Undergraduate Thesis

2024

“Emotion Observed: Dario Robleto and the Human Heartbeat” (Advisor: Dr. M. Warak)

Presented in 2025 at the 10th Annual Anne Perry Art History Symposium at the University of Texas at El Paso and at the SUNY New Paltz Undergraduate Art History Symposium.

The 2025 UTEP Department of Art Faculty Biennial at the Rubin Center

Wall exhibition texts written for the Stanlee and Gerald Rubin Center for the Visual Arts. Link. Glasstire Link.

TOM BIRKNER

In observing and depicting the everyday motions of post-industrial America, Tom Birkner suggests that even the most mundane actions can hold some significance. In his paintings, Birkner portrays scenes detached from mainstream society with narratives that focus on the working class rather than the rich and powerful. “I paint tough people in rough places,” he states. In Trouble with Paradise, Birkner deviates from the solitude and dark tendencies of his previous works and instead depicts a visually powerful scene.

With an intense warm light that reveals the vibrant colors of an El Paso sunset, Birkner represents the city as a place that points to the future as opposed to the past. Signifiers of post-industrial society, such as the gas station sign and the cars lined up on a busy street, depict El Paso as a developed urban center. The intense spectacle of the work reflects the grand chaos of our newly digital world, a contrast to the hand-crafted nature of painting. Amid such radiant chaos, Birkner grounds us back in reality through images of middle-class people and their everyday routines. In Trouble with Paradise, Birkner contrasts the intensity of the radiant light with the stillness of an everyday occurrence. In a seemingly unexciting scene, a younger man is seen checking the red car’s engine. An older man calls for help while a woman leisurely sits atop the vintage vehicle. In merging this narrative surrounding the working class with the energized light and colors of the sunset, Birkner strives to combine visual power with social truth. Wonderfully mundane, ephemeral moments such as fixing an old car in a gas station are transformed into crucial signifiers of American suburban life.

ALIX GAYTAN

Interested in the absurdity and the irrationality of human behavior, painter Alix Gaytan depicts physical manifestations of the fragmented human mind and its ever-changing capacity. In implementing collage and printmaking techniques within her painting practice, Gaytan aims to create an effect that both attracts and repulses the viewer. In Phony People Come to Play, Gaytan uses line, pattern, and vibrant colors to draw the viewer’s attention. Yet, as one approaches the work, the viewer is repelled immediately by the uncanny imagery of fragmented human limbs merged with insect forms. This effect, achieved through a combination of Gaytan’s appealing aesthetic and unsettling insect-like humanoids, reflects how people can be both attracted to and repulsed by the unknown.

The metamorphic nature of Gaytan’s figures reflects her interest in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis as a source; in particular, she references the notion that people can succumb to and change under societal pressure. As such, Gaytan’s interplay between attraction and repulsion and the fragmentation of the figure are manifestations of the human mind’s never-ending metamorphosis. The Kafkaesque figures derive from Gaytan’s curiosity regarding human violence and erratic behavior. She asks the questions of Why do we harm others and ourselves?, and Why do we act irrationally? Gaytan’s perception of instability and transformation are influenced by her upbringing within a tumultuous environment and watching horror films, and particularly those by David Cronenberg and John Carpenter. Gaytan’s violent and fragmented figures reflect the chaos and change that follows when societal and inner systems fail.

MANUEL GUERRA

Marked by gestural and abstract strokes, Manuel Guerra’s latest series of drawings reflect his ongoing commitment to pushing the boundaries of his artistic practice. In describing his drawing process, Guerra writes, “The velocity of my materials has to ignite a conflict with what my rational thought would do.” With an improvised process, Guerra’s drawings develop into dynamic interplays of bold gestures, colliding layers, and graphic motifs. Each drawing differs visually, yet they share the same spontaneity through the gestural application of paint, ink, and graphite. Dynamic layers of line and form blur the clarity of images that play with juxtaposition, such as a female figure placed beside an insect. Rendered in a sketchbook page-like manner, these drawings evoke the act of remembering, revealing themselves through spontaneous montage. From a certain distance, forms emerge with clarity, only to dissolve as the viewer moves closer to the works. Guerra believes that, within this context, his drawings are completed only once they reach the perception of the observer. These works are not depictions but rather recollections: compositions shaped by the unreliable contours of memory.

Guerra draws inspiration from everything that surrounds him, particularly places, people, and events that are intertwined with his memories. As such, his works hold an autobiographical narrative. The gestural approach derives from the ideals of wabi-sabi, a Japanese philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection, impermanence, and simplicity. Guerra implements the aesthetics of wabi-sabi in his drawings by welcoming the unresolved. In accepting the imperfect and unfinished within his drawings, Guerra challenges his impulse to make his works representational. As if in constant conflict with his artistic abilities and limits, Guerra deliberately pushes himself into discomfort, never settling for mere satisfaction.

ISA SY KIM

Isa SY Kim is a multidisciplinary artist who draws inspiration from her Korean heritage and minimalistic aesthetics. In a time marked by turbulence and noise, Kim creates a space for stillness. Mer d’huile, which translates to “sea of oil,” refers to a remarkably calm and waveless sea, allowing for the water to reflect the sky like a mirror. This serene image becomes the core of Kim’s immersive installation. The viewer is encouraged to walk in, sit, and meditate within the closet-sized room installation space whose inspiration converges on the themes of technological, sensorial, and cultural elements. At the center of the work is a continuous loop of AI-generated seascapes that imitated the mer d’huile phenomenon. Although mechanical, the simulated seascapes convey a sense of movement, and they are accompanied by a soundscape. Thus, the viewer is further submerged into meditation by breathwork mimicking sounds of the sea.

In incorporating elements referencing seascapes, Kim’s work evokes the notions of purification, healing, and renewal associated with water. Salt covers the floor, in reference to Korean sauna rituals where the mineral is used for its purifying and therapeutic properties. Visitors are encouraged to walk barefoot, engaging the sense of touch in a physical act of cleansing. Finding comfort in her heritage, Kim presents her own rendition of a Korean sauna. A multi-sensory experience, Kim’s installation offers a suspended space in which stillness can be felt, not just seen.

MARIANNA OLAGUE

Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, Marianna Olague’s paintings explore the nuances of identity in the twenty-first century borderland. Her brightly hued portraits of friends and family serve as windows into the Mexican American experience and allow Olague simultaneously to connect with her loved ones through her mostly naturalistic style. In Quemando Tiempo and Quemando Tiempo II, Olague depicts her father, artist Mauricio Olague, through images sourced from self-portraits taken during his time as a college student. The titles are a reference to a work by El Paso artist Gaspar Enriquez, a friend of both Olague and Mauricio, titled Tirando Tiempo. A play on words, the title creates a narrative in which Olague’s father was wasting or burning time as a university student while taking these photographs.

In Quemado Tiempo, Mauricio looks to his right, seemingly deep in thought, with a cigarette sitting on his lips and his right hand touching his forehead. Vivid hues of green, blue, violet, orange, and yellow decorate the space behind him. In Quemando Tiempo II, Mauricio looks down while he holds up a cigarette to his mouth. Behind him are pastel hues of pink, yellow, and blue, along with an unusual green shadow. The use of a cigarette as a prop, the chosen poses, and the cross around Mauricio’s neck gives viewers a glimpse into his personality. Apart from the background comprised of colorful swirls, Olague’s palette is muted and naturalistic. Because the original photographs were in black and white, Olague aimed to retain a sense of nostalgia through color. In contrast, the brilliantly painted backgrounds evoke the scenery of her father’s birth state of California. The backgrounds do not aim to create an illusion of space, but rather, they are a result of Olague envisioning a memory for she was not present. In depicting such images of her father, Olague reflects upon his memories and experiences, finding pieces of herself within them.

DINA PERLASCA

As a Mexican American artist born and raised within the complexities of the El Paso-Juárez border, Dina Perlasca explores culture, ancestry, and personal history in her ceramic practice. Recalling her visits to her grandfather’s hacienda in Hidalgo, much of the context of her works derive from her roots in central Mexico. In DoubleDeer, Perlasca presents an abstracted double-headed deer, its geometric qualities echoing the styles of ancient Mesoamerican art. The deer motif stems from her grandfather’s identity as half Yaqui, an indigenous people located in the Mexican state of Sonora. The deer is a crucial deity for the Yaqui, as the animal is viewed as a guardian and protective figure. In DoubleDeer, Perlasca evokes the traditional garb the Yaqui wear when performing the Deer Dance. This includes a headpiece consisting of a deer head and shin guards made of snake rattles, represented by the protuberances on the lower portion of the ceramic work.

The double-headedness of the work references, in part, a commentary on machismo in Latino culture. It symbolizes the duality she witnessed in her grandfather: a side of him that conformed to societal expectation and another side that supported Perlasca’s personal feminist identity. The accompanying ceramic work titled Century departs from ancestry and turns inward. Resembling vintage carbon microphones, this work appears to have a function that is, in fact, a fiction. Allowing one to speak into it and have a personal conversation within a safe space, Perlasca views this work as a gift and tool for her younger self. Together with an accompanying wall piece rendered in clay-based pigments, these two works function as symbolic autobiographical guardians and story holders. Through the use of earthly material, Perlasca’s works connect personal memory to ancestral echoes.

HECTOR ROMERO

Through his abstract and non-representational works, Hector Romero translates observation into spontaneous visual form. His graphite drawings, which Romero creates over the span of multiple days, demonstrate a controlled chaos. Working from the floor and without the use of any visual references, Romero allows his pencil to draw intuitively. The result is a drawing comprised of overlapping lines and forms that energize the white surface of the paper. In New June 2 and New June 3, the drawings’ forms remain indiscernible, yet the dissonant lines can become familiar and even emblematic through the observer’s eyes and interpretation. Romero’s colorful paintings contrast the monochromatic tendencies of his drawings, although his technique allows his paintings and drawings to share a similar sense of motion.

In 1977, we see what Romero describes as “a reaction to a memory.” The title is a reference to the science fiction thriller Close Encounters of the Third Kind, a film Romero watched with his father as a child. He recalls being entranced by the film’s vivid use of color, its special effects, and the imagery of aliens and spacecrafts. In 1977, Romero evokes this memory in abutting colors that overlap and mix on the surface. Using dry brushing and washes with excess pigment dribbling downward, Romero creates a sense of texture. Thin, nervous, and expressive lines appear near the edges and center of the painting. Organic shapes of greens and yellows, with forms resembling spacecrafts, dominate the composition. Through such seemingly unrestrained brushstrokes and abundance of color, 1977 is a manifestation of Romero’s reaction to a childhood memory, demonstrating the indirect influences of observation.

Alexandra Urbina

Painter & Art Historian

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