Statement / Bio
2018 RU alum Daniela Mantilla is a painter. The work “Scaffold for the Garden Path” belongs to a group of paintings in which the artist uses small cut-outs made from his own prints and works on paper of figures in domestic spaces as a foundation for each work. He then builds the imagery from the idiomatic expression – to lead someone up or down the garden path – and its connotations of misleading or deceiving someone, and from his ongoing fascination with scaffolds and contraptions as metaphors for ideas of transition, instability, and resourcefulness. Mantilla works from memory, direct observation, and from visual sources such as cartoon animation manuals, and booklets for assembling domestic or office workspaces.
His paintings have been featured at the Hercules ArtStudio Program, in the solo exhibition, “Openings to Further Enclosures” at the Thomas Hunter Project Space in New York (curated by Joel Carreiro), Bronx Museum AIM Biennial, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; MFA Thesis Exhibition, Hunter College (2014), Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, Lawn Gallery, and The Whitney Houston Biennial at Murdertown, Chicago, IL, Museo de Arte del Tolima, Ibagué, Colombia. Museum of Science and Industry, the Tampa Museum of Art, and the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL Mantilla has also shows artists’ books at Tempus Project, Tampa, FL, and Watkins College of Art, Design, & Film Library, Nashville, Tennessee.
Artist website: www. danielmantilla.com