Lyle O. Reitzel Contemporary Art Gallery, founded in Santo Domingo in 1995, presents Dominican artist Scherezade Garcia’s new series Memories Afloat at its new location in the heart of the Lower East Side in Manhattan on February 16th running through March 30th. The gallery will celebrate Scherezade Garcia’s new opening with a private reception on Thursday, February 16th.

The New York based artist’s Memories Afloat was produced in the summer of 2016 while she was residing in Granada, Spain and engages in that “always” conversation and the endless fascination García has had with history.

Her work delves into what she calls “the politics of inclusion,” playing on her attraction with the first European settlements in the American continent (with its atrocities and beauties), the creation of a new race as part of its multifarious consequences, and the American dream with its many layers, aesthetics and inventions. These paintings on paper are multi-layered and presented in her traditional baroque style. Visually and spiritually lush, the series is an imbedded contradictory history of fleeing, rooting, freedom, enclosure, brutality and beauty.

“Observing and talking to people is the way I collect stories and allow myself to imagine, fabulate and daydream through them,” said García. “By witnessing and experiencing places and its people, I compose and recompose, and I develop my visual dictionary.”

The work of Garcia has been exhibited worldwide and her most recent credit includes “My Floating World” at the Los Angeles Art Show at MOLAA booth/Relational Undercurrents exhibition. Her work is also included in the permanent collection of The Smithsonian Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., El Museo del Barrio in New York City, The Housatonic Museum of Art in Connecticut and El Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo.