EXHIBIT ARCHIVE
OPEN HOUSE GALLERY
On Wednesday, December 4th, we hosted our first ever Open House Gallery in Miami and unveiled the latest pieces by ALA artists Gabriela Agreda, Luca Otamendi, and introduced Sofia Mesa’s stunning ceramic pieces. We were lucky to host all three artists in the space as well as over 165 of you!
The evening would not have been complete without our partners: Lalo Spirits, Icelandic Water, Gifts by LMD (catering), and DJ Laguna Sounds.
As always, our pieces are available for purchase both physically at our events, as well as online, where you can now find and collect the artworks directly.
Thank you again for your continued support of ALA Projects!
For inquiries, contact us here.
MILK & UNI X ALA PROJECTS SUPPER CLUB
For our second event, we partnered with our friends at lifestyle platform, Milk & Uni, to bring their SUPPER CLUB experience to NYC and feature our Andrea Grau — Inner Echoes exhibition. The evening included cocktails by LALO Spirits, a 3-course candlelit dinner inspired by the artist’s Peruvian roots and crafted by the talented chefs at Pia’s Plate, natural wine by Famille du Vin, followed by a fiesta with DJ Pipe Zav.
Andrea Grau — Inner Echoes
Curated by Amanda Garcia
As abstract artist Amy Sillman described, “[abstraction] is not an illustration, it’s not a representation. It’s an experience of understanding certain types of physical and formal relations: space, color, time, weight, heaviness, lightness, ugliness, beauty”. Andrea Grau’s practice embodies this perspective as she engages with abstraction to explore themes such as pain, love, life, sadness, chaos, resilience, transformation, and uncertainty. Her work incorporates an intense, aggressive, bold, and sometimes calm exploration, navigating the interplay between materials and their resistance in order to nourish her improvisation.
Grau approaches her art intuitively: “my work is a performative process that suggests the presence and importance of my body, which engages with the whole piece through movement and gestures as I create.” Her emotionally charged works, such as Pain (2023), feature a gestural vocabulary developed from internal visions, often revealing a calligraphic character, or a unique grammar inherent to her art.
Creating in a hyper-present state of awareness, Grau observes the constant change and transformation around her, as well as within her, and attempts to reflect this in her pieces.
Failure and mistakes are integral to Grau, offering freedom and opportunities to transform failed works into new creations over time. Her process begins with an unclear destination, allowing the painting to take shape and express itself organically. She then spends time with the work, observing what it communicates and seeks to convey.
Inner Echoes portrays the imaginative ideation that reverberates within the artist’s mind while creating, but also the exercise at large, inclusive of the many bouts of cotidianidad, or everyday influences, as well as the interludes of doubt and questioning – a process the artist enjoys overall and seeks to represent. Ultimately, Grau intends to continue developing and creating works that exceed her expectations, works so large or vivid that they scare or unsettle her.
The exhibit Andrea Grau — Inner Echoes was on view for one night only at the Milk & Uni x ALA Projects Supper Club in NYC on November 16th, 2024. Following the event, remaining available pieces may be viewed and acquired online via the ALA Projects website – www.alaprojects.com — as well as through Artsy.
To view available works from this exhibit, visit the Collect page.
ACT I: THE SHOWCASE
In May 2024, ALA presented its inaugural exhibition, Act I: The Showcase, featuring seven emerging artists: Gabriela Agreda, Jonathan Carela, Laura Castro, Gustavo Ghavami, Andrea Grau, Victoria Martinez,and Luca Otamendi.
Curated by Ala founder Amanda Garcia, Act I aimed to illuminate the array of artists, styles, mediums, and conceptual approaches that ALA will feature in its exhibitions. Here, we showcase works by emerging and mid-career artists who explore myriad themes, from Laura’s examination and reconstruction of identity, memories, and relationships erased by colonialism in the Dominican Republic; to Gustavo’s admiration for manual labor, its associated agency and power to transform our surroundings; to Victoria paying homage to her Mexican-American heritage through textile-based, public art-inspired installations.
Displayed in various formats, from Jonathan’s collage paintings on paper and maximalist works on canvas, to Gabriela's experimentation with cement, oil painting, and photography, each artist brings a unique perspective and materiality to their work.
Andrea explores printing and pigments on jacquard woven textiles, while Luca integrates graphic design elements and materials to depict his memories through sounds on canvas.
This initial exhibition underlined the breadth of themes and inquiries being championed by this generation of emerging artists, whether based in the US or their home countries.
Being Latin American, we are united by commonalities such as language – albeit with completely distinct tonalities, words, expressions, degrees of fluency or bilingualism – but our histories (colonial, post-colonial, neo-colonial), struggles, challenges, opportunities, are diverse and vary widely.
ALA endeavors to provide a platform to showcase our talent, but also our individual experiences, contributions, depictions, and questioning, painting a more contemporary and nuanced portrayal of Latin America and its diaspora today.
To view available works from this exhibit, visit the Collect page.