David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to present SATOR ROTAS, its first exhibition of new work by Maia Cruz Palileo. The exhibition will occupy two spaces at the gallery’s Los Angeles location, and will include paintings, ceramic sculptures, and works on paper, shedding light on the multi-faceted nature of the artist’s project and their poetic engagement with the Filipino diaspora. SATOR ROTAS is on view at 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. from March 13 through April 26, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 13 from 6 to 8 PM. Palileo looks at their own Filipino heritage to better understand the routes by which their family arrived in the United States, but also as a way of entering into deeper communication with their own psychological and imaginative responses to the contemporary world. In each phase of Palileo’s work, they give shape to otherwise invisible forces that animate landscapes, drive historical change, and enrich—and complicate—human lives. SATOR ROTAS features work Palileo has made since their visit to the Philippines at the beginning of 2024, when they were able to have firsthand experiences of environments that, as someone born in the US, they had predominantly encountered through archival documentation and secondhand family accounts. A whole new set of sense impressions has therefore transformed the raw material available to them on both conscious and unconscious levels, lending increased physicality to a practice already notable for its attunement to the sculptural qualities of paint. Such impressions are not limited, however, to the visual or even the tactile. They also include more intuitive perceptions that arose when Palileo was able to connect myths, legends, and folklore shared by their family with the natural landscapes of the Philippines, resulting in an expanded, multi-dimensional sense of place. Several paintings are informed by time spent around Mount Banahaw, a slumbering volcano long considered a holy pilgrimage site in the Philippines. Palileo renders images of dense forest scenes, root systems, and branching forms of trees, providing opportunities for intricate layering and the creation of suggestive, mystery-laden openings where the unruliness of life bursts forth, seemingly of its own accord. The exhibition’s palindromic title draws attention to ideas of reflection and mirroring that appear throughout the works on view. In the horizontally oriented work, Like a Shadow That Cannot Walk (2025), Palileo bisects the painting so that when viewed in one direction, orange and pink swaths appear as water atop which a boat is floating. When viewed in the other direction, however, the orange and pink become a sunset sky, with its boat and figures reflected in the dark waters beneath. Similarly, the painting Revir (2024), whose title is the word “river” spelled backwards, draws connections to sinister ideas of the “upside down world” as it relates to colonialism, prompting the viewer to interrogate what it is they’re seeing and to not be easily fooled by a first impression. In Springtime Again (2024), a monumental diptych, Palileo establishes an optical rhythm in which vertical striations create an effect akin to double vision. Like vintage stereo cards, Palileo creates two nearly identical spliced landscapes that, when presented side-by-side, allude to a third, imagined landscape. This work also exemplifies the ways in which collage, as a process and typology, influences Palileo’s approach to image-making. Here, a repeated pattern of dark, tree-like vertical impressions approximates the negative space that results when cutting out strips of paper. Springtime Again, like several other works on view, pulls imagery directly from postcards—objects that have historically represented, or misrepresented, faraway places from a colonially skewed perspective. Postcards and stereo cards have an inherent relationship to both image and experience, which makes them an ideal reference for Palileo, whose work considers the motivations behind historic documentation and image-making, just as much as they consider the physical embodiments of one’s senses. Understanding the invisible, like travel or other sensorial events, plays a large part in Palileo’s project, prompting questions around what experiences are invisible and what can be rendered visible. As a whole, the works in this exhibition offer a parallel understanding from both lived accounts—touching trees, walking down a street you’ve mostly seen in photos—and flattened images in an archive. It’s through this parallel approach that Palileo creates paintings that appear mirrored, spliced, or otherwise bifurcated to approximate the experience of understanding a place and people through indirect methods, thereby gaining a closer understanding of their own family history and of themself. Maia Cruz Palileo (b. 1979, Chicago) has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, Florida (2023); Kimball Art Center, Park City, Utah (2022); Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2021); and American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C. (2019), among others. Recent group exhibitions include Spirit House, Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University (2024); Seven Rooms and a Garden, Moderna Museet, Skeppsholmen, Stockholm (2023); Spirit in the Land, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (2023); The Outwin: American Portrait Today, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2022); A Point Stretched: Views on Time, San José Museum of Art, California (2022); and Our Blue Planet: Global Visions of Water, Seattle Art Museum (2022), among many others. Their work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Cummer Museum, Jacksonville, Florida; San José Museum of Art, California; TANG Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Fredriksen Collection, National Museum, Oslo, Norway; Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky; and Chapman University, Orange, California. Palileo lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. ____ David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to announce Amazônico, the first solo exhibition of Chico da Silva’s work in Los Angeles, on view at 5130 W. Edgewood Pl. from March 13 through April 26, 2025. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, March 13 from 6 to 8 PM. “I feel the animals, the jungles, the fantastic worlds, entering the phase of other worlds.” —Chico da Silva, 1972 Over a prolific career spanning four decades, Chico da Silva devoted himself to depicting the celestial, otherworldly realms within his imagination. His work, which spans a rich and varied body of paintings, drawings, and performance, encapsulates a profound engagement with the intersection of personal mythology, cultural history, and collective creativity. Amazônico brings together exemplary paintings from the 1980s—an often-overlooked phase of Chico’s career—alongside works from the 1960s, offering a comprehensive look at his practice and insight into the evolution of his distinctive artistic vision. Born in Alto Tejo, Brazil, Chico’s early years in the Amazon deeply influenced the development of his cosmology of fantastical creatures and environments. As a teenager, he moved to Pirambu with his mother. It was only a few years later that Swiss art critic Jean-Pierre Chabloz saw him drawing on some neighborhood buildings and quickly became a key supporter, launching Chico’s international career. By the early-to-mid 1960s, Chico had honed his unique style, working primarily on paper and depicting creatures—both real and imagined—in suspended states of conflict. The 1964 and 1966 works featured in this exhibition both feature stippled lines and dots that define his bichos (creatures). In the 1966 example, fish surrounding a tree share the same intricate patterns, dissolving the boundary between flora and fauna in Chico’s invented world. Chico continued to garner significant attention, culminating with an invitation to participate in the 1966 Venice Biennale, where he received an honorable mention. A work from this pivotal year is included in Amazônico. The only painting in the original artist frame, this work offers critical insight into Chico’s process: the painting’s frame bears marks from the artist, who constantly wiped his brush onto the frame’s border to ensure precision in every stroke. His refined technique later became the foundation for the Pirambu School. Originally conceived as an arts workshop for children and local artisans to learn directly from Chico, the school quickly evolved into a collective. Members of the Pirambu School began to create their own works, expanding Chico’s visual language and contributing to a shared, imaginative universe. Throughout his time teaching at Pirambu, Chico continuously reinterpreted and evolved his compositions. Two works from disparate parts of his practice, 1966 and 1981, exemplify this sustained reinterpretation. Both of these works feature a large, central fish surrounded by smaller ones swimming around its open mouth. In the earlier of the two paintings, an eel swims into the fish’s mouth, while in the later version, Chico replaces it with a slim fin extending from the fish’s head, subtly shifting the composition and drawing in the smaller fish. Moreover, Chico’s use of color and pattern shifts from a moody, dark tone in the 1966 work to a vibrant, eclectic style in the 1981 piece. Fifteen years apart, these works highlight Chico’s endless ability to reinvent his fantastical world and the characters that inhabit it. Chico’s Venice Biennale recognition brought both fame and scrutiny to the Pirambu School. European audiences struggled to make sense of the school’s collective approach. Meanwhile, Chico’s worsening alcoholism led to extended inpatient treatment. While hospitalized, Chico continued to paint and by the late 1970s, he had returned to the studio. An untitled painting from 1980, created in the last few years of Chico’s life, presents a notable departure from his earlier style by omitting the patterned gradient backgrounds that had defined much of his previous work. Here, a vibrant grid serves as the backdrop for two dueling dragons. Each square is composed of creatures and scenes amassed throughout his decades-long body of work. The snakes, trees, birds, and fish familiar from his 1960s pieces are reimagined in smaller forms, subtly obscured by the dramatic presence of the two dragons. Through this grid, Chico synthesizes the rich cosmology he had developed over many years. Chico’s deployment of Amazonian flora, fauna, and mythical iconography has had a lasting impact on international audiences. By presenting regional narratives on an international stage, Chico continues to play a key role in shaping the conversation around Latin American art, challenging conventional views and highlighting the relevance of art practices from outside traditional art centers in global movements. Chico da Silva (b. circa 1910, d. 1985) has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including the major, traveling retrospective Chico da Silva e o ateliê do Pirambu, presented at the Pinacoteca de São Paulo (2023) and the Pinacoteca do Ceará (2023). Other solo exhibitions include Chico da Silva: Sacred Connection, Global Vision, Museu de Arte Sacra, São Paulo (2022); Chico da Silva – O Renascer 100 Anos, Espaço Cultural Correios, Fortaleza, Brazil (2010); Retrospectiva Chico da Silva: do delírio ao dilúvio, Espaço Cultural do Palácio da Abolição, Fortaleza, Brazil (1989). Group exhibitions include Uma história da arte brasileira, Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro (2024–2025); Patrimônios, Memórias, Artes e Ofícios, Museu da Cultura Cearense, Fortaleza, Brazil (2024); The Sacred in the Amazon, Centro Cultural Inclusartiz, Rio de Janeiro (2023); Fantaisies brésiliennes, Musée International d’Art naïf Anatole Jakovsky, Nice, France (2016); Brasileiro, Brasileiros, Museu Afro Brasil, São Paulo (2005); and 33rd Venice Biennale, Italy (1966). His work is in the permanent collections of Centre Pompidou, Paris; Tate, London; Pinacoteca de São Paulo; El Museo del Barrio, New York; Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Museu de Arte do Rio de Janeiro; and Fundacão Edson Queiroz, Fortaleza, Brazil.