No other medium can as yet so directly combine vision and touch to express what it's like to have a particular mind, with its singular troubles and glories, in a particular body. 

PETER SCHJELDAHL

 ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

 A Battle of Ideas represents two distinct approaches to my ever-present interest in iconography and meaning as it relates to daily experience. My tendency is to look at the world as a series of intricate academic problems—as so many jewels to be appreciated from every facet—but the world isn’t a series of arguments, diagrams or even infographics. Life’s visceral qualities, it’s incomprehensible pain, beauty and monotony find their way into my work through the expression of color and texture. Some work in this show is approached from an ivory tower perspective: an almost aerial deconstruction of words and symbols, making heavy use of style and metaphor. Other works represent a much more intuitive approach, focusing largely on memory—a seeking out of imagery that isn’t so much about research as it is sifting-through-the-brain-and-letting-images-float-to-the-surface without making distinctions between autobiography, politics and history. I see the combination of these bodies of work as indicative of what Schjeldahl calls the “singular troubles and glories” of a life lived by many contemporary artists, which seems to, ironically, juxtapose intellectual pursuits and abstractions with catastrophic world events and a thousand daily banalities: a reverie with interruptions.

CASEY ARGUELLES GREGORY

Curated by Hills Snyder 

 ABOUT THE ARTIST

Casey Arguelles Gregory is a painter, writer and educator based in Houston, Texas. She holds an MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio, and has exhibited widely throughout the region including solo and group shows at Hardin Simmons University (Abilene), Red Arrow Gallery (Dallas), Lawndale Art Center (Houston) and Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio). In 2011, she was the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship. Arguelles Gregory blogs about looking at art with her two-year-old daughter at www.artstrollertx.com, and is a regular contributor to Arts + Culture Magazine. 

http://caseyarguellesgregory.com/              

Image: Something About Longing, (2015); oil on canvas; 31 x 72 inches  

PRESS  

San Antonio Express-News  UTSA Grad has first solo show at Sala Diaz 'A Battle of Ideas' - Express News, June 5, 2015

San Antonio Current  http://www.sacurrent.com/sanantonio/a-battle-of-ideas/Event?oid=2448643