Agrela. The exhibition will be on view at 4859 Fountain Avenue, August 27 – October 15, 2022. An opening reception will take place Saturday, August 27, from 2 – 4pm.

Agrela was born in Úbeda, a small historic city in the south of the country and UNESCO World Heritage Site. She received a degree in Fine Arts in Granada—another city with an extensive historical heritage—where she was immersed in classical art, and simultaneously introduced herself to languages of contemporary art.

The artist began exhibiting professionally in the mid-1990s, establishing early-on her interests in the body, identity, masks or camouflage, and often using her own body or self-portraits to make sense of the experience of being a female artist in an art world focused primarily on men.

Her most recent work, on view in Fauna, includes references to fashion, graphic novels, illustration, advertising, and pop culture, as well as to classical masters. In recent years Agrela has turned focus to developing a pictorial technique rooted in classical portraiture, while combing manifestations of femininity in contemporary culture, including popular media and social networks.

The title of the exhibition refers to a colloquial expression in Spanish referring to a heterogenous group of people, who are unconventional and act in unusual and distinct ways—like animals that live together in a region, each behaving according to their instincts. It is true, there is something of an animalistic metamorphosis in some of Agrela’s works. 

Through the pattern and shapes of hair and hairstyles, these female figures connect with an extravagantly civilized side of our culture, while alluding to ‘the animal’ through certain forms of camouflage and adaptation to the environment, as a metaphor for the construction of identity.

As the artist puts it, “I think that sometimes distracting attention from the features of the face has an effect of generating extra attention to the other traits or characteristics of a person—toward the things we [as individuals] have consciously chosen to create our image.” Mining tropes of classical portraiture, Agrela imbues her subjects with a mysterious ambiguity, questioning standards of beauty and the performance of identity.

Ángeles Agrela (b. Úbeda, Spain, 1966) is one of the most recognized artists of her generation in her home country, exhibiting in some of the most important museums and galleries. Recently presented solo projects include Art 021 (Shanghai, 2021), Zona MACO (Mexico, 2020) and Art on Paper (Brussels, 2019) with Yusto/Giner Gallery. Her work by her has recently been included in group exhibitions and fairs such as Facial Recognition, Fabien Fryns Fine Art (Dubai, 2022), Art Busan, Yusto/Giner Gallery (Busan, South Korea, 2022), Art Dubai. Yusto/Giner Gallery (Dubai, 2022), Disembodied, Nicodim Gallery (Bucharest, 2022), Summer Nights, Stems Gallery (Paris, 2022), Around the world, Woaw Gallery (Hong Kong, 2021), Without warning, Avenue des Arts (Los Angeles, 2021), Le Regard, Perrotin Gallery (Dubai, 2022). Agrela lives and works in Granada, Spain.