Firelai Baez, Fruta Fina, Fruta EstranÌa (Lee Monument)Â (2022), via James Cohan
For painter Firelei Báez, abstraction takes it cues form alchemy; gesture and material commingling in the artist’s hands in order to realize new spaces, new forms, and new ways to see the world. Incorporating this concept into senses of the body and of the world, her works tug at the notions of how we live, and how we might rethink the material of life through new modes of transformation.  This notion sits at the core of the artist’s work in her new show at James Cohan, where a series of canvases explore these modes of thought in detail. Â
Firelai Baez, Madeline (Rupture rapture maroonage) (2022), via James Cohan
For over a decade, Báez has painted transcendent chromatic interplays of abstract gesture and symbolic imagery directly onto found maps and printed materials to disrupt the boundaries they serve to delineate. For her third solo exhibition with the gallery, Báez presents a group of immersive large-scale canvases that continue and deepen her ongoing exploration of narratives of Euro-American exceptionalism. In these works , Báez ruminates on the foundational mythologies that have come to form a uniquely American brand of nostalgia, one shaped by the projected desire for an idealized past that never was.
Firelai Baez, Untitled (Premiere Carte Pour L’Introduction A L’Histoire Du Monde) (2022), via James Cohan
In Báez’s new paintings the fluid movement of material across the canvas and a dynamic manipulation of the composition take on a Rorschach effect; opening up a channel for generative exchange between the artist and the viewer. Abstraction becomes a form of liberation, doing away with the notion of visibility and legibility as an essential pint. In other paintings, unbridled abstraction is married with highly rendered, illusory mark making. In one fantastical composition, Báez invokes a female figure robed in a diaphanous ruffled dress luxuriating on a plush tufted rug. With flesh transformed into a swirling map of the cosmos, her body becomes a hallowed site–unfixed from time and space–within which rest, resilience, and healing are paramount and prioritized.
Firelai Baez, Haitian Mermaid (Describing the West India Navigation, from Hudson’s-Bay to the River Amazones) (2022), via James Cohan
Exploring notions of the canvas, painting and expression as modes for liberation, the artist’s work is on view through December 21st.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
James Cohan [Exhibition Site]
