Collection: SYMBIOSIS

“Symbiosis” A two-person exhibition by artists Daniela Marin and Jasmine Raskas.

ON VIEW September 2024 - November 2024

Friday, August 6th 5-8pm in the First Floor Gallery at Angad Arts Hotel

Opening Reception for Grand Center's Monthy First Friday Artwalk. This event is free and open to the public with complimentary food and drink.

This exhibition shares the collaborative journey of two artists working together across continents. Marin, based in Lima, Peru, and Raskas, in St. Louis, MO, were introduced to each other’s work through a mutual contact at Art Basel Miami 2023. From there, the two artists set out to create an exhibition that highlights the relationships between their works and ultimately stands as a metaphor for the nature of the collective unconscious and a symbol for the convergence of form found in organic matter.

Marin and Raskas explore relationships and the interconnectivity of biological forms, both real and imagined. Their vibrant, dynamic compositions are filled with organic shapes and biomorphic forms, becoming entities and ecosystems each with its own synergy. Patterns and textures found across the planet are pulled together to showcase the beauty and complexity of nature. Their artwork celebrates the diversity and interdependence of all living forms. This exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the connections that bind us all, transcending geographical and cultural boundaries to discover a universal visual language.

Accompanying the First Floor Exhibition will be the debut of the first new installation in the Gallery of Doors. Raskas brings us, Intergalactic Ecosystems, a sculptural installation through September 2025. You don't want to miss it!

Daniela Marin

Daniela Marin is on the vanguard of South American abstraction. Her paintings swarm with technicolored, protozoan forms, juxtaposing tension and randomness with naturalistic color harmonies.

Within the cacophony of Marin’s entangled forms, a tug of war is being played between synthesis and diversity; connectivity and separation. The movement and complexity that defines her paintings has also defined her own life. She has lived in Venezuela, Argentina, Chile, the Dominican Republic, and Peru. The back and forth between stability and upheaval within her compositions reflects the contemporary realities of the South American people and the societal changes Marin has observed.

Though she is clearly positioned on the avant-garde, there is also something timeless about Marin’s work. Her mysterious mixture of patterns, shapes and textures hints at Latin America’s contemporary anxieties as well as the enduring legacies of its past. The earliest human inhabitants of this region made artworks that expressed the relationship between their spirit and the natural world, a theme that endured and evolved for millennia. European colonization put those foundational interests in conflict with the relentless forces of modernization. Similar dynamics play out in Marin’s masterful paintings, where seemingly disparate, yet interconnected forces vie for influence while struggling to coexist.

“The works do not refer to recognizable forms,” Marin says. “Moments are represented that exist only to emphasize the human drama and to clarify our existence. I invite viewers to enter the fascinating creative world where aesthetics are intertwined with deep reflection and social criticism.”

Jasmine Raskas

Bio

Jasmine Raskas is a multidisciplinary artist based in St. Louis, Missouri. Jasmine utilizes paint, sculpture, and installation to explore sentience, organic systems, and otherworldly world-building. Their recent solo exhibition, "Eternal Jungle," incorporated light, sound, animation, sculpture, painting, and storytelling to create a fully interactive immersive environment. Jasmine's work has been featured in numerous galleries across the region, including the Center of Creative Arts, Duane Reed Gallery, Houska Gallery, Fenix Arts, The Foundry Art Centre, St. Louis Artists’ Guild, Art Saint Louis, St. Louis Public Library, The Jacoby Art Center, 31 Art Gallery, Osage Arts Center, and The Stone Spiral Gallery.

Jasmine has been highlighted by the Riverfront Times as one of the three St. Louis artists to watch for in 2024. Publications and features of their work have appeared in Create! Magazine, Gesso Magazine, HEC-TV, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, KDHX radio, and Ladue News. Awards include grants from The Luminary’s Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Regional Art Commission (RAC) in St. Louis. Jasmine is also a graduate of the RAC-Teaching Artist Institute.

With an M.A. in Counseling, Jasmine's collaborative work integrates mental health initiatives with community arts practice, aiming to create intentional spaces for mindful awareness, connection, and growth.

Artist Statement

I work with paint, sculpture, and installation. My art explores sentience and organic growth in the context of world-building. I’m fascinated by the mathematical rules that govern the emergence of physical structures and information-based systems. For example, the same branching patterns are found in the distribution of rivers, networks of neurons, a strike of lightning, and the growth of a tree. These patterns matter to me because of how they re-occur across multiple levels of scale, appearing at both the microscopic and macroscopic points in space.

I create work that is purposefully ambiguous, but yet simultaneously representational of the natural world. I work in collaboration with what’s around me, releasing control over outcomes and allowing the unconscious to lead the way. Throughout the process, I embody the mindset of an intergalactic observer, attempting to step outside the human vantage point and occupy a timeless, scaleless, harmonious existence.

I’m particularly interested in the point at which objects and systems are labeled to be intelligent, conscious, or alive, and how these distinctions relate to the 21st century’s relationship to plants and technology. My work gives animistic qualities to a variety of forms exploring the crossroads at which intelligent systems may alternatively be defined as beings.