“Mirage” with Nina Tichava and Marina Savashynskaya Dunbar at Laura Rathe Fine Art

Houston, TX. Laura Rathe Fine Art (LRFA) announces Mirage, a two-woman exhibition featuring new works by Marina Savashynskaya Dunbar and Nina Tichava. LRFA will be hosting the opening reception on Friday, November 18 from 5-8pm at our River Oaks District gallery (4444 Westheimer Rd). Nina Tichava will be in attendance. 

Mirage explores Marina Savashynskaya Dunbar and Nina Tichava’s individual artistic processes through a lens of reality vs. imagination. While both practices are distinct in their own right, each artist creates spatial compositions complex enough to leave the viewer questioning what is actually in front of them and what they believe they are seeing. Through gestural movements and seamless layering, the viewer is lost in the space between one line and the shadow of another as the paintings create a dreamlike escape from reality.

Inspired by nature, architecture, and textiles, artist Nina Tichava relies on  processes of layering and intricate patterning. While Tichava’s work is seemingly geometric, dominated by leitmotifs of circles across parallel and intersecting lines, upon closer inspection, each painting is rendered organic and delicate by the underlying texture. Her unique system of collaged dots punctuate the work with a three-dimensional quality, drawing the viewer even closer to appreciate every moment. 

Marina Savashynskaya Dunbar’s nature-based abstractions are composed through harmonious movement, material improvisation, and layers of translucent color. Using gravity to direct the flow of her materials such as paint and sand, she allows the element of chance to create an airiness in the work. Her surfaces seek the dichotomy of having reservation and the embrace of the unforeseen.

Mirage will be on display through December 10th.