Towards is pleased to present MagicMaria, an exhbition of new work by Maru Aponte.
Maru Aponte uses watercolour as a way to explore the fundamental qualities of light, movement, and place. Often drawing upon her home territory of Puerto Rico, she creates large scale, expansive paintings that envelope the viewer in color.
The works in MagicMaria emerged following Aponte’s residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in the summer of 2024. While there – Aponte worked with Fresco, deepening her understanding of the ways in which materials shape both the act of making as well as guide the ontology of the painted surface. The resulting paintings are hybrid forms that resist easy categorization – watercolours that aspire toward the density and permanence of fresco while simultaneously embracing the fluidity inherent in their nature. Through their perceptual shifts, these works expand the conceptual and material boundaries of watercolours, questioning the expectations imposed upon it as a historically subordinate medium.
Central to Aponte’s practice is the consideration of water as both an environmental and ecological element. Working both in studio and en plein air, her paintings are a site of flux – where material conditions and conceptual inquiries coalesce – toggling between the universal and the individual and embracing a methodology of hybridity, transformation, and reinvention.
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Maru Aponte recently graduated with an MFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver. Previously, she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and graduated from the Painting Department of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. Aponte was the 2023 Emily Carr Fellowship Resident at Griffin Art Projects, North Vancouver and recently was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture 2024.
Recent solo and group exhibitions include Moontalker, Agustina Ferreyra, Mexico City (2024); Salt Stains, Pale Fire, Vancouver 2024); Con mil ojos de espuma, Souvenir 154, San Juan, Puerto Rico (2023). Mi casa es tu Casa, About Art, Antwerp, Belgium (2021).
From April–June 2025, Aponte will be the artist-in-residence at Art Gallery of Ontario.
