How Cuban Artist Rachel Valdes Maps Perception in Her Abstractions

"For Cuban artist Rachel Valdés, light is not only an element of her work but the core focus. In her solo show at Miami's Gary Nader Fine Art, " Light and Matter," a new body of work illuminates Valdés's continuing explorations into the perception of light and, in parallel, light's connection to human consciousness and emotion. Using the bending of light through an aperture or across an edge-also known as diffraction-as a starting point,"

"The lingering colors and shapes, the encroaching darkness, render not the light or light source directly, but instead the experience of light. "I work with color as if it were energy," said Valdés in a statement. "I am interested in that moment when what we no longer see persists as a sensory echo-almost as a shared creation between memory and the invisible.""

Rachel Valdés investigates light as both material and metaphor, focusing on diffraction and afterimages to examine perception, consciousness, and emotion. She manipulates color and optical effects to produce lingering sensory echoes that emphasize experience over depicted light sources. Her multidisciplinary practice remains grounded in the body's relationship to environment and sensory perception, creating tension between internal and external worlds. The works feature surging, rippling hues and elusive focal points that evoke cellular, pulsing visions and introspective reflection. The exhibition situates the viewer within perceptual phenomena that blur physical light and psychological response.

Read at Artnet News