Massiel Mafes & Papo Colo

Calderón and Dinner Gallery are pleased to present a two-person exhibition featuring Massiel Mafes and Papo Colo, whose paintings delve into the exploration of memory and place. Titled The Color of Shadows, the show is on view at Dinner Gallery.

Massiel Mafes and Papo Colo both delve deeply into the memory of place, weaving together personal experiences and imagined realities. Mafes employs painting and collage as a means of narrating her familial history. By stitching fabric collected from family members and piecing together stories passed down through generations, she preserves and reimagines the memories of her family. Her work reflects her lived experience as a result of the experiences of her relatives who migrated to the United States from Cuba, leaving behind personal belongings, photographs, and other material objects imbued with familial significance.

Papo Colo often transcends the confines of lived experience, drawing on collective histories, cultural myths, and abstract impressions to recreate places he has never physically encountered. Colo lives and works between Puerto Rico and New York. The artist embodies a practice enveloped in performance and rituals. Often using utilitarian objects and materials found around his plein air studio in El Yunque rainforest, such as branches, dirt and even rainwater, Colo creates works that are crucial to understanding how one positions and establishes oneself in the world.

Both artists explore the liminal space between reality and imagination, crafting works that embody the fluidity of memory—simultaneously intimate, universal, and often untethered from a singular truth. Mafes and Colo's use of found materials from a different geography and time further highlight the intersection of past, present and future. Their works serve as a guide, tapping into a universal and collective experience while also testifying to diverse perspectives. In their hands, place becomes both a site of personal reflection and a canvas for speculative exploration.

Massiel Mafes (b. 1993, Miami, Florida. Lives and works in New York City) Mafes received her BFA from the Miami International University of Art & Design in 2015, her MFA from the California College of the Arts in 2018, and is a recipient of The Golden Foundation Artist Residency Program, in New Berlin, NY and the Vermont Studio Center. This year she is the recipient of the prestigious AIM Fellowship at The Bronx Museum.

Papo Colo (b. 1946, Puerta de Tierra, Puerto Rico. Lives and works between New York and Puerto Rico) Colo is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Franklin Furnace Fund. Most notably, Colo is the co-founder of Exit Art in New York. Colo's works are included in the collections of the MoMA, New York; El Museo del Bario, New York; and the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.