Mixed Media Artist Toots Magsino Exhibits at the Grace Institute Gallery

Sept. 13, 2007 - PRLog -- The Grace Institute presents a solo show by Toots Magsino entitled “Into My Little World” from July 30- October 5, 2007. Born in Manila, Philippines,
the world Magsino conjures in her painting, printmaking, collage, and mixed media practice serves as a diary of her inmost thoughts and feelings as a Filipina in a foreign land.  Imagery consists of fragmentary, shadowy, ambiguous forms – autobiographic markers of her personal and artistic development in a global city.  

She honed her craft at The Art Students League of New York for eight years – four years in painting, another four in printmaking. She has mounted 9 solo exhibitions and has participated in more than 30 group shows in the US, Japan, Italy, Canada and the Philippines.  The agony of search for “my place in the sun” haunts her pictorial idiom as much as nostalgia, the daily need to be in touch with family and friends, and the passage of time.  Of late her career moved up a few notches when her mixed media work “Unveil” was chosen as winner of a national competition and appeared as the cover of Carnegie Hall’s Playbill for June 2007.  

“Unveil” is an operative word when applied to her body of work.  They reveal as much as they conceal.  And what they reveal is not conscious states of mind, but more like a stream of the subconscious, of memory, desire and dream.  “Meaning” is made to work its way into the viewer’s imagination by suggestion rather than by objective description, by clues dropped here and there or left unsaid.   A salient feature is her fusion of handwritten texts and visuals in many of her mixed-media pieces: she prefers the vulnerable hand instead of the letter-perfect, heartless machine to communicate the personal pulse of human relationships.  Mostly, her texts are wordless, just scribbles simulating sentences. Her art gives your imagination a “workout” in grasping the sense and sensibility her images evoke.   Such “workout” reprises the creative act itself in all its intriguing ambiguity, thereby empowering rather than diminishing the viewer’s perception.

From now until October 5th, her works will be on view at the Grace Institute Gallery in a one-person exhibition entitled “Into My Little World”. An artist reception will be held on September 26, 2007 from 5:30-7:00 pm. Come and meet the artist who has been hailed by Ronnie Landfield, premier NY abstract artist and art critic, as a “true alchemist who changes the mundane and the everyday into the profound and timeless.”

The Grace Institute is located at 1233 Second Avenue (between 64th and 65th) Gallery hours are M-Th 8:30-9:00; F 8:30-7:00

For more information, please contact the curator, Jennifer Camara at (212) 832-7605

www.tootsmagsino.com

Website: www.tootsmagsino.com