Rochelle Botello: Free Fall
The Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA
January 25 - September 7, 2024
Art embodies freedom--a liberation found in surrendering control and embracing the empowering leap into the unknown. This sense of freedom grants the capacity to be fully present to free fall into one’s intuition. Rochelle Botello’s work serves as a conduit to understand the world around her through these intuitive impulses while also playing with the fusion of structure and space. The focus of her practice is the process of discovery, wonder, and curiosity. Botello’s observations of the world around her have sustained her as an artist. Observations that compel her artistic practice.
As a sculptor, her work is an attempt to capture traces of her existence. Employing everyday materials like cardboard, wood, and tape, her sculptures embody an ephemeral quality that Botello finds both compelling and absurd. The impermanence of these materials, coupled with the way they unexpectedly shapeshift and implicate activity, adds to the poetic ability of her sculptures. Trusting the creative process and embracing the unknown, Botello revels in the impermanence of forms, mirroring the wondrous inevitability of life. By merging manmade materials with the organic and poetic forms of nature, she creates a subconscious familiarity that celebrates the absurdity of life.
Her drawings, though independent of her sculptures, invoke ruminations of movement while also calling into account the transformation of character and this tension between stasis and freedom.
Although her work featured in Free Fall addresses her personal experiences that examine the relationship between the known and unknown, control and letting go, strength and vulnerability, stability and instability, these themes are universal and speak to the human condition.