Under The Crescent Moon

Monica Kim Garza spent two months painting this summer in Paris. Slowly, the city emptied. The Parisians abandonned ship, as they do every summer, in search for water.

Leaving Garza to remain in Paris in the brutal summer heat. She was alone with her paintings filled with a deep sense of urgency and devotion.

In her summer paintings, we encounter the feminine figures specific to her past works. These women with mysterious smiles. But this time, they were mixed with the colors of Paris — the red and the burgundy of the cafés which have fascinated the painter. We find them seated at the terraces of the city. Or lying down in a night of a heatwave.

Far from the beaches, Monica Kim Garza was able to find some coolness inside the museums. She particularly liked the Eugène Leroy exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne. And we understand why : each of her works, like Leroy’s paintings, is opposed to “flat paintings”. Since she has left acrylic paint for oil, her works become richer in texture. And, above all, these paintings reveal a progressive mutation. A combination of  figurative painting and abstraction. It is this essential movement, so precious in the career of an artist, that  cadet capela has wanted to show.

Some signs are unmistakable: women’s bodies are more and more abstract, backgrounds mingle with subjects, contours are multiplied in a desired blur, the materiality and thickness of the painting become essential elements… And the title of the exhibition also mixes two visions: the crescent moon and the Parisian croissant, two images idealized and dreamed up by the artist. Like a quest that has just begun.

Like a metamorphosis. In an exhibition that celebrates the dedication of this young painter to her gesture. Inside her, it’s like painting gets the upper hand over everything else…  

Boris Bergmann

As final words, this little poem, written by the artist at the end of summer :

Under the crescent moon
I see you through the window
I pass you in the streets
Buttery and soft, staring back at me
I want you and you want me

Calling out to me every morning
I waited all this time,
Played hard to get
Drank and ate without you
Slept without you
But I want you and you want me
You are mine and I am yours,
Le croissant

Monica Kim Garza