«Gisela Romero transforms the aesthetic elements into plastic metaphors that refer to the dialectic of dualized cultures such as Judeo-Christian between matter and spirit, good and evil. Faced with this conflict, she creates a beauty that reveals the fall and rebirth of the soul, which tries to make matter flourish when confronting the viewer…» Eduardo Planchart Licea, 1994
Gisela Romero is an American Visual Artist born in Venezuela, living, and working in Orlando, Florida. Her focus is on Drawing in multiple formats and surfaces.
Romero has a master’s degree in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, New York, and a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with honors from the California College of Arts, Oakland, CA. With over 30 years of experience, she has been communicating visual ideas through mixed media with a basis in Drawing as a medium for creating and teaching art.
Gisela Romero is committed to producing art that examines immigration and its consequences, especially the painful consequences of uprooting, she is currently working on a new body of work that reflects the issue of immigration. Metaphorically, a household object that serves as a surface such as a table runner and using fabrics bought in thrift stores that bear traces, shapes, patterns, and stains of other people, she imagines stories of immigrants using the table runners as an inspiration for short stories and in turn, the short stories as an inspiration for her drawings.
Romero has made more than twenty individual exhibitions in Galleries and Cultural Institutions (Studio Gallery, Osceola Arts / Besharat Gallery, Atlanta / La Caja open spaces, Chacao Cultural Center / Studio Soto, Boston, etc.), has participated in more than two hundred group shows (Terrace Gallery, Orlando / CityArts, Orlando / First Thursday Orlando Museum of Art / Alejandro Otero Visual Arts Museum, Caracas / Museum of Contemporary Art Sofía Imber, Caracas / Cruz Diez Museum of Graphic Arts, Caracas / International Art Fairs as Pinta, NYC / ARCO, Madrid / Art Miami,FL / Estampa, Madrid / FIA, Caracas / etc.) has made artworks for Public Spaces, has participated in Artist Residencies in Italy, Spain, Norway, Thailand and the United States. Her work can be seen in public and private collections.
Recent honors include a yearlong residency at the Art and History Museums Maitland, Florida, as part of the program «Artist in Action». In 2022-2023 she had a solo show at the Mayor’s Gallery, City Hall, Orlando, curated by C. Keith Beasley, former Public Art Coordinator of the City of Orlando, FL. and she was awarded with the First Place prize in the 2023 «Celebrating the Genius of Women» competition by Women in the Arts, Inc.
Gisela Romero next solo show will be in January 2024, curated by the Chief Curator Dan L. Hess, at the Art& History Museums of Maitland, FL.
«Frequently, the original texts of Gisela Romero -created in a unique symbiosis with her plastic work- appear in the drawings as a creative strategy. They are different codes that touch on the complex issue of intertextuality, in an attempt to make a plastic translation of the world. The handwritten word -in what seems to be an unintelligible texture- gives way to the «drawn word», which then becomes the veiled complaint against disagreement or the unexpected. It becomes an expressive resource, used as a compositional element, with its own shape and identity – sometimes forcefully; in others, almost unnoticed.» Lieska Husband, 2010
Gisela Romero invokes a deliberate and defiant ambivalence. From a subtle and fragile presentation, she raises a vehement and caustic critique. The allusion to the deterioration and the loss of urban spaces is revealed through explicit calligraphic sentences. The limited and fenced city, the forbidden and lacerated territories, the contaminated and fragmented reality, the cracked and interrupted roads, in short, the material, social and spiritual decomposition of our restricted freedom is shown with certainty and pain, but also with delicacy and lightness. These contrasts are captured by means of hanging fabrics that reveal the mystery of what it hides. Illusions and hopes seem to throb from the most hidden depths, as well as the will to denounce the most obvious surface. These amphibological crossings promote a strange call for the viewer to assume the challenge of distinguishing without separating the multiple messages that are combined in Romero’s work. Victor Guédez, 2006
All images are from Gisela Romero’s solo exhibition «A Constant Goodbye – The Table Runner’s Stories», Curated by Dan L. Hess, Art & History Museums of Maitland. January 26 – April 15, 2024.
Gisela Romero
A Constant Goodbye – The Table Runner’s Stories / Editorial Lector Cómplice.
Available on Amazon
Gisela Romero, with an impressive career of over thirty years, is a visual artist who has dedicated her life to communicating emotions through her art. Today, at Lector Cómplice, we are proud to present her new book, «Un Adiós Constante» (A Constant Goodbye). This work emerges from her most recent exhibition at the Art & History Museums of Maitland, which explores themes as profound as the Venezuelan diaspora and its consequences.
Les Quintero.