Maya Kabat 

Antonio Vigil

Invisible Cities 

Mercury 20 Gallery

25 Grand Ave. (at Broadway)  

Oakland, CA 94612

February 1 – March 1, 2008 

Opening Reception:  Friday, February 1 from 6-9pm (in conjunction with First Friday/Oakland Art Murmur) 

Maya Kabat  and Antonio Vigil open an exhibition of new work at Mercury 20 Gallery on February 1st with a reception for the artists from 6:00 - 9:00pm.

Invisible Cities  will consist of urban landscape paintings by each artist as well as a collaborative sculpture. The exhibit is inspired by Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities which explores the ephemeral and magical reality of the city as an allegory of the human condition. In this haunting book, dreamlike cities are described as visual poems--one city held together by ropes suspended above a deep valley, one connecting all of its inhabitants with string, one made up entirely of strangers whose fantasies about one another creates an exciting vibration throughout. Kabat and Vigil's paintings for  Invisible Cities examine the seemingly solid, but ultimately invisible, unknowable and multivalent concept of the city.

Maya Kabat's  paintings explore the changing form and reality of daily life through an examination of shifting external and internal environments. Referencing the urban landscape, Kabat's work investigates shifts of light, weather, and the passing of time. Plates of earth move, houses shake and settle, horizontal and vertical structures turn slightly off-kilter with time and wear, and cracks in the hard cement remind us that nothing is fixed. The built environment, like our bodies and minds, is not static. Using a range of scraping tools to create surfaces with stripes, gouges and flat slabs of paint, Kabat's painting process results in the tactile and visceral record of a struggle to hold two realities at once; to create a language for aspects of uncertainty and precariousness without crumbling beneath the weight of the understanding.

Maya Kabat was born in  Portland, OR . She graduated from Oberlin College with a BA and received an MFA from the University of California, Davis, CA.  Her work has been exhibited at Los Medanos College Gallery, Front Gallery in Oakland and the Seattle Art Museum Rental Gallery and her work is represented in numerous private collections.

Much of the work of Antonio Vigil takes place between two societies and cultures, namely Mexican and American. Between these spaces, notions are challenged, negotiated, and combined. Identities both personal and cultural begin to evolve. Ideas of history, memory, and migration are explored, on both personal and cultural levels. Landscapes with shared political, economic and cultural histories illustrate both the cohesion and disjuncture created by migration and cultural exchange. Vigil's work for  Invisible Cities, painted with a sensuous and meticulous touch, collage several locations into one continuous environment, and in these reconfigured cities lie the terms for identity formation and transformation.

Antonio Vigil received a BFA from the  University of New Mexico , and an MFA from Mills College in Oakland , CA. He has exhibited his work at the  Bronx Museum of the Arts , the Patricia Correia Gallery in Santa Monica , ProArts Gallery in Oakland , and has work in public and private collections.

Mercury 20 also presents an ongoing group exhibition in its back gallery. The artwork changes monthly and features new work from the gallery artists. Mercury 20 Gallery is an artist-run gallery in the heart of downtown  Oakland ; part of the emerging arts district in the Broadway/Telegraph corridor. Gallery hours are Friday and Saturday, 12:00 noon - 3:00 pm, or by appointment. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE