Tamara Gonzales's 'Seed' Exhibition at Cheryl Pelavin Gallery Explores Myth, Fertility, and Global Culture

Tamara Gonzales presented her exhibition 'Seed' at Cheryl Pelavin Gallery in New York City from December 2, 2004 to January 8, 2005. Her paintings feature large blue dots that multiply into forms resembling planets, suns, flowers, and lost souls, inspired by a misremembered Joan Miró image. Gonzales cites influences from her travels to Selcuk, Turkey, where she saw multi-breasted sculptures of Cybele (Artemis) at the Artemision temple, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. These ancient fertility deities, later remodeled into the Virgin Mary, inform her chthonic paintings that use sticky white enamel reminiscent of "magic lacteal sperm." Gonzales also draws from her experiences in Mexico during Day of the Dead, India (noting widows wear white in Varanasi), her Hispanic American identity, Buddhism, and decorative impulses from Christmas decorations in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and the rural Catskills. Her work incorporates cheap novelty merchandise, creating irony by highlighting these items as a common global language. The artist's statement references a Donovan concert and questions whether Americans prefer "dying full" over "dying free." Paintings evoke amoebas with nippled petals, suggesting infinite fecundity and offering a cosmic, hippie perspective on contemporary historical moments, timed for a season of pagan, tribal, religious, and consumer holidays.