About the Exhibition
Lucid Dreams. A color turns and shifts in gradient. Beyond a plane’s oval window, the horizon stretches endlessly. As the sun sets beneath hazy clouds, the mind wanders. These are the fleeting moments that Stefania Nazzal captures in her latest body of work. In a kind of fullness that is attained when one empties the mind and escapes, she alludes to states of consciousness that impart a sharp sensory awareness. As dreamy texts contemplate other ways of being, sheer luminescence promises a world of our own making. It is a world that Nazzal understands.

Where color floods the senses Nazzal points to natural phenomena that are all-encompassing. In a deeply layered artistic process, she meticulously chooses every component and shift in tone as a means of dissecting colors we see in nature and those we don’t. There’s a notion of plenitude in the way hues conjoin and shimmer. Her seemingly contained works incorporate a rich palette of PVC strings that teeter between solidity and fluidity. She has mastered materials, which, known for more pliable forms in friendship bracelets and keychains, are now sculptural flows that stream like thoughts.

In a new series of work, Is This The True Story (2024), Nazzal moves from the sky as her canvas to a monochrome page in which she invites the viewer in. In three gestural forms akin to crumpled paper, she subtly distorts her streaming lines, removing elements of her former work in order to begin anew. Color is subdued and gradient disappears. A steely pastel blue is interrupted by the shock of a bright orange on the backside. By not revealing the full image as flat, Nazzal marks an in-between state, starting and stopping to witness and question reality as one might in a lucid dream.

In this subjective world, a sense of control is relinquished and an unknown narrative unfolds, Revealing traces of her creative process, her new series offers the viewer a peek into the capsule of her mind, in which movement towards another story is shown as a progression, a freeze frame of three moments in time — the idea of suspension. The works unravel and open out from the wall and away from the notion of a solid frame. The plane window turns into a more abstract representation of change and color.

About the Artist
Stefania Nazzal (b. 1976) is a Swiss artist who currently lives and works in Dubai. Nazzal trained at the Cyprus Academy of Art and at Central Saint Martins in London. Working in mixed media, Nazzal weaves together deep colours to create dreamlike often paradoxical compositions, through a meticulous creative process. Through her practice she performs a reflection, refraction and dispersion of light, constructing whimsical colourscapes that depict the spectrum of light in multicolored forms. Driven by nature and natural phenomena, Nazzal strives to craft diverse realms.

All of the works in the show are for sale. To learn more about the artists, pricing and availability, click here.

Galleri Urbane, located in the Design District of Dallas, Texas, is a contemporary art gallery, founded in Silver City, New Mexico, in 2000. The Dallas location opened in 2009, where the gallery remains today. Since its founding, Galleri Urbane has advocated for the careers of contemporary, emerging and mid-career artists from across the United States and abroad, now representing more than 20 artists. These painters, sculptors, photographers, mixed- media artists, and conceptual artists share a the mission to innovate their media beyond traditional applications and conventions. These various approaches to art fuel the gallery in solo and group exhibitions every seven weeks — about eight shows each year. Two exhibitions run concurrently and works by gallery artists rotate in the Viewing Room, adjacent to the two main galleries. Galleri Urbane continues to maintain relationships with artists, collectors, curators, and critics internationally after more than 20 years. (Ree Willaford : Director/Curator; Jason Willaford : Head Registrar, Installation and logistics manager)

To view PH's Local Artist Wall, click here.